Becoming Interwoven: Sewing My Brown Jacket as the Art of Practice
Nguyễn Bảo Châu, Chân Xuân Sớm/True Early Spring
(pronouns she/her), is a second-generation Vietnamese
American. She teaches and learns by doing as a graduate
student in biology at Miami University’s Project Dragonfly.
Châu, her husband Hiệu, daughter Bảo Ái, and their two
dogs are guests living and working on traditional, unceded
Tongva/Gabrielino lands and shared spaces of the Kizh,
Serrano, Cahuilla, and Luiseño.
Sarah Manion
Sarah Manion shares about the
interbeing, reverence for life,
and meditation of crafting
with natural materials.
In Old Path White Clouds, Thầy recounts the origin
story of the Buddha’s patchwork robes. Overlooking a field of rice paddies, Buddha said to Ananda,
“‘Ananda, how beautiful are the golden patches of
rice that stretch to the horizon! Wouldn’t it be nice
to sew our robes in the same checkered pattern?’
Ananda said, ‘Lord, it is a wonderful idea. Sewing
bhikkhus’ robes in the same pattern as rice fields
would be lovely.’”
I have been creating things with my hands
all of my life. When I first learned the story of the
Buddha’s robes, I fell in love. I fell in love not only
because the Buddha’s community, like me, apparently had a practice of sewing their own clothes,
but because the Buddha showed me how mindfulness, meditation, and interbeing can be integrated, illuminated, reflected, and worn in everything
we do. To me, this insight was as beautiful as those
rice paddies must have been to the Buddha and
Ananda.
When I became an aspirant to the Order of Interbeing, I knew that hand-sewing my own brown
jacket would be my way of honoring the Buddha,
the Dharma, the Sangha, and my commitment to
this path.
I see making as a form of engaged practice. Bringing materials together with needle and thread
helps awaken wisdom in me: I am a complex collection of non-human fibers and filaments woven
together to form the fabric of human experience.
In my mind, the fabric of my work is the fabric of
all life; everything integrated, everything interwoven. Looking at craft through the eyes of interbeing
makes my work feel alive, the process of selecting
the material for my brown jacket an act of reverence for life. As I flip through all the brown fabrics,
I take a moment to look deeply into the origins of
these materials. Where did they come from? How
did their creation impact the people, places, and
animals of which they were made? What stories do
they tell?
My choice is a soft linen-wool that hangs on my
arm like water. Touching the cloth for the first time,
I consider the linen-ness of it: flax that grew in a
field under sunny skies before the harvest. A plant
with roots deep in soil that produced threads sturdy enough to yield fabric for working garments and
pliable enough to flow gently around ankles and
calves on a summer’s walk through the woods. I
touch the fabric again and feel the softness of wool
interwoven with linen. I like the mix of plant and
Becoming Interwoven:
Sewing My Brown Jacket
as the Art of Practice
animal fiber in this cloth. It reminds me of the enduring interrelationship between land and life, between the human and the more-than-human. And
it doesn’t hurt that I have a particular fondness for
sheep! The integration of wool with linen means
my jacket will be pliable, warm, and joyful—qualities I try to reflect in my practice.
The Irish poet John O’Donohue said, “Every time
you’re creative, you’re on holy ground because
you’re actively deepening, extending, and realizing creation.”1 I love working with the closeness
and immediacy of my own hands. I like the meditative dance that unfolds across a piece of fabric
when finger, needle, breath, and eyes move as one
across the stage of cloth. It’s an embodied practice
that helps me to release into the wonder of being.
When I’m sewing, it’s easier for me to feel deeply
how the body and mind are in perfect oneness.
Each stitch is alive as an expression of creation. I
find it delightful.
I am a slow maker. Not only because I believe
that making something beautiful deserves to take
time, but also because my everyday life is filled to
the brim with busyness, and so sewing is a refuge.
Each day, I spend a few moments with my brownjacket-in-progress. I make a cup of tea and invite
my busy mind to sit with my body a while. Once I
am settled, I pick up my sewing and allow myself
to release into the order and progression of one
stitch after another. If I listen closely, I can hear the
moving song of the stitch gatha: Breathing in, needle meets fabric / Breathing out, stitching.
DE E PLY WO RN
Much has been written about what it means to
wear the brown jacket of the Order of Interbeing.
Over the course of my aspirancy, I found I needed
to craft my own relationship to the brown jacket.
Thầy encourages us to create a life that supports
our practice, and this has been a profound invitation for me. For me, this means exploring the origins of what brings me real peace. The practice of
making helps support my spiritual practice by cultivating the energy of mindfulness and bringing me
joy. It is a pattern of everyday practice that fits me.
When I wear this brown jacket, I will be putting
on all the teachers and all the communities that
have been woven into my life along this path. Each
time I slip my arms into this coat, I will inhabit all
the moments of connection experienced in sewing
the garment; I will smile, knowing that I have this
practice, that I am a part of this community. I will
smile at all of the non-brown-jacket elements woven into the folds and creases of this one garment
that clothe me in joyful, interwoven interbeing. As
the African scholar Bayo Akomolafe writes, “We
are not a crease in the fabric of things, we are the
fabric of things.”2
Craft and making is one way I have translated this practice into the language of my life. It is a
personal act of reverence and gratitude for all the
beings, elements, and conditions that have manifested to create this beautiful garment. I aspire to
wear it fully and joyfully for myself and the world
each day.
1 John O’Donohue, 2012, “Imagination as the Path of the
Spirit,” YouTube. Accessed July 11. https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=F0bg7lNeKY4
2 Bayo Akomolafe, 2020, “Don’t Be So Careful,” Radical
Discipleship. Accessed July 11. https://radicaldiscipleship.
net/tag/bayo-akomolafe/page/2/