Khoa Nguyễn, MD.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are gathering here today to send off our very good friend Robert Vĩnh Đại and celebrate the journey he had with us. I first ran into Robert Vĩnh Đại in 1957, in 5th grade, at the petit lycée St Exupery in Saigon. We were both ten and were among the best of our class. He used to draw beautiful pictures of roaring tigers that have remained with me until now. From then on our path stayed joined through high school at the grand lycée Jean Jacques Rousseau, then Saigon medical school. Destiny brought us both to the States in 1975 where I became a dermatologist through the US army and he became the brilliant surgeon, as we know of, first in the US air force, then at Kaiser Permanente in Northern Virginia.

Our common journey however started billions of years ago when out of nowhere we became particles, atoms, molecules, star dust, swirling in the cosmic dance of the infinite space and time. As physicians, we understand that we have evolved through 13.8 billions of years, through an infinite number of “lives “and metamorphoses to become chemicals, cells, organs and the conscious human beings that we are today.

And although we have divided, multiplied and transformed ourselves countless times, we are still in essence same with the mother source. It is the well known holographic principle in Eastern philosophy and medicine, by which the part has all the properties of the whole. We cannot refute our history. It is not a matter of belief. It is a matter of progress, scientific knowledge and information that were not available to us a couple of hundred years ago.

Dying has turned out to be not an end, but a transitional process within the bigger movement of life. We are not just the lonely particle of dust lost in the immensity of space and time. We are space and time itself. That is the true common journey Đại and I are having. We have come a long way, and we are happily moving forward. I certainly wish his last few years had been less eventful.

But Life is such a deep mystery. We always try so hard to come to terms with the data feeding into our feeble minds that we overlook the miracle of our being. Being is not so much assuming appropriating a certain body and personality as being the whole through its eternal movement. The challenges Đại went through were just a ripple in the eternity of our journey. His tremendous professional and personal achievements, his wonderful family, and especially the love that shows through the difficult times, are there more than anything to illustrate the colorful totality of the whole experience. In the end and through it all.

Love is always there, in the trillions of. processes unfolding within and outside of us. And in Love Đại is and will always be. He is now being whole, in his and in our true collective and eternal self, in you,T uyet Hoa, in all of you, Tran, Jeremy, Lucien, in me, in all of us. Feel the Love, feel his presence and rejoice in the magic of our common journey.

I shall not blame: it is by reason of myself alone

I will die: it is a short journey, everything will pass

Sufferings are the meaning of life; Love is its goal

I will but do not expect: my will and the Divine Will harmonize

Things unfold as they should: I can never predict what is to come

Empty particles among empty particles, I am part of the Universe

I shall not blame: it is by reason of myself alone

I will die: it is a long journey, I will be born again

Sufferings are my medium, meditation my vehicle, and Love my goal

For in Love I do not expect: my will and the Divine Will are one

Things unfold as they should: I am what comes

Empty particles among empty particles, I am the Universe

- Dr. Khoa Nguyen