Dear Brothers and Sisters

In sacred writings, there is one word standing out prominently due to its oft repeated use – that is “heart”. Translated into Vietnamese, heart is tâm, trái tim, lòng.

Tâm is Sino-Vietnamese (Hán Việt) for trái tim. However, the more traditional Vietnamese language has another very familiar word – that is “lòng”, as in lòng từ bi, lòng bác ái, lòng mẹ, lòng cha, lòng yêu nước, lòng yêu đồng bào…

All these words indicate one thing: “Our entire system of feeling and thinking, with a strong focus on emotion.”

When talking about heart, tâm, trái tim, lòng, we automatically focus on emotion first.

And there is only one comprehensive system of feeling and thinking, different from the dual track of mind and heart in Western culture. Until today, mind and heart are still two separate things in the West: mind is for logical reasoning, and heart is for emotion and feeling, and mind is considered higher than heart.

I say putting mind (logic) over heart (emotion, feeling) is incorrect. Our experience shows that our logic is the slave of our emotion – when you love a person, you start to think about all kinds of logical reasons to convince your parents that the person is the best for your life and they should want you to marry her/him; when you don’t like the rain, you mind conjures up all kinds of reasons to prove that the rain is bad… Emotion is the queen and logical reasons are the soldiers supporting the queen. Not the other way around as in popular Western culture.

The writers of sacred writings many thousand years ago understood human psychology very well, so they all talked about (1) one system of feeling and thinking and (2) feeling is the queen, thinking is the queen’s soldiers.

Sometimes you can confuse your emotion and logic. For example, “My heart says I love him because he is so gentle and sweet. But my mind says we need a financially secure life, and he doesn’t have any marketable skill to guarantee good living.” The “mind” (logic) here is “financially secure life”, which is your desire of a high and stable lifestyle, so it is your desire, your emotion, your feeling, not your logic. So, you don’t have the conflict between feeling and logic – you have a conflict between 2 different feelings. This analysis shows that your feeling is the queen, not your logic.

Back to sacred writings. In the Bible, Jesus said: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). “Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’” (John 7:38).

In the Quran, “It is the heart that goes blind and refuses to recognize the truth” (Quran 2:74). “It is the heart that inspires the function to reason and understand.” (Quran 22:46)

In Buddhism, the most important sutra of Mahayana Buddhism (Phật giáo Đại thừa) is the Heart Sutra, short name of Prajñāpāramitāhṛday, translated as “The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom”. In Sino-Vietnamese, it is “Bát Nhã Tâm Kinh” – tâm kinh means sacred writing of “the heart.” In Trần Nhân Tông time, it was called “Kinh Lòng.”

So, we can see the significant of our feelings, our sentiments, our desires, our wishes in our life. These emotions – not logics – are the queen of our thinking.

And that is why all the sacred writings tell us to guard our heart – keeping our heart pure at all times.

Desire can be good or bad, feeling can be good or bad, emotion can be good or bad… Nourish your heart with good desire, good feeling, good emotion…

Instead of greed, hatred, ignorance (tham, sân, si), nourish your heart with generosity (rộng rãi), love (tình yêu), and wisdom (trí tuệ).

Watch out for your emotions – loving, caring, supporting, positivity… are good; hatred, jealousy, fighting, negativity… are bad.

The Dhammapada (Kinh Pháp Cú), verse 183, teaches:

Không làm mọi điều ác.
Thành tựu các hạnh lành,
Tâm ý giữ trong sạch,
Chính lời chư Phật dạy.

To avoid all evil,
To cultivate good
To keep the heart pure
This is the teaching of all the Buddhas.

So, brothers and sisters, keep your heart healthy and pure: Stay away from evil emotions, tham sân si – greed, hatred, ignorance. Cultivate good emotions and good deeds. And your heart will automatically be pure.

Most importantly, guard your emotions. It is your EQ (emotion quotient) that is important, not the IQ (intelligence quotient).

Wish you all good heart.

With compassion,

Hoanh

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