Dear brothers and sisters,

What is most important to you?

Your career? Your reputation? Your love life? Your family? Your wealth? Your success? Your…?

I know what is most important for you.

That is your heart – your heart is your thinking center. If your heart is not working right, you are insane and should be in an asylum, useless.

If you don’t know that your heart is most important to you, you are stupid beyond cure.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people in the world don’t know and don’t care about their heart. That is what the Buddhists call “ignorance” in the human life.

Ignorance here doesn’t mean you don’t know math, or politics, or philosophy, or IT… Ignorance means you don’t know yourself.

Got it? Ignorance means you don’t know yourself – because you don’t know what your thinking center is.

About 25 centuries ago, Socrates warned people: “Know thyself.”

Until now, these two words still reverberate throughout the human race.

Know yourself. If you don’t know yourself, then whatever you think you know is garbage, just like a mentally ill person wondering the street, collecting every piece of garbage he sees and putting it in the huge bag he carries on his back.

So, you understand the weight of ignorance in Buddhist teaching – not that you don’t know something, but you don’t know yourself, your life, and the human life.

Ignorance is the root of all human sufferings.

So, if you’re smart, start asking why ignorance is the root of all sufferings and am I ignorant at all?

That question may save your life.

Wish you all understand what ignorance is.

With compassion,

Hoanh

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Trần Đình Hoành
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