Dear brothers and sisters,

If you are good at observation, you will realize that all the people around you have the same stressful aura. You can detect some different aspects of stress – worry, fear, anger, hurry, sorrow – but they have a common foundation: stress.

That is very much the human life.

Once in a long while, you may run into a person with an aura of peace – seeing the person you immediately have a feeling of peace. A saint, or an angel, in the stressful world.

And you probably want to know what is the person’s secret to have such peace.

If you ask the person, chances are you will hear: “I don’t chase after anything. Whatever Heaven gives, I live with that. And I have compassion for everyone around me.”

And if you are lucky enough to meet several angels like that over your lifetime, you probably realize all the angels have very much the same answer, although with somewhat different language.

Peace Angel

That is the secret to have peace. This is no small task, my friends – having peace in a world full of stressful people is a rare and precious achievement.

But the secret is simple:

(1) Don’t chase after anything. In Buddhist terminology, it is “not greedy” (không tham). The world has million things for billions of people to chase after. That is the big world game. If you want peace, don’t play that game.

If you have food to eat, clothing to wear and a place to sleep at night, that should be enough. Everything else may come – big money, big house, big car – then let them come, but you don’t want to spend time chasing after them. And when they go, let them go in peace. The detachment attitude to all things in life is the first secret for peace. In Buddhist terminology, that is “non-attachment.”

Non-attachment doesn’t mean you are against worldly things. You can have many worldly things in your life, but your non-attachment attitude is that such worldy things are clouds in the sky – clouds come and go, and you watch clouds coming and going. That’s all.

(2) Compassion toward others. You cannot have true peace if you don’t have compassion for people. Say, city life is so stressful, you go up the mountain, build a cottage and live there by yourself. You may have quietness, but in your heart you hate the city and, of course, everything in it, including city people.

Compassion in our heart connects people together mentally and spiritually, and so it generates in our heart a feeling of warmth and peace as a son/daughter sitting among family members. This is a psychological phenomenon, I would say, of social animals – animals that live in group – one of which is human.

So the two-prong secret is simple: Don’t chase after anything and have compassion for others.

Don’t chase things means don’t run after them. You may work to have them, but don’t attach yourself to them. Everything comes and goes, let it come and go naturally and peacefully.

Have compassion for all others in your heart.

Then you will have peace and the peaceful aura of an angel.

Actually, you become an angel because you will see the presence of God.

Peace to all of us.

With compassion,

Hoành

© copyright 2023
Trần Đình Hoành
Permitted for non-commercial use
www.dotchuoinon.com