Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Life has a lot of roughness – people cheating, backstabbing, betraying, badmouthing, oppressing, hitting each other on the head – so the older we are, the more we become rough as everyone else in the world.

That is a big problem: There is a natural tendency for all of us to become rougher with time.

That is why Jesus said: “If you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, be like children.” And Siddhartha taught that we are born with a Buddha heart, which becomes sinful as we grow up in an ignorant world.

So, actually we grow up in the world and learn sinful ideas, thinking, attitude and behavior. We turn from good to bad as we grow up.

Remember the story of the Tree of Knowledge in the Bible?

God made Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden.

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. (Gen 2:8-9). Take heart, guys and gals, only “trees good for food”, no animals good for food. That means, originally we human were vegetarian, eating only fruit. Evolutionism seems to go along well with the Bible here – we come from monkeys, and monkeys are vegetarian.

In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Gen 2:9). If we eat the fruit of the tree of life, we would be immortal. Too bad, Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden too early, so today we know death and coffin. OK, folks?

But the attention here is the “tree of knowledge of good and evil”:

The Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Gen 2:16-17). So, if we eat the Knowledge Fruit, we die.

Sure enough, God gave Adam the woman Eve, and Eve seduced Adam into eating the Knowledge Fruit. God kicked both of them out of Eden Garden, so today we know death and suffering.

Guys and gals, everything deadly wrong has to have a woman behind. Is man chronic finger-pointer? Or is he simply stupid, always doing whatever his woman commands him to do? Or both?

But, the important point we are studying here is the Tree of Knowledge. Do you see, folks? Many thousands of years ago, people had already known that “knowledge brings death.” We have mentioned above that the more we grow up, the more we become sinful. Children are saints and angels; adults are robbers and thieves. That is very much the going of life.

So, if we learn from Jesus, Siddartha, God, Buddha, Bodhisattvas, Saints, sacred books and sacred teachings, we don’t learn anything new, we don’t learn any “knowledge.” OK, folks? No knowledge for us to learn. We only learn how to unlearn all the stupid knowledge we have learned all our life – unlearn them, erase them, annihilate them, evaporize them…

Unlearn, to be back like children – sweet, innocent, honest, loving, trusting…

We unlearn tham sân si (greed, anger, ignorance) – so we become a child again, pure and innocent.

We unlearn grasping onto the self – so we become non-self again, just like a child.

We unlearn grasping onto things of the world – so we become totally free again, just like a child.

We unlearn from being VIP, divo, diva, queen and king of the world – so we become totally empty again, like a child, Buddha, Jesus, Bodhisattva…

That is what we do – unlearning the “knowledge” we have been collecting from the world all our life. So that we can have Heaven, in our heart, here and now.

Wish you all have heaven in your heart.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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