Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Probably you have heard “You are what you eat” many times. It mainly talks about your food – if you eat mainly meat, you are fat, heavy, and slow, with cholesterol clogging up your veins and all your internal organs. If you eat a lot of fruit and a moderate amount of starch, you are thin and healthy.

But I am talking about your spirit: Spiritually, you are what you eat.

We have many kinds of food for our mental and spiritual life – you are what you eat.

For your mind, you need to read things that make you more intelligent, knowledgeable and caring: the issues chalenging the country and possible solutions; the poor and the oppressed; the things that your community and your country need; justice, equality and happiness for your people, your integrity and trustworthiness, the meaningful way to live; the way to keep yourself healthy physically and mentally…

For your heart, learn about loving, caring, and sharing; how to love all people; how not to discriminate against anyone; how to search for goodness and beauty in everyone; how to erase and prevent hatred in your heart; how to overcome your prejudice…

For your spirit, learn about the life of spiritual leaders – Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Gandhi, Mandela… Read some well-known sacred writing in various spiritual tradtions, like The Lord’s Prayer (Christianity), Dhammapada Sutra (Kinh Pháp Cú, Theravada Buddhism), The Heart Sutra (Bát Nhã Tâm Kinh, Mahayana Buddhism), the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the life of Jesus (Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of John), The Analects (Luận Ngữ, Confucius), the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the life of Nelson Mandela , the life of 14 Dalai Lama…

I am not saying that you need to consume eveything here in a month, or a year, or even 10 years. Take your time, one bit at a time. The purpose is not to eat a lot. The purpose is that you have some idea of what food is good for you, and you take your own time to try them and eat them.

And don’t waste your time on stupid and harmful food. You know what they are. Life is short.

Brothers and sisters, please open your mind, both horizontally and vertically.

Vietnam depends on the level of khowledge of each Vietnamese citizen.

We have been a small and poor country of the world for several thousand years. Stop it. Try to bring Vietnam to the top rank of the world. And the only way to do it is that each citizen has to be on top of the world.

And don’t say you don’t know what your job is, now that the country is not at war as in the time of the generations before us.

Wish you all be intelligent and knowledgeable.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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