Dear Brothers and Sisters,

If you think about it, the human life has more tough time than relaxing time. Excluding sleeping time, during our awake hours, we usually are under pressure of work, studying, making deals, buying and selling, taking care of children, fighting and competing, dealing with unexpected bad things falling down from the sky – such as sickness, accidents, being stabbed on the back, being badmouthed, being betrayed… Moments to relax and enjoy life are few and far between. That is why the Buddhists say, “Life is suffering”.

You may try many things to be calm and at peace when bad things drop down on your head, such as praying, sleeping, drinking, doing Zen. But I think even saints and Zen masters have a lot of crying time. Saints cry a lot, usually because they feel sorrowful for their weaknesses or for the sufferings of others. Even Jesus cried when he saw people suffered in their ignorance.

Zen masters are supposed to be cool and calm all the time, but I have seen a Zen master, at a funeral where he was chanting prayers for the congregation, cry when he saw the deaceased’s family members cry. Jesus cried when he saw dead Lazarus’ relatives cry and suffer so much.

I have always thought I have Zen in me, and generally I am relaxed and calm, compared to other people. But very often I feel pains in my heart seeing the sufferings of the poor, the oppressed, the disabled, the disadvantaged, the abused… and sometimes I feel like crying.

So, I have very much concluded that the more advanced you are on the spiritual road, the more sensitive you are about people’s sufferings and, therefore, the more pains you feel in your heart. And, thus, more crying.

Trúc Lâm Zen patriarch Trần Nhân Tông talked about sống tùy duyên (living with the causal flow): “When hungry, eat; when sleepy, sleep.” I would add: “When grieving, cry.”

Bodhisattva Avalokitasvara (Bồ tát Quán Thế Âm) so loves the world that she listens to the world’s cries of suferings all the time, to help and save people in distress. That job must make her cry often. So too all other Bodhisattvas – they all work to save the suffering people of the world.

We men are taught to be macho – men don’t cry. Well, I don’t know what benefits that kind of education engenders.

Every time I cry, openly outside or quietly inside, I feel I am more humane, closer to other people and closer to my own heart.

So, folks, you don’t have to be macho. Live with the causal flow – when grieving, cry.

Wish all of us find crying easy.

With compassion,

Hoành

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