Dear Brothers and Sisters,

When I was in high school and university, we boys often told each other: “Heaven is not for you, boy. You already have a one-way ticket to hell. Forget about heaven.” You know, you went to church or temple and listened to preachers, at home your parents preached also, and you always heard that you were bad, bad, bad and sinful, sinful, sinful. Almost everyone everywhere preached negative, especially when it came to you, you, you. So, you grew up and believed seriously that you were so bad that it was impossible for you to buy a ticket to heaven. The place waiting for you was hell.

Actually, you were in hell already with those negative feelings about yourself. No need to wait till death to meet the Devil.

That was the old days, but I don’t see much difference today either – the Information Age appears to bring us the same volume of negativity as in the old days, proportionately speaking.

That is the problem of humanity for thousands of years. The Buddha has taught we all have the Buddhahood in us. Confucius has said: “Human nature is originally good.” The Bible has said: Humans were created by God, in the image of God, with God’s breath (aka God’s Spirit) breathed into us… Basically, all biggest spiritually teachers teach the goodness in us. But the lesser teachers, for some reasons, always focus on our weaknesses, our sins, our evils, so much that we believe firmly hell is the only place for us and, of course, such hellish belief puts us immediately into the hell of our mind, now and here.

That is how the bulk of mankind tend to aim for hellish life.

Brothers and sisters, imagine that right after you were born, your parents put you in the hands of some nuns at a temple to raise you up, and you lived with the nuns all your life, probably became a nun yourself, then you had probably lived like a saint all your life. That is because you lived with your original saintly nature that you were born with and didn’t learn anything bad or stupid from the outside society.

We all are born with a saintly heart and, as we grow up, we learn bad, evil and negative things. And we become negative about the world, about human in general and, worst, negative about ourself.

But that is what Buddhist philosophy calls ignorance – which covers our eyes and mind – and the Bible calls separation from God – out of the Garden of Eden.

We need to turn and focus back on our true self – the self of a Buddha, the self of a Child of God. Holy and Good.

Humans are originally (from birth) holy and good. We just have to unlearn – to drop – all the stupid stuff we have learned from the society, to be back with our true self – holy and good.

That is our conversion back to the true creed: We believe in our original holy and good nature.

And live with that original nature. We shall be the high priest of our own creed: everyday performing the sacred ritual to celebrate our original nature – holy and good.

Drop all the dumb negatives that you have been brainwashed into believing.

Believe in your pure heart.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matthew 5:8)

Wish we all be pure in heart.

With compassion,

Hoành

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