Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Do you know the real difference between a soldier and a civilian? The difference is discipline. A civilian very much can live any way he likes. The soldier has to live with the military discipline, which is known worldwide as the toughest discipline anywhere.

Discipline means rules – everything has a rule. Military discipline is: When you eat, when you stop eating, when you go to bed, when you wake up, how to do your bed, how your shoes should look… Every small or big thing of your daily living has at least one rule, sometimes more than one.

And such discipline makes the military stronger than any civilian organization.

Life in monastery or convent is also a life of discipline, to produce leaders for the church.

When we’re young, we don’t like discipline, but as we grow older, we gradually learn that discipline makes us strong – the more disciplined a person is, the stronger and better is he.

A truly disciplined person is disciplined in all aspects of living. However, many people have discipline only in some areas and are very undisciplined in other areas. For example, a person may be very disciplined in making money, but very undisciplined in eating, so he has a lot of money and also a lot of extra fat on his 80kg body.

I am talking about your discipline in your spiritual life. There are rules in spiritual life to keep, most of us know what they are: no lying, no killing, no stealing, no jealousy, no backstabbing, no badmouthing, love people, love animals, love the poor, be faithful to your God, faithful to your spouse, loyal to your friends… All these are very basic rules of living that we all were taught when still a kid. Nothing new or mysterious.

The mystery is that those basic rules we kept when we were little, but as we grow old, we tend to throw these rules out the window.

So, when we were younger, we were stronger; as we grow old, we become weaker in our heart and in our soul.

You cannot have discipline only in the material realm, like money making, and no discipline in your spiritual realm, because your heart and your soul are your root, money making is your branches and leaves.

If your spirituality, which is your root, goes down, all your material realm will follow and collapse.

Be disciplined and take care of your root.

Wish we all have discipline.

With compassion,

Hoành

© copyright 2024
Trần Đình Hoành
Permitted for non-commercial use
www.dotchuoinon.com