Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We all want big things – big house, big car, big job, big position, big money, big power, big name…

Who want small stuff?

But here is the important point: If you do anything very well, you shall have big name and/or big money and/or big power, whether you like it or not. You cannot stop the big things coming to you when you are very good at something.

However, when you actively chase after big things, that is another story. By now, probably you have already concluded that people who chase after big things are greedy, vain, shallow, arrogant… They are the folks whom the Buddhist school calls “ignorant.”

First, they don’t know that small things matter. You can buy for your wife a huge diamond ring, and its value to her is still much less than the cup of coffee you make for her every morning before she goes to work. Or you are a billionaire and you donate to the church 100.000 USD, its spiritual value is still smaller than what a homeless donates – 1 USD, his entire wealth.

Second, if you aim for big things, chances are you aim at them for yourself. That is an extremely self-centered way of living. Self-centering is self-attachment (chấp ngã), the worst attachment of all kinds. If you focus on yourself, you don’t see anything other than yourself and you become stupid. Try to look at yourself, or your image in the mirror, non-stop for three days, and see if you can see anything other than yourself for those three days. And we are not talking about three days, we are talking about you looking at yourself continuously non-stop for your entire life, 24hrs per day. Super-stupidity of the first rank!

Third, you have no friends, because people hate and don’t trust self-centered people.

For the above reasons, you are guarantied to fail all your life, in whatever you do.

So, look for the small but meaningful, and forget about the big deals. Big things will automatically come to you, even when you don’t want them, if you are super-good at some things, small or big.

Wish we all know the value of small things.

With compassion,

Hoành

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