Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We are good at heart, so when we see that a guy doesn’t know something, we tend to try to teach him that thing.

Now, the teaching and learning are not really from the teacher; they are totally in the hands of the student.

If the student is not ready to learn for some reason – he is not in the mood, or he is stubborn or simply stupid, or he hate you, or he is absolutely blind from ignorance (using Buddhist terminology) – then there is no teaching (you can’t teach) and no learning (he can’t learn).

The teacher almost has no power over teaching and learning. Indeed, if the student truly wants to learn, he doesn’t need the teacher – flowers, trees, birds… can teach him, if he really wants to learn.

The Sixth Zen patriarch Hui Neng (Huệ Năng) was totally illiterate. He didn’t know how to read and write. However, when he heard his neighbor chanted The Diamond Sutra, at the verse “Not sticking to anywhere, the Enlightened heart shall be born” (Ưng vô sở trụ, nhi sanh kỳ tâm), he was suddenly Enlightened (though he didn’t know that, so he started to look for a Buddhist teacher to learn Buddhism, and got to The Fifth Zen partriarch Hong Ren (Hoằng Nhẫn) who knew immediately that this country pumpkin from the South has got Enlightenment).

A pure heart shall understand the deep knowledge of the sacred heart (tâm linh), even without learning.

Back to our main subject. When the student is not ready to learn, no one can teach him and he can’t learn anything. So, don’t try to be a teacher to someone when that someone is not ready to be the student.

I spent the major part of my college and post-graduate time trying to convince many people around me that they were wrong, or had no understanding, about some particular things. I don’t remember now that I ever succeeded in convincing anyone then. Much later, things happened to prove that I was right, but that would be too late for them. In the meantime, I was very frustrated and disappointed – not good for my mental health.

So, about 40, I concluded that if someone is not ready to learn, I should not try to teach.

Now I try Jesus’ method, writing trà đàm for thousands of readers, but whoever want to learn will learn, whoever don’t want to learn will not learn. I have nothing to do with that. God himself shall lead them. At most, I am a writing instrument of God; at the least, I am just an average guy on the street who likes to study and write about spiritual matters.

Jesus preached to the multitude, sometimes in groups of thousands of people. After a sermon he woud say: “Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 11:15). I said to myself: “Whoever has eyes to read my trà đàm, let them read.”

When the problem is big, say, a national problem, the wait will be much longer. If a government has no experience on some kind of problem, you can tell them about it, but you should be patient to wait for 10, 20 or 30 years, until the government has experienced that kind of problem again and again and struggled to solve them again and again, then the government is ready to learn (or re-learn) seriously. I have told some government lots of things, and have patiently waited for 20 years for them to really understand after they have struggled with those problems again and again many times.

Everything has its own timing. Wait for the right time for right things to happen. Don’t be impatient as to scream and yell, or, worse yet, to start a revolution. If the timing is not good, your revolution is also wrong on timing. What’s the point? Haven’t you seen many revolutions help absolutely nothing and only make things worse? I hate revolution. I have seen many stupid and harmful revolutions in my lifetime. I am patient enough to wait for things to grow at their natural pace. You cannot force a one-year-old mango tree to produce tons of fruit.

Wish everyone be patient and wise.

With compassion,

Hoành

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