Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Understanding spiritual matters is completely different from understanding worldly matters. You use your head, your reasoning, and your logic for your worldly matters – selling and buying, marketing, financing, engineering, lawyering, doctoring… For spiritual matters – understanding the depth of your heart and the human heart, your true nature and the true human nature, God, the Buddha, the meaning of life, the purpose of living, reward and punishment, paradise and hell – you use your true heart, simple, pure, gentle, and loving, that can understand everything deep in the human soul.

So, when you read the Sutras or the Bible, do not use your mind and logic to analyze and reason. Instead, let your heart feel the meaning of the sacred verses, and you will not be lost, but will understand their true meaning. In other words, have the “right” heart and you shall understand spiritual matters.

What is the right heart?

Probably the simplest answer is what Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. (Matt 18:3-5).

In short, if you have the heart of a child, you are Jesus equivalent.

Or, the heart of Hui Neng, the Sixth Zen Patriarch. Hui Neng was illiterate, he could neither read nor write. But when he heard his neighbor read aloud the Diamond Sutra verse: “Have no place to attach to, the Enlightened heart shall be born,” he at once became Enlightened. (Diamond Sutra, par. 10 – Thế nên Tu-bồ-đề, các Bồ-tát lớn nên như thế mà sanh tâm thanh tịnh, không nên trụ nơi sắc sanh tâm, không nên trụ thanh, hương, vị, xúc, pháp sanh tâm, nên không có chỗ trụ mà sanh tâm kia. That is the answer for the question in par. 2: Bạch Thế Tôn! Người thiện nam, người thiện nữ phát tâm Vô thượng Chánh đẳng Chánh giác [Anouttara Samya Sambodhi], nên làm sao trụ, làm sao hàng phục tâm kia?)

So, have no place to attach to, then you shall have the Enlightened mind/heart – Anouttara Samya Sambodhi heart.

What you need to understand spiritual matters is the simple, pure, gentle, and loving heart of a child, or of the illiterate Hui Neng. All your intelligence, degrees, hard-earned experiences, reasoning, and logic shall not help.

Each of us still has a child inside, a Buddha heart inside. Use that heart to guide you in thinking, feeling, and acting, then you shall be Enlightened – a Bodhisattva helping the world cross the suffering sea to the other shore.

With compassion,

Hoành

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