Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears” is my saying to indicate that when you are ready to learn spirituality, you will see a teacher stand there waiting to teach you. When you are still not ready, you don’t see the teacher.

That is because (1) when you are ready, your eyes will open and you can see, and (2) teachers are all around you and have been there for eons. Continue reading When the student is ready, the teacher appears →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

If there is something you have been wanting to do, but you haven’t started to do, then you probably lack determination. The shortage of determination is the numero uno reason why many people are not successful in life.

Each one of us is a train, and the train needs a locomotive to pull the long line of wagons. Our locomotive is our determination aka our will. If you want to do something, just do it. Have the will/determination to start it right away and don’t stop until you get it done. Continue reading Determination →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I talk about honesty so often that I may have sounded like a seriously broken record over the years. Honesty is the last virtue of the Humanity Way (Đạo làm người) – Love, Propriety, Loyalty, Wisdom, Honesty (Nhân, Lễ, Nghĩa, Trí, Tín). Falling below honesty, you fall below the Humanity Way. Continue reading Honesty →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“Unrighteousness at the top, chaos at the bottom” is the English version of the Vietnamese “Thượng bất chánh, hạ tắc loạn” – when the leaders are unrighteous, the people are in anarchy.

People always look up to their leaders to imitate, be they government officials, business executives, teachers, priests, monks, nuns…

The problem “at the top” now is that too many government officials are involed in major corruption cases. Of course, the current government has been doing a more than superb job in fighting corruption. But the constant news stream of anti-corruption victories is also the evidence of so many bad apples at the top.

And when the people see unrighteousness at the top, they imitate and become unrighteous, immoral, and illegal.

How do we fix this mega-problem of the country?

Of course, the obvious solution is to fix “the top.” But we need to expand the meaning of “the top.”

Everyone of us is already at the top – parent, teacher, supervisor, company director, boss… Each one of us is at the top of some entity and has many followers or “lính” under us. Thus, we need to be righteous, for the people under us to have order, peace and goodness.

The top of any entity – family, school, class, company, company department, government office, Internet network, association, group, church, pagoda, temple – needs to be righteous for their followers to be good.

We cannot simply point our finger at the top of the government while we don’t do our job at the top of our own entity. The government is a very small minority, the people is everyone in the country – that is a colossal number of people, which truly determine the state of the nation.

The minority simply cannot do the job of the collosal majority.

Think about it. And do our job.

With compassion,

Hoành

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

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In some of the big corruption cases, many prosecuted government officials testified that they did not ask the companies for money, they only tried to do good job, but companies insisted on giving the officials gifts (usually in the form of an envelop). The officials would tell the companies that they didn’t have to do that, the companies handed the envelops anyway, and the officials received the envelops.

Of course, that is bribe and corruption, because they all knew that those envelops didn’t have love letters inside. Continue reading No gift →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We all have known by heart this saying: Tiên học lễ, hậu học văn – First learn propriety, second learn knowledge. This order means propriety is more important than knowledge.

Propriety is the way we treat and deal with each other; knowledge is the academic subjects we normally learn in school. Continue reading First learn propriety, second learn knowledge →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We all want to keep the peace for ourselves and for the world. But how to keep the peace?

Talking about peace means talking about two or more persons. How can you keep the peace if others harass you, abuse you, harm you, do wrong to you? We have the so-call self defense to fight back – and it means war. Peace usually requires all people involved to agree to keep the peace; if one doesn’t agree, chances are there would be no peace.

Because the difficulties in keeping the peace our Great Master teach us to be tolerance (nhẫn nhục).

Tolerance means forcing yourself to endure and tolerate hardship from others without complaining or fighting back.

Tolerance is one of six virtues of Bodhisattvas in Buddhism: Giving, Keeping the rules, Tolerance, Diligence, Meditation, Wisdom – Bố thí, Trì giới, Nhẫn nhục, Tinh tấn, Thiền định, Trí tuệ).

Jesus expresses tolerance in a very simple and easy-to-understand way: “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

That famous sentence, called “turning the other cheek,” is in a longer paragraph:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:38-39)

Why tolerate?

Because it is the only way to keep the peace for your self and for the world.

With compassion,

Hoành

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

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Golden Rule is considered as the most important rule for us to live by. However, there are two versions of the Golden Rule; they came about 500 years apart.

The first version is from Confucius: Continue reading The Golden Rule →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Many people have the habit of overstating what they are speaking about and making their statement sound like an exaggeration, such as: “I’d like to introduce to you the most beautiful lady in the Mekong Delta,” or “This is the best history book ever written.” Continue reading Understatement →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In case you haven’t heard, our world is in serious trouble, the kind of trouble we have never had in our human history.

IT is moving extremely fast. What we are facing now is artificial intelligent (AI). And this is only one thing in a long series of stuff to come.

I am very sensitive about this, because at the beginning of IT revolution in the 1980’s I was an attorney for MCI Telecommunications, the most advanced telecommunications company in the world at that time. Continue reading A lightning world →

Brothers and Sisters,

A man who is writing a book on Taoism asks me to read his draft version and share my comments. I read and realize that this man has zero knowledge on Taoism. My God, a person has absolutely no knowledge about a subject is trying to publish a book about the subject. I point out his huge errors, but I don’t know how to tell him stop writing.

This case is not about someone who has low level of knowledge. He has zero knowledge, and he simply put his own weird ideas down, and plans to sell his book. Continue reading Teaching →