Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Most people of the world make a huge mistake – they go with the masses. Whatever numerous people do, they would consider as correct, right, standard. In the Vietnamese culture, we have the quintessential phrase “Không giống ai” (not like anyone). If you are không giống ai, you are wrong or, at least, weird. If you do something không giống ai, you are nutty in the head. Continue reading Don’t go with the masses →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

When you’re sick, you’re tired. The body doesn’t want to move. It wants to stay in bed and sleep. Because it’s out of energy? Obviously. But the truth is that, your body is not out of energy – it is using all its energy to fight against your illness and help you recover. In short, your body is using every bit of your energy to help you recover. It wants you to sleep, not wasting energy on anything else, so that it can work on your recovery.

So, my friends, when you’re sick, you need to rest, so that your body has enough energy to heal you.

Same thing with spiritual illness. When you sick, rest. Continue reading When you’re sick →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I know that everyone of us is working to improve ourself. The question is “improving what?”

Most of us try to improve doctoring skills, lawyering skills, engineering skills, selling skills, teaching skills… but the most important skill, the mother of al other skills, few people pay serious attention to. That is the skill to keep a pure heart. Continue reading What are you improving ? →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Life is ups and downs constantly.

When you’re on the way up, you jump around happily. When you’re down, you lie on bed feeling close to death.

That is normal, but no one feels normal, especially when they go down. In addition, everyone will agree with me that your tough days are much more numerous than your easy days. Say, marriage, the peak of marriage life is the wedding celebration and the honeymoon. From the peak, you can’t go any higher and can only go down. Two persons living together may have all kinds of problems very quickly and these problems come in long series – one gives birth to the next, each problem is a mother of a long chain of childrens, and each child soon becomes a mother too. Problems can spread with a geometric progression aka exponential growth. Continue reading Ups and downs →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Many people do want to learn how to live a positive spiritual like. The problem is that they read about so many things, which overwhelm them. Just confusion and fear.

But the learning is much simpler.

• Jesus says two sentences called Two Greatest Commanments to convey all his teachings: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39).

These two Greatest Commandments go together: you need to love God, before you can love all people, because many people are unloveable – without God you shall not have enough strength to love all people.

• The Buddhists say there are 84 thousand methods (pháp môn) to achieve Enlightenment. You just need one, say, non-attachment aka non-grasping aka non-sticking. If you don’t attach to anything, you shall be Enlightened. Ưng vô sở trụ nhi sanh kỳ tâm – non-attaching to anywhere, the Enlightened heart shall be born.

Just focus on one method and don’t worry about other thousands of methods, you shall not be confused and overwhelmed and shall reach Enlightenment.

• Or you can practice honesty about everything to everyone at everytime, here and now. You shall gain Enlightenment and purify your heart.

These are spiritural rules to help you gain Enlightenment and suscess in whatever you do, be that selling bánh mì or teaching or doctoring.

The way of positive spirituality is extremely simple. You want to be successful in your soul and in your work, you shall succeed, however you define success.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It is very interesting that the idea of “born again, rebirth, reincarnation” and the like is present in many cultures of the world – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and many religions around the world in small indigenous tribes and nations since the ancient time till now. The idea is some what different with each culture, but they all talk about refreshing our life and our soul with a new beginning. Continue reading Born again →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

When I was much younger, I understood the standard life is grabbing, gasping, fighting, lying, badmouthing, backstabbing… anything you do to win. Why? Because I saw everyone around me do that, almost no exception, and I understood that was the standard life, because I didn’t see any other lifestyles around. Continue reading What is the standard life? →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

If you check all the schools of spirituality of the world, you will realize that they all talk, in one way or another, about the great power inside everyone. Buddhism talks about Buddhahood in each of us. The Abrahamic tradition – Judaism, Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant), and Islam – teaches we all are children of God with Spirit of God in us. Advaita Vedanta Hinduism says Atman (a human) is a part of Brahman (God).

Even the non-spiritual schools of today talk about “the force” or “the energy” of the universe that we can activate to work in our favor to achieve what we want. I think these schools simply use the old concepts of the spiritual schools without mentioning the word “God”. Continue reading Believe in your great potential →