Dear Brothers and Sisters,

People love formulas. There are formulas for everything under the sun.

A formula is a clear and systematic method of doing something. Say, you learn to write your first sentence in English: “I love you.” The formula for the sentence is: 1) Subject “I” comes first. 2) Verb “love” comes second, standing next to the subject. 3) Object “you” comes last, standing next to the verb. That is the writing formula you will use for the rest of your life.

(Note: If you are a girl learning English from a foreign guy, or vice versa, chances are the first sentence he teaches you is exactly that: “I love you.” Real life. Not my imagination 🙂 ) Continue reading Formula →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

You win some, you lose some.

You win a university exam, you lose a girl friend, you win a ticket to a concert, you lose the exam to be a medical expert…

Winning and losing is the most facinating story of the human life.

First of all, is there such a thing called losing or winning? Continue reading Winning and losing →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Are you unhappy? If yes, then what make you unhappy?

Of course, there may be a thousand causes that make a person unhappy, but the most common causes we may hear are: I’ve lost a friend, or a motorcycle, or my business, or my spouse; or I failed the university entrance exam, or the job interview; or I don’t have a job, or a house, or a lover… In sum, most of us are unhappy because we want something but we lose, or can’t have, that thing. Continue reading Are you unhappy? →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

When are you old? Probably you are thinking about age – 60, 70, 80…

“Old” means you retire, don’t want to be involved much with life, not active in anything, slow and weak, and very much waiting to go back to your ancestors.

But, think about the woman who got a bachelor degree at 74, the man who finished the drawing class at 80, or Zen master Joshu who began learning Zen at 60 until 80 when he realized Zen, and taught Zen till 120. Continue reading Are you young or old? →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

When you have some problem, do you ask for help? Or you usually don’t seek help because “I don’t want to bother other people”?

I know many people averse to help seeking just because they don’t feel comfortable “brothering others.” But I don’t understand why they think they brother others when they reach out to seek help.

I imagine the help seeker probably thinks that every time he receives someone’s help, he owes the helper a debt, and he doesn’t want to have debt, so he doesn’t seek help. Continue reading Asking for help →

Dear brothers and sisters,

If you are good at observation, you will realize that all the people around you have the same stressful aura. You can detect some different aspects of stress – worry, fear, anger, hurry, sorrow – but they have a common foundation: stress.

That is very much the human life. Continue reading Peace Angel →

Dear brothers and sisters,

If your think you know how to learn, let’s consider these facts.

Almost everyone in the world knows very well the Buddha’s teaching, or Jesus’ teaching, or Quran’s teaching. There are books and Internet for eveyone to read the original teachings as well as the explanations of all kinds of current teachers expounding on the masters’ teachings. Nothing is new or unknown to anyone in the world. And everyone respects and learns seriously what the masters teach. Except for a very small minority, no one says these teachings are stupid – they all follow the masters, at least that is what they believe. Continue reading Do we know how to learn? →

Dear brothers and sisters,

What is most important to you?

Your career? Your reputation? Your love life? Your family? Your wealth? Your success? Your…?

I know what is most important for you.

That is your heart – your heart is your thinking center. If your heart is not working right, you are insane and should be in an asylum, useless. Continue reading Ignorance →

Dear Brothers and Sisters

In sacred writings, there is one word standing out prominently due to its oft repeated use – that is “heart”. Translated into Vietnamese, heart is tâm, trái tim, lòng.

Tâm is Sino-Vietnamese (Hán Việt) for trái tim. However, the more traditional Vietnamese language has another very familiar word – that is “lòng”, as in lòng từ bi, lòng bác ái, lòng mẹ, lòng cha, lòng yêu nước, lòng yêu đồng bào…

All these words indicate one thing: “Our entire system of feeling and thinking, with a strong focus on emotion.” Continue reading Heart – Tâm – Lòng →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

A community-minded person cares about his community.

This is an idea that has probably existed in our head while we were still apes – Homo habilis, 2 million years ago, long predating Adam and Eve who were full human, Homo sapiens, 300 thousand years ago.

The community-minded idea is in our DNA a long time before we became full human, probaby while we still were some crawling fish crawling upshore in schools. Continue reading Community-minded →

Dear brothers and sisters,

Work ethic (đạo đức lao động) is our belief that work is good for us – it strengthens our character, gives us wisdom, enhances our integrity, and bring us success.

This thinking has not been universal throughout history. In ancient Greek culture, work was seen as a burden – the word for “work” is “ponos,” equivalent of the Latin word “poena,” meaning sorrow. In ancient Jewish culture, in The Old Testament – the first half of the Christian Bible – work is called “toil/toiling,” indicating hard, tiring labor. In The Genesis – the first book of The Old Testament – after Adam & Eve ate the Forbidden Fruit, God kicked them out of the Eden Garden and told Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.” (Gen 3:17). In the Vietnamese culture, what valuable is “nhàn” (leisure) as Nguyễn Công Trứ wrote in his archetypal poem “Chữ Nhàn.” And the Buddhist culture focuses on not working too hard, relaxing more. Continue reading Work ethic →

Dear brothers and sisters,

For the last 60 years, the word “loyalty – trung thành” probably is the least heard word in the Vietnamese culture. For a long time now, loyalty is considered a bad word. I have heard people explain that loyalty is a Confucian idea, used by the powerful to force the powerless to be loyal, so it is an oudated and evil idea, which must be erased.

So, do you know what has happened in the last 60 years in the Vietnamese culture? Continue reading Loyalty →

Dear brothers and sisters,

That is a very common story – people often say and hear: “I’m looking for myself,” or “I have to find myself,” as if the speaker is completely lost from himself, or he has dropped his self somewhere on the long road of life.

Funny as it may sound, the feeling of not knowing who we truly are – “where is the real me?” – is a familiar feeling in many of us.

But why? What generates that feeling? Continue reading I’m looking for myself →