Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The story about God’s grace that impresses me the most is Abraham’s bargaining with God to save Sodom. God told Abraham Sodom was sinful, so God would destroy Sodom. Abraham wanted to save Sodom, so he asked if God would save Sodom if there were 50 righteous persons in that city. God agreed: “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.” (Gen. 18:26). Abraham then bargained it down to 45 righteous. God agreed. Abraham continued to bargain down to 40, God agreed. Abraham continued to bargain down to 30, then 20, then 10 righteous. God agreed every time. Abraham stopped at 10, without finding 10. Why didn’t he bargain further? Looked like he was on a roll with God. We never know why Abraham stopped at 10. Thus, Sodom and Gomorrah were burned.

Lot, Abraham’s nephew, also was informed by God’s two messengers that Sodom would be destroyed and was told to take his wife and two daughters with him to go up the mountains to stay safe. (His sons in law, husbands of his two daughters, didn’t believe Lot and thought he was joking about the city being destroyed). But Lot told God’s messengers that he could not go up the mountains, fearing some evil would overtake him and he would die, so he asked them to allow him to stay in a small city on the way called Zoar. A messenger told him: “See, I have favored you concerning this thing also, in that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there.”

So God saved Zoar because of one righteous person, who was Lot. (Gen. 19:21-22).

Abraham couldn’t saved Sodom, because he couldn’t find 10 righteous and he stopped bargaining. But God did save another city (Zoar) with just one righteous person. Obviously God doesn’t require much.

Does this story have anything to do with us today?

Well, it has a lot to do with us. If we live righteously, one of us will be able to save a city from destruction. We are not talking about counting heads – how many bad guys versus how many good guys in a city. We are taking about God’s grace – God only needs one righteous to save a city. God love people and God just needs a small excuse to save a city. God doesn’t require much.

So, don’t count head and don’t lose faith. One person is enough, and that one person can be YOU. One righteous you will be able to save a city.

So, brothers and sisters, try to be righteous and know that your righteousness will be used by God to save a city.

Trust in you and trust in God.

Wish you all be righteous.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Here is the common problem of mankind: You have seen or read about leaders, usually warring or revolutionary leaders, who talked about saving their country, saving their people, loving their nation, protecting their citizens… all the great idealistic goals for their people to follow. But in practice, such leaders and their followers killed, maimed, tortured and imprisoned millions of people that the leaders considered anti-revolutionists, reactionists, betrayers, or enemies of the people… So their mouths talked peace and love while their hands killed and maimed, as if the hands and the mouth belonged to two separate persons. Continue reading Thinking and talking in concrete terms →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Probably you have heard “Change yourself to change the world” many times. The question is how many people really practice that.

The world has so many problems and, of course, everyone wants the world to change for the better – less war, less sickness, less poverty, less injustice, less inequality, more health, more safety, more equality, more happiness… We all wish the world to be more like heaven.

And that is a problem: we want to world to change. Continue reading Change yourself to change the world →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Do you realize that almost every parent worries about their children’s learning bad things, especially teens and college-aged children? Why is that?

The answer is obvious: More bad things than good things are being taught out there.

We adults know that. Life really has too many traps for the young. Parents never know what kinds of things their children may get into and be hooked, or how their children will turn out to be in the future. Scary! Raising a kid is a job with a lot of unknown involved. Continue reading Your supervisor →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Heart Sutra is the short and popular name of Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya Sūtra, translated into English as “The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom” or “The Heart of Prajna Paramita Sutra”. It is the apex of Mahayana Buddhism thought.

Buddhism developed from Theravada (Phật giáo Nguyên thủy) to Mahayana (Phật giáo Đại thừa). Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Laos are essentially Theravada. Vietnam, China, Japan, Korea, Hongkong, Singapore, Taiwan, Tibet and Mongolia are essentially Mahayana. Continue reading The Heart Sutra →

Ảnh: Trúc Lâm Đạo Sĩ Xuất Sơn Đồ

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

One of the most famous Vietnamese Zen writings is Cư trần lạc đạo phú (“Living in the World, Joyful in the Way” Meditation) by Trúc Lâm Zen Founder Trần Nhân Tông. It is a long poem, which I classify as a “meditation” – a long meditative poem, on life and Zen in this case.

The mediation has 10 chapters (10 hội), each chapter is a medium-length poem. Most people, however, only remember the short, four-verse poem that concludes the meditation, at the very end. This concluding poem, though short and simple, embraces the full spirit of Zen.

We talk about this concluding poem today. Continue reading Living in the world, joyful in the way →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We see a lot of problems in the world – wars everywhere with horrendous killings and bloodshed, the strong oppressing the poor and the weak, famine and starving, injustice, exploitation, diseases surrounding the poor, migrants in the millions risking everything, including their life, to get to a rich country… So many problems the world is facing.

And many of us have the indifferent attitude: “Those things are far away. I am here. I don’t care about them.” That is the self-righteous attitude: “They have problems because they create their own problems: Whatever seed you sow, you shall eat the fruit from such seed. That has nothing to do with me.” Continue reading Responsible for the world’s health →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

If you already have some experience with life, you would realize that you are tired and stressed the most when you try to get something. You work hard – that is one reason to be tired and stressed. But more than that, you often have to fight against others who either compete with you for the same prize or simply try to prevent you from getting to your goal just because they don’t like you. Fighting against others makes you tired and stressed manifold more. Continue reading No fighting →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In Tao Te Ching (Đạo Đức Kinh), Lao Tzu (Lão Tử) said, the highly virtuous person is like water, looking for the low place to dwell. Chapter 8, about virtuous person, reads:

Continue reading Water →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Life has a lot of roughness – people cheating, backstabbing, betraying, badmouthing, oppressing, hitting each other on the head – so the older we are, the more we become rough as everyone else in the world.

That is a big problem: There is a natural tendency for all of us to become rougher with time.

That is why Jesus said: “If you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, be like children.” And Siddhartha taught that we are born with a Buddha heart, which becomes sinful as we grow up in an ignorant world. Continue reading Unlearning →

Do you love your country?

Love, not as a word or a slogan on your lips, but as a feeling in your heart, like you love your grandparents.

I have the feeling of that love since I was 8 or 9, when I was still in Hà Dừa Primary School, of Hà Dừa Parish, in Thành, Diên Khánh, Khánh Hòa. Continue reading Do you love your country? →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough. That is, the most important virtue to help you succeed in life, here and now, is honesty.

If you’re arrogant, people may not like you, but they will work with you when they need you.

If you don’t love people, people may still work with you as long as you do a good job for them. Continue reading Honesty →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Nhàn cư vi bất thiện – Leisure living is not good. It means if you have a leisure life, you are not busy with working, then it is not good for you.

Why?

When we have so much time in our hand because we are not working on anything, we become couch potato. Our health is on the way downhill – we are overweight, our muscles weaken from lacking physical activities, cholesterol builds up everywhere in our body from the veins to the heart, and we will start having all kinds of diseases due to the deterioration of the body and the immune system. In addition, when we have too much idle time, our mind goes down because it is inactive so much, and the mind may often wander off into negative thinking, unhealthy thoughts, ailing attitude. Continue reading Leisure living is not good →

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

One of the biggest differences between a winner and a loser is their focus – loser focuses on theory, winner on practice.

I am not even sure I am using correct language when I say, “Loser focuses on theory.” I don’t think you can focus on theory – people who read theory all the time only read like they do Internet surfing, glancing over everything very quickly and not really focusing on anything. Continue reading Theory and practice →