Tag Archives: trà đàm

What are you improving ?

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 ?

Ups and downs

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

Learning positive spirituality

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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Naked I came and naked I will depart

Dear brothers and sisters,

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
    and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
    may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:21).

God gives us reputation and God takes away,
God gives us wealth and God takes away,
God gives us family and God takes away,
God gives us health and God takes away… Continue reading Naked I came and naked I will depart

A pure heart

Dear brothers and sisters,

Jesus said:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Continue reading A pure heart

Born again

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

Believe in your great potential

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

Làm gì khi đau?

Chào các bạn,

Trong đời chúng ta sẽ gặp những cơn đau – vợ chồng có vấn đề, mất một tài sản lớn, mất một chức vụ lớn… Những cơn đau làm ta tê liệt, mất hết năng lượng, nằm ì một chỗ, chẳng nghĩ ngợi được gì, mà càng nghĩ ngợi lại càng rối rắm, chẳng thấy lối ra. Những lúc như vậy ta làm gì?

Theo kinh nghiệm của mình thì: Continue reading Làm gì khi đau?

Children and Heaven

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Let’s talk about heaven and hell in our heart.

If you look at children, you see heaven – children are always happy, innocent and playing.

We adults experience fears, worries, sorrow and anger, and we often find ourselves fighting, grabbing (chụp giật), and grasping (chấp), which leads to us being stressed all the time. That is hell. Continue reading Children and Heaven

Đừng ăn thịt thú rừng

Chào các bạn,

Người Việt chúng ta rất ham mê ăn thịt thú rừng. Các nhà hàng thịt thú rừng luôn đông khách. Tuy nhiên, đừng ăn thịt thú rừng vì các lý do sau đây:

1. Môi trường.

Thiên nhiên ngàn năm nay vận hành theo kiểu loài này phụ thuộc vào loài kia trong một hệ sinh thái đã quân bình đã ngàn năm. Loài người chúng ta không sống độc lập mà phụ thuộc vào các loài khác, trong đó có thú rừng. Nếu ta ăn rắn, các loài chuột rừng sẽ chẳng còn bị rắn tiêu diệt, sẽ sinh sôi phát triển và sẽ ăn các loại rễ cây non. Cây non chết, khi mưa xuống, nước chẳng được giữ trong lòng đất, sẽ trôi tuột trên bề mặt đất, tạo nên lũ lụt. Continue reading Đừng ăn thịt thú rừng

Đi một ngày đàng, học một sàng khôn?

Chào các bạn,

Thời ông ta trở về trước, thế giới thật rộng lớn. Muốn biết điều gì cũng phải bước chân ra khỏi lũy tre làng, và phải đi càng xa càng tốt mới mong được mở mang đầu óc, kiểu như Đường Tam Tạng đi bộ từ Trung Quốc sang Tây Trúc (Ấn Độ) thỉnh kinh Phật.

Thời nay, với Internet trong tay, thế giới thật nhỏ bé. Chẳng cần phải đi đâu cũng có một trời kiến thức. Khi muốn học, dù nơi ta ở là xó xỉnh nào đó của thế giới, ta cũng có thể học vượt trội so với những người đi nước nọ nước kia mà chẳng chú tâm gì nhiều. Continue reading Đi một ngày đàng, học một sàng khôn?

Faith as small as a mustard seed

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Probably the strongest statement about human faith in history comes from Jesus: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Mathew 17:20).

Wow, how do we tell this mountain to move from here to there, and the mountain will move? Can you do that? Probably if you have a huge construction company, they can do that for you; but if they have to break this mountain to pieces and build a new mountain from those pieces, it wouldn’t be the same mountain. Continue reading Faith as small as a mustard seed