Emptiness is homogeneity, oneness, indivisibility, non-duality, harmony. It is the accord between men and the universe, or unity. A person in the state of emptiness does not see that he or she is different from others, plants and trees, and things in general. He or she is inside everything, and vice versa.
Emptiness has a great strength to unify us and others whom we choose or want to help. This extraordinary strength integrates with others’ power of the mind, to recover their strength and redirect it to our direction.
This extraordinary strength only exists inside those with love, with compassion for humanity, who sacrifice their small ego for the service of others.
Where will this kind of love lead?
It leads to the service of a greater community, rather then to a mere individual. However, it cannot develop or strengthen if it does not start by helping an individual. This love develops by multiplication.
When true love comes from many people it can develop and extend, eventually to maintain the universal balance as well as the safety of mankind.
How can love be developed in many people?
Love needs to be transmitted. Those who transmit love have to sacrifice for religious practice. Those who implement the Way should not only talk and teach, but should dedicate and sacrifice. If true love exists they can do anything, even the most difficult and challenging task. Those who know how to sacrifice their own self to serve the universal concord and humanity will benefit from a great deal of divine help, together with their own strong will. Divine help is actually the movements of Providence. Those who go against Providence will eventually fail, since their well accomplished work is to serve their own selfishness. Their unopened hearts prevent them from being in harmony with the universe, and they fall out of the universal movement. Their body and soul will be in destruction.
The new world is a world of love, the homogeneity of men and the universe. We should open wide our hearts to be in this homogeneity.
*Let’s listen carefully
In what way does emptiness help us?
And how does emptiness help us?
In the state of emptiness, do we stay immovable like copper statues, or do we let things just happen around us, all actions, thoughts, and speeches that may influence and carry us away?
In the state of emptiness we do not oppose, since our ego is not present, and we just let everything pervade and influence us. Therefore, we can understand the situations and the people around us. Since we do not initiate adverse actions and speeches to create new conflicts and a string of subsequent conflicts, all things that have pervaded us and caused motion will pass, and our mind will go back to the cycle of emptiness, because none of them has a place to cling to or stay in.
The resilient characteristic of emptiness is not immovability or inflexibility. On the contrary, its flexibility does not break; its softness is to go back to nature, not to change its state or form. Therefore, this is the movement that goes back to nature, to the state of oneness.
Mankind and the universe are constantly moving and changing. To catch up with this perpetual change, we need to keep up with knowledge. In order to have knowledge we need to learn what is new, what are the changes. We cannot learn the new things and changes if we do not stay in the state of emptiness and let them pervade us. Once they have affected us and we have realized that, we then should let them pass by and go back to nature to prepare for other new things. As a result, we always stay in the state of knowing but not knowing. We know the old things, but not the new things. Thus, as mankind and things in nature move, we know about their movements.
Why do we need to know about the changes?
Because we do not want to hold on what we know ten or twenty years ago, and act wrongly against time and space, against the people and current situations.
We cannot talk to the people of the 21st century with thoughts and prejudices of those in the 19th century and the circumstances of that time.
To talk to a child in the United States, we should understand his living conditions, his education, and his language. To talk to a child in Vietnam, we need to understand his living conditions in Vietnam and things that he has learned in his environment. We cannot use the knowledge about a child growing up in Vietnam to talk with a child growing up in the United States or vice versa.
The new Vietnamese generations are very complex, since they have been growing up and learning from all over the world. There are children who have grown up in privilege, with a great education, while others have grown up in the worst conditions of poverty and hunger in the country.
All of them should be embraced in the love and nurture of the older generations in order to rebuild a new Vietnam of the future. This reconstruction cannot be built without our knowledge and understanding about these children. If we do not know and understand them, we tend to do what we like or want for ourselves; this will not be what the younger generations want, and it will bring no benefits to them.
Let the younger generations speak in their own voice. We should only listen and pay attention, without any judgment, prejudice, pressure, or accusation. With true love for the younger generations, the future generations of Vietnam, let’s push aside all things that we want or like for ourselves, to bring happiness to the future generation of a New Vietnam.