I give away what I dont useto those who are in need . I see a person walking in the pouring rain without an umbrella, I give em mine. I offer my jacket and tent to a homeless person. I cover homeless people sleeping without a blanket in winter, a warm quilt. Its not the case that I hold onto possessions thinking i might need it later. I give away my own blessings without hesitation.

i went to make offering to the Buddha

I hesitate to write this but may it be heard. Years ago, I visited a certain monastery and stayed as a volunteer. A young man in the community criticized, discriminated indirectly against me for having make-up on in front of others. Therefore suggesting I am not fit. The teacher laughed and replied to him that this person has a good heart. The discussion ended. Almost two decades later, i still held animosity for this young man whom ordained as a monk since then. Still, the animosity was there and i did not care to listen to his talks and dismissed him as a fool as foolish as I am. Then…

On Thanksgiving 2022, my wife Maggie and I gave out vegetarian pizzas to people who were in need in downtown San Jose.

My sister wanted to celebrate her birthday painting ceramics with her friends, but after realizing that it might be too expensive for everyone, I came up with an idea. I told her to ask her friends what they wanted to paint, and over the course of two weeks, I made the items they wanted out of air-dry clay. I went and bought more paint brushes, just to make sure they had enough to share. Her friends came over to our house and got to sit, talk, and laugh together while painting. I heard some of her friends say that it was their first time painting clay. At the end of…

Our family of four just came back from our year-end trip from Northern California to four national parks in Southern California and Arizona. We spent six nights in four hotels during the seven-day trip. We were very grateful to hotel staff who still worked very hard during the holiday season. What we did was leaving tips along with a hand-written thank you note in the hotel room when we checked out. In addition, I made sure that we also tipped the hotel staff who made continental breakfast for us. On our last day of the trip, when we were getting our car’s tank filled up with gas, it occurred to…

Facing financing crisis, spiritual crisis. I had no hope. I wish to go to the Pure Land as soon as possible. But still an aged mother needs to be taken care of…. Very struggle on life.

I am a leader in the Vietnamese Buddhist Youth Association. Every week, we chant our repentance in Vietnamese language. The American born kids have a hard time to understand the repentance because it is not in Ebglish. I have combined many partial translations of our repentance into 1 translation and also translated some parts of it. So far, I have finished about 80%. I will finish the rest very soon.

I teach at a public elementary school. Since the pandemic, our school focus has been on socio-emotional learning . To facilitate this, my class of first graders have Sharing on Fridays. Each child can bring an item of their choice and tell the class what it is, how they get it and answer questions from their classmates. Sometimes, they can’t stop talking. To help them, I taught them to “Sit like a bell”. Bells do not talk. So they learn to sit and listen (and take turns to talk). At recess, when lining up, they learn to “Stand like a tree”, so noone is swinging their lunch bags and hitting…

My old mother had passed away last month 13th Oct, and me try vegetarian food and praying in 49 days, hope she really could go to pure_land (极乐世界) to have better living.