8Th Sun Flower Program

On Sep 02nd, 2015 (Aug 20th Lunar Calendar), on the occasion of the 80th “Seven Days Retreat”, Hoang Phap pagoda continued organizing the “8thSun Flower” program on the topic “What is happiness?”

 Happiness is what humanity always finds. All of us need to have happiness but no one attains it easily. People have many point of views. Someone believe that we will have happiness when we have much money or higher rank in the society. So they spend all of their life to find happiness by gaining much money. But when they have enough money as they need, many people have to suffer the sneaking misery which is hidden by the high and rich vision.

Journalist Hoang Anh Suong luckily had a chance to meet many great monks and he also has had chances to meet many ranks of people in the society by the nature of his job; he has judged the nature of happiness profoundly and multi-dimensionally as well as the way to setup a peace and contentment life. That is the way of the zen monk: “A calm mind makes the happiness”, which means that  when we keep a mind calm, my life will be very happy; happiness will only come when we can turn our body and mind calm.

Journalist Hoang Anh Suong had the good predestined affinity when he joined the group of Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the monks in “Mai Village” to America. At that time, he conceived more profoundly the Dharma when he had the chance to study it, from that time he became a Buddhist on the religious name Tam Hieu Thuong and he wrote his mind onto papers for circulating to everyone. According to him, happiness is peace and contentment; peace leads to contentment. When the body and the mind is peace and contentment. We can have a chance to meet the happiness and we can help others around us with our love and knowledge.

Happiness is not something got by Gods but by ourselves. Practicing on what Buddha taught, being mindful in daily activities, controlling the speech and mind and acts in reality can help us control the raising of emotion. Applying the oral loving and listening method can help us to reconcile all pain for people and for our own. That is the way each of us must follow to find for peace and contentment and happiness.

 In this program, he also presented the sketchy Vietnamese Tea Way. From the love of tea and the tradition of his family, Hoang Anh Suong has taken up his father and nurtured the ambition to spread the Vietnamese Tea Way to the friends all over the world. The Vietnamese Tea Way expanded and developed greatly in the past, a sacred protocol, a religion, a way to cultivate and a method to link members in the family as well as in the society; but due to the war and the time, this cultural beauty was faded day by day. He hoped that in the future, he would reinstate this Tea Path of the traditional culture in each Vietnamese family.

 After having answered all the questions in the program, journalist Hoang Anh Suong and special guest, poet Tran Dang Khoa also answered another questions from Buddhists.