Trần Hoàng Trung

I got a drink from a café. First sip: so sweet. My first thought wasn’t how could she do this to me. It was just wow, that’s sweet, and then okay, it’s fine. And I drank it.

That’s how I take most things. Unless I get really angry (then I’ll tell you), I’m the one who accepts what’s given.

Afterwards I saw what had happened, socially and in the Buddhist sense. She and the café made something too sweet. Someone else would complain, or carry the irritation into their next conversation, and the thing keeps cycling: from her, to them, to whoever is next. With me it sits for a while, and then I let it go. The karma that passes to me doesn’t continue from me. It isn’t even about me anymore.

A lot of people around me stir things up. Around me they tend to go quiet, I think because in my mind I have nothing against them.

In my Tử Vi chart, Mệnh (the palace of the self) sits in Hợi, with Thiên Đồng Hóa Kỵ.

Hợi is the twelfth of the twelve branches: the end of the road, the last step of the cycle. Thiên Đồng is the star of feeling-with, đồng cảm. Not the thinking of Thiên Cơ, but feeling all the way down. Hóa Kỵ is the knot: excess, depth, what gets held. And Thiên Đồng is a water star sitting in a water palace.

So I’m where the cycle ends. Things gather and flow toward me, and they come to rest here. I’ve felt that my whole life; the sweet coffee showed it to me in one sip.

It isn’t effort. I’m not practising patience or holding something back. In moments like this the usual urge to push back just doesn’t come up. I have other desires; this one stays quiet.

It isn’t suffering, either. In the balance of things someone gains and someone gives way, and my chart is the one that gives way. That doesn’t mean enduring. My joy comes from somewhere else: seeing people get more out of each other.

And it’s lighter than the alternative. Rejecting things costs energy: you build a filter, you keep the grudge. Taking it, feeling it and letting it go costs less.