Master Woo Myung Message – My Will II
Ask people what they have become enlightened of.
There is no such thing as enlightenment for man,
nor has he ever known anything.
Man’s thoughts fabricate
his enlightenment or unenlightenment.
Enlightenment does not exist,
but man’s mind is what creates
its existence or non-existence;
man’s mind is what constantly makes a fuss.
Human life is a fleeting memory –
a shadow one hunts out,
but it is nothing more than a shadow.
In that shadow, he lives deceived.
His shadow mind does not actually exist,
and it too is fleeting.
Man’s mind is always in want.
His wants are his kleshas,
which are nothing but dust.
Man thinks not of how
the dust will eventually disappear;
he thinks he will live on,
even after having become dust.
Mankind’s false dreams are many –
more than enough to fill the universe to the brim.
But those dreams are not real,
which is why they too will eventually disappear.
They will disappear because
they never existed in the first place.
That they never existed means they were never Truth.
Human beings spend their lives
dreaming their false dreams
only to die one day.
Though he wanders from place to place
in search of the Mind,
man does not know where it is.
Man lives ever lost in his mind.
Man lives deceived by his mind.
Man alone is piteous.
He cannot undo his false mind.
He looks back, but cannot really see.
He does not know what it is he has seen
or what it is he has come to know.
Man lives a lifetime of falseness,
and without knowing the meaning or purpose,
he dies and goes on to the next world.
That he goes is due to his wants.
That he comes is due to his wants.
Man lives creating countless kleshas
ignorant of how going and coming are the same.
I follow a path,
only to find that it becomes a narrow trail –
only to find that that path is not the path.
With a hollow, desolate heart, I turn back;
I cannot begin to describe this hollowness to anyone.
There is no way to console this heart of mine.
I beat my breast, but no one knows.
The people of this world say that I am mad,
but not a single one of them seek to understand
this state of madness.
I wipe the lonely, bitter smile off my face
and continue on my path of madness and wandering.
But man knows not where he must go,
what he must seek out,
or what it is he must do.
Therefore, his is a path of wandering.
What man knows is nothing more than
a mind full of wants.
Falseness is all he knows with his false mind.
He knows an abundance of things he need not know
which is why he alone creates kleshas.
The mind he has is a kind of attachment
which he has come to attain while living.
Because of this attachment, delusions are born.
Because of this attachment, these delusions ripen.
In him, he stores all of these countless delusions,
and with them, he lives in the world,
only to find that due to their disharmony with Heaven,
they have perverted his mind.
There is not a single person in this world
who knows that in the absence of his mind,
the Body and Mind are one.
With a deep sigh,
I lay with my head pillowed on my arm.
There is a limit to what man knows.
Thus there is not a single person worth asking.
With a hollowness in my mind,
I stare into the ceiling.
Who could possibly know my torment?
With my head pillowed on my arm
and my leg crossed over onto the other,
I stare into the invisible ceiling,
thinking intently.
Thus human life is a waste of time.
Though man may go to the next world,
Heaven is the only one that knows the meaning of life,
and Heaven alone is silent.
What is man?
He does not know that he is living a misguided life;
one day his youth will turn into old age,
but even after he dies, he will not know the answer.
I ask the emptiness
when man might be able to know my will,
but there is no reply.
Truth is a thing that is intended for man;
it exists wholly inside of man.
But due to his arrogance,
man is unable to find this Truth.
Though he is within Truth,
he makes a huge fuss about finding it;
he blames the passing of time,
and he blames birth and death.
Though I beat my chest and beseech them,
not a single person knows.
As I walk, I look to the blue sky countless times.
Heaven alone knows this worry-filled mind of mine.
Man does not know why the clouds are drifting by
or why the empty sky exists.
But only the emptiness remains.
If one sees images
to be nothing more than images,
then one would not know that
that is the right way.
Man struggles –
he tries to grasp everything
only through what he sees with his eyes.
The Mind does not exist inside man’s mind.
The Mind does not exist outside of man’s mind.
The Mind is the whole of creation.
The Mind is of its own accord.
The Mind is the flow of Nature.
The Mind is Truth.
The Mind is as it is.
However man has created
so many things in his mind with his thoughts,
and these things harass the Mind in so many ways.
Despite this, the Mind has
no thoughts or purposes;
it has nothing.
The Mind is not something that exists
outside man’s mind.
Neither is it something that exists
in the images of things.
The Mind simply exists as it is.
And this Mind is the only Truth there is in the world.
But people fabricate so many things,
and in their minds they create their minds.
Therefore, how could they possibly understand
the true will of the emptiness?
Heaven and man are one,
but it is man’s mind that sees them to be otherwise.
He who lives with things stored in his mind is
a person who has a mind in his mind
and a mind outside his mind.
The Mind is one;
it has no inside or outside.
All things that exist are the Mind,
but man is the one who differentiates them.
There is no life or death;
there is no birth or demise.
But man differentiates them
depending on all things and their images.
Man’s mind ripples like the waves of the ocean.
His mind rocks with the waves
and so to calm his mind,
the waves must be put to sleep.
The winds are what cause the waves.
To put the winds to sleep,
he must not regard the winds as winds.
He must dance but not be in it.
He must know to just be.
He must not stir up his futile mind.
The wind that does not belong to anything –
the wind of the absolute source –
is the true wind.
The wind of the absolute source is simply the wind.
It does not move with the wind.
Man lives dreaming dreams,
and he lives on his dreams.
It is only when man lives a life
that is not confined in a dream –
that is not bound to living on his dreams,
that does not sway in time with the wind no matter
how much time may pass or wind may blow –
that he is living a true life.
There is no such thing as life,
yet at the same time there is.
It is only when man does not exist in life
that his life is true.
It is only when he is outside of it
that he is able to see everything rightly.
Life passes one way or another
and there is no answer for it.
A true life is one absent of wants.
It is one that does not belong to anything.
Such is the right life – the true life.
Days of whistling tunes
and of laying around on the hills
with one’s head pillowed by one’s arm,
days of singing melodies –
it is only when such memories are not memories
that his is a true life.
It is only when one does not exist in one’s mind
that his is a true life.
But when will man learn it?
I ask Heaven this.
Not a single person can possibly understand how I feel.
Though all I have may be my troubled mind,
I am not in it.
But man has no choice but to live in his agony.
As I try being in man’s shoes,
I realize how stifling it is.
Yet man still does not know
where the limits of Truth lay
or what it is he must learn.
Instead his mind is in turmoil,
and he constantly speaks as if he knows everything.
I pity him.
The Mind does not exist only in one place.
The Mind does not belong to anything.
But man buries his mind in one thing;
he lives with his mind fixed on one thing.
Thus I await the day when
I may free man of his life.
Heaven alone waits without a word for
its will to become man’s will
and for man’s will to become Heaven’s.
I too wait without a word.
This alone is the only way I can live.
This alone is the only way man may be saved.
When will man come to know this?
Carefully, I put down my pen.
-Woo Myung-
