Santa Clara Meditation Find Your True Self – What is truth?
Where did humans come from and where will go? When we talk about this, I think we can answer Truth more easily.
Last week, my husband and I drove 400km to Busan to spend the weekend at my mother-in-law’s house. My husband is 50 years old, but he went to the tteokbokki restaurant he has been visiting since he was 14 years old as soon as he arrived in Busan. Surprisingly, the shop was closed. It is open 365 days a year. This restaurant, which has been run by the same owner for over 40 years, is a favorite restaurant for Busan people. When the business flourished, franchises were created and stores were opened in Seoul in addition to Busan, but due to excessive expansion, almost all branches disappeared and only the headquarter remained. Still, they made so delicious tteokbokki, so my husband and I went to the snack shop two or three times a year when I visited my mother-in-law in Busan. But I can’t believe it closed. My husband said that even when he was in middle school, the owner of the restaurant was already old. As of 2021, she is probably fairly old. Maybe she passed away and closed the business, or the store might be closed due to her illness.
I was sad to think that I can’t eat the delicious tteokbokki that I ate for granted. If the restaurant owner passed away, I thought that there was no more my favorite tteokbokki in the world anymore.
A few days ago, I had a call with a friend who is a doctor. My friend is a dermatologist and a successful businessman who opened a branch in every big city in Korea because the hospital is doing well. As a greeting, I asked if the business was going well, and I said that I was envious of him because he is the boss and very successful. My friend said to me with a smile. He says that he lives on the body and that if he gets sick, his business gets in trouble. And he told me that he gets rewarded only as much for the sweat and effort he put in. These days, there are so many people around me who are trying to make money from stocks, coins, and real estate capital gains. They talk about understanding the properties of capitalism and using it. But I don’t believe this. I think like my doctor friend. The world only rewards me for as much my efforts. The money I earned was easy come and easy go.
We all die someday. Humans are imperfect beings. That is why human-made capitalist society, socialist society, and communist society are incomplete. If you look at it more broadly, the earth we live on will disappear someday when its lifespan is over, and the moon and sun will also disappear. Numerous stars in the sky are also born and disappear. So these are not Truth. Truth is never changing and eternal. Such beings in this universe are the place where the stars, the moon, the sun, and the earth were born, and the place where the celestial bodies in the universe will disappear when their lifespans expire, the empty universe itself is eternal and immutable.
And this original universe is alive because its size is infinite. This is where we humans came from, and the place we return to after we die is this original universe. This is Truth.
I praise myself for saying that it’s great just to know this. I came to know this purely because of the meditation method that I am doing now. Through meditation, I came to realize Truth by throwing away the many miscellaneous and false thoughts I had made in my life. When I abandoned the human mind, I learned little by little that the mind of Truth was in me. It’s amazing that I, who was only interested in eating and living, have such abstract thoughts and I’m proud that I have a mind that has gone beyond time and space.
by Donna Seo
