✨ Introduction
✨ In this insightful teaching, Master Woo Myung answers a deeply meaningful question about prayers for the deceased, including the Buddhist tradition of forty-nine days of prayer.
🌿 While many believe these rituals help guide a soul to Heaven, this teaching reveals that the true determining factor is not the ritual, but one’s state of mind and enlightenment.
🌌 Without knowing Truth, neither the soul nor the person performing the prayer can truly reach Heaven.
💫 Ultimately, Heaven is not a place one is sent to—it is a state one enters by becoming completely without self.
📖 Original Writing by Master Woo Myung
Can a soul go to heaven after death if he is given the Buddhist service of forty-nine days of prayers, or if he is given the prayers of passage to heaven?
People pray for forty-nine days in a temple after a person dies because it is thought that this will help the soul of the deceased to go to heaven.
However this practice does not work because the soul does not know where heaven is.
It is the same for prayers of passage to heaven because the person performing the prayers does not know where to send him.
However, these practices serve as a consolation to the deceased’s loved ones so it is fine to do them.
Now, anyone can go to the land of God and Buddha after he dies.
Even when one is still alive, he can go to heaven if he is completely without self.
– Woo Myung
🌿 Reflect at Santa Clara Meditation
At Santa Clara Meditation, this teaching gives clear direction beyond ritual.
🌌 Heaven is not reached through ceremonies,
✨ but through eliminating the self,
🌿 and becoming one with Truth.
Through meditation, one can realize Heaven
💫 while still living, in the present moment.
