INTRODUCTION
โจ In this deeply illuminating teaching, Master Woo Myung explores the question: Does the Universe truly exist?
Those who still have self within cannot unite with the existent Mind, and therefore conclude that the Universeโor Truthโdoes not exist. Yet for those who have fully discarded the self and become the Universe itself, the Body and Mind of the Universe are completely real.
Within absolute emptiness where โeven nonexistence does not exist,โ one can see the presence of the one and only God filling everything. When the self has completely died, the Mind of God appears, and the worlds of the material and immaterial become one. Ultimately, this state is the world beyond non-existence, the realm of tathฤgata-garbha, where total emptiness is full of infinite virtue. ๐
ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG
Does the Universe Really Exist?
He who has his self – or rather, a sense of self within him โ cannot unite with the existent Mind, and because that Mind is not his, he thinks that it does not exist. What is left when the stars disappear from the sky? When the stars are no longer there, we say that they have disappeared and that they do not exist. However, those who have found the Mind would say that the great Universe, which is the Mind itself, exists, for those who are wholly the Universe can see its Body and Mind.
Nothing exists in the Body of the Universe, whereby even that nonexistence does not exist. However, within this non-existence, we can see the existence of the one and only God filling it to the utmost. When oneโs self has completely died and not an inch of self remains and when even the infinite Universe exists no more, oneโs mind is able to see the sole God of Heaven and earth. Furthermore, he who has been completely reborn as that God is the son of God or Buddha. For one who has reached this level, both the material and non-material realms are one; furthermore he also knows that all creations will live with him eternally in true Paradise. He who has become the Universe, itself, has no mind that he is indeed the Universe; he is empty of all but knows everything. For him, this total emptiness is the world of endless virtue and the world of tathฤgata-garbha; it is the world that is beyond non-existence.
If a person were to have delusions or klesha, it is because he has failed to become God. But for a person who has reached God or Buddha, the Mind exists. Such is the state in which delusions and klesha no longer exist, for he wholly has the true Mind. A person who has reached this state is one who has been reborn from the Universe and so his mind has become the Mind of the Universe and the Mind of God. Therefore, it is this Mind and this Mind alone that remains. This Mind has no likes or dislikes; it has no discriminations of right or wrong, for it just lives and exists as it is; it is absent of death. Such a person is one who has been born into everlasting Heaven and lives there; thus his mind is even absent of joy. Nevertheless, he is in Paradise for his joys are of the utmost.
โ Woo Myung
REFLECT AT SANTA CLARA MEDITATION
At Santa Clara Meditation, practitioners learn how to discard the self, uncover the existent Mind, and awaken to the reality of the Universeโentering the world where emptiness is fullness and where one lives in eternal Paradise. ๐
