🌟 INTRODUCTION
✨ In this insightful reflection, Master Woo Myung explains why people often approach religion with hidden agendas—seeking blessings for success, wealth, or recognition rather than seeking Truth itself. 🌿
Through a vivid experience of becoming one with a Buddha carving, he reveals that there is often no space in the human mind for blessings to enter. This teaching uncovers how begging for blessings only deepens greed, while opening the mind to Truth allows all people to truly live well. 🌌
This writing invites the reader to look beyond delusion and to expand the size of the mind—the true way to live in the world as Truth. 🌠
📄 ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG
People Who Beg for Blessings
It seems people believe in religions because they have certain agendas.
When I ran a college preparatory tuition school in Daegu, I went hiking every day. Students would come in the afternoons, so I would use my free time in the morning to go hiking.
At the top of the mountain, which could only be reached by climbing hundreds of steps, there was a statue of a Buddha carved into a huge rock. Every day I saw an endless stream of people come and pray for various blessings, such as college admittance for their children, business success, or wealth. Once in a while I would sit behind the carving to meditate and on one such day when my eyes were closed, I found that I became one with the carving. From its viewpoint, I could see that there was no one worthy of receiving blessings. There was no room in their minds for blessings to enter. It is the same in churches and all other religions: all people believe in religions while wishing for something in return.
People live according to what they hold in their minds. This determines the size of one’s mind, which is sometimes described as one’s ‘plate’ in Korean. The way people live is determined by the size of their ‘plate’.
People may ask for blessings, but the existence that is God and Buddha is not an entity that listens to such pleadings. One’s delusions are begging to a false delusion and this only adds to his karma of greed.
Truth is not an existence that grants blessings which benefit people’s delusional individual lives. Whether one lives well or poorly depends on how much he has opened his mind. People should focus on increasing the size of their minds. When people live with big minds – the mind of Truth – everyone will be able to live well.
– Woo Myung
🔍 REFLECT AT SANTA CLARA MEDITATION
At Santa Clara Meditation, practitioners learn to discard delusional desires and to expand the size of their minds. 🌿 Through reflection and practice, they come to understand that living well is not about begging for blessings, but about becoming the mind of Truth itself, as taught by Master Woo Myung.
