INTRODUCTION
✨ In this symbolic and deeply Korean-rooted teaching, Master Woo Myung interprets the folk song Arirang as a spiritual map of awakening.
🏔️ “Passing over the Arirang hills” does not mean a physical journey — it signifies parting from the false self and discovering the true self. Only after crossing these inner hills can one drink the true water of life, where the past, the body, and the illusion of self completely vanish. What remains is the complete, living True Self.
ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG
Dear People, Let’s Drink the True Water of Life
Let’s go over the Arirang hills,
Arirang, arirang, arariyo,
Passing over the Arirang hills.
He who forsakes me and leaves,
will go lame before he has gone a league.
- Arirang, a Korean folk song
Passing over the Arirang hills symbolizes both parting with one’s self and gaining one’s self.
Where it says that a person who leaves me will become lame means that a person who leaves his true self will become sick and die before getting too far. It signifies death. When one has passed over all the Arirang hills, he can drink the water of life.
By meeting one’s true self, his false self will disappear. When this happens, no matter how hard he tries to recall having had a body in the past, he will just exist in the state where even the concept of the past has vanished. Passing over the Arirang hills also represents finding his complete true self.
— Woo Myung
🌿 REFLECT AT SANTA CLARA MEDITATION
At Santa Clara Meditation, “crossing Arirang” is practiced as an inner passage: letting go of attachment, memory, and the false self so that one may drink the true water of life and live as Truth — just as taught by Master Woo Myung. đźŚ
