📖 Introduction

⏳ Youth fades silently.
Years pass without announcement.

In this reflective poem, Master Woo Myung describes youth as a dream — a restless wandering filled with desire, resentment, ambition, and striving. Only after awakening does one realize that what seemed so urgent was illusion.

What remains after awakening is not regret — but relief.

🕊️ Original Writing by Master Woo Myung

The Poem of Youth That Has Passed

Silently, my youth disappeared
with the years that passed without a word,
and my body is different from the days of its youth.

My life was spent in futile busy activities,
but it became more and more meaningless.
Everything that I achieved and wanted to achieve
was in vain and empty.

It was a life in a time when man could not become complete
and it was the time of a dream,
in which I had resentments and grudges.

After waking from the dream, I found it such a relief,
that all I wanted to have and achieve were not fulfilled.

In the dream, without once waking,
I lived wandering and wandering the dream world
without a day’s rest from my scripted dream.

If there are any regrets about the years that have passed,
it is that I did not wake sooner from the dream
to do the work of the awakened world.

It was only when I awoke from the dream
that I was able to know everything in the dream
were all false things and falsely done.

The law of the world is that all material things in existence
disappear with the years; this is nature’s law, Truth,
but I was only able to know this when I woke from the dream.

All desires and bitterness exist inside the dream.
While I was in the dream
I was filled with bitterness and I had many desires
but it is a relief among reliefs,
that I was not able to fulfill those desires
or resolve my bitterness.

Perhaps that is why I easily awoke from the dream.

Who is the great man and who is the fool?
Only in the dream are there great men and fools.
Outside the dream, everybody is one and lives in freedom.

I have no regrets for my youth that has gone;
I will do what I have to do
without complaining that the time remaining is too short
and then silently leave this body behind,
but in the world I worked for —
the world of the Soul and Spirit —
many people will be saved and my land will prosper;
and I will be waiting,
for the people who will live eternally with me.

— Woo Myung

🌠 Reflect at Santa Clara Meditation

🌿 Youth is not wasted because it passed.
It is wasted only if one never awakens from the dream.

The poem does not express sorrow — it expresses relief.
Relief that worldly ambitions were not fulfilled.
Relief that desires dissolved.
Relief that awakening occurred before life ended.

In meditation, we see:

  • Achievement inside the dream is empty.
  • Desire belongs to the dream world.
  • Regret disappears when illusion is seen clearly.
  • Freedom exists outside comparison and status.

When one awakens, “great” and “fool” vanish.
Only Truth remains.