Introduction
✨ In this poetic and powerful teaching, Master Woo Myung describes the journey from the burdens of human life toward the Land of Light, a place of freedom, liberation, and enlightenment.
Many people wander through life carrying countless worries, attachments, and past memories. Because they do not know where true rest exists, they continue to live in places that bring suffering and hardship. According to Master Woo Myung, these struggles persist because people remain attached to the self and to the burdens created by the mind. 🌌
Through the symbolic imagery of crossing the Arirang hills, he invites readers to leave behind their suffering and move toward a world where the self no longer exists. In that world, one can drink the water of life, shed all burdens, and be reborn as a being of Light.
This teaching reflects the possibility of awakening to a state where life is no longer bound by past, future, or suffering, but instead exists in the eternal presence of Truth and Light. 🌿
ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG
The Land of Light
Dusk is approaching,
but people do not know where to go.
They do not have anywhere to rest
because they have nowhere to go.
Immature people –
they live in the harshness of their realities
and hold onto them.
Pass over the Arirang hills
before night falls;
shed your burdens and sufferings,
so that you can know where you must go,
and find a place to rest.
If where you are is unfit for life,
you will be fine if you leave.
Why do people live in a place unfit for life?
People do not know their countless struggles
do not exist when they leave them;
this is the reason they have nowhere to go or rest.
Try living in the world beyond the Arirang hills –
it is freedom and liberation there,
because one’s self of attachments does not exist.
Even if you live only for a day,
you must live as a living person;
even if you live only for a day,
you must live as Truth.
Only then can you shed your sufferings and burdens.
Why do you not know this,
and simply cry?
You may speak of your greatness,
you may brag that you are great,
but it is all a futile dream during a moment’s nap.
People live with all kinds of events in their hearts
they do not have to have, as if they were treasures,
events of heartbreak as well as countless others,
but aren’t these things suffering and burden?
Let’s leave, let’s leave,
let’s go over the Arirang hills
to the world beyond.
All people in the world,
let’s all leave.
To where there is no death, or even one’s past self;
let’s drink the water of life and shed suffering and burden.
Let’s leave to the world of enlightenment,
a world of freedom,
a world of one,
a world where I am the master –
let’s live in the world I have made.
In a place of many words,
it may seem as though people care for others
but they are envious and they begrudge others’ successes.
A place of many words
only brings suffering.
Beyond the hills,
there is the land of Light.
One’s forehead, one’s mind is shone with light
in the land of Light.
One is given new clothes from head to toe – a new body and mind –
he receives a whole body of Light.
If one goes to the land of Light,
the life that he has lived in the past does not exist,
and if one goes to the land of Light,
and one no longer has a past or future,
and like Light, there is no beginning or end,
he just exists.
By drinking the water of life, of Light,
I have become the Light.
Oh wanderers with nowhere to go,
let’s all go to the land of Light
and drink the water of life.
Those who drink will live,
and for those who do not, it is death.
When the master, the Light, asks us to come,
without any restrictions, to the land of Light,
let’s just go, without dallying in preparation.
Let’s just go and live.
When one goes over the Arirang hills,
and drinks the water of life,
he has no death, and no self with suffering.
He becomes an eternal and imperishable immortal.
Let’s go, let’s go, let’s hurry,
let’s go drink water in the land of Light.
The water is light,
and this body becomes Light –
one is reborn as Energy that is Light.
— Woo Myung
🌿 Reflect at Santa Clara Meditation
At Santa Clara Meditation, practitioners reflect on teachings from Master Woo Myung that guide individuals toward the Land of Light described in this passage.
Meditation allows people to release the burdens, attachments, and memories that create suffering in their lives.
🌠 As these accumulated thoughts disappear, individuals may experience a state of freedom and clarity where life is no longer bound by the past or by the limitations of the self.
Through this transformation, practitioners can discover the deeper reality described by Master Woo Myung — a life of unity, peace, and harmony with the light of Truth.
