INTRODUCTION
True Paradise is not a place one enters after deathโit is a state that must be achieved while living.
In this profound teaching, Master Woo Myung explains that only by cleansing the false mind and awakening as the oneness of all existence can one be reborn in the Land of Truth, the eternal Paradise within.
This is the world where life and death do not exist, where the individual and the Whole are one, and where one lives as pure emptiness and wondrous existence, the true nature of Buddha and God.
ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG
One Must Be Born in True Paradise While One Is Alive in Order for One to Live There
In order for oneโs mind to be at ease,
oneโs mind must cease to exist.
That oneโs mind ceases to exist
does not mean it is non-existent.
It is only when one has the Mind of Truth
that one is truly free.
Everything in the world is the Mind.
And it is when this Mind is one that
all things will be fulfilled.
That all things will be fulfilled means
all existent things will exist.
That all existent things will exist means
everything will live as one.
He who no longer has his own self
but a self that is Truth
is one who has found his true self โ
the self that is truly his.
Such a self is one that is absent of a sense of self.
Such a self is one that is boundlessly at its ease,
one that is perfectly free.
The whole of creation would be one
and would be alive because
his liberated self exists.
Man says he knows things,
but such knowledge is only his fixed conceptions,
for it is not his true self that knows โ
it is not Truth that knows.
Thus man is only able to talk about what he knows.
He lives talking about his own experiences
and the things he feels,
which are nothing more than
his own fixed conceptions and habits.
Truth simply lives.
Truth simply exists.
To let go of everything,
to see the Whole and know it,
is Truth.
Existence and non-existence are one because
nothing exists and yet everything exists.
And it is amidst this non-existence that one must find
the nimitta-consciousness
in order to be reborn.
It is only then that one can become God, Buddha,
as well as the โpure emptinessโ and โwondrous existence.โ
A person with his delusions โ
his karma and habits โ
live in his maya because of them,
whereby such maya are not reality.
That they are not reality means
they are delusions.
Furthermore, if he were to die with those delusions,
he would indeed be dead;
he would wander as his delusions โ
delusions in which there is no true self or reality.
Thus he would be dead.
But a person who has become the Whole
while he is alive
lives as reality, not his delusions.
In order to become the Whole,
man must return to the one source
and be reborn as the oneness
so that he may be resurrected as Truth and be reborn.
He who has cleansed his mind
will be reborn as the true Mind
and will live as the true Mind.
He will have become
the pure emptiness and wondrous existence;
his image will have become
the โJung (Body)โ and โShin (Mind)โ,
whereby this Jung and this Shin are
the Mind of all creations.
When the individual becomes the Whole,
the individual and the Whole are one.
And it is this oneness that is the Land of God,
wherein man can live absent of life and death.
So even though his body may be no more,
his Jung and Shin will live on.
He who has become one with the source,
which is the Sambhogakฤya and Dharmakฤya,
will be born in the Land of God
and will live in the one Land.
This one Land is the Land of the true Buddha
where he who has become one with this Buddha
lives as the true Buddha;
he is an individual,
yet the individual is the Land itself,
and the Land is the individual.
Oneness means
the death of oneโs self while one is still alive.
A person whose consciousness has yet to be reborn as
the oneness โ as Truth โ while he is still alive
cannot live in the one Land.
This is because such a person
is one who is blinded by his karma and habits
and is thus dead due to these delusions.
Truth has always existed;
that which never disappears is Truth.
He who has been born as Truth
in the Land of Truth
is Truth itself.
Thus he will never disappear;
he will be eternal and will never perish.
This Land is the true Paradise โ
the place that can only be had within
by a person who has become one with the Whole.
Such a place is the Land of Truth.
True Paradise is not a place where one can go to
only after one dies
but the place one comes to have within oneself when
oneโs consciousness has become Truth while one is alive.
One cannot live unless
oneโs consciousness has become Truth while one is alive,
for after one dies, his delusions cannot become Truth.
So though they say
that one can go to true Paradise only after death,
one cannot go there unless
oneโs consciousness awakens while one is alive.
โ Woo Myung
REFLECT AT SANTA CLARA MEDITATION
At Santa Clara Meditation, practitioners learn how to cleanse the mind, awaken from delusion, and be reborn as the consciousness of Truth.
Only then can one come to possess the true Paradise within, the one Land where eternal life is possible. ๐
