✨ Introduction
🌿 In this deeply introspective writing, Master Woo Myung reflects on a life once lived in emptiness, loneliness, and wandering—like duckweed floating without roots.
🍃 Duckweed becomes a powerful symbol:
- A drifting mind without direction
- A life searching but never finding
- A heart filled with questions but no answers
🌌 This message captures the human condition—searching for meaning, yet unable to find it within a mind full of thoughts and desires.
✨ And yet, the turning point comes:
when one transcends the false mind and becomes Truth, all questions are resolved.
📖 ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG
Duckweed
While mountain birds fly,
I wander around in the mountains and rivers alone.
I soothe my emptiness
by walking around the mountains and rivers.
Like duckweed, my mind has no place to firmly plant itself,
nor have I achieved anything in life.
Without any achievements and without a place to achieve,
I blame the meaninglessness of life.
Only I feel trapped in loneliness,
and only I have become like the floating duckweed in the world.
And my mind drifts about, unable to settle.
Wood from the mountains contributes the most to the kitchen;
there are trees of different ages
and large pine trees here and there.
Poor farmers in the country-side
live in this world
without complaining, without blaming the world.
But I wonder if they know what it is they live for.
Indeed, they are diligent and adapt well to their environment;
they live in complacency.
I am the floating duckweed of the world.
I want and try to gain something from the world,
but there is nothing that fits my mind.
Nothing fits my mind for I have countless things in my mind.
No matter how much I drink,
there is no solution at the bottom of the glass.
Without knowing the fundamental ways of the world,
my mind is like floating duckweed.
It may have been that since youth,
I did not like the meaninglessness of life.
Among the endless lines of graves in the mountains
which are the traces of those
who had once lived long ago and passed away,
I think about the meaninglessness of life.
The remains of one who was successful in life is a grave
and the remains of one who failed in life is also a grave.
They passed away wordlessly
after living lives that were like mere dreams.
People who are dedicated to their present lives
will never understand my mind; they will never know me.
I love nature and its silence,
so I walk around the mountains and rivers alone
thinking about my questions and curiosities,
about this and that.
Clouds in the clear sky, winds blowing,
rain falling, snow falling, and the weather being cold and hot;
all are the life of nature.
But living was difficult, and I knew nothing about life
because I lived only for myself.
Though it was only after I became Truth
that I realized this;
it was no wonder that I did not have the solution before.
For the solution was not in my mind
since I only had falseness in my mind.
That is why there was no solution, no matter how hard I thought.
But now that I have become great nature, the world,
and have become that mind which is true,
my questions about the world have been solved.
As I have the origin of the world in my mind,
I know the world and the will of the world,
and my many questions and curiosities are all resolved.
– Woo Myung
🌠 Reflect at Santa Clara Meditation
At Santa Clara Meditation, the drifting mind finds its root.
🌿 Through meditation:
- One understands the cause of emptiness and loneliness
- Lets go of the false mind filled with endless thoughts
- Becomes one with Truth and the Universe
✨ The mind that once drifted like duckweed
can finally become rooted in Truth.
