🌿 Introduction
✨ In this deeply reflective teaching, Master Woo Myung reveals that true freedom cannot be found in the outside world, no matter how far one goes.
Like migratory birds that travel vast distances yet still face death, and people who try to escape life’s burdens through change of place, external movement never brings true liberation.
🌌 Human beings often seek freedom by leaving their circumstances, relationships, or responsibilities, but this only leads to more suffering, regret, and illusion.
The root of bondage is not outside—it is within the mind itself.
🌿 Master Woo Myung teaches that real freedom begins only when one discards the false and “worthless” self.
When the self disappears, one becomes one with the world, and in that state, there is no lack, no conflict, and no searching—only true rest and liberation. ✨
đź“– ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG
Let’s Find It Within
The migratory birds that fly overhead
have no fixed destination,
but instinctively know where they need to go.
When they get there, they stay awhile then leave.
Some die along the way
and some fly to the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountains,
then fly all the way back.
But even for these birds that look so free,
death is always waiting nearby.
A person who wanted to live following the drifting clouds,
had thoughts of living freely in a world without hindrances.
He longed to leave, without destination or obstacles,
but could not, because of his ties and possessions.
In this weary life, this meaningless life,
there would have been times when he wanted to die.
His stifled mind may have wondered
what he can do to be free.
Having countless thoughts of wanting to throw off
the shackles of one’s life is the human mind,
but leaving one’s wife and children
and running off to a mountain temple or a foreign country
is not the way to let go of attachments.
To do so is a manifestation of one’s feelings of inferiority
that he himself is not aware of,
whether the reason is to escape from reality or something else.
People get divorced or commit suicide together
because reality does not suit them;
even though they do it all in their own interest
it ends in regrets and sorrow,
and finally it does not benefit them at all.
In hard times when it was difficult
to earn enough to eat and stay alive,
many husbands who left their wives and children
to earn money in Japan, went and never came back.
The women spent the years as young widows,
wondering and waiting for their husbands to return.
But after growing old,
their husbands returned with new wives and children,
or sent word that they had a new family
and could not come back.
The women’s lost youth had long gone,
with only bitterness remaining.
People lived their lives with many stories and events,
but everything that happens is bitterness and sorrow.
Whether they came or went,
there was no true freedom;
there was no proper life.
Where can one go, where can one live,
to be free, to have the desire to live?
Do not try and find it outside of yourself—
throw and throw away your worthless mind,
eliminate and eliminate your worthless self,
and when your worthless self no longer exists,
it is true freedom,
and you can go where you need to go and live well.
If you live as one with the wordless mountains and streams,
as one with the wordless sky,
as one with the wordless world,
you will lack for nothing and it is freedom and liberation.
There is no freedom or happiness
while you look for it as a slave to your mind.
If you become one with the world’s mind,
your false mind no longer exists,
and you will always be at rest.
This mind never changes
and since that mind has no comings or goings,
you no longer come and go;
you have freedom and liberation.
He who lives having discarded his worthless self
is God, Buddha and a saint,
and he who discards this worthless self
can go to heaven while living,
the heaven we have only heard of.
While he may wonder if it is real or a dream,
when he knows the place he is living is heaven,
life will be truly joyful.
Even though the blue sky does not speak,
it does all it needs to do;
the mountains and streams do not speak,
but they do all they need to do.
Only man talks a lot and thinks a lot
but does not do anything properly; such is human life.
I like the world because it does not speak,
but I do not like people who speak so much.
Do they speak any words
that are not boasts of how great they are?
What is there to miss and what is there to do,
when it is all a vain and futile dream?
Just as when one wakes from a dream,
he knows the dream is vain and futile
and no longer struggles within it,
the elimination of your worthless self
is the medicine to wake from the dream.
– Woo Myung
🌠Reflect at Santa Clara Meditation
At Santa Clara Meditation, practitioners are guided to stop searching outside and instead look within. 🌿
By discarding the false mind and the accumulated self, one can experience the state described by Master Woo Myung—
✨ true freedom without conditions
✨ a life without attachment or burden
✨ a state of complete rest and liberation
