🔎 Introduction

✨ In this poetic and symbolic writing, Master Woo Myung speaks of crossing the “Arirang hills” to reach the Land of Light — a realm of freedom, enlightenment, and eternal life.

Dusk approaches, yet people do not know where to go. 🌅 They cling to burdens, memories, and attachments, unaware that suffering disappears the moment one leaves the false self behind.

The Land of Light represents rebirth beyond past and future — a state where one exists as Light itself, drinking the water of life and living without death.

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, the “Arirang hills” symbolize the threshold between attachment and liberation. 🌄

To cross the hills is to leave behind:

  • Past memories
  • Pride and self-importance
  • Emotional burdens
  • Fear of death

The Land of Light is not a physical destination.
It is the state where one’s self dissolves and only Light remains.

When one drinks the water of life — the Light of Truth — one is reborn as Energy itself.

Heaven is entered while living.