✨ Introduction
🌿 In this reflective writing, Master Woo Myung observes the lives of countless people moving through the world—busy, driven, and unaware of what truly matters.
From the flowing river to the crowded streets of New York, this message reveals a powerful contrast:
🌍 While nature flows silently and eternally,
humans live hurried lives, filled with work, stories, and concerns—
yet ultimately, all pass away.
✨ This teaching emphasizes that the most important task in life is not busyness, but understanding the principle of existence and being reborn beyond death.
📖 ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG
Many People
The river’s clear water flows from Canada,
following the river’s every bend
all the way down to New York.
It has flowed through the ages without words.
In this clean river that meets the ocean,
there are many small fish,
and some big fish too.
But even the fish, living freely in this flowing river
live with the circumstances of their environment.
In New York, the financial center of the world
the river flows around Manhattan;
it is here that the river finally meets the sea.
Even this place, with its relatively short history,
holds a lot of sadness and regrets.
With many people coming and going from different countries,
Manhattan is hectic and busy, full of people walking hurriedly.
All people have work to do, but here,
people seem to be especially busy.
With the passing of time, many people who had trod
the streets of this city have vanished,
and even the buildings have aged.
The sky, the earth and the river are still in their places
throughout all the trials of this world,
but these people, with all they have to say
and their many stories, will one day disappear.
After much time has passed,
and even the river and land have disappeared,
the sky will still exist.
If everything that existed in the world becomes the sky
and has a Soul and Spirit in the land of the sky that just exists,
the rivers and the land will also exist eternally.
When these become your mind and are alive within your mind,
when your Soul and Spirit is born, there will be no death.
People should not live so busily;
the most urgent matter is to know this principle,
be born in this land, and become free of death.
This is the only thing that needs to be done.
But man who does not know the principles of the world
only goes about his work,
and does not try to know the principles of the world.
With a heavy heart, I see many people die.
– Woo Myung
🌠 Reflect at Santa Clara Meditation
At Santa Clara Meditation, life is seen from a deeper perspective.
🌿 Through meditation:
- One realizes the impermanence of busy life
- Understands the true purpose beyond work and activity
- Awakens to a state beyond death and limitation
✨ Life is not about how busy we are—
it is about whether we understand Truth.
