INTRODUCTION

🌿 In this reflective and poetic piece, Master Woo Myung captures the quiet loneliness of looking back on life—the tears, the sighs, the drifting memories, and the sense that something essential is missing just beyond reach. He describes how human life, bound by sadness and ignorance, becomes like floating duckweed, fragile and directionless.

Ultimately, he reveals a profound truth: when one steps beyond the human-bound mind and sees from the perspective of the Universe, life is understood as a fleeting dream—existent yet non-existent. This writing invites deep contemplation of the nature of life, memory, and existence itself. 🌌

ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG

Memories I

Upon the windy hills you lay
thinking about memories past,
which bring tears to your eyes
and a sigh to your breath.
No one asks you why;
you are alone,
watching the woolly clouds
float lightly across the sky.
As you look to the sky,
you feel as if
there is something missing –
something that seems just out of reach –
but a something that you want to find.

All you do is sigh as you look back upon your life
which has been riddled with pointless sadness.
Indeed they say that life is like floating duckweed,
but having to live it in this manner is such a shame.
You know nothing,
which is why you have been able to accomplish nothing
throughout the years that have passed.
Upon seeing those dear to you disperse,
all you can do is cry.

Everything is existent and non-existent in the Universe.
Everything that is existent in the Universe is as it is,
but man lives thinking that there is something beyond
the Universe.

Grieve as you may to Nature over the fact that
human life is a useless thing
and that it is all just a dream,
Nature remains silent.
When you are removed from human life
and then look back on it,
the days in which you lived a human-bound life
will be a distant dream.

– Woo Myung

REFLECT AT SANTA CLARA MEDITATION

At Santa Clara Meditation, practitioners learn to step beyond the human-bound mind and see life as it truly is—existent yet non-existent, a fleeting dream within the Universe. 🌠