by Haemin Sunim
they are seeing their projected illusion, not your real self.
In contrast, when people who know you well respect you,
it is probably because you deserve it.
Some ask if swallowing your pride is conceding defeat.
I don’t think so. Humility is a sign of inner strength and wisdom.
When you swallow your pride, real communication becomes possible.
We can finally hear each other and eventually solve our problems.
When someone tells you, “No,”
don’t react emotionally and lose control.
“No” may open up a surprising new world to you.
“No” may unexpectedly lead you to good people.
If you begin to push back against the unchangeable “No,”
you will suffer in the process and miss other opportunities.
Your boss asks you to run an errand that has little to do with your job.
Rather than getting annoyed, just do it and let it go.
Do not turn something trivial into a major source of agony
by wasting time and energy thinking about it endlessly.
If I had to summarize the entirety of most people’s lives in a few words,
it would be endless resistance to what is.
As we resist, we are in constant motion trying to adjust,
and yet we still remain unhappy about what is.
If I had to summarize the entirety of an enlightened person’s life in a few words,
it would be complete acceptance of what is.
As we accept what is, our minds are relaxed and composed
while the world changes rapidly around us.
Do not try to control those around you.
When you cannot control even your own mind,
what makes you think you can control others?
Things I liked when I was young but now couldn’t care less about:
Airplane rides, all-you-can-eat buffets, horror movies, staying up all night.
Things I enjoy now that I am older:
Mozart, brown rice, meditation, spending time alone, regular exercise.
We change without realizing it. We are in the midst of change even now.
Do not lament that the world has changed.
Do not resent that people have changed.
Evaluating the present through the memories of the past can cause sadness.
Whether you like it or not, change is inevitable.
Embrace and welcome it.
Whether it is an object, a thought, or a feeling,
if it has emerged out of emptiness,
it will soon change its form and
eventually retreat back to emptiness.
Seekers in search of the eternal Truth
must look beyond its impermanent nature and
become aware of “that” which knows impermanence.
The monk most venerated by other monks is not the one who
appears most holy,
preaches the best,
runs the largest temple,
most accurately predicts the future,
has the ability to cure illness.
He is the one who teaches through his own actions.
He possesses no aura of self-importance,
and sacrifices himself first for the community.
Spirituality must be practiced
not just in solitude but also among people.
Open up to people around you and feel connected.
This is the true challenge of spiritual practice.
If you are sincere about reaching enlightenment,
you can learn even from a child,
or from the person who insults you on the street.
The entire world becomes your teacher.
The person leading you toward spiritual awakening
is not the one who praises you or is nice to you.
Your spirituality deepens because of those
who insult you and give you a hard time.
They are your spiritual teachers in disguise.
How can you tell if someone is truly enlightened?
Shower him with both praise and criticism.
If he shows signs of being susceptible to either,
then it means he has forgotten his enlightened nature.
Our emotions are capricious, like the weather in London.
One minute, when someone criticizes us, we are offended and furious.
The next minute, when someone praises us, we feel proud and pompous.
Unless we recognize the still point beneath the surface of our changing emotions,
we will feel we are hostage to their whims.
Someone advanced in spiritual practice has the following attitude.
In a large community, she lives as though she is alone.
She minds her own business without meddling in others’.
When alone, she acts as though she is in a large community.
She follows her regimen without sliding into laziness.
A great spiritual teacher can wait for her students to mature.
She feels no need to boast of or prove her enlightenment.
She neither imposes her teachings nor asks students to follow her exclusively.
She lets her students be so they can grow on their own.
When a deep, honest conversation
makes us feel connected to someone,
we become very happy.
The same deep connection with ourselves is possible
by wholly accepting who we are and
realizing the enlightened nature of ourselves.
This, too, is a source of incomparable happiness and freedom.
When You Are Feeling Low
“Haemin Sunim, I’m feeling low. What should I do?”
Quietly observe the feeling without trying to change it. It will change on its own.
As if gazing at a tree in the backyard, as if sitting by a river and watching the water flow by, quietly observe your feelings as if they are external to you. If you observe your feelings in this way for just three minutes, you will notice their energy and texture slowly changing.
Feelings are often born from a matrix of conditions beyond your control. Just like you can’t control the weather, or your boss’s mood, you can’t control the feelings in your body. They are just passing through, like clouds in the sky. They, too, dissipate on their own.
But if you take them too seriously and start internalizing them as part of your identity, then you will resuscitate them every time you think about the past. Remember that you are neither your feelings nor the story your mind tells about you to make sense of them. You are the vast silence that knows of their emergence and their disappearance.
When the mind looks outward,
it is swayed by the heavy winds of the world.
But when the mind faces inward,
we can find our center and rest in stillness.
People ask: “How can I clear my head when I meditate?
The more I try, the more my thoughts seem to arise.”
This is completely natural—because trying to clear your head is also a thought.
Do not try to get rid of your thoughts—it won’t work.
Instead, witness the emergence of a thought.
Witness the disappearance of a thought.
The moment you become aware of it,
the mind quiets and becomes clear.
We like to talk about things external to ourselves
because our minds are accustomed to flowing out into the world.
Spiritual practitioners, however, reverse the flow and look inward.
They stop talking about external matters
and t
rain themselves to become intimate with the mind.
Of all the words that pour out of our mouths every day,
how many are really ours,
and how many are borrowed from others?
How often do we say something original?
Is there such a thing as our own words anyway?
Within each of us, there is an inner witness
quietly observing what goes on inside and outside of us.
Born from a place of silence and wisdom,
even when the world churns up a storm of emotions,
the witness sits calmly in the eye of the storm,
unharmed, luminous, and all-knowing.
If you wish to clear away the clouds of your thoughts,
simply keep your mind in the present.
The clouds of thought linger only in the past or the future.
Bring your mind to the present, and your thoughts will rest.
Rather than repeating,
“It is awful! It is awful!”
stare straight into the awful feeling.
Quietly.
Examine the feeling.
Can you see its impermanent nature?
Let the feeling leave when it says it wants to go.
Everything in this universe is evanescent.
Because it is evanescent, it is also precious.
Spend this precious moment wisely and beautifully.
The mind cannot have two thoughts at once.
See if you can think two thoughts at exactly the same time.
Well? Is it possible?
We can be consumed by anger for a long time
without realizing we have been angry.
Similarly, we are easily lost in thought
without knowing we have been thinking.
Even when we are awake
we are no different from a sleepwalker.
We do things without the awareness of doing them.
Just because our eyes are open does not mean we are awake.
Being awake means that
you know what is happening within your field of awareness.
Rather than blindly following your thoughts and feelings,
stay awake and recognize the state of your mind before it is too late.
At mealtimes, we often do not realize how much we’ve eaten until we stand up.
Spiritual practice is all about being mindful of each moment.
If you are aware in the moment that your stomach is getting full,
then you are spiritually advanced.
Our consciousness often does not know what our subconscious wants.
We think we want something, but when we get it, we realize we wanted something else.
When you wish to hear the voice of your subconscious, try meditation.
Meditation opens a secret path to your subconscious.
Our consciousness may desire money, power, and prestige,
but our subconscious desires selfless love,
harmony, humor, beauty, sacredness, peace, and acceptance.
When we listen to silence, we can hear subtle vibrations.
While listening to the vibrations, ask a simple question:
What is it that is listening?
There is no listener.
There is only listening.
“When I gaze upon water, I become water.
When I look at a flower, I become the flower.
The flower riding on the water, yippee!”
—ZEN MASTER SEO-ONG (1912–2003)
When our bodies are fit and healthy, we feel light, almost like air.
But just because we feel light does not mean our bodies are not there.
It takes a lot of effort for our fitness to appear natural and effortless.
But just because it appears effortless does not mean that no effort was made.
What we call our “spirit” or “enlightened nature” exists like air,
so light and natural that we are not aware of it,
unless we train ourselves to be mindful of it.
A long time ago,
there was only one mind,
which became bored by being alone for so long.
So it decided to split into two.
But since the two knew they were originally one,
playing together was not much fun—
as if playing both sides of a chess game.
So the two minds agreed to forget where they came from;
they pretended not to know each other.
As time passed, they also forgot about their agreement.
They forgot they were actually one and the same.
This is the condition of our existence.
We forget that we are originally from one mind.
When an enlightened person transcends the duality of you and me,
she sees life as one long play.
This is why she remains humorous and lighthearted.
She plays her role but never forgets it is a performance.
Life is like theater. You are assigned a role.
If you don’t like the role,
keep in mind that you have the power to re-create the role you want.
CHAPTER THREE
Passion
Temper Your Eagerness
ALTHOUGH I STILL felt like a student, before I knew it I had “PhD” after my name and had become a college professor in a small town in Massachusetts. I still recall vividly how my heart pounded at the thought of meeting my students for the first time. I was filled with eager anticipation, much like a teenager going on a blind date. I tried to remember the many wonderful teachers who had taught me, and I hoped I would embody some of their skill and authentic presence.
Of the two courses I was teaching that first semester, one was the subject that had been the most inspiring to me when I was a student—Introduction to Buddhist Meditation. I didn’t want this class to be merely theoretical; I wanted to provide students with a chance to actually experience meditation for themselves. I hoped that later, even after they graduated from college, they would turn to meditation when confronted with difficulties in their lives. I thought the best gift I could give my students was the ability to observe their own minds objectively and not be caught up in their ever-changing thoughts and emotions.
I still remember my first lecture like it was yesterday. Before going into that class, I was worried about what I would say and how I would say it, but I ended up speaking passionately about the incredible rarity of what is called “karmic affinity” in Buddhism. I told the students that, according to Buddhist teachings, our gathering there that day was not the product of mere chance, but the result of our having met over countless lifetimes. I also said that since our time together was such a rare, precious occurrence, we should aim for a productive semester. As many of the students were freshmen, they were very sincere and seemed to have great expectations for college. The class size was limited to twenty-five students, so it was not difficult for me to learn all their names, and I was able to have brief chats with each of them. I found out why they were taking the class and what they hoped to learn. I liked them all and promised myself I would dedicate my time and energy to their education.
My enthusiasm became even more evident as the class began. I gave my students a little more homework than the other professors, as I felt the urge to teach them as much as I could. When I received their assignments, I graded them very carefully and as quickly as I could. In addition, I asked the students to practice meditation every day and to keep journals of their experiences. While other professors typically hosted one dinner with their students toward the end of the term, I held gatherings several times, including a picnic to a local Buddhist monastery. Once, I asked my students to join me at a local church for a talk given by a prominent Amer
ican Vipassana meditation teacher.
As the semester progressed, I began to realize that my eagerness was creating some problems. I thought that if I did my utmost to teach the students, they would try their best to follow along. The majority of students seemed grateful that I was giving them a variety of experiences, but a few appeared tired and seemed to lose interest. Students began coming to class without having done their assignments, some without having completed the readings. A number of them brazenly declared that since the visits to the monastery and the local church were not part of the class, they shouldn’t have to attend. I began to feel disappointed and even hurt. I couldn’t help myself. I was doing everything I could for them, and they were rejecting what I was offering.
I examined this feeling of disappointment. When I saw the situation more clearly, I realized how unskillfully I had been conducting myself. This class was just one out of four the students were taking. Important as the subject was to me, the other courses were equally important to them. It was only natural that they couldn’t invest all their time in my course, but I hadn’t been able to see that clearly and had been caught up in my own desire to teach.
No matter how effective the medicine may be, if you demand that someone take it, it can taste like poison. My teaching style was becoming poisonous to some students. After this realization, in the middle of the semester I altered the class to find an appropriate balance between my passion for teaching and my students’ capacity to learn. To my amazement, the students noticed the difference almost immediately and began to respond positively. I didn’t burden them with my overzealousness, and they slowly rediscovered their interest in the class on their own terms. When that happened, I realized something I should have known all along.
When we’re first given a job, especially one we’ve been working toward for a long time, it’s easy to become overly enthusiastic, as we are eager to prove ourselves. But in our excitement, we make the mistake of equating our own eagerness with effectiveness. Getting the job done well is more important than one’s feelings of doing a good job. It takes wisdom to discern that these two are not always related. In some cases, one’s zealous efforts can get in the way of achieving the desired outcome, especially if one is unable to see the needs of the others working toward it together.