Master Woo Myung Teaching of Wisdom – The Life of a Dō-in
People tend to have their own conceptions of what an ideal ‘dō-in (道人)’ or ‘one walking the Way of enlightenment’ is. Whenever I am asked to appear in special television interviews in the U.S., the staff members of the broadcasting stations frequently comment, “We expected an elderly person with a long beard wearing a robe that flaps in the wind. You, however, are much younger and do not seem to have the attributes of a dō-in.”
In the past, a dō-in was someone who could perform many tricks or had special talents and was capable of doing things others could not do, such as flying, for which he was thus praised. People with such fixed conceptions of what a dō-in is have come to practice meditation, many of whom have left because they were advised only to eliminate themselves and their attachments; therefore, they find that this method does not agree with their own delusional greed.
A dō-in is a person who has been born again as one with the eternal and everlasting Truth that is God and Buddha. Humans do not have wings, and so man’s inability to fly is Truth; everything is Truth just as it is. Therefore, a dō-in is one who lives liberated. He is one who knows that life and death are one, has been reborn as God and Buddha, and has Heaven in him.
A dō-in does not exist in those idealistic images man has. As the saying goes, ‘it takes one to know one,’ or in this case ‘it takes a dō-in to know a dō-in.’ This means that a person whose level of consciousness is low cannot recognize another person whose consciousness is higher, for he is only able to see from his own viewpoint. Furthermore, the phrase, ‘Divinity cannot be seen by the eyes of man,’ means that man is Divinity, yet man does not know this.
Indeed, the life of a true dō-in is one that saves people and selflessly works for others.
-Woo Myung-
https://santaclarameditation.blogspot.com/2023/06/master-woo-myung-teaching-of-wisdom.html
