The Enlightened World

Master Woo Myung Meditation Poem – From a Temple in the Mountains

Where there is Truth, there is the Way.

Ask people what they have become enlightened of.
There is no such thing as enlightenment for man,
nor has he ever known anything.

To all of you living in the world:
learn how to be unknowledgeable
before being knowledgeable.

‘Seon-bang (禪房)’ is a place people go to
in order to find their original nature –
to find Truth.

The countless stars in the sky

I can recall the early winter,
when fallen leaves would blow in the wind,
for I do not have a want-filled, human mind,

Look at the stars that illuminate the sky,

I exist,
but I live a non-existent life.
Life is a thing that exists because the body exists.

Man longs for the days of
those countless stories that have all disappeared.
Where they have gone, he does not know;