Your Happiness Matters
Hello, I’m your host Kristine and welcome to Woo Myung Cast, where you can listen to Great Teacher Woo Myung’s words of wisdom.
Today’s story is called Your Happiness Matters.
People are born into the world, live their life and depart. On average, human’s life span is seventy to eighty years. People age and become old. That person eventually dies. It is said that there is no exception in death. Life has a definite end one day; it is the principle of the world that a human is born and dies one day, just like parting is “waiting” after meeting. Then, in this one precious life, ask yourself, “do you live a happy life now?” Some people might say that their life is too busy and tough to even answer such a question. However, this is indeed a very important question.
There is a seventy-year-old old man in my neighborhood. That man told me with a somber face that he was a very good looking man when he was seventeen years old and he felt like it was only yesterday. He woke up today and had become a wrinkled old man with no energy. For him, his life passed by in the blink of an eye. If you live so busily not affording any time to look back at yourself, get old and die, isn’t your life meaningless? We should give a thought to our life whether we have a happy life now. Life happens only once. And, time does not wait for us and passes by instantly. Happiness is when our mind is happy. Our mind must change from unhappiness to happiness.
We should think about a way to make ourselves happy sincerely even though we live a tough life. Isn’t it futile if we get old like this? True happiness is in us and it exists when emptying out the mind. Suppose that you have found the way to become happy, you have actually emptied out the mind and found happiness in your true self. Then, you will have joyful time in the rest of your life. Moreover, the true self having happy mind is everlasting even after the body dies; and therefore, you can live eternally with happy mind. What would be more valuable and noble than this in the world? Also as you live, you live a difficult and busy life unaware of where human comes from, why he lives and where he goes after he dies and, if you just live and vanish from the world by aging or sickness, what meaning would there be?
Your happiness matters.
We must find the solution of life while living. Such a solution and happiness can be found if you throw away your human mind, which is false, and find the true self that is the universe mind, the mind of happiness. Then, you can be born in the true world and live in the true world as you are, happily forever. Even after the body dies after its lifespan, the true self that has been born again is the everlasting life, and thus, you live eternally without death. Will you simply struggle in your life for seventy to eighty years and vanish forever? Or, will you diligently eliminate your false mind and find the true mind? You really need to give it a thought whether or not to live a life of the truth. Your happiness matters.
To conclude, let me introduce a piece of writing by teacher Woo Myung, a real teacher of this generation, who has been devoting his whole life with only hope that everyone in the world becomes enlightened to the truth and live happily forever since he became the truth.
This is called Thinking You Are Alive Is a Dream – Save Yourself Before You Are Devoured by the Devil of Time.
Thinking You Are Alive Is A Dream – Save Yourself Before You Are Devoured By The Devil Of Time
Rain is pouring down;
Late April showers are hurrying spring in.
As the rain falls I look back on life –
It has all become dim memories.
All of it was futile, it was just a dream.
All people; those who loved me, those who cherished me
And those who disliked me,
Have all scattered and disappeared somewhere.
What remains inside my mind are pictures that my mind has held onto.
All those who lived in the world, within time that flows,
Were busy and noisy while living,
And though they tried to fill their sense of inferiority,
They were unsuccessful,
And have vanished somewhere
With just their regrets and bitterness.
That we are living is just a nap-time dream.
Just as when we wake from a dream
We discover that it is not real but false,
It is so with human life.
While one might not know whether it is real or false
When he looks from within himself,
As one knows that a dream is a dream when he has woken,
When man’s consciousness sees from outside himself,
From the origin, human life is something that does not exist.
Human life is lived inside a false dream,
Lived according to that scripted dream.
Thus man does not know he is dead even when he dies
And even the thought that he is alive
Does not exist in the world and is a dream.
Your mind is the path that you have walked,
Producing a video of sorts.
Because you live inside that video
You are truly ignorant of the world.
The world is real,
And when you live in the real world
It is possible to know the ways of the world
And the will of the world.
But because you live inside your own world
Having turned your back against the world
It is a dream without meaning or purpose,
Far from the world.
The life that one lives is a false dream,
Gaining false things which become meaningless and false.
Such is human life and the human world.
All were born and lived without meaning or purpose
And have all gone to a false world after doing false deeds.
Is there anything more lamentable than this?
The world is the land of the skies.
The world is nirvana.
The world is heaven.
This land is a place of oneness,
A land that exists.
The land that does not die but lives forever
Is the land of Truth.
He who has cleansed his mind,
His mind becomes one with the mind of Truth
And is reborn within it
And thus he is reborn, resurrected.
Wherever he is, wherever he lives
Is heaven and Truth and therefore, alive.
As part of the world, he lives without death
In the land of that consciousness.
People! Do not live a life of falseness.
Do not waste even a single moment but repent your sins
And come out from within your mind world.
Let us go to the heaven we have only heard of
While you are still living.
Know that time which passes silently
Is the devil that devours people without rhyme or reason.
Do not waste your time with false deeds
And come out into the world.
Life in this world is all a dream.
No matter how well you live or how happy you are in a dream,
What use is it if it is not real?
What meaning does it have?
Before you are devoured by the devil of time,
Save yourself.
In the world where the devil of time does not exist,
In the world without time,
When you are born in that world,
There is no time,
And so there is no death either.
This was from teacher Woo Myung’s book, Stop Living In This Land Go To The Everlasting World Of Happiness Live There Forever.
We hope you enjoyed today’s insightful poem by Great Teacher Woo Myung.
Thank you for listening and please join us next time on Woo Myung Cast where the more you listen to Great Teacher Woo Myung’s writings, the more you gain wisdom. This Woo Myung Cast is sponsored by Maum USA. If you would like to learn more about Great Teacher Woo Myung, please visit Woomyung.org.