Noon Blessing, Day 36 – may all beings be free of accidents

As they go about their daily lives,
may all beings be free of accidents.

Daehaeng Kun Sunim said that people’s suffering comes from five sources: Genetics, karma, the conditioned nature of existence, microbes, and spirits of the dead. There’s a few more details and qualifications in there, but those are the five basic sources of suffering.

Sometimes though, she mentioned that something can really pop up and cause us huge problems if we don’t at that time have a firm grip on our fundamental mind. So they appear to be things that weren’t really coming towards us, but just happened because of unfortunate circumstances. So in that sense, accidents do happen. One time, years and years ago, Daehaeng Kun Sunim was boarding a plane to somewhere and had just sat down, when she suddenly called out in a loud voice, “Get a grip on yourself!”

Nowdays, everyone would completely freak out, but back then, everyone was just uncomfortable, I guess. Later she said that the pilot was just about to make a huge mistake. I don’t know what it was, but one of the reasons Korean Air flight 007 was shot down, was because the pilot had transposed a number when he entered the flightpath into the autopilot, and the plane actually entered the edge of Soviet air space.

So sometime, when it feels like things are slipping out from under us, it’s not a bad idea to shout inwardly, “True self, you’re the one that’s truly doing things, so take care of this!” Sometimes we need to practice inputting things very firmly like this.