The lanterns for Ullambana, a day for remembering the dead
Yesterday was August 15, which in Korea used to be called “Liberation Day,” because it was the day that the Japanese surrendered in 1945. (It was changed many years ago to 광복절, “The day the light returned.”) “Liberation Day” is the old name, and was changed for good reasons, but it still seemed appropriate when I read this short Dharma talk by Daehaeng Kun Sunim:
When you take the various thoughts and feelings stirred up by the consciousnesses of the living beings within yourself and return them to this fundamental mind so that they merge into one within your foundation, they will no longer appear as if they were something separate from you. When there is no longer duality, in that moment, you become free from fixed concepts, and are able to treat others as one with yourself.
Using your mind like this is the source of true virtue and merit, and benefits you and others in ways beyond imagining.
Further, you have to be able to lead the consciousnesses within your own body to this true, living virtue and merit, and only then will you be able to do the same for the karmic states of consciousness within other people.
This is the truth of one mind, the reality of the interconnected and interacting whole, where your mind and other’s minds are not separate ̶ they are merely a single point united as one.
Wake Up and Laugh! 