Wake Up and Laugh!

I’ll be giving a series of (English) Dharma talks about Daehaeng Kun Sunim’s translation of the Thousand Hands Sutra here in Anyang, every Thursday, starting next week, so stop by if you’re in the Seoul area. They run 7:30pm- 8:30(ish), and if you don’t know how to get here, send me a message. The talks will run for 12 weeks, until the Buddha’s Birthday in May. I am going to try to post each week’s text here, as well as a link to the audio recording. (cross your fingers!)

— Every week I’ve been messaging people with a verse from the sutra. Here’s this weeks verse; try to recite it out loud a few times, as well as write it out. You will feel it deep within you! —

The minds of all Buddhas are my one mind, so I ask my one mind
to take care of everything in my life

Avalokitesvara,
the Bodhisattva of Compassion,
who hears the cries of all the world,
resides within my one mind.
How can I express my gratitude?
The great saving power of all Buddhas
becomes the saving power of my one mind.
With it I can live every day free of entanglements.
So wonderful!

The compassionate hands of all Buddhas
are the hands of my one mind.
Their touch harmonizes all seen and unseen realms.
How can words express my gratitude?

The bright eyes of all Buddhas
are the eyes of my one mind.
Through their vision
see the entire universe as truly is,
and by clearly seeing the dead,
fully understand the living.

The deep sincerity of all Buddhas
is the sincerity of my one mind.
It always brightly leads me
using all manner of seen and unseen methods.
With infinite compassion
it reveals the precious truth
of how everything in the universe flows.

Our center has the usual scattering of calligraphy pieces that you’d expect for a temple this size, but one of them recently caught my attention.

I see this one every day on my way out of the Dharma hall, but it finally dawned on me that each of these characters is another way of writing “Mu(無)”(literally “nothing” but in its historical context it’s mixed with an undercurrent of “stop doing that!”)

Four “Mu” likely means “Mu” in every direction, or in other words, everywhere you turn, let go of your fixed ideas about things. For in every direction you look, there is only flowing and changing. Nothing is fixed. Nothing remains the same.

 

Here’s a wonderful verse for Christmas!

There is a candle
that gives light to everything behind you and ahead of you.

When this candle is lit,
it shines light upon all your ancestors and descendants,
helping untie any knots that bind them.

This is the candle of mind, which is lit through mind.
Do not forget your true essence.
It is what has led you across endless lives.
It leads you even now,
and it leads you through the vast and unknown future as well.

-Daehaeng Kun Sunim

An Easy Guide to Spiritual Practice

From the very beginning,
Buddhism has been about
finding yourself.

Of course, they never said “yourself,”
instead they talked about “true self,”
the foundation that leads and guides
our present consciousness.

They used all kinds of words
to point to this foundation,
such as “Buddha-nature,”
“Suchness,” “Original Appearance,”
and so on.

Among the old expressions
used by Seon masters,
I like “Juingong.” [The true doer, which has no fixed form.]

When it comes to spiritual practice,
I usually teach people to take everything that comes to them,
everything that confronts them,
and thoroughly entrust it to this “Juingong”
while observing.
In order to completely entrust everything,
you need two things.

First,
you must have faith.

Every single thing
originates from this foundation of ours, what I’m calling Juingong. Know this. Trust in this.

Don’t let your trust in this foundation waver,
not in the least bit,
even if you are suddenly confronted by things
that seems far beyond your ability.

Second, while having faith in this foundation,
you have to actually entrust it with the things that come up.
You have to completely let go of them and entrust them there.

Praying or begging for things to go a certain way
is not entrusting, is not letting go,
and it is not this spiritual practice that has to be done through mind.

True entrusting is like sweeping up all the scrap metal
and dumping it into the furnace.

True entrusting in every moment
is sincerely letting go
while having this kind of strong faith:
“Juingong! True Nature!
You’re the source of everything I encounter,
so you’re also what can take care of it all!”

Even though, for the sake of helping people understand,
I use words like “Juingong,”
don’t think this means something with a certain shape,
something that exists apart from where you are now.

“Juingong” means the Buddha within,
through this each and every thing is connected,
and is only one.

So please don’t get confused by names.
“Juingong,” “True Self,” “Inherent Buddha”
all mean “Search within yourself.
Don’t get distracted by outer things.”

At any rate, having faith and letting go like this
is the beginning of proper spiritual practice.

Observing and being aware is the next part.

“Observing” doesn’t mean to watch some object,
instead it is being firmly centered within yourself
and being aware.

What I’ve said here today is how to begin true spiritual practice. Sitting down with your legs crossed isn’t it.

 

If you find what I’ve said difficult to follow, then think of it like this:

“Juingong is like a post office mailbox that communicates with my inherent Buddha. Let’s just put everything that confronts me into this mailbox. It will deliver it to my inherent Buddha, and bring back a reply.”
Entrusting like this, with this kind of faith and watching for the responses, is the essence of spiritual practice.

This is my all-time favorite verse, from Daehaeng Kun Sunim’s translation of the Heart Sutra. It causes everything within me to settle down, and shows me how I need to be living.

     Inherently,

all beings share the same life,

the same mind,

the same body,

and work together as one,

giving and receiving whatever is needed,

ceaselessly manifesting and changing.

But because unenlightened beings don’t know this,

they walk the path of suffering.

 Here’s a great comment and answer from a Dharma talk I’m currently translating. I particularly enjoyed this one, because so often it happens when we strive for something, we are subtly despising where we are at, and desiring to be someplace other than where we are right now. The longer I practice, the more I think the key is having goals but still accepting the place we are in this moment. 

Questioner 1: When I hear your teachings like this, I feel like I’m about to awaken and fly into the sky like a bird.

Daehaeng Kun Sunim: Look! Don’t try to awaken! [Laughs.] If you’re focused on something called “awakening,” you’ll wind up filled with frustration.

Whether you succeed or not, just keep going forward on the path in front of you, taking things as they come. Keep quiet about what you encounter, and stay centered on your foundation, knowing that, “My foundation can take care of this.” Then it will be taken care of in that instant.

When entrusting something to your foundation, sometimes you see the results instantly, and sometimes it takes some time before the result works its way into the material realm. But when you entrust things like this, your foundation works like a blast furnace, melting down whatever you put into it.

So even though you put in grubby and twisted scrap, all of that will be melted down and only bright, shiny metal will be left. Which is then sent back out into the world. But how could someone experience this if they aren’t thoroughly entrusting the things and emotions that confront them?

(a couple of paragraphs later:)  A mind like this becomes deep waters, and so large boats can sail there and take many beings across.

Finally! We have an ebook version of My Heart is a Golden Buddha!  And just as wonderful, we have a paper edition that’s easy to order anywhere in the world!

This is a collection of 33 stories told during Daehaeng Kun Sunim’s Dharma talks. Featuring monks and bandits, foxes and kings, house wives and wise mothers-in-law, she entertains while always returning us back to our fundamental nature. Without fail, she shows us how we can apply this wisdom to the things that crop up in our own daily lives, and so find a path of growth and peace.

The ebook is on sale now for $4.99, and the paper edition is $15.99

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords
Kobo Books
Google Play Store

It’s not that you’re a bad person,

it’s just that, without realizing it,

you use your mind in harmful ways.

The effects of this become your genetics,

as well as your reality,

always coming back to you, one after another.

Nonetheless,

don’t be caught up in thoughts and feelings

about your bad behavior

or the pain it causes.

Instead, just keep entrusting every single part of it

to your Juingong, your true nature.

If you understand why it happened,

entrust it, grateful for understanding.

Even if you don’t understand what happened,

keep entrusting each and every thought,

feeling, and experience.

For several years, we’ve had book of questions and answers available for free. Taken from the Dharma talks of Daehaeng Kun Sunim, the questions range from basic issues such as “why does life feels empty” to “is there such a thing as previous lives,” and “how can I become a more spiritual person.”

It’s a nice little book, about 75 pages, and available in ten different languages, but until now it’s only been available in print editions, and is probably somewhat hard to find. But now, we’ve started to make ebook editions. (Yay!)  The English, Italian and Russian versions are finished, and German, Korean,and Vietnamese will follow in October~December. Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and French are also lined up, and will follow as corrections arrive and time permits. I hope you find this book helpful, and please feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

[For epub devices, you can use the direct download link, and of the file hosts, Smashwords is the best one because they don’t make you log in to download the epub.]

[For Amazon devices, we have a direct link to a mobi format. If you don’t know how to “sideload” it onto your device, there is another way to transfer the file to your device. Amazon gives you a unique email address for your device or app,(look under your account and “manage your content and devices”) and if you email the mobi file to that address as an attachment, it will show up on your device. Note that epub files can’t be sent this way.]

 English

Smashwords
Google Play store  (or read it on Google Books)
Kobo Books
(direct download – Amazon’s mobi format, and epub)

 

 

 Italian
Smashwords
Google Play store  (or read it on Google Books)
Kobo Books

(email me for Amazon’s mobi format- direct download is coming soon)

 

 

Russian

Smashwords
Google Play store (or read it on Google Books)
Kobo Books

 
 
 
 

German

Smashwords
Google Play store (or read it on Google Books)
Kobo Books