Enlightenment

In the world there are falseness and Truth. Man’s mind that lives copying what belongs to the world is false, and the world is true. Man is not one with the mind of the world; instead he lives in an overlapping copy of it. In any case, it is a certain fact that he lives in his own mind world. He comes to know Truth to the extent that the mind of the world enters his, and this is enlightenment.

Man’s mind is made up of illusionary pictures. Consequently, when he throws away these pictures Truth will enter into his mind, and he will know Truth to the extent of what he has discarded. This is enlightenment. Only when one repents, can one gain enlightenment and go to the place of Truth.

It is the same principle as washing dirty clothes - the more you clean the dirt away, the more it goes back to its original state. A piece of paper, which has been scribbled on, gets cleaner the more the scribbling is erased. Enlightenment is the same as knowing the true state of the paper once it is clean.

Reference: Stop living in this land, go to the everlasting world of happiness, live there forever by Woo Myung

Enlightenment I

Though one may live in the world sighing,

though one may live in the world laughing,

they are all futile dreams.

Time passes,

making everything into a dream

and scattering all existent images into pieces.

Having lived attached to those images is one’s error.

Let us go seek out Truth.

Where could it be?

It is not up in the sky;

Truth is the place where I have come from

and it is where I will return.

But people do not know Truth and thus are lost.

I see that Truth is the existence

that is within the emptiness,

and though it may be invisible,

in it there is material existence.

Truth is the eternal and never-changing self,

which everyone must know

so that we may be together forever.

Enlightenment II

Human life is meaningless for an enlightened person.

Such a person does not dwell in life

and is happy in his ever non-existence.

Happiness comes when one is absent of mind;

happiness means to have no worries.

One’s mind is his attachment

and what he has come to store within;

it is a burden he is unable to be free of.

In order for him to become free of it,

the most important thing

is for him to abandon his thought-mass.

One’s thought-mass is

the immanent thoughts that exist inside him

because he has a life.

In order to do away with this thought-mass,

one must discard it little by little

while he is in the emptiness of the Universe.

This is the best way to eliminate the thought-mass

and the fastest way to know what Truth is.

But man is unable to know Truth

due to the mind he has.

To break free from one’s mind is

to no longer have the self.

In order to eliminate the self, one must eliminate

the whole of his thoughts and his body.

The Universe is a place where nothing exists.

But man creates countless things, for his self exists.

Originally man is perfect,

but the reason he cannot be so is that

his self exists, for he has attachments.

During the creation of heaven and earth,

the Universe bore forth humans that were perfect.

But they have their bodies and thus their lives,

which while they are living them,

they grow confined to their thought-masses;

therefore they are unable to live perfect lives.

This is because of their lack of wisdom

and because they have attachments.

In order to teach man that he is without sin or karma,

one must get him to realize the original foundation.

The foundation simply exists as it is,

but man does not know it,

which is why he must realize it.

The reason people of this world lack wisdom is

they are bound to words and to religious scriptures;

they cannot see Truth

but instead bind themselves to their thought-masses.

The scriptures are righteous,

but in order to know them,

one must be enlightened of them.

The scriptures merely teach us that Truth exists

but are not Truth itself.

Truth is only Truth when man seeks it out.

But no one knows the will of the Universe,

and all live in the world with worries.

The Universe is ever-high and infinite,

and once one knows that

his mind and others’ minds are the Universe,

he will be able to easily understand the realm of God.

In other words, man’s mind would be

the Universe and the realm of God,

and in it he would exist.

Reference: Nature's Flow by Woo Myung