My Heart is a Golden Buddha Read online

  It was all very beautiful in its own way, and his thoughts turned to his family. No longer paying much attention to the path before him, he stepped a bit too far off the trail; with a sickening rush, the ground gave way under his foot.

  Toppling sideways into the abyss, he somehow managed to grab a tree root as he fell. Clinging to it, he tried to pull himself back up, but there was nothing above the root to grab on to.

  He was stuck there, hanging on the side of the cliff. The clouds had closed in again and he couldn’t see very far, but he heard the river and imagined the long fall to the rocks below.

  He gathered his strength and cried out with a wavering voice. “Help! Is anyone there? Help me!”

  Amazingly, someone called back, and a moment later an elderly Buddhist nun poked her head out over the cliff.

  “Oh thank goodness! Pull me up!” the man cried.

  “I’m not strong enough,” the nun replied, “but if you just let go, you’ll be fine. The ground is right there below you.”

  “Are you nuts? I can hear the river! I’ll be crushed on the rocks—if I don’t drown first!”

  “No, really!” she told him. “The ground is right below your feet. Just look down.”

  The man glanced down, but between the heavy fog and his panic, he couldn’t see anything.

  “There’s nothing there! What are you doing, trying to kill me?”

  The nun's eyes narrowed. “Listen, you,” she said. “You asked me to save you, and now I’m trying. Set aside your fear and let go of that branch. You’re just wearing yourself out, clinging and yelling like that. The ground is right below you.”

  The nun’s reproach gave the man a bit of courage. He was still afraid of falling, but felt a bit less scared.

  “Let go? I still can’t see anything, but I can’t hang here much longer anyway. That nun seems pretty confident that I’ll be okay….” With that thought, the man closed his eyes and let go.

  In the next instant, he hit soft earth!

  The “cliff” he’d been hanging from so desperately was only a few meters high. The whole time, his feet had been dangling just above the ground!

  ∴

  What the man was clinging to, and what he let go of, wasn’t just the tree root.

  Behind his clinging was much more than simply the fear of death. Mixed in with that were all of his attachments to his possessions, his desire for fame and recognition, his disappointments over the things that didn’t go well, and of course his concern and love for his family. So you can imagine how much courage it must have taken for him to let go of that branch.

  It’s a lot easier to talk about letting go than it is to actually do it, especially when it’s wrapped up with your family, your children, your pride, and your self-respect. But this letting go is so essential—it is the foundation of all spiritual practices.

  Ironically, we’re already letting go of every moment. We naturally let go of every moment and go forward. Even with an act as simple as walking, as soon as we take a step, we leave that behind and take another step. Even when we’re breathing, as soon as we’ve finished exhaling, we just naturally inhale. The reason we can let go like this is very simple: because we deeply believe that we can. Not a single cell in your body doubts for an instant that it is possible.

  So don’t get caught up in “I have to let go.” Just know that your foundation, your true self, can completely take care of everything.

  Thoroughly trust your foundation. Keep working on this until it becomes as natural as breathing in and breathing out, and you’ll know what it means to live a true life!

  17

  Like a Centipede

  One day, as a centipede was busily walking along, a fox called out to it.

  “Hey, how do you walk so well without your legs getting tangled up? Dozens of legs all going in different directions at the same time, and yet you still walk so smoothly, without once tripping or stumbling. That’s incredible!”

  The centipede listened to what the fox said, and had to agree that it was kind of amazing that he could walk so smoothly. Thinking this, he looked down at his legs, and immediately tripped and fell over.

  Lying there on the ground with his legs all tangled up, he was unable to take even a single step forward.

  ∴

  Both spiritual practice and daily life go forward like a centipede.

  Do you realize all of the things we are doing naturally and automatically at this very instant? You simply drink a glass of water if you’re thirsty, sleep if you’re tired, and if you’re hungry, you get a bite to eat, digest it, and then excrete it.

  In the same way, everything inherently arises from your foundation. So just entrust everything back there and go forward. If you can live like this, everything will flow naturally.

  Believe in the power and ability that you are inherently endowed with. If you have faith in this foundation and entrust it with everything that arises, then just like food, what’s needed will be absorbed, and what needs to be sent out will be sent out. It’s exactly like the process of eating and excreting.

  However, some people have a hard time trusting that their foundation can do this, and instead try to rely upon their intellect and thoughts to solve the problems they face. But, just like the centipede, those thoughts entangle people and prevent them from moving forward.

  18

  All by Yourself

  It often happens that when a sunim becomes renowned for his or her spiritual practice, the temple that sunim is living at becomes increasingly busy.

  Many people come to practice and seek the sunim’s guidance. There are visitors everywhere, both genuine practitioners and the merely curious, as well as the spiritual thrill-seekers who come looking for a dazzling experience. There are meals to prepare, ceremonies to attend, guests to look after, and offerings to collect and account for—so it’s not exactly the quiet life of tea and meditation that some envision!

  One day, the student of such a seon master came to see him. “Sunim, life here is so crowded and busy. It’s really interfering with my spiritual practice. With your permission, I’d like to go to somewhere deep in the mountains and find a quiet place where I can practice by myself.”

  The master studied his student for a moment, and then answered in a quiet voice, “Really? If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. There’s just one thing though. When you’re hungry, don’t eat anything that was harvested or prepared by others. Don’t accept clothes from other people, and when making your own clothes, don’t use fabric made by others.

  “If you build a hermitage, don’t cut down any trees, and if you’re thirsty, don’t drink anything. And while traveling, don’t step on the ground. If you can do all of these, you have my permission to go and practice by yourself.”

  The sunim just sat there, stunned. Aside from being utterly impossible, the master’s reply was so unexpected.

  As the sunim carefully thought about his teacher’s words, he realized that his teacher was describing how the world functioned.

  “There’s nothing in this world that isn’t supported by the help of every other thing. Everything in this world lives together, as one life, helping and being helped. ‘Go practice by myself.’ What on earth could I have been thinking?” He was struck to his very core by this realization.

  Afterward, regardless of what the sunim encountered, he always saw that person or situation as another aspect of himself. Their heart was his heart, their behavior was his behavior, and their pain was his pain.

  He was very thorough and unceasing in this non-dual practice, and took everything that arose in his life as the subject of his practice.

  Eventually, he became deeply enlightened and led innumerable beings to freedom.

  ∴

  A hut or cave in the mountains isn’t a true hermitage. You yourself are a hermitage.

  Thus Shakyamuni Buddha said, “You have to escape from your own cave. If you free yourself from the cave of your own mind, then you’ll be
able to overcome all other hindrances.”

  If you want to practice spiritual cultivation, don’t go looking for a hermitage someplace faraway. Spiritual practice doesn’t depend upon some special place, time, or technique. Know that your body, your thoughts, and right here, right now, are the hermitage where you have to practice.

  As we’ve evolved over billions of years, is there any form of life that we haven’t been? So how could we look down upon some lives or think that some are precious and others not?

  Beings exist with a billion different shapes and sizes, and have just as many different spiritual levels, but fundamentally we all share the same life, the same mind, the same body, work together as one, and share all things among each other—all together, harmoniously, as one.

  So, regardless of who you meet or what kind of difficulty you encounter, never see that as something other than yourself. Entrust it all to your foundation.

  When we live like this, everything in our life naturally functions together, as one mind, and so we can live freely. It’s practicing like this, with what arises in our daily life, that is the essence of true spiritual practice.

  19

  Three Grains of Millet

  Once there was a sunim passing through a village busy with the millet harvest.

  He’d been traveling all day and his stomach looked forward to dinner. Walking by the ripe stalks of millet, he reached out, and touching them, three small yellow grains fell into his hand. He popped them in his mouth without thinking, and kept walking.

  Although he immediately forgot all about it, this unconscious act caused the sunim a lot of suffering in his next life. Dying some years later, this karmic debt led him to be reborn as a cow belonging to the farmer whose millet he’d eaten.

  For three years he had to work as a cow, and although the farmer was a kind man, life as a cow was still difficult. Not only was the sunim not used to hard physical labor, but he had also retained his human consciousness. He was trapped in a cow’s body with all of his human thoughts and feelings, but couldn’t communicate with anyone.

  Finally, those three long years were nearly finished. Just as the sunim’s karmic debt was fulfilled, in the minutes before the cow died, he regained his ability to speak.

  He spoke to the kind farmer and explained all of the causes behind his rebirth as a cow. Further, he warned the farmer about a disaster that was approaching the village:

  “The day after tomorrow, a gang of five hundred outlaws will attack this village. However, if you prepare meals for all five hundred men, they’ll spare the village.”

  The farmer, amazed by what the cow said, took it to heart and went to tell the village elders. After much discussion, they gathered the entire village together and began preparing food and places for five hundred men. And then, everyone waited.

  As the cow had foretold, two days later five hundred outlaws, bandits of the worst sort, came riding hard into the village.

  They'd come expecting the usual thrill of terrified villagers running every which way, but instead, the villagers met them calmly. They announced that they had prepared dinner for all five hundred men, and that if the gentlemen would be seated, they would begin serving them.

  “What’s going on here? Is this some kind of a trick?” demanded the leader, waving his sword around.

  The villagers told him about the cow’s prophecy, including why the sunim was reborn as a cow. This was just too strange to accept. But everyone told him the same story, and, as they had provided meals and food for his group, he decided to leave the village intact.

  As the days went by, the bandit couldn’t help reflecting upon what he had heard about the sunim. Again and again, he found himself comparing the monk's behavior to all the bad things that he had done.

  In fact, all the outlaws found themselves thinking along the same lines. “If taking three tiny grains of millet can cause a sunim, a disciple of the Buddha, to be reborn as a cow, what will happen to someone like me?”

  Each man knew that he had done far more terrible things. Trying to estimate how much they would have to suffer, they were forced to think about how much pain and suffering their actions had caused others.

  As a result, the leader and his men began to sincerely repent of the things they had done, and dedicated themselves to learning and applying the teachings of Buddha.

  Eventually, all five hundred bandits became Arhats, great beings who extinguished the seeds of desire and anger, and transcended birth and death.

  ∴

  When people hear this story about a sunim becoming a cow because of three grains of millet, they often think this is just a story, something I made up in order to teach them. Of course I tell this story to teach people, but you should know that everything actually happened, and that things like this are still happening today.

  Nothing in this world happens by accident. A sunim can be reborn as a cow for stealing three grains of millet, and, because of that cow, five hundred bandits can reform and even become Arhats.

  Although everything in the world has its own path and its own function, at the same time, it is all interconnected and functioning together as one.

  Holding the universe in one hand,

  and making it my hat,

  hanging the sun and moon from my staff,

  with a single step

  journeying throughout the soaring mountains.

  Everything in these living mountains,

  every leaf and pine needle,

  are all one body.

  Seon Master Daehaeng

  February 22, 1986

  20

  The Same Dream

  In a certain village there lived two close friends who were like brothers. They had grown up together, and if you saw one, the other wasn’t far away.

  One night, one of the friends woke up in a sweat after a strange dream. In it he somehow wound up holding a wide, shallow basket. It seemed trivial, but the image had such an odd feeling that it still bothered him several days later. So, together with his friend, he went to a nearby temple to see the sunim who lived there.

  As he explained his dream, the sunim burst out laughing! “Congratulations!” he said. “You’re going to be invited to a big party with all kinds of great food.

  “This is a good lesson for you—even if a dream seems strange or frightening, always view it positively. Everything depends upon how we use our minds, everything follows our thoughts. So be sure to use your mind in an upright and positive way.”

  As his friend sat there listening to this, envy began to stir in his heart. “Everything always happens to him! How come things like that never happen to me?” he thought.

  As foretold, that afternoon the man received an invitation to a huge party in the neighboring village, and took his friend along. They ate every kind of special food and were completely stuffed by the time they left. But the envy didn’t leave the second friend’s heart; he was still jealous of his friend’s good fortune. Tossing and turning in bed that night, he decided to go see the sunim and pretend to have had the same dream.

  “Sunim, you won’t believe it, but last night I also dreamed about receiving a wide and shallow bamboo basket. What do you think this means?” he asked the next day.

  The sunim’s eyes narrowed. “What are you playing at? You’d better be careful—it means you’re going to get a real beating.”

  The second friend couldn’t believe his ears; he had described to the sunim the same dream as his friend, but instead of nice words of blessings, all he had gotten were threats.

  He went home, grumbling and huffing the whole way. That evening, a number of men from the neighborhood came upon him. When they left, he was lying in his yard, bruised and bleeding.

  It happened that he had started a minor rumor about someone as a joke, but the rumor had grown out of all recognition, and he came to be blamed for its final version. Fed up with the rumor and the harm it was causing, some of the men from the village got together to teach him a lesson.


  They had really worked him over, and it was four days before he could get out of bed. As he lay there, everything seemed so unfair to him. The original rumor he started was almost harmless, certainly not the sort of thing you would hurt someone for. As for the dream, it never even happened! How could it have predicted him getting beaten up? This really bugged him, so on the fifth day, bruised and aching, he again went to see the sunim.

  “Sunim, to tell you the truth, I didn’t actually have that dream about the basket. So how could you tell I was going to get beat up?”

  The sunim growled at him, “The thoughts you gave rise to became your vision and your destiny. You made up that dream hoping to receive the results of it, and, just as you wanted, you received the results of it: scheming and jealousy.”

  ∴

  You see, it wasn’t important whether or not he dreamed of a bamboo basket. What mattered was his mind and how he used it.

  It makes no difference whether a dream is real or fake, good or bad. This moment we are living in is the combined functioning of both the material and the nonmaterial realms. They function together as one, so the thoughts we raise can change things beyond all imagining.

  A dream isn’t something that happens only when you are asleep. The thoughts you give rise to while awake also become dreams.

  For example, when you see someone who is suffering, and you stop and ask within yourself how you can help, that becomes a good dream. And if you often give rise to those kinds of dreams, good things will result.

  On the other hand, if you go around focused only on your own desires, or taking joy in dominating and bothering others, those will also become a dream—a bad one—and those kinds of results will return to you. If you keep this up, you’ll find yourself living in a nightmare. The thoughts you’ve given rise to will follow you around like a bad stink. This is why it is so important to raise thoughts well.