Campbell Meditation Column – How to live well
Such words as ‘stress’ and ‘depression’ are overused these days. Everyone seems to live with unsolved questions of life and a void that can never be filled no matter how much you try to fill it. There is nowhere you can truly rest; loneliness chases you everywhere and people endlessly search for and obtain something to fill up and soothe the mind. What everyone pursues will eventually be never-changing happiness. It would be truly resting without any worries even for a moment… Happiness – true rest – really sounds like an unreachable goal that is difficult for us who are living in this generation.
Can I ever become happy? Can I really live well? Within the endless burden and pain of the mind, it might be fearful and dreadful to live every day. The moment a day ends, you sigh that you have endured a day. The moment a new morning starts, you might barely open your heavy eyes and be at a loss about how you can endure today. Joy happens by chance and so you momentarily forget everything and laugh cheerfully. But as soon as it passes by and vanishes, you might feel more solitude and futile. We might just hope that someone – even though it is just one person – could understand my mind… We might be craving for some being due to loneliness that can never be filled even if we are with someone.
What we need in such a life would probably be to look back at the cause of all these things for a moment. Rather than running endlessly to fill up what cannot be filled up, wholeheartedly look back at ourselves and throw away all the attachments and greed that we have blindly created and captured ourselves within. Because what you call yourself is also just an illusion and a piece of thought, when you throw it away completely, you can find the true, real you. The best way to live – the way we are supposed to live – will be to live according to “nature’s flow”, that is, to “just” live day by day, like winds, water, flowers in fields and birds in the sky, without attachments and greed. It might sound like a story that is too different from how you are now. It might sound like a fairy tale. However, it is not so. As there is the method of throwing away now, it is certain that the day when everyone lives the life of nature’s flow is not far away.
From Master Woo Myung’s Poetry “Nature’s Flow”
How To Live Well
To live without attachments is to live well.
To live without self is to live well.
To stand in Truth is to live well.
To live without confrontation is to live well.
To live a life of that is of nature’s flow is to live well.
To live as one is to live well.
To know that life is eternal is to live well.
To live without worries, pain, or agony is to live well.
To live as the emptiness is to live well.