Like the Banyan Tree, the roots that have been ripped out, will eventually return from the sky and back to the earth--where life that was once so mercilessly uprooted will return to take root once more.
The law of cause and effect can be explained as the relations and conditions which must be present for phenomena and occurrences to take place. Without these relations and conditions, nothing will actually happen.
Buddha believed that once we remove ignorance by discovering the Truth, we would attain the wisdom we need to end our own suffering.
Lord Yama, the King of Hell, is a dharmapala wrathful god who is said to judge the dead.
Perhaps they feared the emptiness I always embraced.
"Do not be afraid. Everyone before you has died. You cannot stay, anymore than a baby can stay forever in the womb..."
"Thanks to Sawaki, Antaiji is truly devoted to the ways of the ancients. And thanks to his main disciple Uchiyama, it is one of the few Zen temples in Japan that is quite open to foreigners practicing together with the Japanese monks."
Sunim's book inspired me to re-read Religion in Korea: Harmony and Co-Existence. It's a little book that I borrowed a while back from the library. I mainly picked it up because I was interested in studying about Korean Shamanism--a practise that prehistoric Koreans brought with them as they migrated to the peninsula from Central Asia.
The child in me always believed that somewhere somehow all the living entities in this universe are assisting each other to find their true purpose. This invisible inter-relation of entities is beyond past, present, and future.
One day, I decided I would do an extreme sport and signed up for a 10-day Vipassana course. For those of you who don’t know: a 10-day Vipassana course requires you to meditate for ten hours a day, in complete silence. During those ten days, you have no contact with the outside world. As the starting date of the course drew near, I found myself more and more anxious.