When you are so busy that you feel perpetually chased, when worrying thoughts circle your head, when the future seems dark and uncertain, when you are hurt by what someone has said, slow down, even if only for a moment. Bring all of your awareness into the present and take a deep breath. What do you hear? What does your body feel? What does the sky look like?
Only when we slow down can we finally see clearly our relationships, our thoughts, our pain. As we slow down, we are no longer tangled in them. We can step out and appreciate them for what they are. The faces of our family and colleagues who always help, the scenery that we pass by every day but fail to notice, our friends’ stories that we fail to pay attention to—in the stillness of the pause, the entirety of our being is quietly revealed.
Wisdom is not something we have to strive to acquire. Rather, it arises naturally as we slow down and notice what is already there. As we notice more and more in the present moment, we come to a deeper realization that a silent observer is within us. In the primordial stillness, the silent observer witnesses everything inside and outside.
Befriend the silent observer. Find out where it is, and what shape it has assumed. Do not try to imagine it as something you already know. Let all your thoughts and images merge back into silence and just sense the observer already there in silence. If you see the face of the silent observer, then you have found your original face, from before you were born.
Haemin Sunim
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