All Korea Considered: June 2015

There is No Self.

When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Lamentations 3:28

(Pictures mostly at bottom of posting)

Neither Buddhist nor hermit, seclusion at Beopjusa has become a regular, if required part of my life. It is one of those "Thin places and times" where one can get astonished, interrupted and ... surprised.

The value of such astonishment, interruption and surprise? They teach "nothing". Much spirituality is about adding, increasing, development, accrual and optimization ... which is what one may need at any given time. However, I go to the Buddhists for interrupting: learning (again) how to diminish, subtract, shrink and ... well ... die.

One does this in Buddhist Meditation. Such meditation is a necessary interruption of the "adding life," in which we confront demons in a safe spiritual space. And befriend them. If for no other reason than to plant intentional signs: "Danger!" "Thin Ice!" Meditation is the art of doing nothing, precisely in order to operate more purposefully.

Befriending one's demons and the Mysteries helps one know one's vulnerability points in a lifestyle marked by bombardment, stress, anxiety, and little time given to being alone.

This is vital information. Pascal said that our problem is distraction and the solution is not more distraction. The only cure for distraction is Attention. Attention is vocation, one's call.

The appropriate response is not more noise, but more silence. To choose to be alone is to "bait the trap" to create a space one's demons cannot resist entering. And that is good news. Because the demons that enter can be named, written about, exposed, and die from the exposure. Silence is a miracle in action.

So one sits still, and like agitated muddy water going calm, the mental fermentations fall away. This video demonstrates this perfectly! Practice nothing!

We're taught how to talk, but not how to listen, to push the self forward in the world, but not to erase the self. The illusion of being a self, or in control, on top of things, gets dispelled at 0 MPH, at decibel level zero.

0 MPH is a spiritual practice. At Beopjusa, it means getting up at 3:00 AM, participating in a bowing and chanting ceremony with the monks at 3:20, performing the 108 Prostrations of Great Repentance by 5:00, breakfast at 6:00, a hike with the monk after breakfast, and then dharma discussion over green tea. By 10:00 AM, the day is yours to read, reflect, hike and stay silent, and then at 6:30 you end the day with chanting and bowing. Bedtime is 9:00 PM.