Teacher Woo Myung Poem – Last Words
Last Words
I was one who could not die, for I was afraid of death. But now that I have died and have thus become free of all my burdens, I have reached the state of great enlightenment. People do not know that this is possible and so they live with pain and burdens while ceaselessly regretting the fact that they live bound to them.
A young shepherd with a familiar face passes by, and his faint footsteps remain. But people do not know this and so they just sigh. It is in the state where there is no life or death that the yellow dandelion that is in bloom is Truth, but people live on, not knowing it.
Though I count how many go and how many come, though I have laid the foundations in Heaven – this place where none go or come – over numerous years and await the arrival of man, none have come. Arrival into that place is nirvana; it is freedom.
I had never actually sought out my original non-existence. But now that I have found it, I can see at one glance the heavenly work I must do. Since I have found it, my mind is Heaven; from the start, I have never lived in the world nor have I ever lived at all. I am me just as I am; I have become the infinitely large me.
-Woo Myung-