Skip to main content

Forgive. - End of AhnGo (Meditation Retreat) Address


The insulted insult
The shamed shame
The pitied pity,
even if they have to find someone more pitiful, if not someone then some thing and if no one or no thing pitiful enough, beneath them enough, is found they will invent it
The angered rage, 
frequently when they can’t rage on their abuser they find someone weaker to rage onto
The miserable seek out those in greater misery
So too it is for the whole gamut of human emotion
We share!
It is innate in us
We share our hatred and love, our joy and misery, suffering and happiness
We share the good and the bad
The good we share to invite more of it
The bad we share to free ourselves of it
We see the good as born of us, birthed from us, gifted into the world by us
But the bad…the bad we see as imparted onto us, spewed onto us, forced upon us
Wake up!
One is a dream and the other a nightmare
It is all FROM us!
Beware, however, the danger!
Having found no one or thing blameworthy
Find oneself not blamed and punished but simply accountable
Having forgiven others forgive yourself and so wipe clean your heart
Forgive!
Don’t simply listen to the word
Forgive!
Look at it. Forgive with your eyes
Forgive with your skin
Forgive with every one of your senses
Forgive with your heart and soul
Forgive with every twist and turn of your brain and every twist and turn of your intestines Forgive your son and your daughter
Forgive your inner child and its trauma
Forgive your siblings
Forgive your mother and your father
Forgive your neighbor, your city, your county
Forgive the world
Forgive with every molecule of your being
Forgive …. for therein lies freedom and peaceForgive the fly its buzzing
Forgive the lion its roaring
Forgive the flower its fragrance
Forgive the winter its cold
Stop it. Here and now.
Defang the gears of karmic wheel so that they bite no more and therefore turn no more
Cycles broken
Cease to look for who to blame
Only then the blameless self appears before you, shining and bright, and still
And where there is a blameless self, there’s a blameless other and a single thought of forgiveness purifies the entire universe and every being within it.
Forgive.


With joined palms,
Sok Myong-Ahn, Aug 28, 2022





















Popular posts from this blog

Moment-to-Moment Reincarnation

Do you think that the sages, the spiritual masters are ordinary, or do you think there are extraordinary? Do you think they are special, unique, or do you think they are just normal? If you think the masters are just normal, you will never reach enlightenment. If you think the masters are extraordinary, you will never reach enlightenment. If you think that the masters are normal, you will not pursue the goal of spiritual practice correctly. In Zen tradition, this is illustrated in almost graphic ways. “The one who set their mind on the goal of enlightenment is to practice as if their hair was on fire and they’re looking for a lake into which to dive into”. It is with this urgent energy that one is to pursuit Enlightenment. So, if you think masters are just ordinary, you won't have the necessary energy to pursue it. If you think masters are extraordinary. You won't even start the journey. “Ah, these lofty goals are for a select group of people, some special fantastic spiritual V...
March 2024 Soshimsa HoriZen Newsletter is in! Click HERE to view the Newsletter with clickable links.

Founder's Day 2023 (Abbot's Address)

I have, from time to time, on the rarest of occasions, been accused of being...verbose. I know! I was as shocked then as you are now. So, we are in imminent danger of the lunch getting cold. Yet, I don’t have the words (imagine that!) to express how fortunate we are to be in the mere presence of a Dosa. This is the stuff we each have to stick our head through the mystical curtain of mystery to glimpse. So, we won’t go there now. I thought to myself… if I absolutely had to, choose a single quality of IlCho Dosanim that I would want to highlight. What would that be? And of course, we go through the usual list: wisdom, compassion, knowledge, patience, etc. Yet, as much as all of these are true, today they won’t do. And so, I went on, sifting through and I think I found it. So here it is, the single most impressive quality of Il-Cho Dosanim, for me….expressed in a single word… succinct. Succinct. Never have I met someone who can distill the esoteric and the complexities of our human condit...