Try Mind Center

Letter to a student:

Dear Margaret,

Thank you for your beautiful card. Your work is very beautiful.

You spoke about losing energy too fast and want to shut it off.... losing energy so you want to plug it up. After a period of long sitting usually we have much energy which wants to demonstrate itself. In itself that's not good or bad. What matters is how we use this energy. If we have correct energy direction then energy becomes more energy.

It's like this: during sitting our karma energy (our back seat driver)—our desires, anger and ignorance—begins to lose control and our Dharma energy increases. Our back seat driver does not like this at all, so when we return to a daily routine this back seat driver says, "ah ha, here's my chance", and wants to pull you this way and that, wants to use up and break down dharma energy, wants to be in control again. This small "I" does not want to die, it does not want to lose control so it pulls you here and there.... and old habits and patterns appear.

If you only try to push this back seat driver down, push it away, it will only use more energy, then finally kill you. So Margaret, let it be, please don't check your feelings, condition or situation, just let it be. I know it's easy to say but another thing to do it. That is, moment to moment, if you are doing something JUST DO IT... but we, each and everyone of us, must try that... so we say for 10,000 years non-stop try, try, try. That's so important, you know.

Once, not long ago, I asked Soen Sa Nim about this and he said, "Dharma energy strong, then Demon energy strong, but Dharma energy plus Try mind, then Karma energy cannot control completely." So Try mind is so important.... do you know that?

Already you tried many YMJJs and long periods of sitting and recently three weeks of summer Kyol Che so you already have wonderful try mind.... Bodhidharma dolls always fall down whenever they are pushed down, but always return to their correct standing position. Seven times, it is said, Bodhidharma fell down, went off the track, lost his correct direction, but always returned... that is called Try Mind Center, that means moment to moment when you are doing something, just DO IT. That means if you don't understand only go straight, don't know. That means, as you said, "it's time to let these little devils rest, I'll go sit a little." Ha! Ha! Ha! That's wonderful.

Margaret, please take care. I hope you only go straight, don't know, find your correct direction, use your karma and experiences and save all beings from suffering.

Yours in the Dharma,

Mu Deung