You Have to Taste It to Know t

39. 먹어봐야 맛을 알지

39. You Have to Taste It to Know the Flavor

JL, a young student at the Won-Buddhist temple in New York, had the following exchange with Rev. Baek.

JL: I’m practicing checking my mind, and I’ve set up a mindfulness app on my smartphone to keep track of whether I’ve checked my mind or not. My “do not do” is “don’t judge others involving my ego.” The other day, I was on the phone with my mother and we got to talking about my father. I was so angry that I ended up flying off the handle and criticizing him.

Fortunately, even while I was blaming my father for his mistakes, I was able to say to myself “practice mindfulness!” and continued being aware of my mind. If I’m aware and I end up committing one of the items on my “do not do” list, does that count as mindfulness? Or is this not checking the mind?

Rev. Baek: You did not check your mind. When you are unable to overcome your deeply rooted habits and do something even when you know it is a “do not do,” you should mark this as having not checked your mind.

JL: Isn’t that the opposite? In the Principal Book, it says, “In the beginning, you are to keep track of the number of times you acted with heedfulness or without heedfulness in making choices, regardless of how things turn out.”

It tells us to count the number of times based on whether or not we acted with heedfulness. So if I noticed while I was making the mistake and said “Aha! This is a ‘do not do,’ ” that means I didn’t let go of my heedfulness, even if I did commit the mistake. So shouldn’t I count that as having checked my mind?

Rev. Baek: When the Māra of bad habits in our mind wrestles with the dharma of the will to correct them, and we give in to Māra and commit something that we should not do, then, even if we are aware of it, we have let go of heedfulness. We should rightly count it as having not checked our mind.

“Heedfulness” refers to the mind in action. And “noticing” is not simply about recognizing that you had criticized your father. You must proceed to the point where you notice the desire that isn’t satisfied unless you’re disparaging others, notice how it emerges and disappears like a bubble, and bring an end to that fixation.

JL: So what would happen if I never did anything? Sometimes, the “do not do” passes by without me realizing whether I did it or didn’t do it.

Rev. Baek: Among the three poisons—greed, anger, and foolishness—do you know which one is the most difficult to gain control over?

JL: Is it greed?

Rev. Baek: It is foolishness.

JL: Huh. I guess that makes sense.

Rev. Baek: In many cases, Sakyamuni Buddha used the words “foolishness” and “ignorance” to mean the same thing. If you were unaware whether you had let go of heedfulness or not in the moment and only noticed it as you were settling into bed that night, then that means your mind was obscured by foolishness. That is what you need to notice.

JL: I see. When I get angry the way I did today, it’s difficult to control it even when I am aware of it. I didn’t go crazy with anger or anything, but it’s not easy to suppress the feeling that rises up in me when I’m unhappy.

Rev. Baek: Learning to control emotions through “mind-checking” practice—such as telling yourself, “I’m not going to get angry”—is not going to come easy to someone who is just starting out with mindfulness. The first step is to practice checking your mind while focusing on words and actions.

For instance, if you’ve said, “I’m not going to surf the web during working hours,” and when the feeling of wanting to do it arises but you don’t actually do it, then count that as having checked your mind. But if you were aware that you were being drawn to surf the web and you did it anyway, then you failed to check your mind.

This is all entry-level mindfulness practice. Let’s now look at the advanced level. The founding master said, “As practice deepens, however, you are to keep track of the number of times the result is good or bad.” For example, say you’ve decided not to lie.

Now imagine that you know someone who’s being pursued by criminals and they ask you to help them hide. If you simply tell the criminals where they are in the name of “honesty,” it may seem like you’ve observed your decision not to lie, but you haven’t checked your mind.

This is because your fixation on the words “I’m not going to lie” has resulted in someone being victimized and someone committing a transgression. In other words, it has resulted in affairs going badly.

JL: This all seems so difficult. I guess I just need to start from the beginning and work hard at it.

Rev. Baek: Mindfulness is the heart and soul of Won-Buddhist cultivation. Just because it is difficult, that does not mean we should chicken out and run away. As we continue checking our minds over and over again, accepting the pain that naturally occurs in the cultivation process, a pathway will form in our minds and it will all become much easier. It’s actually quite simple once you see it.

By the way, have you heard of ghee, which is made out of milk? Why don’t we have a taste of ghee sometime?