New Year’s Dharma Message for the Year of the Water Rabbit

by the Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism

Numinous splendor adorns a new morning, and every household sees the opening of 

the gate to inexhaustible happiness.

Heaven unleashes limitless merits by mobilizing its natural capacity, and

myriad phenomena open an eye of bliss upon receiving benefits and fortune.

Thundering Dharma crashes down everywhere to destroy manmade barriers,

and the great gate of generosity is opened.

Obstructions filling the ten directions disappear like clouds, and

myriad phenomena send out good news to fulfill life’s genuine purpose.

Each step opens the universal gate, each step achieves perfect interpenetration.

Each thought leads to awakening, producing buddhas.

Each plant frees itself from bondage, revealing the original face of its Dharma body.

Awakening lies before your eyes to undo the knots of life, and

before your eyes lies the living path of liberation, free from all worries.

Myriad buddhas are not outside this mind.

Therefore, do not seek an external buddha

but be awakened to the true person of no status who comes and goes before your eyes.

On this New Year’s morning when ordinary sunshine

transforms into perfect luminosity while you hold it in your heart,

I invite you to shed the old, and cultivate your mind-field from which light re-emerges.

With conflict and division, hatred and anger, your mind-field may become chaos.

Now is the time to cultivate patience, forgiveness, and the virtue of reconciliation,

thereby reviving the garden of humanity.

One who has made a keen vow in their mind that produces myriad phenomena

will establish a new universe that provides what they seek and pursue.

One who has cultivated a boundless heart that embraces all

will gain the faculty to embrace myriad virtues, making neighbors prosperous.

New Year’s Day 2567 Buddhist Era

Ven. Seongpa, His Eminence the Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order