The Teaching on the “Faith in Mind” by Venerable Jinwoo

但莫憎愛 

洞然明白

Once loving and hating ceases,

Everything will make perfect sense, most obviously. 

Those organisms that possess feelings and emotions are called sentient beings. They are by their karma bound to constantly chase after positive feelings, which are inevitably dogged by negative feelings following them like a shadow.

All sentient beings, without exception, try to avoid having bad, painful feelings, while they are eager to attain good, pleasant feelings. But as soon as anything interferes with the attainment of feeling good, they become disappointed and angry.

Enduring suffering is just a tactical retreat, often part of a strategy to avoid even bigger pain or achieve greater pleasure because it does not make the emotion go away. Being hungry causes painful feelings, so one eats to alleviate them and at the same time to enjoy pleasant feelings of a full stomach. These two opposing feelings are in fact two sides of the same coin, always arising hand in hand. 

If one is eliminated, the other will disappear on its own. Without a body, there is no shadow, and without a front, there is no back. All sentient beings, including humans, are driven by the desire to experience these good, pleasant feelings, and at the same time to keep away from bad, unpleasant feelings. These are the actions of dormant karma (sub-consciousness).

Therefore, no matter what anyone does, whether small or large, good or bad, the truth is that a small amount of joy creates a small amount of suffering, while a large amount of joy always leads to a large amount of sorrow. A hundred grams of happiness is inescapably pregnant with a hundred grams of unhappiness. This is the law of karma. 

However, karmic causes and effects manifest at different times for different people. Therefore each has their own timing when positive and negative feelings arise. Depending on one’s state of karmic consciousness, some may suffer from great sorrow, while great joy arises in others; some rejoice in the karma of birth while others anguish in the karma of dying. 

However, only when both of these feelings have been completely eliminated can one enter and walk the Middle Path unhindered, the path that brings one back to the original clarity, the unsurpassed perfection beyond anything we know of, beyond even time and space. When such a state is attained, we call it reaching the other shore, or nirvana.

All human relationships, whether it is with parents, children, family, friends, neighbors, or fellow countrymen, ultimately exist to serve one’s karmic objective of achieving feeling good and avoiding feeling bad. The karmic causes of pain and pleasure are generated only by their own actions. You and you alone are responsible for the karmic results, each to their own. Parents may think they are devoting themselves to their children's happiness, but ultimately, parents choose to do that in their quest to beget positive feelings.

Being sentient means we are limited by this cage made entirely of the desire to gain good feelings and avoid bad feelings, joyous when such desire is successfully attained, angry when it is frustrated, which makes them forever trapped in the endless cycle of being born, getting old, getting sick and dying. The only way to break the eternal pattern of going round and round in samsara made of six realms (realms of heavenly beings, humans, asuras, hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals) is to discover the Middle Path that enables us to break free from feelings themselves.

First of all, the Middle Path requires practicing and striving to cease the arising of all feelings without forgetting the nature of emotions. To do so, one must have a thorough and firm belief in the cause and effect of suffering, abandon the habit of being swayed by happiness and unhappiness, and develop the mind of equanimity.

Therefore, one should be unattached to good and bad, right and wrong, so that one can cease both love and hatred completely. Otherwise, there is no escaping being ruled by positive and negative feelings, or love and hatred, and one will keep going through the suffering of rebirth and death, the samsaric fate of a sentient being. Therefore, one must rely on the power of prayer, meditation, good deeds, and devoted practice.

Ignorant attachment to good and bad,

Mindlessly obsessing about right and wrong,

Will keep one forever stuck 

In the tyranny of feelings, love, and hatred.

The only way out is to rely on 

The power of prayer, meditation, and devotion.

Venerable Jinwoo, 

The 37th President of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism