Sep 13, 2024 – Departing East Timor, Traveling to Korea
Today marks the end of the East Timor visit schedule as Sunim travels back to Korea.
After completing his early morning practice and meditation, Sunim had breakfast at the accommodation at 7:30 AM and went for a walk.
Last night, Eugenio Lemos had informed Sunim that he had a scheduled trip to an island today and apologized for not being able to spend time with Sunim in the morning. This morning, he sent a text message to Sunim:
“Please send my regards to Venerable Pomnyun Sunim for his kindness to visit Timor-Leste and look forward to continuing discussion for collaboration.”
Although Mr. Lemos offered to send a driver with a car, Sunim politely declined and decided to take a walk instead.
Dili, the capital of East Timor, is located on the northern coast of Timor Island. After a 20-minute walk from the accommodation, the coastline came into view.
A well-constructed walkway along the coast allowed for a pleasant stroll in the sea breeze.
The coastline itself was beautiful and modest, without any special embellishments.
After walking for a while, Sunim sat on a bench to rest briefly. The distant emerald sea helped cool the intense heat.
Sunim briefly shared his thoughts on the East Timor visit schedule:
“Not only in Bhutan but also in East Timor, it seems we can create a new model for sustainable development in the era of climate crisis. The whole country is vibrant, and seeing that Mr. Lemos and the PERMATIL activists are also conscious about environmental conservation, I think this could become a new model of cooperation.”
It seems there will be more opportunities for solidarity and cooperation with Mr. Lemos in the future.
East Timor, which had been under Portuguese rule for over 400 years since the 16th century, established the Democratic Republic of East Timor on November 28, 1975, following Portugal’s declaration of abandoning its colonies in 1974. However, ten days later, on December 7, the Indonesian military invaded and forcibly occupied the entire East Timor, shattering the dream of independence. After persistent resistance, the Indonesian military withdrew from East Timor in August 1999, and on May 20, 2002, after 27 years, the Democratic Republic of East Timor finally regained its place. The people of East Timor, who had lost their land multiple times and were unable to be masters of their own home for over five centuries, finally reclaimed their home with the help of the international community.
For the people of East Timor, Dili is now becoming another name for a ‘City of Peace’.
We hope that Mr. Lemos’ PERMATIL project and JTS’s sustainable development projects can create a new model that accelerates peace for humanity through sharing and solidarity.
After a two-hour walk, Sunim returned to the accommodation at 10 AM. After packing, he moved to Dili Airport at 11:20 AM.
At the airport, Sunim said goodbye to Ms. Kim Mi-sun, who had been interpreting for the past two days.
“Thank you so much for your hard work with the interpretation.”
Ms. Kim Mi-sun returned to Australia, while Sunim proceeded with the departure procedures to head to Korea.
Due to choosing the most economical low-cost airline, the journey from East Timor to Korea involved two layovers. The plane that departed from Dili Airport, East Timor at 1:20 PM arrived at Bali Airport, Indonesia at 2:20 PM after a two-hour flight.
After waiting for three hours at Bali Airport, Sunim boarded another plane at 5:30 PM heading to Hanoi Airport. The plane arrived at Hanoi Airport, Vietnam at 9:45 PM local time after a 5-hour and 20-minute flight.
There was another 3-hour and 30-minute wait at Hanoi Airport. Feeling tired from the long travel schedule, Sunim took a short nap on an airport bench.
At 1:15 AM, we boarded another flight. The plane departing from Hanoi Airport is scheduled to arrive at Incheon Airport tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM after a 4-hour and 20-minute journey. Today, we traveled long distances throughout the day.
Since there was no Dharma talk today, we’ll conclude this entry by sharing a conversation between a questioner and Sunim from the Dharma Q&A session held in Brisbane, Australia, ten days ago.
It’s Difficult Because My Boyfriend and I Have Different Ways of Reconciling
“Don’t meet your boyfriend. This is the most certain method.”
“Is there any other way if I want to continue seeing him?”
“If you want to keep seeing him, just fight occasionally like you do now. Occasional fights can be interesting too. How can everything in the world be only good? If there are good things about dating, there are also bad things like fighting with each other.
Don’t you think it would make life more interesting for me if you all get married, fight, divorce, and break up while dating? If everything about dating and marriage was only good, I wouldn’t find life interesting. I’m interested in worldly and family matters, but when I do Dharma Q&A, I often hear people say it’s so hard being married, which makes me realize ‘I made a really good choice’ and my worries disappear. I always become aware of how well I’ve chosen through you all. So this Dharma Q&A is not just me helping you, but you’re also helping me a lot. That’s why I don’t charge money for doing Dharma Q&A. If I was only helping one-sidedly, I might have tried to charge some money, but because I learn a lot through Dharma Q&A, it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship. (Laughs)
When we meet other people, conflicts are inevitable. Whether it’s with a boyfriend, just a friend, a business colleague, or a travel companion, conflicts are bound to arise with whoever we meet. This is because just as everyone’s appearance is slightly different, their thoughts, habits, and interests are also slightly different. We don’t think ‘that person must be the same as me!’ about someone we’ve never met before. We naturally assume that person is different from us. So there’s no conflict with strangers. If we don’t like them after seeing them once, we can just not meet them again. But as we talk, we find commonalities like ‘Oh, you’re Korean!’, ‘You’re from Gyeongsang-do!’, ‘You’re from my school’, ‘You’re a Buddhist’. As we keep discovering commonalities like ‘You like traveling too?’, we become closer. When 5, 10, 20 similarities pile up, we start to feel affection for that person. So we become close, either as friends, business partners, or romantic partners.
Human consciousness automatically accepts that ‘this person is the same as me!’ the more commonalities there are. Because we think we’re the same, we date and get married. Later, it becomes a premise that we’re the same. But when we live together, we start discovering differences from the first day of marriage. Eating habits are different, some people use and dry towels in the bathroom and use them again, while others put used towels straight in the washing machine, some leave clothes lying around on the floor while others don’t, and so on. As we keep discovering differences, stress builds up until at some point we conclude, ‘There’s nothing that matches with this person. Our personalities are so incompatible!’ and feel we can’t live together anymore.
Because of this human cognitive process, we meet strangers and become friends, lovers, or spouses, and also break up. Is this bad? No. We meet and we part. But if you have the premise that ‘once we meet, we shouldn’t part’, then a life where parting is inevitable becomes painful. For example, if you have the premise that ‘as a monk, I shouldn’t meet women’, then when a meeting occurs, it creates suffering. If you understand that this is the principle of mental functioning that causes us to meet and part, and part and meet again, then meeting is no big deal, and parting is no big deal either. Also, when you understand this principle of mental functioning, there’s no need to part. And there’s no reason to live together just because you have the same hometown, hobbies, and many other similarities. You can keep the similarities as they are and just live separately. And there’s no reason to part just because many differences have been discovered. You can keep the different states as they are and live together in the same house. When there’s no particular reason to part and no particular reason to meet like this, relationships become free.
When meeting, it’s difficult because we have the premise that ‘we shouldn’t meet people of different races, ethnicities, or religions’. When parting, it’s difficult because we have the premise that ‘we shouldn’t part because we’ve married or dated or done something’. So we meet for the reason of being the same, and we part for the reason of being different. However, meeting and parting themselves can’t be suffering. If you want to part, you can part, and if you want to meet, you can meet. The reason it becomes suffering is because we have premises like ‘we shouldn’t meet’ or ‘we shouldn’t part’. If you understand these principles well, you can improve a bit.
You say you absolutely can’t live together, but is there really a reason why you absolutely can’t live together? If you’ve lived together for 10 years, there’s no reason why you can’t live together for 5 more years. Conversely, if you’ve lived together for 10 years, is there any particular reason why you should live with one person until you die? What’s wrong with living with different people? But if you think, ‘It’s already incredibly complicated to understand one person, it’s troublesome to go through that process again with a new person. It’s better to keep living with the person I’ve been living with!’, then it’s better to keep living with the person you’ve been living with. If you think, ‘In this day and age, is there any need to keep living with just one person? Let’s try living with someone else!’, then parting isn’t a big problem either. The problem isn’t meeting or parting.
That’s why when you get married and ask me to congratulate you, I don’t congratulate you. Because we can’t predict whether marriage will be something to congratulate. In most cases, the result is often not something to congratulate. The day of marriage could be the beginning of suffering. Also, when someone says they’re breaking up, if you ask, ‘If you were going to break up, why weren’t you more careful when you got married?’, they answer, ‘I wasn’t calm and didn’t look at the person properly before getting married.’ If they really regret that they didn’t consider various aspects of that person and only looked at a few things when getting married, shouldn’t they also be careful about divorcing just because they see a few unpleasant aspects of that person? But you get angry and say you absolutely can’t live together, wanting to divorce, just like when you got married, seeing only a few things. I don’t interfere whether someone divorces or not. There’s nothing like this in the natural ecosystem. This is all just a product created by human consciousness.
But what I want to say is, ‘If you were rash when getting married, be a bit more careful when divorcing.’ People often misunderstand this as me saying not to divorce. After rashly divorcing and looking for a new person, it’s easy to regret and miss the previous person because you can’t find someone as good.
So you should accept that conflicts with your boyfriend are natural. The reason conflicts arise is because you have the premise that ‘we should be the same’. The reason you keep asking ‘Why are you like that?’ is because you can’t understand your boyfriend from your own standards. So to resolve conflicts, you need to acknowledge and understand that you’re different from each other. This is because habits and thoughts don’t change quickly even if you become friends, lovers, or get married. But you keep thinking that you should be the same when you get married. That’s why conflicts arise. If you acknowledge that you’re different from each other, share what you can share to some extent, and leave the rest open individually, you’ll become much freer. If you keep trying to unify the other person who is different from you in your own way, conflicts will grow. Just like how the North and South fight like that saying they want to unify, you fight because you keep trying to unify. Don’t try to unify too much, just leave it be. Set a wider boundary and let it loose within that range, like letting a dog off its leash. Don’t keep holding the dog’s leash like you’re always walking it, but think ‘It won’t go out of the house anyway, just close the main gate!’ and take off the leash when it comes into the house. If you keep the leash on and always tie it to a post, both the dog and the person get tired.”
“I understand well. Thank you.”
Tomorrow, Sunim will arrive at Incheon Airport and move to the Seoul Jungto Center for a brief rest. In the afternoon, he will have a meeting with the Secretariat, JTS, and the International Cooperation Team about the overseas schedule for the second half of the year. In the evening, he will board a plane again to depart for Seattle. Starting tomorrow, the lecture tour in the North American West Coast region will begin.
