Aug 23 – 2025. Departure from Korea, Travel to Seattle
Hello. Today, Sunim is traveling to Seattle to begin a lecture tour in the western region of North America.
After completing morning practice and meditation, Sunim spent the morning packing for the overseas trip. After finishing up tasks that needed to be completed before leaving Korea, he had lunch.
At 1:30 PM, Sunim left Seoul Jungto Center and departed for Incheon International Airport. Staff members bid farewell to Sunim as he embarked on his long journey.
“Sunim, please have a safe and healthy trip.”
“Thank you. Take care.”
Arriving at Incheon International Airport at 2:30 PM, Sunim immediately checked in his luggage and went through departure procedures. While waiting in the lounge and attending to some work, he boarded the 4:40 PM flight from Incheon International Airport to Seattle, USA.
Sunim will spend the night seated on the plane and is expected to arrive at Seattle International Airport at 11:00 AM after a 10-hour and 10-minute flight.
Since there was no Dharma talk today, I’ll conclude by sharing a dialogue between Sunim and a questioner from the English-interpreted Dharma Q&A held for foreigners at Jungto Social and Cultural Center on the 22nd.
How Can I Overcome Smartphone Addiction and Stress?
“If you want to live slowly, just live slowly. No one is telling you to live fast. We are living swept along by the flow of the world, like pieces of wood floating down in a flood. To climb up the hill without being swept away by the current, you must go against the flow. That requires effort. That’s why many people choose to be swept downstream rather than struggle upstream. However, if you get swept away by the current, you’ll eventually encounter a waterfall. To avoid falling off the cliff, you must go against the current. If you struggle against the flow and reach the shore, you won’t be swept away. Ultimately, it’s an individual choice: will you struggle against the current to reach the shore, or will you comfortably float downstream and fall at the waterfall?
How can we go against the current? In fact, most of the things that make our lives busy are not really necessary. If your hair is white, you don’t need to dye it—just leave it as it is. You don’t need earrings or necklaces, clothes just need to cover your body, and food just needs to fill your stomach. However, we feel we must trim our nails, wear bracelets, apply lipstick, spray perfume, apply lotion, drink alcohol, and smoke cigarettes—so of course we’re busy. But in reality, we can live perfectly well without doing any of these things. About 90 percent of your daily activities consist of things you don’t really need to do.
Even as civilization advances further, transportation becomes more convenient, and everything becomes readily available, we will never have more free time. Instead, we’ll become even busier. Why? Because we’ll find other things to do. We do things because others do them. But if we simply don’t do them regardless of what others do, we’ll have more free time. So if you want to live leisurely, just start living leisurely now. For example, you could stop everything except the basic necessities for survival, like animals do.
Compare yourselves with me for a moment. I wear only two or three sets of clothes in the same color for my entire life. But you all wear various kinds of clothes, don’t you? It costs money to buy them, and it takes time every morning to choose what to wear. You also need to eat various kinds of food. So you can’t help but be ten times busier than I am. If you just cut your hair short like mine, don’t wear makeup, wear simple colored clothes, wear only one pair of shoes, eat simple meals, and sleep anywhere, there’s actually not much to do. That’s why I can live leisurely, or if I choose to work, I can do ten times more work than you.
So whether you live busily or leisurely, it’s your choice. There’s no need to blame the world. But from what I see, you live thinking ‘I should do it because others do it,’ don’t you? Then you have to live busily. This fundamental thinking won’t be solved by meditation or practice without changing it. That’s just a temporary pause.”
Thank you