1. Seon meditation: path to liberation from suffering

We can easily overcome suffering and pain by learning the Seon meditation. Otherwise, it is all too common to end up living a mediocre life. To achieve this freedom, we must first let go of our preconceptions. In Buddhism, our rigid perceptions and stubborn, self-centered biases are termed karma. If karma is too strong, it is very difficult to change. Therefore, it should be a top priority to break free from the framework of preconceived notions through the Seon meditation. 

Eliminating suffering lies at the heart of the Seon meditation. In order to achieve this, it is important to be aware of our emotions. We must be able to observe our feeling states to understand what causes them and where suffering and joy come from in the first place. According to Yogacara philosophy, there are "three types of feelings"- pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral - representing three states: suffering, happiness, and a state that is neither suffering nor happiness. When we experience suffering—feeling distressed, uncomfortable, or in pain—the desire to be free from it arises simultaneously, leading us to pursue happiness. The most basic psychological trait shared by all living beings is the constant desire to avoid pain and suffering. If we cannot find a way to address the problem of suffering and happiness, life will surely be painful. This is not anyone else’s fault. We are the ones who created this situation. If we cannot figure out this cause and effect, nothing can be resolved - only the Buddha can. However, since we are already Buddhas, we must resolve it ourselves.

We should not wish for the nature of our consciousness, which is inherently susceptible to karmic manipulation, to change. To end suffering, we need to adapt to the world. The world will not change to fit our needs. We must stop thinking that the world owes us anything. After all, the world already gives us sunlight, air, and space. If we do not understand this and believe that the world is not accommodating us, no problem will ever be solved. Everyone has the karma of “happiness and suffering” in equal measure, despite how different our lives seem. The karma of sentient beings in the Six Realms is the same; only their form and appearance differ. In other words, the states of happiness and suffering are relative.

 This may be difficult to understand. However, understanding alone is not enough to resolve the matter, because the results of our past actions shape our present. In Yogacara, this accumulation is called alaya-vijnana, or store consciousness, which roughly corresponds to the concepts of the unconscious, subconscious, and dreams found in Western psychological theories proposed by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, for example. The Buddha's teachings, and those of his followers, are clear. The present exists because of the past, and the future exists because of the present. This cannot change. Causes and conditions come together to generate results, which in turn lead to observable phenomena. Furthermore, we tend to project our karma and emotions onto these events, making understanding causality inevitably complex.

2. The five-second pause

What is the most important thing in life? When we were young, food was important. We wanted to be rich. Now, we might say that health and a comfortable life are most important. However, if we truly reflect upon it, we will see that everything we value has one thing in common - we value it because we believe it will help us escape suffering. At the end of the day, it is all about being happy and free from suffering. When we are distressed, we look for ways to feel better. However, we do not stop there. We take it a step further and become greedy, seeking greater pleasure and even an overwhelming sense of joy. This is the psychological foundation of all living beings.

Every human action - blinking an eye, taking a breath, eating food, sleeping, and everything else - is an attempt to avoid suffering and cling to happiness. Therefore, every action is driven by our ultimate desire: to be free from suffering, discomfort, and worry. We indulge our desires to be more joyful and happy. All the actions we take in life, including seeking honor or power, are for the sake of gaining pleasure and avoiding suffering. This is where the problem begins. As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch. There is always a price to pay for pleasure. This is the law of cause and effect that the Buddha taught us: “When this arises, that must arise.” When happiness arises, unhappiness inevitably follows. When joy arises, so does sorrow. When pleasure arises, suffering ensues.

The Buddha transcends both the compounding and overcoming of karma. This is the Middle Way. For ordinary beings, however, happiness is always followed by unhappiness. Any experience of pleasure is met with an equal amount of pain. It is like the two sides of a coin, or the palm and the back of the hand. A hand is simply a hand, but if we insist on defining the palm, the back of the hand is conceptualized. It is the front that gives rise to the back. The moment we label one side of a coin the “front," the “back” immediately emerges. Birth implies death, and creation implies dissolution. This distinction exists only in our mind. Only by resolving this relative existence of pleasure and pain can we be freed from suffering. There is no problem with phenomena themselves, nor with this world as experienced through the six sense organs and the six sense objects. There is no need to make distinctions. Above all, one must not discriminate.

Experiences of pleasure and pain only become problematic because we superimpose our feelings of good and bad, joy and sorrow, onto phenomena. We suffer because we project our emotions onto a reality that operates according to dependent origination and the principle of cause and effect. Through the Seon meditation, we realize that there is no reason to impose our emotions on the phenomenal world. Our perspective then shifts, freeing us from suffering, worry, and anxiety.

I assure you, I am neither particularly worried nor anxious. I am not completely free of them, but when I pause for just five seconds, my mind becomes peaceful, and my worries and anxieties disappear. As I mentioned earlier, worry arises from attachment to phenomena. The moment I become attached, I repent within five seconds. This can be called "true repentance.” As the Sutra of the Thousand Hands and Eyes states, “Bad karma has no inherent nature. It comes from the discriminating mind. If the discriminating mind is extinguished, so is bad karma; if bad karma vanishes, so does the discriminating mind. When one eliminates one’s bad karma and extinguishes one’s discriminating mind, so that both are empty, this is called true repentance.” This is what the Seon meditation is all about. It is about stopping first. I heard that 'six-second meditation' is popular in the U.S. these days. Why six seconds? They say it takes 0.2 seconds to feel a surge of anger, but another five to six more seconds for the anger to translate into action. Therefore, if we feel ourselves getting angry, it is best to pause for at least five or six seconds. This reduces the intensity of the anger, and the resulting distress will also subside.

3. Suffering arises from attachment.

Emotions are also subject to causes and conditions, based on the principle that when one arises, the other inevitably follows. We experience pain to the same extent that we prefer pleasure. This can be likened to the law of conservation of mass. The mass of pleasure is equal to the mass of pain. Just as the sun rises and sets, and just as life begins and ends, so too do pleasure and pain. Youth gives way to old age, and health gives way to illness. All living beings go through birth, aging, sickness, and death. All phenomena undergo essentially the same basic process: formation, existence, decay, and emptiness. These processes are so obvious that there is no room for debate. Our emotions arise just as inescapably. We may be joyful now, but that does not mean we will remain so until death. The intensity of joy fluctuates. We may experience ecstatic joy at times, but once that moment passes, we feel empty and hollow. This is precisely causality, though cause and effect may appear differently according to time and space. The similarity between the logic of spacetime in quantum mechanics and Buddhist philosophy is truly astonishing. The phenomena of this world are composed of atoms, subatomic particles, and physical matter that cannot be divided any further. The Buddha spoke of the four great elements—earth, water, fire, and wind—which can be described in modern terms as atoms and electrons.

No object in this world has a fixed existence. Through the interdependent origination of causes and conditions, atoms are moved by electrons, forming various objects. Ultimately, however, even these objects are created by our mind. Indeed, all phenomena originate from the mind. In the end, these objects disappear. The Buddha described this as sunyata, or emptiness, or the Middle Way, in a psychological or non-material context. Enlightenment is none other than attaining this state. I have explained this in a somewhat complex way, but the point is: why cling to the idea of gaining anything? Everything is composed of material elements like atoms. Since all things undergo the cycle of formation, existence, decay, and emptiness, it is ultimately empty. Attachment leads to suffering, and suffering arises from attachment. The two opposing emotions of pleasure and pain rely on each other, with one always leading to the other. This is why we find one thing pleasant and then another unpleasant. This is why we cycle endlessly between happy and unhappy thoughts. Even if our physical bodies, which we mistakenly identify as “self,” were to vanish, the traces of our past experiences of joy and suffering would not die with them. The cycle of pleasure and pain continues even as a ghost.

4. Seon meditation leads to the severing of the causal connection between pleasure and pain.

Happiness and unhappiness are merely feelings we have attributed to phenomena. Everything is the result of our own actions and our own creation. Eventually, everything comes back to us, so the problem lies within us. What we call the "self" is an endless cycle of emotions - of suffering and happiness - through reincarnations, life after life. Even when faced with the same thing, we perceive it differently depending on our karma, which dictates how we experience pleasure and pain. While some people view certain things favorably, others view them unfavorably. This is simply the manifestation of their different karmic connections. The phenomenal world we encounter is driven by everything mutually influencing one another. A stream becomes a river, which flows to the sea, and then evaporates to become rain. Nothing escapes the law of dependent origination. Everything is connected on a cosmic scale. Even space, which may seem completely empty and void of connectivity, is linked through electromagnetic waves. It is the very essence of all things in the universe.

What is my emotional state as I observe these unfolding events around me? Everyone has preferences and aversions toward certain phenomena, and we may experience joy or concern over them. Rivers flow according to the principle of interdependence. From our perspective, however, we may see them as beautiful or as muddy. We project our emotions of pleasure or pain onto the river and experience them simultaneously. For instance, the sun rises early and sets late in the summer; in the winter, it is the other way around. Yet, when viewed over the course of a year, the duration of day and night is exactly the same. Just as there is a difference in when joy and sorrow come, phenomena merely appear different. When joy arrives, it is already pregnant with the seeds of suffering, which can manifest at any time - perhaps in one second, one minute, or one day. If we practice the Seon meditation while understanding that suffering will inevitably arise—though we may not know when—and recognizing our emotional state, we can quickly overcome suffering.