The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World Read online

  © Sehyen Jo

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down

  HAEMIN SUNIM is one of the most influential Zen Buddhist teachers and writers in South Korea, where his books have sold more than three million copies and are popular as guides not only to mediation but also to overcoming the challenges of everyday life. Born in South Korea, he came to the United States to study film, only to find himself pulled into the spiritual life. Educated at UC Berkeley, Harvard, and Princeton, he received formal monastic training in Korea and taught Buddhism at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has more than a million followers on Twitter (@haeminsunim) and Facebook and lives in Seoul when not traveling to share his teachings.

  CHI-YOUNG KIM is the translator of the New York Times bestselling Korean novel Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin, for which she received the Man Asian Literary Prize, and the Korean contemporary classic The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Sun-mi Hwang. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

  YOUNGCHEOL LEE is a Korean artist. His paintings have been shown in more than 150 exhibitions and are admired for their idyllic quality. You can see more of his artwork at www.namusai33.com.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  Copyright © 2012 by Haemin Sunim

  English translation copyright © 2017 by Chi-Young Kim and Haemin Sunim

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  Ebook ISBN 9780698156425

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Hyemin, author.

  Title: The things you can see only when you slow down : how to be calm and

  mindful in a fast-paced world / Haemin Sunim ; translated by

  Chi-Young Kim and Haemin Sunim ; artwork by Youngcheol Lee.

  Other titles: Mæomch’umyæon, piroso poinæun kæottæul. English

  Description: New York, New York : Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016036101 | ISBN 9780143130772 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Conduct of life. | Spiritual life—Buddhism.

  Classification: LCC BJ1594.5.K6 H9413 2017 | DDC 294.3/44—dc23

  Illustrations by Youngcheol Lee

  Cover design: Roseanne Serra

  Cover illustration: Young-Cheol Lee

  Version_1

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title page

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  Rest

  Why Am I So Busy?

  When Life Disappoints, Rest a Moment

  CHAPTER 2

  Mindfulness

  Befriend Your Emotions

  When You Are Feeling Low

  CHAPTER 3

  Passion

  Temper Your Eagerness

  Being Right Isn’t Important; Being Happy Together Is

  CHAPTER 4

  Relationships

  The Art of Maintaining a Good Relationship

  The Journey of Forgiveness

  CHAPTER 5

  Love

  First Love

  I Love Your Ordinariness

  CHAPTER 6

  Life

  Do You Know Kung Fu?

  Three Liberating Insights

  CHAPTER 7

  The Future

  One Word of Encouragement Can Change the Future

  When You Look for Your Calling

  CHAPTER 8

  Spirituality

  Long-Lost Cousins

  Two Spiritual Paths in One Family

  EPILOGUE

  Your Original Face

  PROLOGUE

  AS A ZEN monk and former professor at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, I am frequently asked for advice on dealing with life’s challenges. In addition to sharing my advice in person and over e-mail, a few years ago I began to answer questions over social networking sites, as I enjoyed the feeling of making connections with people. My messages were generally simple, straightforward, and short. I sometimes wrote directly in response to a real-life question, sometimes as a quick note to myself when I discovered interesting patterns of thought in mindfulness practice or in interactions with people. I also discussed the value of slowing down in our busy modern lives, as well as the art of maintaining good relationships and cultivating self-compassion.

  I did not anticipate the outpouring of responses to my tweets and Facebook posts. Many people started sending me messages not only to ask advice, but also to express appreciation and gratitude. I still remember a young mother who had lost her husband in a car accident and sent me a heartfelt thank-you note for saving her from committing suicide, saying that she never thought about loving herself because love for her always meant giving it to someone else. A busy executive in his forties told me how wonderful it was to start his day with my messages; to him, they provided a moment of calm reflection and rest from his hectic schedule. A young recent graduate, discouraged after not finding a job, read my supportive words and gave the search another try, finally landing a job. When I read his news, I was overjoyed for a couple of days, as if I had gotten my first job.

  It made me profoundly happy that my simple messages could inspire people and help them in their times of difficulty. As my messages came to be shared by more and more people, and my number of Twitter and Facebook followers increased, people started calling me a “healing mentor,” which ended up becoming my nickname in Korea. I was then contacted by publishing companies offering to turn my writings into a book. In 2012, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down came out in South Korea; to everyone’s amazement, it stayed number one on the best-seller list for forty-one weeks, and sold more than three million copies in three years. Translations followed—into Chinese, Japanese, Thai, French, and now English. I am humbled by the attention the book has received and hope it can be of help to readers of English, just as it has been to readers in Asia and France.

  The book has eight chapters, addressing various aspects of life—from love and friendships to work and aspirations—and how mindfulness can help us in each. For instance, I address how to deal mindfully with negative emotions like anger and jealousy as well as life’s disappointments, digging deep into my past to share my experience of failure as a new college professor. If you are overly self-conscious, the “three liberating insights” from chapter 6 can be quite helpful. If you are anxious about your future or unsure about your true calling, I offer advice on how to increase self-awareness and how to discover it.

  Each chapter opens with an essay, which is followed by a series of short messages—words of advice and wisdom addressed directly to you, to consider one by one, and to reconsider and remember, so that they may accompany you in moments of anxiety or despair, and remind you that you are not alone. Each chapter then conti
nues with a shorter essay, followed by another series of short prompts for meditation. Throughout the book are color illustrations by Youngcheol Lee; these are intended as calming interludes, to be lingered over much like the meditation prompts are meant to be.

  Some people read the whole book quickly as they would a novel. However, I would recommend that you take your time and reflect on what you have just read before moving on to a new chapter. You will enjoy it more and find deeper meanings as you go through each chapter slowly. You should feel free to make notes in the margins or highlight parts that have resonated with you.

  I hope that spending time with this book becomes an occasion to reflect on and meditate in your busy life. I hope it inspires you to connect with the kinder and wiser side of yourself. May you be happy, healthy, peaceful, and always protected from harm.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rest

  Why Am I So Busy?

  When everything around me is moving so fast, I stop and ask, “Is it the world that’s busy, or is it my mind?”

  WE USUALLY THINK of “mind” and “world” existing independently of each other. If someone asks where our mind is, most of us would point to either our head or our heart, but not to a tree or the sky. We perceive a clear boundary between what goes on inside our minds and what happens in the outside world. Compared to the vast world outside, the mind nestled inside the body can feel small, vulnerable, and sometimes powerless. According to the Buddha’s teaching, however, the boundary between the mind and the world is actually thin, porous, and ultimately illusory. It is not that the world is objectively joyful or sad and produces a corresponding feeling in us. Rather, feelings originate with the mind projecting its subjective experience onto the world. The world isn’t inherently joyful or sad; it just is.

  Perhaps we can better understand this through a conversation I had with a dear friend of mine, a responsible and meticulous Buddhist nun. She recently oversaw the construction of a meditation hall in her temple. After relating the ordeal of obtaining various permits and finding the right contractor, among other things, she described the construction process in the following way:

  “When it came time to place tiles on the roof, I saw tiles everywhere I went. I noticed the material they were made of, their thickness, their design. And then, when it was time to install the floor, all I could see were floors. I naturally zeroed in on the color, origin, pattern, and durability of a hardwood floor. And then it suddenly dawned on me: When we look at the outside world, we are looking at only a small part that interests us. The world we see is not the entire universe but a limited one that the mind cares about. However, to our minds, that small world is the entire universe. Our reality is not the infinitely stretching cosmos but the small part we choose to focus on. Reality exists because our minds exist. Without the mind, there would be no universe.”

  The more I reflected on this, the more her insight made sense to me. The world comes to exist because we are aware of it. We cannot live in a reality of which we are unaware. The world depends on our minds in order to exist, just as our minds depend on the world as the subject of our awareness. Put differently, our mind’s awareness can be said to bring the world into being. What our mind focuses on becomes our world. Seen this way, the mind does not seem so insignificant in relation to the world out there, does it?

  We neither can nor want to know every single thing that happens in the world. If we did, we would go crazy from the overload of information. If we look at the world through the lens of our mind, the way my friend did, we will readily notice what we are looking for, because our mind will focus on it. Given that the world we see through our mind’s eye is limited, if we can train our mind and choose wisely where to focus, then we will be able to experience the world corresponding to the state of our mind.

  As a monk and a college professor, I am pulled in many different directions. During the week I teach and conduct research, and on the weekend I drive a couple of hours to assume duties at my teacher’s temple. During school breaks, my schedule becomes even busier. I need to visit senior monks, serve as an interpreter for monks who don’t speak English, go to different temples to give Dharma talks, and carve out time for my own meditation practice. On top of that, I continue to research and write academic papers.

  To be honest, I sometimes wonder whether a Zen monk should keep to such a full schedule. But then I realize it isn’t the outside world that is a whirlwind; it is only my mind. The world has never complained about how busy it is. As I look deeper into myself to see why I am living such a busy life, I realize that, to a certain extent, I actually enjoy being busy. If I truly wanted to rest, I could decline invitations to teach. But I have welcomed such requests because I enjoy meeting people who want my advice and helping them with what little wisdom I have. Seeing other people happy is a deep source of joy in my life.

  There is a famous Buddhist saying that everyone appears as buddhas in the eyes of the Buddha and everyone appears as pigs in the eyes of a pig. It suggests that the world is experienced according to the state of one’s mind. When your mind is joyful and compassionate, the world is, too. When your mind is filled with negative thoughts, the world appears negative, too. When you feel overwhelmed and busy, remember that you are not powerless. When your mind rests, the world also rests.

  We know the world only through the window of our mind.

  When our mind is noisy, the world is as well.

  And when our mind is peaceful, the world is, too.

  Knowing our minds is

  just as important as trying to change the world.

  I squeeze myself into the subway car.

  People are crowded all around me.

  I can either get annoyed

  or think it’s fun that I don’t have to grab a handrail.

  People react differently to the same situation.

  If we look at it more closely,

  we see it’s not the situation that is troubling us,

  but our perspective on it.

  Tsunamis are frightening not just because of the water,

  but also because of the objects hurled at us by the water.

  Tornadoes are terrifying not just because of the wind,

  but also because of the objects uprooted and thrown by the wind.

  We feel unhappy not just because something bad has happened,

  but also because of the swirling thoughts about what happened.

  When you have an unpleasant feeling,

  don’t grab hold of it and turn it over and over.

  Instead, leave it alone so it can flow.

  The wave of emotion will naturally recede on its own

  as long as you don’t feed it by dwelling on it.

  To get food unstuck from a frying pan,

  just pour water in the pan and wait.

  After a while the food loosens on its own.

  Don’t struggle to heal your wounds.

  Just pour time into your heart and wait.

  When your wounds are ready,

  they will heal on their own.

  If we know how to be content,

  we can relax our endless striving and welcome serenity.

  If we know how to be content,

  we can enjoy the time we have with the person next to us.

  If we know how to be content,

  we can make peace with our past and let go of our baggage.

  If you’ve been unable to change a bad situation, even after many attempts,

  you should change how you look at the situation.

  Nothing is intrinsically good or bad.

  Good or bad is always relative.

  Compare your situation with someone’s that is worse.

  Now yours does not seem so bad after all.

  When you are stressed out, be aware of your stress.

  When you are irritated, be aware of your i
rritation.

  When you are angry, be aware of your anger.

  As soon as you become aware of these feelings

  you are no longer lost in them.

  Your awareness allows you to witness them from the outside.

  Awareness is inherently pure, like the open sky.

  Stress, irritation, and anger can temporarily cloud the sky,

  but they can never pollute it.

  Negative emotions come and go like clouds,

  but the wide-open sky remains.

  Like toxins slowly filling our bodies,

  if anger, despair, or sorrow accumulate in our hearts,

  we have to do something about it.

  Exercise, talk to your mentor, meditate on loving-kindness.

  As we begin to make the effort, the toxins start to lose their grip.

  Do memories cause you pain?

  Practice being in the present moment.

  Turn your attention to the here and now.

  Notice that your thoughts subside when you focus on the present.

  As your thoughts quiet, so, too, the memories.

  Because memories are, in essence, thoughts.

  When you leave work for the day,

  if you find yourself asking,

  “Do I have to live my whole life like this?”

  Then try the following:

  Wake up a little earlier the next morning,

  and sit in silence, as if in meditation.

  Breathe in deeply and slowly,

  and ask yourself how your work is helping others,

  regardless of how insignificantly or indirectly.

  As you focus more on others,

  you can reconnect with the meaning and purpose of your work.

  A very modern dilemma:

  There are countless television channels