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Your Eyes Cannot See Your Eyes

Dae Soen Sa Nim used to teach us, “Your eyes cannot see your own eyes. To try to see your own eyes is delusion. And yet you see. In the same way, mind cannot be understand through mind, through thinking and concepts. To try to understand your mind through thinking and concepts is a delusion. But you have mind! Only experience can teach you the nature of mind — not books or words and speech. Even my own explanation is a big mistake!”

Here, in the following dialogue, is perhaps his greatest employment of this teaching tool for opening our minds to the possibilities of attaining true insight into the nature of reality. It is the opening chapter for the book, Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake. In this, we see his truly Socratic method, birthing the “answer” or the insight right out of the student, and if the student could not seem to be made fully aware of what they were “looking” for, in that instant, at least the assembly of fellow listeners could (or we could, reading it, years later).

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