self-denial

You Should Subdue Your Body

Cheon Seong Gyeong 325

What should a person leave behind him to be remembered for eternity? The first thing is a legacy of love, and the second is a legacy of true life. You must leave behind your love and your life. Love did not exist before God did; love is there because God exists. That is why, for God, life is first and love is second, but for human beings, love is first and life is second. (105-75, 1979.9.23)

Cheon Seong Gyeon 1598

All true created beings in the world possess ideal love, the love of original nature, centered on God, and so we must become families based on absolute couples, children, siblings and parents. This is the second Jardim declaration. As well as absolute faith, love and obedience, God’s nature includes the qualities of being absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. Since these are God’s attributes, it naturally follows that He desires His object partners also to possess these four attributes. Moreover, since He wishes for His object partners to be superior to Him, He would look for more absoluteness, more uniqueness, more eternality and more immutability in His object partner.

Subduing the Desires of the Flesh

Extinguishing the Desires of the Body

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

The true religious life starts from denying all relationships with the body. If you read the scriptures, can you find any guidance about eating good food and leading an easy life? It is impossible to find such guidance. Religion teaches you to serve, sacrifice, be gentle and humble. Therefore religious people pray for the sake of others even at the risk of their lives. The body by itself cannot do this. In this way you can knock down your body.
The mind and body fight when they have the same amount of strength. So you should make effort to weaken your body. When your mind can subdue your weakened body for several months, then even after the body regains its strength it will follow the mind out of habit. When you reach such a level, you will find that your plans turn out well, having support from Heaven. Then it will be difficult to lead the life you led in the past. You will gravitate towards living an upright life according to your conscience. This is the purpose of the religious life. (38:272, January 8, 1971) Continue reading “You Should Subdue Your Body”

Abstain from Passions of the Flesh that Wage War Against the Soul

Cheong Seong Gyeong 845

Parents first think about their sons and daughters when going through hardships. Then, what is the deepest concern of people’s hearts? You have to know how to find people of misfortune and strive to raise them up to your standard. When you do this, the entire world may oppose you and treat you with contempt, but God and heaven will admire and protect you. The spirits centering on God in the spirit world will go around protecting you like a cloud. Such a person will not perish. When this happens, the clouds will sweep away the entire circumstance and sort it out. Thus, you can create results in equal measure to how hard you work and how much you have invested. Although you are persecuted and suffer hardship, heavenly fortune comes behind you and lays this foundation. Saints were persecuted in their times, but in the following generations they left behind their names. Such phenomena occur because the spirit world, heaven, and heavenly fortune make it this way. (207-99, 1990.11.1)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1722

All of us are seeking after God’s world of love, the source of His love. All beings are on their way to possess the male and female organs. People are on their way to become God’s partners in love. Isn’t this the flawless view of the Principle? This is not some theory I thought up arbitrarily. It refers to the principles of the great way of heaven and earth. (288-334, 1998.1.1)

Subduing the Desires of the Flesh

ALL RELIGIONS AGREE THAT THE SEEKER of Ultimate Reality must restrain his or her desires and subdue the passions of the flesh. Striking and weakening the body through rigorous self-control, fasting, sitting hours at meditation, etc. are all commendable ways to struggle against the flesh’s desires and ultimately to dominate them.
For most people, the most challenging of them all is sexual desire. Jesus taught that we should be ruthless, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out…” to which we add a Buddhist story of a nun who did just that—to quench her counterpart’s sin, not her own. Buddhism promotes the technique of meditating on “the loathsomeness of the body” as a bag of fluids, lymph, bile and feces to help men curb their desire for the opposite sex. Father Moon also recommends summoning up an attitude of disgust for the body, calling it “Satan’s dance-hall.”
Related passages on self-conquest are found in Chapter 12: Self-Control; yet perfect self-control is nearly impossible to attain. Father Moon explains this predicament as a consequence of humanity’s impaired condition after the Fall. Extreme and forceful practice is required to do what does not come naturally. Therefore, religions developed to teach the path of intense and unrelenting efforts at striking at the body and subduing its desires. In some religions these practices became organized into monasticism; nevertheless people in every walk of life should be making efforts in this direction.

1. Extinguishing the Desires of the Body

Beloved, I beseech you…to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul.
1 Peter 2.11 Continue reading “Abstain from Passions of the Flesh that Wage War Against the Soul”

Absolute Faith Is the Place of Self-Negation

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2288

Mothers and fathers should love each other and their children and educate them by manifesting themselves as representatives of the nation, the cosmos, their relatives, their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. This must take place on earth. They must set an example of how to love the cosmos, world and nation. They must be the textbooks that reveal the future.
That is not all. To become owners you need to learn the heart of parents, teachers, and God, and inherit the right of ownership. After joining the church, we are reborn, educated, and finally perfected. When we are fully matured, we will be able to understand everything. You will then say, “I want to stand in the position of the owner.” You will inherit everything, for that is what being the owner means. Wherever it is, it comes to the same thing. Such is the mainstream ideology. If you go this way, you will meet the true teacher, and if you go that way, you will meet the True Parents. All is the same. Hence, the Kingdom of Heaven is the same everywhere. (205-21, 1990.7.15)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1262

The reason human beings need a messiah is so they can be saved. Then, what is the original starting point from which salvation can occur? It is returning to the point of contact with God’s love.
However, the whole of humanity has become totally disconnected from God, and instead has become the embodiment of Satan. This is the exact opposite of God’s love, and therefore needs to be indemnified. Indemnity refers to the complete removal of the original sin. But the fundamental problem lies in the lineage. Any problems related to the bloodline cannot be resolved by fallen human beings. That is why humankind needs the Messiah. (35-159, 1970.10.13)

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Absolute faith is not the place of self-affirmation, but of self-negation. (Way of God’s Will 3.2)

What is the most serious obstacle to entering the Kingdom of Heaven? An enemy called “I” is lurking about. “I” am the enemy. The reason why we pray and put effort into our life of faith is ultimately to be victorious over “me.” Our goal is to achieve the victory whereby we no longer face Satan’s accusation, but as long as “I” exists, it is impossible to completely break away from that condition.
We should be able to deny this “I” in the name of God. We must totally deny ourselves. Only by total self-denial can we cut all the strings by which Satan has been pulling us. We should understand that something like the silk threads of a spider web connect us to Satan, who uses them to pull us. We have to cut them all with a razor. (122:13, April 26, 1982) Continue reading “Absolute Faith Is the Place of Self-Negation”

Whoever Would Save His Life Will Lose It

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2281

There exists our vertical self that enables us to freely relate to vertical love. This is the mind. Until now the nature of mind has remained unknown, even within Buddhism. However, we in the Unification Church do know about it. We depict a spherical ideal with its center defined by a horizontal, vertical and front-to-back love axis. As that spherical ideal operates through God’s ideal of creation there can be no loss of energy running through east, west, north and south. Whenever in operation, only good will come; there will be neither evil nor conflict. (182-258, 1988.10.23)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1272

God wants everyone reborn. From His position, He is trying to bring all of humanity, which is still in the realm of Satan’s false love, to His side through His greater love. Since all humankind was born through the parents, ancestors and lineage of false love, they need to be reborn through the parents, ancestors and lineage of true love. In this way, they can become the children of God and the people of God’s Kingdom. The precious blood of Jesus and the ritual of the Last Supper all symbolize the providence of becoming the children of God through the conversion of the lineage. (135-12, 1985.8.20)

Self-Denial

PEOPLE ARE BLIND TO THEIR OWN SELF-CENTEREDNESS. We know that selfish and greedy people are far from goodness; yet, everyone is tainted by selfishness to some extent. This self-centeredness needs to be exposed and beaten mercilessly; otherwise our goodness is superficial and ephemeral. Therefore, we should deny ourselves.
A life of self-affirmation and pleasure seeking leads, in the end, to emptiness and loss. Self-denial seems to lead to death and loss, but in fact it leads to abundant life with God. Thus we encounter the paradoxical truth, in the words of Jesus, “whoever would save his life would lose it; and whoever loses his life will save it.” These teachings are common to all the world-level religions.
Father Moon affirms the value of self-denial. He explains why human beings should have to travel such a paradoxical and unnatural course to reach the goal of life based upon his insights on the Human Fall. Although God created humans to manifest the character of love and altruism, because of the Fall we are infected by Satan, whose nature is pure self-centeredness. Hence, we face the predicament that in order to restore our original selves we must first deny our existing selves that are stained by satanic elements.

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
Mark 8.34-36

He who has no thought of “I” and “mine” whatever towards his mind and body, he who grieves not for that which he has not, he is, indeed, called a bhikkhu.
Dhammapada 367 (Buddhism)

They are forever free who renounce all selfish desires and break away from the ego-cage of “I,” “me,” and “mine” to be united with the Lord. Attain to this, and pass from death to immortality.
Bhagavad-Gita 2.71 (Hinduism)

The Man of the Way wins no fame,
The highest virtue wins no gain,
The Great Man has no self.
Chuang Tzu 17 (Taoism)

Where egoism exists, You are not experienced, Where You are, is not egoism.
You learned ones: expound in your mind this inexpressible proposition.
Adi Granth, Maru-ki-Var, M.1, p. 1092 (Sikhism)

Torah abides only with him who regards himself as nothing.
Talmud, Sota 21b (Judaism)

“Subhuti, what do you think? Does a holy one say within himself, ‘I have obtained Perfective Enlightenment’?” Subhuti replied, “No, World-honored One… If a holy one of Perfective Enlightenment said to himself, ‘Such am I,’ he would necessarily partake of the idea of an ego-identity, a personality, a being, a separated individuality.”
Diamond Sutra 9 (Buddhism)

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
John 12.24-25

Remember, those who fear death shall not escape it, and those who aspire to immortality shall not achieve it.
Nahjul Balagha, Khutba 43 (Shiite Islam)

O Son of Man! If you love me, turn away from yourself; and if you seek my pleasure, regard not your own; that you may die in me and I may eternally live in you.
Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, Arabic 7 (Baha’i Faith)

You, who sit on the top of a hundred-foot pole, although you have entered the Way you are not yet genuine. Proceed on from the top of the pole, and you will show your whole body in the ten directions.
Mumon’s Comment: If you go on further and turn your body about, no place is left where you are not the master. But even so, tell me, how will you go on further from the top of a hundred-foot pole? Eh?14
Mumonkan 46 (Buddhism)

If, like a cracked gong, you silence yourself, you have already attained Nibbana: no vindictiveness will be found in you.
Dhammapada 134 (Buddhism)

Yen Yüan asked about perfect virtue. The Master said, “To subdue one’s self and return to propriety is perfect virtue. If a man can for one day subdue himself and return to propriety, all under heaven will ascribe perfect virtue to him.”
Analects 12.1.1 (Confucianism)

Knowing that this body is like foam, and comprehending that it is as unsubstantial as a mirage, one should destroy the flower-tipped shafts of sensual passions [Mara], and pass beyond the sight of the King of death.
Dhammapada 46 (Buddhism)