Speeches of Hyo Jin Moon 2006-2008
Delivered Sunday at Belvedere Estate in Tarrytown, New York
Hyo Jin Moon Speaks on Birthday, Page 248

Some episodes may contain explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Birthday

January 21, 2007

(Today is Hyo Jin nim 's birthday by the lunar calendar. Also, Hyo Jin Nim's wife gave birth to a son, Shin-Jin nim, last Friday, the 19th of January in the evening. Two cakes were prepared on a table next to the stage. All welcome Hyo Jin nim and offer a bow. Hyo Jin nim bows to the audience as he approaches the stage. He places a small notebook on the podium—he cuts the cakes and receives flowers and a present from the National Interfaith Leadership Training Program, whose members attend every Sunday, and a card signed by most of those attending before he speaks. We all sang "Happy Birthday" twice.]

Thank you. Please sit down.

Thank you for the cake and the present and for the flowers. This was unexpected. He came out a month early. I guess he wanted to come out. He'll be coming home today. He is healthy and my wife is okay. So, thank you.

Today I see some faces that I haven't seen for a while. Living in New York City is rather interesting. Do you like big cities? When you see the people living in big cities they kind of have an attitude don't they? I guess you could say that it is kind of confidence or to get right to the point, they're a little cocky. This attitude is almost a prerequisite for survival in a dog-eat-dog world.

You have to be arrogant—you have to have that kind of presence—you have to have that kind of pride and also project a strong sense of self-importance just to get recognized.

It's almost like the big city environment provokes you whether you want it or not to have and present that kind of attitude and personification. You have to ask yourself if that is healthy. What happens to people when they actually live in that kind of mode? What kind of transformation will happen, because you will be transformed based on what you are, what you think, what you want to think, and what you want to be. This will transform you whether you like it or not. You will pass through the process, the growth, and you will change into that whether you like it or not. So, you have to ask yourself—is that good? If that's not good, if that's the only way I guess you can't stop it and we have to live with the consequences. But if it is not good then how do you stop it? That's the question. If we don't address that kind of question and focus on the solution that we can all agree on, then it's very difficult.

The challenge is in ourselves, the challenges that lie ahead for what we have to do in our mission. We have to deal with these areas and that kind of arrogance. These will become a problem area and it's growing faster than any other time in history. Every big city will have that problem. It will start itself with some idealism, but it will change because of the nature of what you have to be to survive in that competitive setting.

It will change you. That modern big city life will change you. The problem, especially in China, is that the big cities are growing up, popping out, every few years. It will become the number one import and exporting country in the world in a few years. Germany is number one, America is second. And China is third right now and it will overtake America and Germany.

That's the problem, and how do we address even the problems that we have now. Think about it.

To me, arrogance is stupidity. Stupid people are people who are in a state of stupor, right? Their senses are dulled. They feel numb to all sorts of stuff. You live in today's world and are desensitized to life. Sometimes you have to question whether that is right or wrong. Many times when you start to think morally and ethically you question pretty much everything that is stimulating your senses, all that is titillating out there. That's what you're bombarded with on a daily basis. It is overwhelming and you are getting desensitized to that reality.

 We're being stupefied every single way by things that are supposed to educate you, things that are supposed to stimulate you to be a better person. But actually it is doing the opposite. Why? The great excuse is that corporations have to make money. This is the land of the free and the land of capitalism. In this society you have the right to pursue opportunity. Opportunity means wealth and personal gratification.

When that aspect, especially personal gratification, is not defined properly it becomes very dangerous. We do have a problem with religion in itself because the values that religion should uphold as sacred and absolute aren't being propagated. Regardless of what religion it is, there has to be some absolutes that are equal to the primary absolutes, the laws of God. But look at physics. Even that is unstable. There is no clarity in some religions. That's the problem.

There are many issues that need to be solved. We still have basic problems. And how do you go about changing that when the world is becoming more stupefied?

We have to go to the very essence of who we are, starting as a child, we want to learn. We have to bring that back. And how do you go about doing that? It's extremely challenging and it's extremely difficult. You have to really make a creative environment that is so overwhelmingly rich, productive, creative, that it provokes you so much that you become enraptured by it, and hit the point where you want to learn,­ you want to start to learn again.

Otherwise things will never change. They will only decay further. How do you provoke the arrogant culture into wanting to learn again? How do you restart the need for growth? How do you stimulate that? That's the question that we need to ask. We must find the solution there.