Planting in the Ground
　
A long time ago, I heard about a famous person named Helen Keller. Although she could not see or hear, she had the ability to speak. At one time, she had the opportunity to visit Korea to speak at the Eun Ahm auditorium in Seoul. This was the largest hall at that time. Those in attendance welcomed her with enthusiastic applause. Even though she could not see the crowd nor hear their applause, she could feel their presence. She could feel and hear their presence through her skin. She transcended the usual worldly sense-objects of hearing and seeing yet she could explain what was around her. She predicted that there were 3000 people in attendance. To everyone’s surprise, she was correct.
There was also a violinist playing the G Line Aria. She placed her hand on his arm to feel the music. Even though she could not hear the music, tears flowed from her eyes because she could feel the music through the violinist’s arm. Again, it was her flesh that could hear the music, not her ears.
Helen Keller proceeded to tell the audience an important story about when she sat a sapling in a flowerpot. The tree grew and grew everyday eventually breaking the flowerpot. The young tree’s roots continued to grow into the soil beneath the broken pot. This occurrence had a deep meaning for Helen Keller. She used it as an analogy to explain religion. There are many traditional religions, including traditional Christianity and traditional Oriental religions, which are like flowerpots. These flowerpots refuse to break. Each flowerpot has its own small tree that is limited to its own flowerpot. These types of flowerpots need to be broken.
The problem with most traditional religions is that they tend to believe that their religion is the only truth, so they regard other religions to be false and inferior. To use the analogy, flowerpots of traditional religions separate themselves from other flowerpots. These individual flowerpots thus become like castles, in that, castles feud against other castles. However, the age of feudalism has past, therefore castles should also be in the past.
Instead of separating ourselves into individual flowerpots, we should create a bigger and stronger flowerpot to connect ourselves to self-nature and human nature. This is the infinite and the ultimate concern. There is a connection in the world through spirituality – an ultimate power showing that the small flowerpot is unnecessary. From now on, we need to have a new religion where the entire world is equal. If I am planting in this part of the world and someone else is planting in another part of the world, there is only one world. This is a very important message. Individual flowerpots have to break in order for us to create one large flowerpot where every religion is united.
We can use three methods to break the flowerpot:
1. Human nature as a way to break the flowerpot.
One is the way of human nature, which is the same for Buddha, Saints and sentient beings. By breaking down dogma and religious superiority we can find the way of human nature. We must study human nature so that everyone is regarded as equal and our mind never discriminates. It is easy to plant this tree in the earth.
2. Awareness of human habits as a way to break the flowerpot.
The second way is the way of human habits. Human habits are like castles. Therefore, when we break out of our human habits – then we also break the flowerpot. It is easy to plant this tree in the earth.
3. Spirituality as a way to break the flowerpot.
The third way is the way of spirituality. There are so many different cultures making themselves into types of castle. If we find the way of spirituality, we never separate the cultures. Through spirituality the flowerpot is broken, thus creating a spiritual world. This is the way of universal human nature.
How do we understand our self-nature and our human mind? In this world of humanity there is equality. This is the way of life in this world. This is the way beyond current circumstances. We must study the world beyond society, beyond dogma, beyond the valuable ready-made thinking. Then we can find the way of the truth of the one circle.

http://www.wonbuddhism.org/