“Usually, opinions will arise, such as ‘I am bigger than you,’ ‘I am better than you,’ and so on,” Haemin Sunim explained. “However, when a smaller 350ml bottle appears, we suddenly feel superior to it. This reflects human nature—how we contstantly compare ourselves to our surroundings.”

Haemin Sunim elucidated that the problems of everyday life actually come from our opinions and perspectives based on external factors that are beyond our control. The more one seeks or pursues what we call ‘happiness’ in external things, the more difficult it becomes to find true happiness, because real happiness can only come from within each person: “If we focus on ourselves, on what we feel right now, on what is right now in front of our eyes, then we can find true happiness.”

He also used sunglasses as a metaphor for the way we view the world and our surroundings. When we become accustomed to living with sunglasses on, we only recognize the world as filtered through the tinted lenses, which represents our preoccupation with our lives in the past and the future. We often fail to realize that if we remove the sunglasses, there’s another state of being that we’ve been missing: life in the present and the present moment.

“If we position ourselves to focus our attention and our emotions on what’s in front of our eyes right now, we no longer feel regret about the past and worry about the future,” Haemin Sunim said. “At that moment, we can experience life with a calm mind and slowly free ourselves from worldly attachments.”