Brooks Automation, a first-ranking robot making company in the United States, is famous for producing precise and comprehensive robots. Choi Choon-bo(61) was a senior managing director and also worked as a research scientist to develop a robot’s brain. The robot software development team she managed became the world-best development team and known as ‘a small United Nations.’ Starting to study engineering at 40 years of age, she entered Brooks Automation to rise to the position of senior managing director as an Asian woman in 4 years. She received salary that was equal to highest income earners (upper 5%) in America; and was recognized for her superb performances. She started Maum Meditation when she was searching for answers to unsolvable fundamental questions of life.
“There will be less days to live than days I had lived.” In 2002, at 50 years of age, I thought this all of sudden. I thought that I should live a life of service following God’s will with the life I had left. I wanted to start, but I did not know where to begin. Most of all, my mind was not ready to start at all. I should humble myself to serve others, but I wasn’t ready. I read good books and sought out good lectures, but it didn’t work.
After 7 years of searching, I read a book about the Maum meditation. “Subtract the mind” left impression on my mind and in July of 2010, I took a break from work to go to the Maum meditation main center in Korea.
I always thought I had lived a good life. It was tough when I had gotten divorced with two marriages, but since finding my path with engineering at forty years old, things were relatively easy.
At forty, I majored in engineering at University of Massachusetts and graduated in 3 years to work as an entry employee at Brooks Automation at forty-three. I worked day and night because my research work with robot was so much fun. It was a rare event for this company to promote an entry-level employee to a managing director in 4 years.
But all things in my life were about endorsing me and I was working hard only for me; as soon as I knew this, I was ashamed. I prayed, please let me throw away this ‘self-conceit,’ as I meditated. Superiority, inferiority, worries about aging….as I threw those minds away, at one point, my mind was so much at ease. Ah, this is freedom and happiness….and I was enlightened to my original self. Ah, I did not exist originally, the Universe is me. In that original place, there were no pain, no worries, no superiority, no inferiority…I was so thankful that I could live as one with the original self.
◀◀ As a robot receives command through its brain and nerve connections, in a human being, it is similar. Choon-bo Choi drew simple pictures of its structures to illustrate. If the robot continues to accumulate its memory within its controller, it stops working due to overload and for the human being it is the same.
◀ Choon-bo Choi in front of an automated system at work 17 years ago. It was a photo from her company’s newletter.
Maybe this was because I was a scientist. I was happy but was wondering about connection between body and mind, how the body gets better when throwing out the mind; I also got to understand this while I was meditating.
A ‘memory leak’ is the most severe bug a robot can have. Simply explained, a robot must clean a ‘random access memory’ of a previous job in order to do next job well; but with the memory leak, it cannot erase them all and leaves a bit at a time. Then later on, the robot’s brain gets filled and it stops working. In order to reset robots, the companies such as Brooks will lose millions of dollars; and many companies invest incredible amount of money to fix such memory leak. At my company, through a meticulous research, we completely fixed this bug. So our robots are the world-best.
And human beings are also similar. Without throwing out the mind and continuing to accumulate, the brain cannot function properly. Within the human brain, there are billions of brain cells and each has an axon and dendrites; each dendrite receives information from axons through synapses. Alzheimer’s patients are shown to have garbled dendrites upon brain analyses. Synapses are all disconnected from dendrites and axons, so there is no communication of any commands.
If the memory leak is the greatest bug in the robot, the human being’s greatest bug is ‘taking and accumulating of one’s own mind-pictures.’ Since birth, through eyes, nose, ears, mouth and body, we live taking self-centered pictures and as it fills out, the bug happens in our body and mind. But when those pictures are taken out, one returns to the original self, and can live healthy according to God’s programming and the nature’s flow.
Once I understood the logic, I felt the Maum meditation’s subtraction method was really great. Since the history of mankind, this is the first place where such mind-subtraction method was clearly and explicitly taught. The most joyful was that through the Maum meditation, I met the real God. I found that I had my own images about even God in my mind; it was the way I wanted to visualize God. But only when I threw away all of my ideas and habits, I was able to meet God. In Bible, there is a saying ‘one who sees God, dies’; I was so happy when I was enlightened to its meaning – it means once I throw away the ‘self,’ then I am reborn as a God’s child.
I am very happy. It does not compare to any other joy or happiness I had felt before. Now I am ready to serve others. Because we are one, I do not have to be ‘humble’; naturally I can live knowing how precious others are. I was so excited after I quit my job. Now I can live in a new world beyond my life as a woman, and a scientist. I am delighted when I could see clearly how to live and for what (laugh). I want to live helping others find out and practice this method, scientists and other people. I want to live sharing love; watching someone get brighter and more at ease. Thank you.
