3. 그 언덕위에 있었다.
It Was on That Hill . . .
In the corner of Moonil High School’s athletic field, the air thick with dust from boys playing soccer, I opened up a now cold packed lunch as I gazed out on the twilight. There was a hard mound of rice, stir-fried tuna with kimchi, and roasted laver.
I also had a cup of instant noodles so as not to feel thirsty. Beyond the school’s fence, Anyangcheon Stream flowed in the distance. A shepherd had set up this fence on this remote piece of land by the waterside, opening up a school on the pasture site so that he could follow the example of Jesus Christ by tending to the people.
After two decades or so in the military, my father and mother started the “second act” of their lives in Seoul’s Siheung-dong neighborhood, where my mother’s older sister lived. That year, they enrolled me at the well-reputed Moonil High School, hoping to send me to a good university while cutting down on private education costs.
My father may have had difficulty finding work in an unfamiliar city, for he spent more and more days lying languidly in the corner, his back to us. My mother worked at a shoe factory, steadily adding money to our savings. One day, she purchased a new rice cooker with the money and cooked up a warm pot of rice.
Having not had a chance at an education herself, my mother wanted her sons to be good students who would learn the things she hadn’t and grow up with nothing to envy. This was something that weighed heavily on me.
I heard the sound of a bell and awakened from my scattered thoughts. I put my empty container in my lunch sack and headed up the staircase into the school. I still had plenty of time to spend at the library, but my body felt heavy and listless.
The seating in the reading rooms was based on your grades, starting from the top of the class and continuing down, and students would spend long stretches of time taking up residence in them. Every month, grades were posted high on the wall by the central staircase; depending on our results, our homeroom teacher would lash us on the calves with a switch and redistribute our reading room seating privileges.
My position was hovering more or less in its place, neither too far forward nor too far back. I left the school at 11 in the evening. The stars were shining as the library lights went off one by one.
At age 17, I felt stifled. I liked the movie Dead Poets’ Society, although I’m not sure whether it was because of my disappointment at never having had the chance to attend one of those elite private high schools or my admiration for the way they stood up against their corrupt education system.
I was tired of my teachers’ attitudes, which seemed to be dictated by the rising and falling of our grades, and I was tired of my classmates’ emotions hanging on reading room privileges. I had to cut back on sleep for my studies, but I didn’t find any meaning in my classes, not knowing what I even wanted to do.
I gradually lost ground with studying for the university entrance exams.
I hesitated outside the chaplain’s office, taking a step back. Difficult as things were, I didn’t want to share my feelings with anyone.
I continued on to the library. Row after row of dusty books sat on the shelves, unread. My eyes went to the bottom of a bookcase, stopping at an old book whose hard cover was bound in deep blue. Written in vertical script and read from back to front, it was titled Donggyeongdaejeon (The Canon of the Donghak Doctrine).
Flipping its thin pages with my thumb and forefinger, I became enthralled by Cheondoism. I diligently memorized the 13-syllable incantation: Si-cheon-ju Jo-hwa-jeong Yeong-se-bul-mang Man-sa-ji (“Ultimate Energy being all around me, I pray that I feel that Energy within me here and now. Recognizing that God is within me, I will be transformed. Constantly aware of that divine presence within, I will become attuned to all that is going on around me”).
I then made up my mind to study Eastern philosophy when I went to university. The following year, I happened upon a copy of the Jeungsando Dojeon (The Holy Scriptures of Dao), still in its plastic wrapping, in a pile of wastepaper next to an apartment elevator.
Every time I passed the Cheondoist temple on my way to and from school, I thought about stopping there sometime, but I would quickly forget all about it. Now I realized that on the road leading up to Bangmi Ridge, the Won-Buddhist temple in Geumcheon-gu was located on the same hill as the Cheondoist temple.