Nothing If There’s Nothing, So

21. 없으면 없는대로 있으면 있는대로

21. Nothing If There’s Nothing, Something If There’s Something

Yu Hui Jung

After I got my first job, I immediately handed my bankbook over to my mother. Soon afterward, she presented me with a savings account book and a health insurance certificate in my name. For my part, I enrolled in pension insurance, purchased an installment fund, and bought a car. My payments to the national pension service were deducted automatically from my salary.

Eventually, my parents started pressuring me to get married. They pushed me to take out a loan to buy a house, adding that they would help out with the costs. But at 28 years of age, I saw all of it as a trap that would bind me and prevent me from going anywhere. I was also struggling with a job ill-suited to my capabilities. The net kept closing in day by day, and I longed to escape it and pursue a new dream before I turned 30.

I had my mother give me my bankbook back, sold my car, and cancelled my health insurance, pension insurance, and installment fund. After submitting my resignation, I applied to have my mandatory pension payments waived. For the next two years, I lived off my savings as a free man with no affiliations.

After I shaved my head and arrived at Mandeoksan Mountain in Jinan, I debated what to do with the rest of my life. I ended up spending the summer in a room across the hall from Ven. Seungsan.

“Mandeoksan Mountain is really great. It’s terrific.”

Then in his 80s, he was there yet somehow not there, ever-present like a mountain, like water, like the sky, as he taught us of utter emptiness. Whether we call it destiny or choice, I decided at some point to set myself on that path—Won-Buddhism—as well.

Around the same time, I visited Ven. Yetawon. Her room was tidy, with just a few furnishings. Ven. Yetawon mostly just listened silently, offering the occasional nod. But after the person I was visiting her with left the room, leaving me alone with Ven. Yetawon, she finally spoke.

“As you can see, I have nothing,” she said. “Could you live this way?” For a long time, I looked at her words as a hwadu (hua tou).

After a completing a pre-minister training program that lasted over seven years, I finally became a minister. In the US, I received 200 dollars a month; that doubled when I returned to Korea, which means that I now receive about the same as an army sergeant.

I rejoined the national pension, enrolled in fee-for-service health insurance, and deposited my meager savings in the bank. I also invested the odd bit of money in stocks so that I would not find myself too far out of touch with the world. Bit by bit, I reentered the system that I had left behind.

But while my current life may not live up to my old dreams of “not getting caught in the net,” my mind feels much freer now. I consider myself blessed to have enough to make large and small offerings to the Buddha; to not have to visit my teachers empty-handed; to be able to treat my fellow practitioners to a meal; and to be able to buy the books I wish to read.

I need to be able to do my part as a son when my father has his next birthday, and as an uncle when my nephew celebrates his first year. And as the weather grows warmer, I need to go to the market to buy tomato seeds so that I can share the fruits with friends who visit Jirisan Mountain.

At some point, even this freedom might scatter to the wind—or perhaps I will enjoy even greater freedom. Whatever happens, it will be all right. Nothing was ever mine in the first place, so if there’s nothing, I will accept it as nothing, and if there’s something, I’ll use it. Eventually, there will come a time when I must suddenly let go of it all and take my leave.

Zigong said, “To be poor but never a flatterer; to be wealthy but never arrogant – what would you say to that?”

The Master said, “That’s fine, but not so good as: To be poor but joyful; to be wealthy and love li.”

—The Analects of Confucius, Chapter 1:15