Spring Breeze
25. 봄바람
25. Spring Breeze
The boy was gone. I had lost sight of him while cutting the grass. I had figured he had slipped away to rest somewhere, but I was told he had hailed a taxi and left. It was midsummer, and the 17-year-old pre-minister—who bled from his nose every night while carrying pebbles to the temple ground parking lot—had not lasted a week.
After I finished in the field, I went to wash the dirt off my tools, and I found the hose curled up tightly like a snake. I couldn’t imagine putting it back the way Ven. Chwasan had, so I did not attempt to undo it.
The shadow of uncertainty follows like a rising and setting sun even in the day-to-day life of an unwavering truth-seeker. Day after day, I finished my work and fell down exhausted, unable to reflect on anything as I needed to go straight to sleep for the next day. Having been ordained at such a late age, I was nervous that I might fall behind the others.
When I arrived from Mandeoksan Mountain and gone to stay with Ven. Chwasan, I had vaguely hoped that he would provide me with additional, separate guidance and that I would have ample time to study the scriptures. But things did not go as I had hoped, and I found my anger toward him building as he continued putting me to work while my body grew only more exhausted.
“I suppose it’s enough for him to have mastered his study?” I fumed. “I should be given time to practice myself! Why is he ordering me around like some farmhand?” Inside, I seethed, but I held it in. Finally, I decided that I ought to say something. During Ven. Chwasan’s evening massage, I summoned the courage to ask.
“When will I ever study?”
His words were gentle yet stern. This is how I heard them:
“Every time you have done something, I have quietly watched. You do not do things with the singular focus of the mind."
There is always dust left after you clean the rooms, and you often forget to close the door after you open it. You claim to have pulled weeds, yet there are always weeds left where you have gardened. This means you have been led about by distracting thoughts.
“Suppose that someone so lacking in the ability to choose action with whole thought in his daily affairs were to gain a certain power from reading the scriptures and practicing Sŏn for a long time. You would be prone to using that power as your desires led you to, deceiving the world and subjecting many people to suffering.
“When a practitioner who lacks the ability to lead life while choosing action with whole thought gains power through partial practice, it is as dangerous as a child playing with a knife. You must apply the one mind to each individual thing before you can evenly develop your three great powers.”
Overwhelmed by his formidable aura, my mind went blank, and I quickly stepped away. Over the next few days, I focused intently on the question of what it was inside of me that had given rise to such anxiety and anger.
Concealed beneath my desire to study the scriptures was an intellectual desire, a grasping to be recognized by others. There was anger: the indignation that rose up in me when I felt I was wasting my precious time on trifling things, and the arrogance concealed within that.
The scriptures are but a finger pointing toward the truth. It was foolish to be so anxious about being unable to seek the Buddha’s teaching in texts. Greed, anger, and foolishness—these are the distracting thoughts and the thieves that lie within us, distorting the one mind in all things.
Tired from mimicking the shadow of my elder, I had been unable to accept the loving-kindness in my heart. As a result, I wasn’t able to see each task as fodder for study and an opportunity for practice; none of my footsteps led me closer to achieving scripture.
In the reflection that comes after a teacher’s timely admonition, a student sheds the skin of a sentient being and opens their mind.
Though the spring breeze blows impartially without any thought of self, only living trees can receive its energy and grow; though sages give dharma disquisitions impartially without any thought of self, only people with belief can receive that dharma completely.
—The Scripture of the Founding Master, Chapter 10:11
