The Hidden Toenail
26. 숨겨진 발톱
26. The Hidden Toenail
Crossing the cold living room, I opened the door, and the warmth pummeled my face as it rushed in. My body had not adapted to the rapid temperature swings, and my nose immediately started to run. It was time for Ven. Chwasan’s late evening massage. I kneeled beside him, lying straight on the floor, and massaged his tight muscles and joints.
Only the two of us were there, which made it a good opportunity to ask the questions that had come up over the course of my day. I had been considering Korea’s modern and contemporary history, and certain things were weighing on me.
“South Korea is a country that successfully achieved industrialization and democracy through dedication on the part of all citizens and uprisings by the public. Yet even after the world war ended and Japan left, pro-Japanese collaborators empowered by the US military administration and Rhee Syngman took advantage of the Cold War to survive under the banner of ‘anti-communism,’ passing down all of their wealth and power.
It makes me angry to see how much influence they still have in South Korean society. Shouldn’t we have simply wiped out all vestiges of pro-Japanese collaboration from the start?”
“So we should have just killed them all?”
I was taken aback by his response and its reproachful ring. At that moment, a news story about South and North Korea happened to come up on the TV. Ven. Chwasan picked up the remote and turned up the volume, and our question-and-answer exchange for the evening fizzled out.
But the fire in my mind had not died down. Why had he wounded my heart with his words like that?
In 1936, a child was born in a Korea that had been colonized by the Japanese. In his late teens, he witnessed the horrors of the Korean War, as members of the same people killed one another. He joined the Won-Buddhism order, and even today, at over 80 years of age, he prays for peace on the Korean Peninsula every day without fail.
In Ven. Chwasan’s heartfelt, earnest prayers, even those who betray their own people, even the North and South Koreans who did not hesitate to kill one another in defense of their ideology, are still sentient beings in need of enlightenment, fellow Koreans with whom we must live together and against whom. We must not discriminate. Even as we despise their transgressions, we should not treat them as objects to exclude or eliminate.
The loving-kindness of the Buddha is one that rejoices in sentient beings who are kind and grieves for those traveling on the wrong path, embracing them with a love that does not abandon. The foolishness within my mind had been unable to fully shed that merciless bloodlust. To me, a pro-Japanese traitor was someone who deserved to die, not a sentient being to be guided.
It seems to me that his admonition at the time expressed both his disappointment with me for continuing to harbor such a bloodlust while presenting myself as a “practitioner,” as well as his warm-hearted wish for his student to achieve awakening on his own and dash to pieces those wicked thoughts.
I felt ashamed of these wicked thoughts, like a black toenail that I had grown and kept secret.
If there is hatred in your heart and you have the intent to harm that person, that is not compassion.
—The Dharma Discourses of Cardinal Master Chŏngsan, Chapter 8:34
