Have Some Tea

29. 차나 한잔 마시고 가게

29. Have Some Tea

In my teenage years, I became deeply absorbed in the Eastern classics and enrolled in Sungkyunkwan University’s Korean philosophy department so that I could explore them in greater depth.

Yet most of my classmates were more focused on studying for the official employment certification exams or finding jobs than on studying in their fields. Even my friends who hoped to become junzi—the Confucian term for a “superior person”—often lost their way in the classroom and returned exhausted.

If the university was using the scriptures to teach the meaning of cultivation, shouldn’t it have also provided instruction on conduct and ways of training the mind? Unfortunately, the matter of cultivation was left to the individual.

Joining the Won-Buddhist order at over 30 years of age, I enrolled in the Wonkwang University Department of Won-Buddhism. The world seen through my eyes did not appear much different than before.

In principle, there should be a balance between the process of studying the Buddha’s words in writing and the practice of disciplining one’s body to achieve enlightenment through the mind. Yet the teaching was too focused on theory and I could see my fellow practitioners fumbling. Among the pre-ministers, there was a growing sense of dissatisfaction—a feeling that this was not right.

The Won-Buddhism department’s student association proposed to the Central Won-Buddhism Headquarters’ education department that they organize a discussion forum. But when the meeting finally came to pass, the mood was quite different from what I had anticipated.

The rebukes directed at the pre-ministers by the education department minister bordered on insulting; the disciplinary attitude toward the younger students was positively authoritarian. The young students were cowed, but I was thicker-skinned, and I felt like I could not just sit there and do nothing.

With a vehement tone, I spoke up, giving a point-by-point rebuttal.

All of my pent-up anger came rushing out. My body was shaking; my face blazed red. After a heated exchange, I was finally asked to leave the room.

On my way back to my dormitory, I went to the prayer room and locked the door. I lit a candle and sat myself down. I felt embarrassed. For the entire night, my head was a muddle, my excitement having not yet abated. Regardless of who was in the right and who was in the wrong, had I needed to behave that way? Couldn’t I have been a bit wiser?

The following day, I was politely admonished by the dormitory housemaster Rev. An, who told me that a person who could not control his emotions was not a practitioner of the Way. I quietly agreed and went to see the education department minister with whom I had argued the evening before so that I could apologize for my rudeness.

The incident was resolved. But my indignance had merely been replaced by mortification; I was still in the thrall of my emotions. I could not seem to escape my sense of shame.

“Hey there! Baek!”

I had been riding my bike with my head down, deep in thought. From behind me, I heard a young woman calling my name. Startled, I braked abruptly. I had never heard anyone call someone’s name like that on the temple grounds.

The sound was like Linji’s katsu shout—at that moment, my mind suddenly opened, and I was surprised to see all of the guilt that had been choking me simply vanish without a trace. I turned my head to see my fellow student Hwa waving and smiling broadly.

That was not the last of it, of course. It would come upon me suddenly from time to time after that, forcing me to reflect on it all over again.

But as the frequency and intensity diminished, I saw myself improving, slowly but surely.

One autumn day, I visited an acupuncturist to inquire about my health. Slowly looking over my eyes, the acupuncturist told me there was a wrinkle in a certain part of my ear known as the byeongcheom and asked me if I found myself rising to anger from time to time.

It seemed like all the past workings of my mind had come together to leave their mark upon my ear. How deep or shallow these kinds of marks are depends on what we do, I was told.

I stand between the thoughts of the past, presented to me by my body, and the body of the future that will result from my thoughts now. Rather than rushing to mirror the anger that visits from time to time like an unbidden guest—and then being left in regret once it goes away—I wish to treat it as my friend, inviting it in for tea every time it comes around.

He who checks rising anger as a charioteer checks a rolling chariot, him I call a true charioteer. Others only hold the reins.

—Dhammapada, Chapter 17, “Anger”