Loving Nature to Learn from It

Loving Nature to Learn from It
My personality was such that I had to know about everything
that I could see. I couldn’t just pass over something
superficially. I would start thinking, “I wonder what the
name of that mountain is. I wonder what’s up there.” I had to go see for
myself. While still a child, I climbed to the tops of all the mountains
that were in a five-mile radius of our home. I went everywhere, even
beyond the mountains. That way, when I saw a mountain shining in
the morning sunlight, I could have an image in my mind of what was
on that mountain and I could gaze at it in comfort. I hated even to look
at places I didn’t know. I had to know about everything I could see,
and even what was beyond. Otherwise, my mind was so restless that I
couldn’t endure it.
When I went to the mountains, I would touch all the flowers and
trees. I wasn’t satisfied just to look at things with my eyes; I had to touch
the flowers, smell them, and even put them in my mouth and chew on
them. I enjoyed the fragrances, the touch, and the tastes so much that
I wouldn’t have minded if someone had told me to stick my nose in
the brush and keep it there the whole day. I loved nature so much that
anytime I went outside, I would spend the day roaming the hills and
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fields and forget about having to go home. When my older sisters would
go into the hills to gather wild vegetables, I would lead the way up the
hill and pick the plants. Thanks to this experience, I know a lot about
many kinds of wild vegetables that taste good and are high in nutrition.
I was particularly fond of a member of the sunflower family called
sseum-ba-gwi (scientific name Ixeris dentata). You could mix it with
seasoned bean paste and put it in a dish of gochujang bibimbap, and it
would have a wonderful flavor. When you eat sseum-ba-gwi, you need
to put it in your mouth and then hold your breath for a few seconds.
This is the time it takes for the bitter taste to go away and for a different,
sweet taste to come out. It’s important to get the correct rhythm to enjoy
the wonderful flavor of sseum-ba-gwi.
I used to enjoy climbing trees as well. Mainly I climbed up and down
a huge, two-hundred-year-old chestnut tree that was in our yard. I liked
the view from the upper branches of that tree. I could see even beyond
the entrance to the village. Once I was up there, I wouldn’t want to come
down. Sometimes, I would be up in the tree until late at night, and the
youngest of my older sisters would come out of the house and make a
fuss over how dangerous it was and try to get me to come down.
“Yong Myung, please come down,” she would say. “It’s late, and you
need to come in and go to bed.”
“If I get sleepy, I can sleep up here.”
It didn’t matter what she said; I wouldn’t budge from my branch in
the chestnut tree. Finally, she would lose her temper, and shout at me,
“Hey, monkey! Get down here now!”
Maybe it’s because I was born in the Year of the Monkey that I enjoyed
climbing trees so much. When chestnut burrs hung in clusters
from the branches, I would take a broken branch and jump up and
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down to knock them down. I remember this being a lot of fun. I feel
sorry for children these days who don’t grow up in the countryside and
don’t experience this kind of enjoyment.
The birds flying free in the sky were also objects of my curiosity.
Once in a while some particularly pretty birds would come by, and I
would study everything I could about them, noticing what the male
looked like and what the female looked like. There were no books back
then to tell me about the various kinds of trees, shrubs, and birds, so
I had to examine each myself. Often I would miss my meals because
I would be hiking around the mountains looking for the places where
migratory birds went.
Once I climbed up and down a tree every morning and evening for
several days to check on a magpie nest. I wanted to see how a magpie
lays its eggs. I finally got to witness the magpie lay its eggs, and I became
friends with the bird as well. The first few times it saw me, the magpie
let out a loud squawk and made a big fuss when it saw me approach.
Later, though, I could get close and it would remain still.
The insects in that area were also my friends. Every year, in late
summer, a clear-toned cicada would sing in the upper branches of a
persimmon tree that was right outside my room. Each summer, I would
be grateful when the loud, irritating sounds of the other types of cicada
that made noise all summer would suddenly stop and be replaced by
the song of the clear-toned cicada. Its song let me know that the humid
summer season would soon pass, with the cool autumn to follow.
Their sound went something like this: “Sulu Sulululululu!”
Whenever I would hear the clear-toned cicada sing like this, I would
look up into the persimmon tree and think, “Of course, as long as it’s
going to sing, it has to sing from a high place so that everyone in the
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village can hear it and be glad. Who could hear it if it went into a pit
and sang?”
I soon realized that both the summer cicadas and the clear-toned
cicadas were making sounds for love.
Whether they were singing, “Mem mem mem” or “Suluk sulu,” they
were making sounds in order to attract their mates. Once I realized this,
I couldn’t help but laugh every time I heard an insect start singing.
“Oh, you want love, don’t you? Go ahead and sing, and find yourself
a good mate.”
Gradually I learned how to be friends with everything in nature in a
way that we could share our hearts with each other.
The Yellow Sea coast was only about two and a half miles from our
home. It was near enough that I could easily see it from any high place
near our home. There was a series of water pools along the path to the
sea, and a creek flowed between them. I would often dig around one
of those pools smelling of stale water to catch eel and freshwater mud
crab. I would poke around in all sorts of places to catch different kinds
of water life, so I came to know where each kind lived. Eels, by nature,
do not like to be visible, so they hide their long bodies in crab holes and
other similar places. Often, though, they can’t quite fit all of their bodies
in the holes, so the ends of their tails remain sticking out. I could easily
catch them, simply by grabbing the tail and pulling the eel out of its
hole. If we had company in our home and they wanted to eat steamed
eel, then it was nothing for me to run the three and a half miles roundtrip
to the water pools and bring back about five eels. During summer
vacations, I would often catch more than forty eels in a day.
There was one chore I didn’t like doing. This was to feed the cow.
Often, when my father would tell me to feed the cow, I would take it to
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the meadow of the neighboring village, where I would tie it up and run
away. But after a while, I would start to worry about the cow. When I
looked back, I could see it was still there, right where I had tied it. It just
stayed there, half the day or more, mooing and waiting for someone to
come feed it. Hearing the cow mooing in the distance, I would feel sorry
for it and think, “That cow! What am I going to do with it?” Maybe you
can imagine how I felt to ignore the cow’s mooing. Still, when I would
go back to it late in the evening, it wouldn’t be angry or try to gore me
with its horns. Instead it seemed happy to see me. This made me realize
that a person’s perspective on a major objective in life should be like
that of a cow. Bide your time with patience, and something good will
come to you.
There was a dog in our home that I loved very much. It was so smart
that when it came time for me to come home from school, it would run
to meet me when I was still a long distance from home. Whenever it
saw me, it acted happy. I would always pet it with my right hand. So,
even if it happened to be on my left side, it would go around to my right
side and rub its face against me, begging to be petted. Then I would take
my right hand and pet it on its head and back. If I didn’t, the dog would
whine and run circles around me as I walked down the road.
“You rascal,” I would say. “You know about love, don’t you? Do you
like love?”
Animals know about love. Have you ever seen a mother hen sitting
on her eggs until they hatch? The hen will keep her eyes open and stamp
her foot on the ground so no one can go near it. I would go in and out of
the chicken coop, knowing it would make the hen angry. When I would
go into the coop, the hen would straighten its neck and try to threaten
me. Instead of backing away, I would also act in a threatening manner
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toward the hen. After I went into the coop a few times, the hen would just
pretend not to see me. But she would keep herself bristled up and her claws
long and sharp. She looked like she wanted to swoosh over and attack me,
but she couldn’t move because of the eggs. So she just sat there in anguish.
I would go near and touch her feathers, but she wouldn’t budge. It seemed
that it was determined not to move from that spot until her eggs had
hatched, even if it meant letting someone pluck all the feathers from her
bosom. Because it is so steadfastly attached to its eggs through love, the hen
has an authority that keeps even the rooster from doing whatever it wants.
The hen commands complete authority over everything under heaven, as if
to say, “I don’t care who you are. You had better not disturb these eggs!”
There is also a demonstration of love when a pig gives birth to piglets.
I followed a mother pig around so I could watch it give birth to its
litter. At the moment of birth, the mother pig gives a push with a loud
grunt and a piglet slips out onto the ground. The pig lets out another
loud grunt and a second piglet comes out. It was similar with cats and
dogs. It made me very happy to see these little baby animals that hadn’t
even opened their eyes come into the world. I couldn’t help but laugh
with joy.
On the other hand, it gave me much anguish to witness the death
of an animal. There was a slaughterhouse a little ways from the village.
Once a cow was inside the slaughterhouse, a butcher would appear out
of nowhere and strike the cow with an iron hammer about the size of a
person’s forearm. The cow would fall over. In the next moment, it would
be stripped of its hide and its legs would be cut off. Life hangs on so
desperately that the stumps remaining on the cow after its legs were cut
off would continue to quiver. It brought tears to my eyes to watch this,
and I cried out loud.
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From when I was a child, I have had a certain peculiarity. I could
know things that others didn’t, as if I had some natural paranormal
ability. If I said it was going to rain, then it would rain. I might be sitting
in our home and say, “The old man Mr. So-and-So in the next village
doesn’t feel well today.” And it would always be right. From the time
I was eight I was well known as a champion matchmaker. I only had
to see photographs of a prospective bride and groom and I could tell
everything. If I said, “This marriage is bad,” and they went ahead and
married anyway, they would inevitably break up later. I’ve been doing
this until I’ve turned 90, and now I can tell much about a person just
seeing the way he sits or the way he laughs.
If I focused my thoughts, I could tell what my older sisters were
doing at a particular moment. So, although my older sisters liked
me, they also feared me. They felt that I knew all their secrets. It may
seem like I have some incredible paranormal power, but actually
it isn’t anything to be surprised about. Even ants, which we often
think of as insignificant creatures, can tell when the rainy season is
coming, and they go to where they can stay dry. People in tune with
nature should be able to tell what is ahead for them. It’s not such a
difficult thing.
You can tell which way the wind is going to blow by carefully
examining a magpie’s nest. A magpie will put the entrance to its
nest on the opposite side from the direction where the wind is going
to blow. It will take twigs in its beak and weave them together in a
complex fashion, and then pick up mud with its beak and plaster the
top and bottom of the nest so that the rain doesn’t get in. It arranges
the ends of the twigs so that they all face the same direction. Like
a gutter on a roof, this makes the rain flow toward one place. Even
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magpies have such wisdom to help them survive, so wouldn’t it be
natural for people to have this type of ability as well?
If I were at a cow market with my father, I might say, “Father, don’t
buy this cow. A good cow should look good on the nape of its neck and
have strong front hooves. It should have a firm buttocks and back. This
cow isn’t like that.” Sure enough, that cow would not sell. My father
would say, “How do you know all this?” and I would reply, “I’ve known
that since I was in mother’s womb.” Of course, I wasn’t serious.
If you love cows, you can tell a lot about them. The most powerful
force in the world is love, and the most fearful thing is a mind and body
united. If you quiet yourself and focus your mind, there is a place deep
down where the mind is able to settle. You need to let your mind go to
that place. When you put your mind in that place and go to sleep, then
when you awake you will be extremely sensitive. That is the moment
when you should turn away all extraneous thoughts and focus your
consciousness. Then you will be able to communicate with everything.
If you don’t believe me, try it right now. Each life form in the world seeks
to connect itself with that which gives it the most love. So if you have
something that you don’t truly love, then your possession or dominion
is false and you will be forced to give it up.