My 30 Years of Faith Are Crumbling After My Son's Death

Hello. Today Sunim did early morning work and held the Friday Dharma Q&A.

Sunim began his day with early morning practice and meditation, then proofread a manuscript. Since last night, it had seemed like rain would come to Dubuk, but in the end, no rain fell.

After finishing the proofreading, Sunim prepared to do some work with the Haengja (trainees).

"According to the weather forecast, it's supposed to rain for the next ten days starting today, so we should be able to plant perilla this weekend. Today, let's do a preliminary inspection of the upper field where we'll plant perilla, and then take a look at the Jungto Farm's rice paddies and fields."

When they arrived at the upper field, the farming team had already tilled it well.

Sunim did a simple measurement to figure out how many seedlings would be needed. Step by step, he measured the length and width of the field by his stride.

"Each row is 80 centimeters wide, and with a spacing of 50 centimeters between seedlings, my calculation shows we'll need about 1,200 seedlings. If one person plants about 2 per minute, 6 people could plant them all in 2 hours. With the Haengja's help, we should be able to get them all planted quickly tomorrow."

Sunim pulled weeds among the bellflower plants, cleared some kudzu vines, and came back down the mountain.

Next, Sunim went to check the water level of the reservoir in front of the village. The water had completely dried up, and the bottom of the reservoir was exposed.

"The reservoir has dried up completely because it hasn't rained."

On the way to the rice paddies, they came across a grandmother who lived in the house in front of the village hall, and she looked upset. A Haengja asked her:

"Grandmother, what's the matter?"

"The water deer keep coming into my field, so I put up a fence, but big trucks keep going back and forth next to my field and have ruined it. I've repaired it several times, but today the water deer completely destroyed my field. They ate all the beans, sweet potatoes, and even the green onions I planted."

In the sweltering heat, the grandmother stood holding a hoe, sweating profusely and looking very upset. As she continued to pour out her frustrations, Sunim quietly got out of the car and walked around inspecting her field fence.

In part of the field fence, the stakes had fallen over, and the wire holding the fence together was all tangled up.

The grandmother continued talking to the Haengja.

"When I tried to drive the fence stakes back in by myself, they wouldn't go into the ground at all. It's so hot today, and trying to fix this alone makes me so upset."

Sunim went to the Jungto Farm storage shed and brought back iron rods for rebuilding the fence, along with a hammer, string, hoe, pickaxe, and pliers.

First, he untangled all the wire. The wire was so tightly tangled that undoing it was no easy task.

After untangling all the wire, he pulled out all the broken fence stakes and put up new ones.

Because the ground was very hard from the drought, and the stakes the grandmother had were bent and not sharp at the ends, no matter how hard he struck them, they wouldn't go in.

Sunim replaced them with sturdy, sharp-tipped stakes he had brought from the Jungto Farm. Then he tightly wove the untangled wire around the stakes, restoring the fence.

Sunim and the Haengja repeatedly drove in stakes, strung the fence wire, and packed sturdy stones around the base of the stakes.

The damaged fence around the grandmother's field was finally complete.

Sunim inspected the entire fence connecting to the upper part of the grandmother's field.

"Alright, let's wrap up now."

By the time the work was done, nearly three hours had passed. Sunim gathered up the tools and returned them to the storage shed.

The grandmother, who had been working among her pepper plants, stopped a Haengja and asked:

"Has Sunim been working all this time?"

"Yes. (laughter)"

"Oh my, Sunim is always so generous when it comes to anything to do with our village. I really shouldn't have said anything, but I guess I was just so upset today. Thank you. There was no way I could have done this alone."

The grandmother's face finally brightened up.

After hearing that Jungto practitioners were pulling barnyard grass in the rice paddies, Sunim made his way over. From a distance, he could see the Jungto practitioners putting on rice paddy boots to prepare for weeding.

When they saw Sunim suddenly appear, the Jungto practitioners greeted him warmly.

"Which branch are you from?"

"We're from Dongnae."

"We're from Suseong."

"It's hot—are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, we're fine!"

"Please don't overdo it. Thank you."

After greeting the Jungto practitioners and moving on, a villager greeted Sunim.

"Sunim, hello. How have you been? It's really hot, isn't it?"

"It is very hot. By the way, the trees and grass along the roadside have grown thick, so every year we've been using a string trimmer to clear them. When I went to clear them this year, the trees looked red and dried out, as if they were dying. I wondered if someone had sprayed herbicide because they found trimming too difficult."

"No, Sunim, it's not from herbicide. It's probably because the weather has been so dry and hot."

"Oh, I see."

After having a combined breakfast and lunch and taking a rest, at around 4 PM, Sunim met with the Haengja who had returned for the 100-Day Chulga program at Dubuk Jungto Retreat Center. When the Haengja greeted Sunim with three bows and took their seats, Sunim asked:

"What were you doing before you came to the temple?"

"I was in school."
"I was doing theater."
"I was running a fried chicken restaurant."

"I was a fitness trainer."
"I was just hanging out."

"That's quite a variety. (laughter)"

"There's no such thing as a better way to live your life. When you're born as a human being, as long as you keep three things—not harming others, not causing them loss, and not troubling them—then no one can say whether you lived well or not, no matter how you lived. You can't look at a rabbit living in the mountains and say the rabbit lived well or poorly. Life is the same. There's no such thing as living well or living poorly—you can only say that you lived.

Whether you get married, achieve success, graduate from graduate school, run a fried chicken restaurant, or do farming—you just need to live in your own way. However you live, you just need to be satisfied with your life. The Buddha's teachings don't tell us 'this is the right way to live.' They only tell us that the reason people are living miserably in this world is because they aren't living properly. Nevertheless, based on my own experience, if I were to offer a suggestion, it would be that it's good to live a life that is at least somewhat helpful to others. If you have something clear that you want to do—like 'I want to invent something,' 'I want to become a member of parliament,' or 'I want to become an entrepreneur'—then live that way. But if there's nothing in particular you want to do, there are so many ways in the world you can help others.

If you live your life saving what's dying, helping those in difficulty, and listening to the suffering of those in pain, you'll find it rewarding. This is called Jiaksuseon (止惡修善), which means stopping harmful actions and cultivating good ones. In that sense, Jungto Society is a community of practitioners who have gathered to live while doing at least a little bit of good for others. So everything Jungto Society does is something that helps others.

Nevertheless, there are times when we end up causing trouble to others without realizing it. This morning, I was walking around checking how our rice paddies and fields are being farmed these days, and a village grandmother kept muttering to herself. When I asked the Haengja what she was saying, they told me that big trucks going back and forth had damaged her fence, so the water deer had eaten all her beans. The only people who could have damaged that fence are from Jungto Society. (laughter) Our field is beyond her field, so we're always driving trucks and tractors back and forth past it. I quietly listened to what the grandmother was saying. She said, 'Sunim is like my nephew, so I won't say anything, but...' She seemed to have a lot of resentment inside. (laughter) The grandmother feels it became this way because Jungto Society people came into the village and started working. She had tried to fix the fence herself but couldn't manage well because she's old and doesn't have the strength, so she was even more upset. So I ended up spending about three hours this morning fixing the grandmother's fence. (laughter) Going forward, I hope people will say, 'Oh, it's nice having Jungto Society people as neighbors. They fix fences, plow fields—they're really good people.' But because we also have a lot of work and it's hard, we don't always have the mental space to think about other things.

It's not that we harm others with bad intentions, but as we go about our lives, there are times when we cause harm to others without realizing it. And often, we ourselves aren't even aware of it. Practice isn't something difficult. It's about living together, not causing harm to others even in small matters, and living a meaningful life where we can be of help to them."

Sunim wrapped up his conversation with the Haengja and turned to his work.

Around 6 PM, raindrops finally started to fall. A heavy shower would pour down and then stop, repeating this pattern, and thunder and lightning struck as if a downpour was about to begin.

At 7:30 PM, Sunim held the Friday Dharma Q&A at the Dubuk Studio.

"Hello everyone. How have you been this past week? We've been having extremely hot weather day after day—so hot that a fan alone isn't enough to bear it. Here, the air is clean, so the sunlight feels even more intense.

Today, seeing the azalea trees planted along the roadside dying and drying out, I wondered if someone had sprayed herbicide. When I asked the villagers, they said it was probably because of the severe drought. Some regions are getting so much rain they're experiencing floods, while here we have such a severe drought that the reservoir bottoms are exposed. There's news of flood damage in the central region from heavy rain, but here not a drop of rain has fallen, and the drought has continued for a long time. Then today, for the first time, a shower fell and moistened the ground. They say it will continue to rain for the next ten days starting today, which is welcome news. When a welcome rain comes after a drought, you feel good even walking in it and getting wet. On the other hand, places that get too much rain suffer flood damage. Since the weather changes so often in summer, please all take care of your health. I think I sweated a great deal in Bhutan and became worn out from the heat, so recently I've been going through a difficult period with poor appetite and loss of motivation. Since coming down to Dubuk, I've been trying to restore energy to my body and mind—which keep feeling low—by doing physical labor in the mornings and evenings. It's been about two weeks now, and I'm feeling a bit better.

The 'Constitution' That Laid the Foundation of Our Democratic Nation

Today is Constitution Day, commemorating the enactment of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea. For the past 6,000 years of our long history, we lived in a dynastic era in which the king was the master of the country. Then, at the end of the Joseon Dynasty, Donghak thought emerged, declaring that 'humans are heaven.' In the dynastic era, the king was called the 'Son of Heaven.' But Donghak said that people are not the 'sons of God' but 'God' themselves. This became a new declaration that 'the people are the masters of the country.' We call this 'Huchongaebyeok (後天開闢),' the opening of the latter age. In the former age (Seoncheon), the king was the master of the country, but in the latter age (Hucheon), the people became the masters of the country. However, the Joseon Dynasty considered Donghak thought as deceiving the ignorant common people and executed Choe Je-u, the founder of Donghak. About 30 years later, his followers launched the Donghak Revolution to build a new nation, but the Joseon Dynasty brought in Japanese and Qing troops and brutally suppressed them. In this process, war broke out between Japan and Qing, and Japan's victory led to our nation losing its sovereignty to Japan.

On March 1, 1919, the entire nation rose up, declared independence, and began shouting 'Long live independence.' They established the Provisional Government in Shanghai and named the country 'Daehan Minguk (大韓民國),' the Republic of Korea. This means a nation where 'Min (民),' the people, are the masters of the country. The nation's name is 'Daehan,' and 'Min' is the master, so they proclaimed it as 'Minguk (民國),' a people's nation. In 1945, when Japan was defeated in World War II, we were liberated from Japanese rule. However, the United States and the Soviet Union, the victors of the war, did not allow our immediate independence and divided the Korean Peninsula along the 38th parallel, placing us again under US and Soviet administration for three years. Through this process, in 1948, the 'Republic of Korea' was established in the south and the 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' in the north. The Constitution can be said to declare 'what kind of country the Republic of Korea is' and to clarify the national identity. Beginning with the words 'We, the people of Korea, proud of a resplendent history and traditions dating from time immemorial,' the Constitution has been amended several times since then and has come down to us today. Tracing its roots, there is the Donghak Revolution, the March 1st Movement, and the establishment of the Shanghai Provisional Government. After that, the Constitution of the Republic of Korea was enacted, and on August 15, 1948, the government of the Republic of Korea was formally established. Through this, the government and nation of the Republic of Korea were fully established in both name and reality. The completion of the national legal system—the institutional framework—can be described as the 'enactment of the Constitution.' We should hold in our hearts a deep sense of gratitude for the countless independence activists and martyrs of democracy who fought endlessly to make our nation independent and to make the people the masters of the country, so that today's Republic of Korea could exist."

After Sunim's opening remarks, the Dharma Q&A began. A total of 4 people asked Sunim questions. Among them, this post introduces the exchange between Sunim and a mother who lost her son in an accident.

My 30 Years of Faith Are Crumbling After My Son's Death

"It has been 100 days since my 25-year-old son became a star in the sky. My son, who was so kind and had such a strong will to live, died in an accident when he collided with an illegally parked vehicle. My son left this world so young and so suddenly, and my body and mind are in tremendous pain. When I think about how frightened and how much pain my son must have felt at the moment of the accident, it's unbearably distressing. I want to escape from this pain and sadness as soon as possible. I also want to live as a mother my son would not be ashamed of. I have been practicing my faith for nearly 30 years. But through this experience, I saw my heart shaking at the very foundation of my faith. How should I overcome and get through this time?"

"From a child's perspective, when a parent dies, it feels like the sky is falling and you lose your senses. But when a child dies before a parent, they say the parent completely loses their spirit. No matter what I say, it won't help you, but let's set this aside for a moment and look at a few things. If I bought something expensive yesterday and it broke today, I would feel that the money was wasted. And even if it wasn't expensive, if something I've been using for 30 years breaks, I would still feel it was a shame—because I had kept it for a long time. Even a small item, if we've shared time with it for a long while, creates attachment, and when it disappears, there's a tremendous sense of loss. How much more, then, when a beloved parent or child dies—the sense of loss would be enormous. Since ancient times, there's been a saying that when parents die, you bury them in the mountains, but when a child dies, you bury them in your heart. This speaks to the immense shock a child's death brings to a parent. Moreover, since you divorced and raised your child alone, your attachment to your son must have been even deeper. In other words, the reason you're in such great pain is because you had a deep attachment from having depended on your son for so long, and so the pain of loss is also great. If you had been living with a husband or had three children, the attachment would have been spread out, and the shock might not have been this great. But because all your attachment was concentrated on your only son, you've been unable to gather your senses to this degree."

"You said your faith is shaking—is it Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"According to your faith, even turning a single hair on a person's head white or black is done by God the Creator. Then, is living and dying done by our will, or is it done by God?"

"God does it."

"But when attachment is too strong, dissatisfaction arises even with what God does. For matters of a certain degree, we can hold the attitude, 'If it is the Lord's will, let it be done.' But when something bad happens to someone we're strongly attached to, even if it's God's doing, it becomes difficult to accept. That's why the core of faith is having the attitude, 'Let it be done according to the Lord's will.' Accidents happen by chance. Your son also passed away in a chance accident. If the plane Sunim was on crashed, Sunim would naturally die too. But it's not right to interpret this theologically in a distorted way, saying 'he died because he didn't believe in God properly.' Because he was a son you raised alone after divorce, your attachment was bound to be unusually strong, and when such a son passed away in a sudden accident, it's a natural result that the emotional shock is great. Currently, due to the great sense of loss, you've suffered a mental shock and become unwell in both body and mind. At times like this, visiting a psychiatric department and taking medication to calm the extremely tense and overwhelmed nerves can greatly help stabilize your mind. Biologically, your brain nerves are in a state of excessive tension, so if you calm this down with medical help, you can feel much more at ease. After a few years, your heart can also recover significantly. Right now, the space in your heart that was filled with great attachment has become empty, so you feel hollow and out of your senses. For now, you need to see a psychiatrist to receive treatment and alleviate the shock inflicted on your mind. It's better not to feel that you must hold on to your current faith or that you should change your religion. Whatever your faith is, what's most important is that your heart finds peace. While keeping your current faith, it would be good to think, 'I'm somewhat dissatisfied, but since God did it, there must be a reason.' When praying too, if you gather your heart with 'I will accept the Lord's will. If it is the Lord's will, I will accept as a person of faith that my child was taken first,' you will find peace. If you continue to pray this way, your heart will gradually find stability."

As Sunim concluded the Dharma Q&A and asked the questioner for her thoughts, she shared:

"Sunim, I've listened deeply to your precious words today. When my son was alive, he was preparing to become a member of a life-saving rescue team, saying he wanted to do work that saves lives. I want to carry on my son's wishes. I want to use the money I've saved for my son to help those who are struggling and in difficulty—those in humble circumstances—as I live my life.

And listening to Sunim's words about my shaking faith, I realized once again that in the end, faith is loving God until the day I die and being obedient to His will. It will take time to fully accept this grief of having lost my son, but as Sunim said, I will endure well and get through this. Thank you."

Although one cannot dare to fathom how painful it must be to send a child away first, the mother's earnest heart—remembering her son to the end and wanting to carry his intentions forward into the world—was deeply conveyed, and those listening felt their hearts grow heavy.

"Let's end here for today. Next week, I'll be entering a meditation retreat, so I won't be able to have a direct conversation with you. We'll meet again the week after and talk together."

Concluding the Dharma Q&A, Sunim wrapped up the day.

The long-awaited rain has finally begun. Tomorrow, Sunim plans to plant perilla in the field with the Haengja.