January 14, 2019 marked exactly twenty-nine years since I was born on January 14, 1990.
These twenty-nine years have been made up of a little joy and a great deal of pain and torment. I have kept going this far, through leaving home, through striving with all my strength, while carrying many problems within me that kept causing trouble in my life. They surfaced again and again, yet for a long time I could not truly see them myself. As those hardships accumulated, they eventually crushed what I had believed was a strong psychological defense. In the cruelest possible way, fate forced me to spend one of the most valuable stretches of my life reflecting on who I am. Only when I finally recognized all of this did I begin to understand where these problems came from. What consoles me is that this realization has not come too late.
Over these twenty-nine years, I have come to see clearly the endless suffering that desire and greed produce. Because of desire, I have watched people struggle for gain with my own eyes. Even when morality is violated and conscience stands condemned, the pursuit of benefit still circles restlessly in people’s hearts. Conscience cannot be weighed or held like a material object, but it can be felt in words and in actions. As desire expands, greed grows with it. If the devil offered three wishes, people would still wish for three more wishes. Those who have nothing want something; those who have something want more. Desire is a bottomless pit that can never be filled.
When people chase profit through desire, then profit becomes the first principle. Under that shadow, no matter how beautiful the words are, no matter how dazzling the promises or publicity may be, those who already hold power and benefit cannot hide how thoroughly their hearts have been occupied by self-interest. And the greed born from desire can destroy so much—sometimes even a person’s lifelong happiness.
These twenty-nine years have also changed how I understand life, death, and everything tied to them. Life and death may seem governed by destiny, but destiny is not fixed and immovable, because the nature of the universe is constant change. Nothing remains forever as it is. What appears predetermined is altered by the heart, and by the way the heart reveals itself outwardly through human conduct. With our limited eyes, we never truly know what the future will become. We often do not know whether tomorrow or impermanence will arrive first.
That is why I can no longer assume there will always be plenty of time ahead. I can no longer live as though my unfulfilled wishes will always have another chance to be satisfied. I know now that each day should be treated as if it were the last day of life. And on the last day of life, what matters is not indulging a depthless appetite for more, but forming the resolve—and taking the action—to free oneself from the cycle bound up with life and death.
These twenty-nine years have also made me feel, in a very personal way, the truth of a writer’s line: a person’s life is the repeated return of childhood experience. I have felt deeply what my own suffering has done to me. It is as if an invisible thread has been pulling me in a certain direction all along. And what is that direction? It is toward seeing the world as truthfully and as completely as I can, toward perceiving at least part of the causes and appearances behind the world as it is. Only then can I face life with the right attitude. Only then can I seek a meaningful acceptance of living.
These same years have also shown me how heavy my own karmic burden is. People often say that everything is the best arrangement. But that “arrangement” is the working of karma: it is what brought me into this world already carrying a weight, made me bear some of the heaviest things this world can place on a person, and repeatedly pressed and tormented my heart. After reflection, I finally arrived at a kind of awakening. I no longer need to remain disappointed in myself, because the self I call “me” does not completely control everything that belongs to me. None of it exists outside the laws that govern heaven and life.
Even now, I still do not live according to the ordinary path most people follow. The pressure is real, but I do not believe I am doing anything wrong. I am fortunate that I did not numb myself with busyness. I am fortunate that I did not use busyness to bury thought and self-examination. If I had, I would still be pressing enormous, heavy damage down into the bottom of my heart, and one day I would pass it on to the people closest to me in the future, making them live with me beneath the dark cloud formed by my own past and my own upbringing.
I know that if I do not do everything I can to dispel those dark clouds, they will eventually become a storm, sweeping through every person I meet and every part of my life. Anyone who has not lived through this kind of experience can never fully understand this pain or this struggle. But if I devote my full strength to resolving it, my life will undergo a profound turning point. That turning point will not be a dramatic gain in money or status. It will be a spiritual effort to remake myself from within, something no utilitarian way of thinking can fully explain.
At last, I no longer want to lose myself or destroy myself in a world overflowing with material desire because of the wounds left by everything I have endured.
May you never go through the suffering I have known. May the happiness I have already touched be within your reach.
I bow once to the passing years, and from here on, I will not turn back.
January 14, 2019