Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Aknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Korea in the 1960s
- 2 The Columbans
- 3 Learning the Ropes
- 4 Cultural Adaptation
- 5 In at the Deep End
- 6 The Cultural Experience: Where to Begin
- 7 The Confucian Monolith
- 8 The Chosŏn Bureaucracy
- 9 The Buddhist Ingredient
- 10 Exclusivity Myths
- 11 Chilmajae Songs – Sŏ Chŏngju
- 12 Korea’s Greatest Asset
- 13 Tales of the Immortals
- 14 At the Cultural Coalface: Immersion, Submersion? – Take Your Pick
- 15 Nine Priest Immortals
- 16 Seeking the Way
- 17 For Those of us with Less Than Immortal Status
- 18 Learning Korean
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
17 - For Those of us with Less Than Immortal Status
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Aknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Korea in the 1960s
- 2 The Columbans
- 3 Learning the Ropes
- 4 Cultural Adaptation
- 5 In at the Deep End
- 6 The Cultural Experience: Where to Begin
- 7 The Confucian Monolith
- 8 The Chosŏn Bureaucracy
- 9 The Buddhist Ingredient
- 10 Exclusivity Myths
- 11 Chilmajae Songs – Sŏ Chŏngju
- 12 Korea’s Greatest Asset
- 13 Tales of the Immortals
- 14 At the Cultural Coalface: Immersion, Submersion? – Take Your Pick
- 15 Nine Priest Immortals
- 16 Seeking the Way
- 17 For Those of us with Less Than Immortal Status
- 18 Learning Korean
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Spring Rain
Hardly a day goes by that I don't recall
the Song poet's lament for seventy years
of listening without understanding
to the patter of spring rain in the river.
I listen on, still hoping for the flash
of that elusive harmonics of the heart.
SILENCE
In discussing the human heart, the monk Wŏlha said it is a place neither hot nor cold, a place where there are no worries or misgivings; no thoughts or feelings; no right, wrong, ugly, or beautiful; no time, space, attachment, or argument; nothing physical or material.
What could possibly fill that immense nothingness?
Silence?
The story is never entirely in the words.
Speaking My Mind in Sickness (hanshi)
The world has many flavours;
but I’m the same old me.
Caught between heaven and earth,
my body is a caricature.
It's midday in my mountain retreat;
quiet, not much afoot.
I lie here with the thousand books
in my belly drying in the sun.
Kim Shisŭp (1435–1493)RUFFLED FEATHERS
The painters came today: feathers were ruffled on both sides in what proved a keenly fought game. A roly-poly ajumŏni lay on the bell and served the first ball. I went to the door.
‘Is the bell broken, ajumŏni?’ I asked.
‘No, it's working fine,’ she said, stepping inside me with her brush and can, as if going into her own house and not into mine.
Love-15.
She didn't say who she was, nice day, by your leave, or why she had come. I suppose she presumed I knew, which I did, but it would have been nice if she’d said ‘Hello’ and I’d said ‘Come in.’
The old talk-decorative high form, ripe rice stalks bowing to the ground days are gone, I thought with a sigh.
‘Ajŏsshi,’ she asked, ‘are you going to paint the dust shute?’
‘I’m not painting anything,’ I replied, a bit annoyed. ‘You’re the painter here!’
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- Information
- My Korea40 Years without a Horsehair Hat, pp. 276 - 287Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2013