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78 CHAPTER 5 On New Year’s Day of the Twenty-Fifth Year after Joining the Monastery Twenty-four years is a fragment of a moment compared to the innumerable kalpas [eons of time] that existed before and will exist after this life. All the same, the time before I joined the monastery, though only twentysix years ago, seems to me like the ancient past. I published the following end-of-year poem in the Chosŏn Daily newspaper: Half of my lifetime has gone by and won’t be recovered; The time afterward I was to hold on to use it for my benefit; This year too was like a galloping horse, though: It once again kicked me and ran away. This poem reflects what I truly felt at the time. I had made a new resolution the year before that I would make better use of my time to devote it to my own work. But I was not able to keep that promise. I had by then been a Buddhist for about five years. Before that, since the time I was carried on my parents’ backs, I was a follower of Jesus Christ. When I was about eight years old, I heard that all those who did not believe in Jesus Christ would go to hell, a very frightening idea to a child. However, I believed that my parents and I would have no problem, since we were believers, and thought how pitiful were all the people who did not believe in Jesus. I imagined that I would become a missionary when I grew up, even proselytizing to cannibals in far-off islands. I believed that God would not let me be eaten, or, if my sinful body became food for cannibals, He would take my soul to heaven. Such thoughts gave me great satisfaction. Nevertheless, proof only by the mind (faith) cannot have strong power (to those who do not have rigorous faith).1 I did not fully appreciate the value of faith. I believed in Jesus at that time, but I thought that the teachings of Christianity could not be realized in this world or witnessed in this physical body. On New Year’s Day of the Twenty-Fifth Year 79 I absent-mindedly believed in God’s grace and protection and that if a person’s prayers did not bring visible results it meant that he was not a qualified believer.2 Because I was unaware at the time that Jesus taught by skillful means to guide ignorant sentient beings, questions and doubts arose in my mind. Eventually I lost faith—that precious treasure. Why, I asked, did God, who is omnipotent and omnipresent, not foresee that Adam and Eve would eat the apple of good and evil? He gave them freedom ! Being human beings and full of desire, Adam and Eve were bound to eat the apple in spite of God’s command not to. If they had freedom, was it not clear that they would use their freedom to eat the apple? If God was the original creator, the seeds of good and evil must have been part of the design of His creation. Is He therefore not responsible for both good and evil? Being God’s creations, humans cannot have the sense of an individual identity “I.” Therefore, would they not feel it unfair that they should suffer in hell for their actions? These doubts liberated me from the pressure of believing that God was always watching me, and I fell into a lifestyle that deviated from the teachings of God. I became an apostate, denying even the doctrine of the existence of heaven and hell and putting my soul in danger. For almost ten years I was a non-believer and a woman who flaunted social convention. I claimed that it was a weak and foolish person who hid and put up with her discontent in order to save face and because of the opinion of others. I also asserted that morality cannot have an absolute value and that chastity cannot be the standard by which to measure the purity or impurity of one’s body. I contended that a person who can erase even the shadow of her former partner from her mind can renew herself and become a virgin once again. Such a person is a free individual. Anyone who can regain her virginity has great courage and can overcome whatever difficulties she might face to create a...

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