Traces become path

“Don’t walk the snow-covered fields carelessly because your traces today will become a path for those who follow,” South Korean Seon master Seosan Daesa said.

This reporter’s mother, a pediatrician and a senior for her daughter, is now almost 90 years old. Having lost her husband long before, she must have already befriended loneliness. Yet, whenever asked about how she is doing, the veteran doctor always says she is too busy learning something to be bored. It is an answer that never fails in making one humble.

When this reporter was a high school senior, she was not left alone at night studying because her mother practiced calligraphy right next to her. The silent nights we spent together instilled confidence that everything will be all right. That is how she taught that a powerful way to lead children in the right direction is living our own life as diligently as possible, not nagging them. It is only when this reporter became a mother herself that she realized how such an educational method is difficult to practice but also desirable.

The old mother became a calligrapher with her work accepted for an exhibition a few years ago, and even won several awards later on. Her life gives a lesson that it is cool to live a healthy, self-reliant life in which one continues to have curiosity and learn something new, not joining the elderly who get lazy and dependent.

The above writings of Seosan Daesa, which the mother is currently practicing for calligraphy, reveals the monk’s upright mind who, even if he was a Seon master, organized and deployed warrior monks to save the country from the invasion of Japan. Mother has taught this reporter how to live right, by setting an example. Now it seems this reporter’s turn to take the lead so that the mother can feast her eyes on the colorful autumn leaves this fall.