Orphan Monk

Genetics are at work inside of us, they flow like a river through our blood.  This force has been guiding me through the rocks and fallen trees, through the crests and breaks, nets and bait, claws and teeth of life, and keeping me on course despite the temptation to cast myself ashore, to be saved or led by someone else.  

Korean culture is rooted in Buddhism; I was not raised Buddhist, but there is a current in my veins pulling me toward it.  The first Koreans originated from nomadic tribes; and though I was not raised by Koreans, my blood is 100% Korean and my core feels most at peace while traveling with the seasons.  I look to nature as a teacher, a mother, and a god; I don’t know if this is my bloodline guiding me, but there’s a force in every cell of my body that tells me it is.

When the world around you doesn’t fit, doesn’t reflect who you are, doesn’t look, feel, or think like you, the only way to find out who you are is to turn it all off and look in.  You have to look in to find out.  You have to go deeper than your own layers influenced by the outside.  You must reach in to find your origin.  The place that breathed life into you.  Your creators.  Your ancestors are your gods.  When you don’t have them to look to, go back further…all the way to the roots of the earth.  To find the original you.

Turn off the TV.  Turn off the phone.  Turn off the people who watch TV and are always on their phone.  Turn off everyone looking to everyone else to figure out who they are.  Turn off society.  Turn it all off.  Turn off the voices telling you to turn back.  Then once it’s all off, it gets really dark, like a pitch black hole that you’re sinking into.  But it’s only then, in this dark moment, that you start to feel this pull…it’s you…it’s you sinking into yourself…don’t be scared…it feels like dying…like sinking into the unknown…let yourself fall into yourself…it’s your pure intuition taking over…it’s your genetics…the generations that made your blood, your cells, your life…it’s your purest self…it’s the whole you…the steady balance between positive and negative…leading your focus to a pinpoint of light…no other distractions…no walls…no chemicals…no impurities…no mistaking your light for someone else’s…no flailing ego feeding the wound with kerosene beckoning others to set you into flames…it’s your inner light…the authentic one…the one passed down by your ancestors…that can never be replaced…and will never go out…their fire burning on your wick…through the flow and throws of life…as part of nature…it’s the hole you, being filled up by the whole you…it’s you filling your place in life…filling your place on this planet…without the whole you, you do not exist.  You are merely a cavity, an empty vessel, with everybody else steering your ship.

But when you sink into your own skin, your own vessel, you do more than exist, you become a rooted part of the earth, you become the flame to pass on to the next wick, you become part of the river…then you have the power to decide the direction it flows next.

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.  After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”  ~Zen Proverb

My Korean foster mother who had me up to 3 months of age was a Buddhist.  I do not have any information on my biological parents background.