Chapter 380. Youngwoo Focuses on Cultivation 2
As soon as he sat down, stray thoughts began to rise again.
First came the cheers of the people who had watched him cut the trees.
He remembered their mouths hanging open in astonishment, their bright eyes, the faces of the monks and soldiers standing in the snow around him.
Then came the slightly embarrassed face of the guest-receiving monk asking him to cut the logs into smaller pieces.
It had been a shameless request, yet the monk had looked so serious that Youngwoo had found it impossible to refuse.
After that came Chonggi's respectful, almost warm manner, and the feelings he said the Balhae soldiers still held toward him.
Ahem.
Youngwoo laughed softly to himself.
Idle thoughts.
The moment he recognized them as idle thoughts, the disconnected images scattered like morning dew.
He had neither tried to hold on to them nor pushed them away.
He had simply noticed that his mind was wandering.
Once a thought was recognized for what it was, it lost its strength.
Youngwoo lightly touched the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth again and steadied his breathing.
The inhalation passed from the tip of his nose through his chest and descended into his lower abdomen.
The exhalation flowed out long and thin without losing the warmth of the dantian.
Whenever his mind tried to run outward, he followed the breath back down into his lower abdomen.
This was time he had to pass through anyway.
Idle thoughts would come.
Drowsiness would come.
The body would stiffen, and the lower back would grow heavy.
There had been nights when he dozed for so long that dawn arrived before he knew it.
The demon of sleep and wandering thoughts were not enemies that came to obstruct cultivation.
They were gates every practitioner had to pass through.
He did not fear them.
He simply waited for their time to come.
What mattered was not fighting them.
When an idle thought arose, one merely knew it as an idle thought.
When drowsiness came, one knew it as drowsiness.
When the breath became scattered, one gathered it again through regulated breathing.
When the breath settled, the qi sank.
When the qi sank, the mind returned to its place.
Only then could the circulation of qi continue.
Youngwoo did not hurry.
First, he examined the warming and nurturing of the lower dantian.
Then he observed how the qi moved through his waist and along his spine.
He did not force it upward.
He did not try to push through blocked places.
He simply followed where the breath reached and illuminated the places where the qi opened.
The proper way to cultivate did not lie in some extraordinary trick.
It lay in not being carried away for too long by wandering thoughts or drowsiness, and in returning to the breath the moment one became aware.
And once the breathing settled, it lay in circulating the qi of the dantian evenly.
Youngwoo lowered his eyes halfway again.
The empty meditation hall was so quiet that he could hear the snow falling outside.
Snow was gathering along the edge of the eaves.
Thoughts came and went.
His breathing gradually deepened.
Before half a sijin had passed, the young novice returned and lit the furnace behind the building.
The door remained closed, yet every sound was so clear that Youngwoo felt he could almost reach out and touch it.
The dull scrape of the furnace cover being opened.
The soft rustling of ashes being moved aside.
The sound of embers being pushed deeper in.
Even the faint crackling as dry kindling caught fire.
A little later, firewood was added.
Soon the embers caught hold of the grain.
A small flame came alive inside and pushed the darkness of the furnace back with red light.
The novice checked that the logs had caught properly, then quietly withdrew.
His footsteps pressed softly into the snow and faded into the distance.
White smoke first rose from the chimney behind the hall.
For a moment, it showed itself clearly in the cold air.
Then it thinned and became transparent.
Youngwoo sat listening.
Perhaps moving him here had partly been an effort to reduce costs.
This small place would be easier and cheaper to heat than the vast Mahavira Hall.
Heating one enormous hall would consume far more wood than warming this little three-room meditation hall.
Snow began to fall again.
It settled thickly on the chimney in the rear courtyard.
But it did not remain there for long.
Heat from the furnace warmed the chimney wall, and the white snow quietly melted.
The water ran thinly along the edge of the tiles, then touched the cold air again and froze.
The papered windows gradually darkened.
Time passed, but Youngwoo paid it no mind.
There was no one left to come looking for him now.
No one to tell him it was time to rise.
Though it was not the hour for evening service, the sound of a moktak drifted from somewhere.
Perhaps they were holding a rite for the dead.
Many people had died.
Only then did Youngwoo realize he should have asked for such a rite for those who had fallen.
He almost stood up to go request it, then stopped.
After the harsh words he had spoken earlier, he doubted anything proper would come out of his mouth.
Another idle thought.
He could no longer count how many times it had happened.
He had liked the wide, empty vastness of the Mahavira Hall.
But now he also liked this small, three-room meditation hall, cozy as a nest.
He did not make some grand resolution to practice diligently.
Nor did he strain himself to remain intensely alert.
He simply looked inward, with nothing else to do.
From this point onward, he had been told, cultivation became largely a matter of the mind.
Before, what mattered most were forms and techniques built through strength and muscle.
So he had repeated them.
Whenever he had time, he trained his body.
Sword movements that needed only one or two repetitions, he practiced dozens of times in a day—sometimes hundreds.
A fool who did nothing simply remained a fool.
He had to do something.
With that one thought, he had kept moving his body.
There was a great deal of waiting in military life.
Battles did not happen every day.
For a single battle, one trained for dozens of days, sometimes hundreds.
Equipment had to be checked every day.
Broken items had to be repaired.
Things that needed lacquer were lacquered.
Things that needed oil were oiled.
Bowstrings had to be loosened when not in use.
Arrow feathers had to be kept dry.
In winter, even drying the insides of one's boots properly mattered.
And even after all that work, time remained.
During those moments, Youngwoo did not simply stand around.
As in standing-post training, he bent his knees slightly, lowered his body, and settled his breathing.
He had been taught that movement and breath should be brought into rhythm with each other.
Even while working, he did not work thoughtlessly.
He counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
He matched the breath to the movement of his hands.
It was similar to the Buddhist practice of counting the breath.
Whenever another thought intruded and he lost track of the count, he started again from the beginning.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Breath-counting meditation (數息觀): a Buddhist practice in which one calms the mind by counting inhalations and exhalations. Rather than forcibly suppressing scattered thoughts, one notices them while counting the breath one by one, and when the mind wanders, simply returns to breathing. It is related to Ānāpānasati, known in the Chinese Buddhist canon as 安般念, the contemplation of inhalation and exhalation. The emphasis is not on forcing or manipulating the breath, but on naturally observing and counting it as it comes and goes.
Because he had always lived among many people, truly quiet time alone had been rare.
In the morning, he rose early and practiced sword forms in places where no one else was around.
At night, instead of lying down immediately in the sleeping quarters, he sat and practiced meditation.
In that way, he filled every small part of daily life with cultivation or something that could substitute for it.
His teacher had said practice had to be dense and continuous.
A person practiced for one or two sijin out of the twelve in a day and then claimed to have worked hard.
Anyone could do that.
And if one did only what everyone else did, one would become only what everyone else became.
From the day his life was first threatened, Youngwoo had cultivated relentlessly.
At first, he had done it to survive.
He continued even after surviving.
The habit had sunk deep into his body.
Now he could see himself breathing.
He could almost grasp the current of qi created by that breathing.
The way the qi moved according to the inner method resembled the movement of the heavens across the night sky.
Several points connected by thin lines led to other points, then onward again.
Were those called meridians?
Acupoints?
The names did not matter.
He had been told that what could not be named was more important.
At first, he had memorized the general principles of the inner method exactly as written and forced his body to match them.
Now, without effort, the qi circulated by itself along those paths.
From here onward came the cultivation of a true master.
He had been told the mental aspect mattered most.
If so, should he have studied more texts?
Read more scriptures?
Reflected more deeply on their meaning?
Learned more about the mind?
His teacher had told him to gwan and jo—to observe and illuminate himself.
Gwan meant to look inward.
Jo meant to cast light upon what was seen.
Before trying to correct anything by force, one first had to see it.
Only after seeing clearly could the direction of the road ahead reveal itself.
Youngwoo settled his body again.
He lightly touched the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth and let his breath descend long and thin.
He examined the warmth of the lower dantian, passed through the resonance of the middle dantian, and directed his awareness toward the stillness above that he had not yet reached.
Idle thoughts came and went.
Drowsiness would come soon enough.
But that too was simply time that had to pass.
Once recognized as an idle thought, an idle thought lost its strength.
Once recognized as drowsiness, even drowsiness became only another current passing through him.
Youngwoo did not force himself to drive either away.
If they were part of a process that had to pass, he merely hoped they would pass quickly and observed them as he had been taught.
He looked.
And he illuminated.
Slowly, ever more deeply, he sank into himself.