Master Woo Myung Poem – Moon-Kyung-Sae-Jae
I can see the terraced rice paddies in these mountains;
hail falls from the sky.
‘Moon-Kyung-Sae-Jae’ is a mountain pass.
In the old days, people from the Youngnam district
walked this pass to get to Hanyang (present-day Seoul).
The climate here now is not different from
what it was back then.
Thus I can feel the bleakness
that those people walking this pass must have felt.
It is said that there were many bandits here
and so people would gather at taverns
to walk the pass together.
The image of this tavern is vivid in my mind.
It is over six kilometers to get to
the ridge of the mountain.
Thus this lonely mountain pass was one of solitude.
The terraced rice paddies are still here.
There are the graves of those who had once lived;
when they lived, no one knows.
The snow is falling.
Like then, hail falls.
There is no way of finding the people of the past.
The gates are the only reminder of them.
I am reminded of the frailty of human life.
Then the thought hits me:
of all the people who have come and go,
how many of them passed on knowing what life was?
Not a single one of them.
People seem to think that
those who passed on
took with them their relationships
as well as their stories.
However as time passes,
the only thing that lasts in life
is its futility.
They resent that there has been
no bright beacon – no bright light –
in the world for them who are unwise.
They resent Heaven.
But though they have gone about
living their lives this way,
all are the one Nature.
Heaven simply exists as it is.
The snow is simply falling.
-Woo Myung-
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