Venerable Beopjeong, Have you been well?

How have you been in the mountain temple as the chilly winds of autumn settle in? Around this time of year, you must be busy harvesting the crops from your garden. Or perhaps, as you mentioned in your last letter, the wild animals ruined everything again this season, leaving you with an empty field and nothing to gather for the fall harvest.

These days, you have often come to my mind unexpectedly, and for a time I prayed before God for you and for the Buddhist community. How troubled your heart must be these days. Even I—who am not a Buddhist—felt deep pain and sorrow when I saw the newspaper photos of monks wielding sticks and baseball bats, pushing and striking one another in violent clashes.

I still vividly remember your lament over the Jogyesa incident back in 1994: “A person must be free from all things, both inwardly and outwardly. As long as one is trapped by desire or ego, one cannot sense the mystery of the universe that fills both the inner and outer worlds. Only those who are truthful and honest before themselves can become honorable human beings.”

And yet, even those who turn their backs on worldly things often lose all restraint when faced with vested interests. How can we pretend that such disgrace belongs only to the Buddhist community? How can we dismiss it as something that happens only in Korea? Wherever people gather, fierce battles of “your side versus mine” erupt. Those ruled by emotion rather than reason defile temples and sanctuaries, choosing the path of beasts rather than that of honorable human beings—pursuing things that have nothing to do with the will of God.

Your story about the lotus flowers comes to mind. You once said that several years ago, when lotus season arrived, you went to Hyangwonjeong Pavilion in Gyeongbokgung Palace to breathe in the fragrance you had longed for. But to your shock, there were no lotus blossoms—only the fishy smell of carp swarming in the pond. Surprised, you hurried to the Secret Garden, but there too, the lotus flowers had vanished. You lamented that even during the Joseon Dynasty, when Buddhism was persecuted, the lotus had been tended and preserved—yet under a free democratic system, it had disappeared.

“Ask the flower,” you said. “To which religion does a flower belong?”

I wholeheartedly agreed. How could a flower ever belong to a particular sect? In the ponds of Gyeongbokgung, in the Secret Garden, in the waters of Korea’s historic gardens, lotus flowers should bloom. Those places are the grounds of long history, where the fragrance of a people flows. How foolish and childish it is for humans, with their self‑constructed notions of sacredness, to quarrel even with a flower—plucking it, uprooting it, discarding it. And why, instead, have imported carp taken over those waters? What are we to contemplate, what fragrance are we to breathe in, from waters muddied by those fattened fish?

As you know, whenever the occupant of the Blue House changes, the winds within the religious world grow fierce. As if political power were protecting religion—or religion protecting power—hidden battles for privilege intensify behind the scenes. Such a posture cannot stand honorably before either Jesus or the Buddha. Under any administration, religious freedom must be protected, justice upheld, and mutual respect practiced through autonomy, compassion, and love. To belittle another tradition and act carelessly is already to have departed from the essence of religion. Yet such people often seize influence in the world, and it pains both the ear and the heart.

Venerable Beopjeong, as autumn deepens, I find myself longing for the sound of the temple wind chime. They say that people, too, deepen as they each find their own sound. Even the foolish will someday have a chance to grow wise. As the season turns, I hope you will tend to your chimney, gather dry firewood, and draw water from the stream into your kitchen so that even if you are snowbound in midwinter, you will endure comfortably.

As I picture your mountain hermitage, the sound of the stream of passing years seems to echo even more clearly.

With respect, Wanhee Yoon

October 16, 1999