Prayer for the Sick Father

29
At Guinsa Temple, Danyang, 1992



It was not just the problem of speed but that of absolute quantity. Stepping out of the exam room of Dongguk University and walking down the slopy road toward the Changchung-dong Street, winding up the four-day war with incompetence and inefficiency, Dano felt sorry for her and missing Tschai at the same time. He walked with a hasty pace toward the taxi stand.

As regards Tschai, she had no expectations from husband Dano's belated obsession with a judicial post. That might be a reckless challenge toward the impossible. And that might be greed. She didn't have any idea about her becoming a judge's, or prosecutor's, or lawyer's wife. She was street smart. She was reputed to be tough, so much so that she would be able to plant her own tree roots even in the harsh climate of a desert. She only hoped that her husband would get started as the responsible man and father with a stable job.

Regrettably Dano, as a household owner, did not get settled in a safe place with a stable job, so the household troops could not stop getting mobile. The mastermind of the movement was Tschai, who planned, organized and materialized the movement to Mokdong Apartment complex. The apartment was the first of their own house in the true sense of the word, in 1989, 15 years since they lived in Seoul. All the resources originated from Tschai which financed the move, supported the household, and financed the education of three son children who had gone to higher and lower education facilities.

Tschai got much more troubled by public transit transfers caused by Dano's professional inability, and his father Toung Doung got a cancer onslaught. Tschai could not help but make transit transfers from bus to subway (Mokdong to Mullaedong), from one subway to another subway (transferring from Seoul College of Education Station to Daechi Station of Subway Line No.3). she spent almost four hours on her commuting transits to and from her accessory store at Daechi-dong. Toung Doung's disease, begun with minor ailments, considered as stomach ulcer which had been treated with alternative medicines, developed into cancerous tumors.

Dano wondered at some point and later from time to time when his father had been diagnosed as stomach cancer by Dr. Weird in Kyongseong University Hospital or so, in Seoul what the malignant tumors looked like which had been clinging like leeches. He blandly presumed that the tumors might have initially been stained by coal dust in the deep pit of a Nagasaki coal mine, later adulterated by sweaty knobs of the hard labor during the drought and famine years before the 1950s and then warped into gnarled stressful knots caused by the disobedient Dano and touched eventually by toxic farming chemicals inhaled in the course of apple farming, that is, all the crystalization of the toils, frustrations and stresses.

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Then and there in Kyeongseong University Hospital, reclining on the hospital couch, Toung Doung had his body roughly handled by a resident, an intern and two other young nurses. They might have not noticed the presence of a strange man in his forties because the doctors and nurses had been engrossed in their own pleasant conversations about the joyful experiences of the last summer vacation, and they might not have realized that the elderly patient in his seventies lying before their eyes powerless came from the country. They virtually fiddled with the instruments--a computer monitor and a naessikyong, a gastrointestinal endoscopy,-- with a nurse or something fiddling with the monitor and with an intern fiddling with the long horrible hose.

Then and there in Kyeongseong University Hospital, Toung Doung was wiggling like a desperate worm, nauseating and shrieking with pain. "Do then like this," the superior doctor or something directed to his inferior to do otherwise. After a fuss of trials and errors, they were able to show to Dano, an ugly conglomeration of tumors, with a look of perplexion on his face and with an awkward remark of "Oh, we didn't realize his son was here!"

Rising from his couch Toung Doung said "I almost died!" He should have angered at what he had been treated just a while ago. He did not deserve the clumsy treatment. Dano should have collared the doctors and yelled to the goddamned nurses. But the one was powerless and the other fought the urge to yell. The chief doctor of the Internal Medicine Section, said with haughty disaffection to Dano who called at his office, "The patient, who is 78 years old, that is, relatively old age for cancer treatment, and whose tumors are in a final stage, that is, so widely spread, is judged to be inoperable."

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He could not accept the fact that his father, who had been as stout as a bull and as green as a pine, would be soon to fall. How could it be possible that the huge pine that had been Toung Doung should be felled to the ground by the abominable disease of cancer. Toung Doung himself might have been self-conceited in his inviolability because he had never been bedridden in his whole life.

The chief doctor's pronouncement of Toung Doung's having fallen ill with the terminal cancer struck Dano himself as if he had been battered, all of a sudden, by a blunt weapon and that he might have subsequently passed out with a murky consciousness that he would be parting with his father sooner or later.

Once the hope of a hospital treatment was dashed, Toung Doung became a guinea pig for an experimentation with the alternative medicine. Illczin, Dano's brother, who had been living with the parents, made every effort to cure the disease. He made a mail order for an alternative medicine which had been advertised at a magazine from a medicine manufacturer whose name had been Isanghan or something who had been living in Naju. Illczin had not visited Isanghan, nor seen how the medicine had been manufactured, nor questioned, nor asked about the efficacy of the medicine. He believed in people and things in his own way, spent most of the revenues from the orchard for his beliefs.

Illczin worked the hardest among the three son children of the sick Toung Doung. Illczin's concern and efforts were being made in four directions, whereas the last son of Toung Doung, Nara, who had been born at the water mill house listening to the sounds of the rolling mill, was the second most active in the filial efforts. He was in his thirties and worked at the Department of Commerce and Industry as a seventh-grade official. He met Dr. Evereast at East West Hospital in Seoul and arranged for him to write a letter of recommendation to Dr. Nugusira in Tokyo who prescribed anti-cancer drugs for Toung Doung whose main function turned out to kill cancer pain.

Illczin's filial efforts took his father to a bee farmer at Mushin-dong at the outer precinct of Daegu. Toung Doung got roughed up there for almost a month by apian attacks. He virtually was roughing up, with Boolim taking care of him by his side at a hut room of the bee farmer's. He had his body given up for apian stings. The owner of the house, Mr. Amuge, who had had a strong belief in the efficacy of bee venom, stepped across to the couple's hangout and administered the venom to Toung Doung's body parts once or twice a day despite Toung Doung's grimaces and grievances. He picked out a bee from a small box of bees, held it in a pair of tweezers and put an end part of a sting on the desired body part. Toung Doung had had bulges and fluid scars as a result all over the body. When Dano visited the place to inquire after his father, Mr. Amuge rattled off case after case of the efficacies of bee sting treatment. He said he had once been a cancer victim but he had had his cancerous body stung by bees himself and cured of the disease.

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Illczin might have had a premonition that the rest of his father's life was numbered. Dano also had consulted a divinist, who had been practising, by the name of Odagada, his fortunetelling business at Naguon-dong, Chongno-gu, Seoul, who had told him some bad tellings about his father and some good tales about Dano himself at the same time. The guru of the Iching said that Toung Doung would pass away in two months and Dano would run into "a righteous man" in a week or so who would be willing to publish Dano's manuscripts on the Conversion Approach, a theory on the correct interpretation, as a speaker of the second language, of the English writings. Mystery Dano intuited at the time was how the fortuneteller had predicted Toung Doung's death date via Dano, or a strange person who was sitting before him at the time.

When the telephone rang the previous morning, he got a fright as usual through the spine, with his right hand reaching for the receiver shaking and his heart beating faster. It was Ilczin's voice over the phone that carried not a news of the parental doom but asking a brotherly favor of Dano. It was a sober call to know whether Dano would be able to go down to Guinsa Temple in Danyang to hold prayers for their terminally ill father. Saying that, he informed him that he would wire the money for the expenses.

It was a rather chilly morning for February. He stepped onto the elevator at his apartment house on the 8th floor, went down to the ground floor, got out of it and started walking to the village bus station. He saw a hawk appearing from nowhere circling the sky over the Apartment Complex. What an omen.

During the inter-city bus tour and after the arrival at the destination terminal, he felt as if his feet were being carried. He was not moving his own system. He was not the master of his own motor reflex. He was standing awhile even after passengers had left the place.

It was around noon. Some modest rustic cafeterias around the bus terminal were in full swing. The travellers who had just gotten off the bus wandered over to the roadside dining halls. The aromas of cooking foods pricked stimulated their appetites. A woman at a cafeteria across the road was gazing at Dano as if to invite him to her house.

Dano had a better idea. He stepped to a phone booth at the corner of the sidewalk, picked the receiver and slid coins into the slot of the booth and heard the phone buzzes going through. It seemed an age. They might have crossed the rivers and gotten over the hills. The coins were heard to drop with the clang. A familiar female voice returned with "Hello." "This is Dano. How are things going, Miss Allite?" "Going well. Your book is to come out soon, with proof readings done," she said.

The joyful tidings of the impending publication of his book stimulated his hunger. He crossed the road and entered an eating place and ordered deoduckjjim, a stewed condonopsis lanceolata flavored with pungent sauce. It smelled and tasted good. He ate up a bowl of rice in a nano second when the realization struck him cold that he was engrossed in satiating his appetite while his father had a hard time gulping even a plate of soup. That was a shame on him.

Dano got into a taxi which was waiting at the roadside stand. The driver, looking at him through a rear mirror, said, "You're going to Guinsa, aren't you?" Dano took an issue with the mode of his greetings. Then the driver in hat in his middle forties said matter-of-factly that Seoul passengers' usual destination used to be Guinsa.

Moving along a while, the driver then switched to a mode of his vehicular transportation. His suggestion was that unless you were rushed you might as well go slow. He said, "How about going slow?" Dano took a look at the dashboard. The speedometer of the car directed at 80/km. Dano said yes. The taxi driver boasted of the landscapes unfolding in the winding four-lane local highway along the blue river with the beautiful mountain hills in the background. They were beautiful, indeed. Dano then blamed himself who was appreciating the rivers and hills. The mountain hills should have been crumbling and the rivers should have dried ugly.

All through the ride, the driver tortured his passenger with pumoeunjungkyong, the mantra for the filial piety. He switched on the tape and made his passenger hear it out. The recorded voice of the cassette-tape mantra inspired his (or her) captive audience during the taxi ride with the "immeasurable love" of the parents, recalled their toils and asked them to repay their debts. The cab driver was used to reading his passengers' mind heading for Guinsa, knew their vulnerabilities and also knew how to subjugate them to ingratiating customers. He might have gawked at Dano who was lowering his head and spilling tears.

After 40 or so minutes' ride, the cab driver said, "You made it." It was a wide clearing which appeared to be used for a parking lot. Dano couldn't see Guinsa or something. "You can't get there by taxi," he announced. "Then?" Dano looked at him accusingly. "You have to walk from here."

Nothing was seen from there. It was a steep uphill. Turning a corner, pushing a flank of a hill aside, a portal was seen standing high up. Negotiating the uphill for a minute or so, he got there and stepping on to the entrance of the temple, he was overwhelmed by the huge complex of temple buildings. Really huge.

The first impression of Guinsa Temple was overwhelming. The impression was solidified as Dano stepped deeper into the precinct. The temple complex found itself hugely in the mountain valley tall and wide. The Buddhist buildings, whose height ranged from five stories to single, were arranged in orderly fashion, along both sides of the thoroughfare, by category of use.

Dano found the temple complex built on the rock foundation with steep upper slope on top of which was located the huge dining hall and its adjacent facilities. Dano, after having registered under the category of one-week prayer for paternal health with the front office near the portal, was guided to the prayer room on the fifth floor. The accommodation capacity of one room was fifty persons of the same sex but the room was not cramped but spacious enough to house four times as many prayers.

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"Don't get connected," the speaker system of the temple said in a low convincing male voice, not blaring, though. A while ago there had been a morning call and the whole crowds of the religious complex were busy preparing for the day's schedules. And the speaker systems installed indoors and the loud speakers of outdoors were reciting to the attentive ears some religious aphorisms, warning them not to get connected. "If you get connected, you'll pine over those with whom you've been disconnected. If you get connected, you'll get tormented by those with whom you've been connected."

What did they mean by "Dont get connected"? To paraphrase, the phrase might have meant that you should not or did not have to make a relationship or something. It was illogical after all that you could not make a human contact or something unless you get connected because the world consists of relationships, because you are the end result of relationships, because Guinsa Temple consists of relationships. and because the very reason for the existence of the temple is that there are many relationships to handle. Therefore, the context of the aphorism might have been: Don't make a new relationship except one you have sustained or you should have considered substantial. You should not start a superfluous relationship because basic, inevitable and commonsensical relationships would be put in danger.

Standing in a long line of the diverse dining population and stepping slowly along the slopy hillside road leading to the dining hall, getting near the meal distribution table holding the meal tray, sitting and eating among the large number of diners in the huge dining hall in which one thousand people were known to dine at a sitting, and looking at the busy dining room helpers, Dano had his throat choked with emotion. Meals were good, and side dishes of kimchi and others were good too. He consumed every bit of them. He felt he himself was brazen enough, thinking that his father was having a hard time eating gruels, much less eating solid meals.

Pray? How to begin it with? Dano was at wit's end as to the matter of the prayer. He didn't pray with sincerity ever, but he did assure to himself that he would take revenge on anything that was in his way. When he had been famished as a kid, he had not prayed to God for rich harvest but he'd decided himself to get rich. When he had been tormented by pranksters for long as a juvenile boy, he'd gritted himself and decided to get even. When his father had been hard at work, balking at the idea of allowing any person around him a minute's break to pee, he had avoided his contact, not praying for his health. When his grandma had been walking in all directions in search of medicinal herbs for her fragile grandson, he had not said a prayer of thanks for his grandma's efforts.

Dano had been obdurate all along. He had not known as a kid as to how to say even commonplace thanks or regrets. He should have been trained to do that. He once had almost killed his father. His father had been at work 10-meter deep down the earth ground, digging and building an embankment of the family well at the corner of the orchard. Father Toung Doung had been digging the earth, with his son Dano up on the ground bringing up soil and send the rocks down below with which his father would build an internal embankment in which a person could move around. Tound Doung had not been satisfied with the way in which the work was being done. The water had been spilling from the tin box of soils coming up and replacement rocks coming down. In an instant, a rock had slipped off his hand and dropped onto the head of his father, with him screaming. Coming out, Toung Doung had had his bleeding scars dressed and bandaged. Though he had not scolded his son, his son should have sought forgiveness nevertheless for his lack of suitable heed. But he had not. He had been scared all over.

The prayer session was guided by a young priest. He had made his appearance from a corner room and introduced himself and Avalakitesvara at the same time. That is, he had introduced a way in which Dano and others, the room prayers, who had numbered 38 at the time, had had to pray. He said you had to pray to and through the one effective personality--Gwansseumbossal, Avalakitesvara, the Buddha of Great Compassion. She, from the earliest times on, had been so compassionate and so effective that any prayer of yours would come true. So you had to virtually chant Gwansseumbossal with concentration, with the object of prayer in mind. You were not forced on any typical position as an ideal prayer position. But you were not supposed to lie on the room floor until midnight.

He was frustrated at first attempt and blushed with shame: He slept away while chanting the prayer word. He had dozed on and off whiling away three hours or so, and he had lain flat on the room floor. At midnight, he found to his amazement ten or so roomers still immersed in chanting the mantra. He went to the washing place and awoke himself by splashing his face with cold water. He sat down again with legs crossed and began the process afresh.

As he kept chanting the mantra, he found himself conversing with his father. As he darted his questions about his father's love toward him, they were returned with more questions about it. Dano did the late take, a real awakening that caresses, kisses and vocal expressions of love did not just constitute paternal love.

Although Toung Doung had not, all through his life, said a word of love to his sons, he had lived out his love with all his efforts. He had crawled on all fours in a hellish pit of a Nagasaki coal mine for his family: That was love. He had kept a vigil through the night, casting a concerned look at his feverish son: That was love. He had walked all the way to the town hospital, carrying on his back his son who had come down with pleurisy: That was love. He had built a nice wooden house of his own with his architectural skills: That was love. He had tilled the fields, toiled day and night through the year and planted apple trees: That was love. He had built a family well that was not dry: That was love. He had succumbed at last to cancerous tumors but he did not complain, nor whine nor accuse anyone about him: That was love.

Dano shifted gear and swerved off the designated route. Prayer changed to remorse and repentance. The agent appeared identical but the action changed. In fact, the doer changed, too. In the action of prayer, the doer hurted no one, but in the action of remorse and repentance, he hurted himself. He could not help hurting himself. He reflected on his past deeds; He regretted his mistakes; He blamed himself on his father's unhappiness and his pain of disease. Cries blurted out. He cried to his heart's content. Slumberers around him moved and the murmurers of prayer opened their eyes and complained: "What a noise."