173.
Reunion with Family, the Strangeness of Everyday Life
At the end of the road, the village came into view, along with the familiar stone walls.
Sunlight broke across the bricks, and from beyond the fence came the sound of a rooster crowing.
That one cries at all hours.
Park Seongjin stopped for a moment.
There it was—the peaceful, beautiful, familiar, and comforting world of his childhood.
Even from a distance, almost nothing had changed.
What felt unfamiliar was likely himself.
The sense of distance he felt inside was longer than he had expected.
Running would close it in an instant, but trying to move backward through time would take days and nights and still not be enough.
The scenery remained the same, yet the grain of his gaze had already changed.
When he opened the gate, summer light poured into the courtyard.
The sound of boiling water, the smell of weeds along the field ridge, and his mother's footsteps overlapped.
"Mother!"
At his voice, someone rushed out from the kitchen.
His mother stood there, wiping her hands on her apron, still streaked with soil.
He was about to drop into a deep bow even though he was already in the yard, when she stepped forward and pulled him into her arms.
After a brief silence as she caught her breath, she said,
"You're back…"
Seongjin smiled.
"Yes. I'm back."
That short reply carried with it the nights he had passed through, the battles, and the long hours of vigilance.
The family gathered on the porch one by one.
His sister and nephews surrounded him.
One small nephew pointed at a scar on his arm.
"Uncle, is that from a fight?"
He feared that even a casual sign of concern might ripple outward and become an unnecessary burden of worry for his family.
"No. I just fell."
He answered with a smile, then drew in a deep breath.
He couldn't even remember when he had been wounded.
The scar was deep enough to remain, yet he had no memory of pain.
He had lived through a time when even pain went unnoticed, when even death carried no sorrow.
It felt as though he had crossed a violent, heaving sea.
Old tableware was set out.
The smell of soybean paste soup, rice, and pan-fried cakes spread gently.
It was a familiar scent, and he was grateful for it.
After stirring the soup once more, he set down his spoon.
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
"No. It's just… quiet."
The family smiled silently.
Seongjin, returned after so long, seemed unfamiliar to them.
"Isn't quiet a good thing?"
"It is, but… a home is better when it's a little noisy."
The words trailed off.
He felt a lack he couldn't quite name—something missing, a tension without a clear shape.
The one who didn't understand his difference wasn't someone else.
It was himself.
In the quiet, his ears were awake.
Echoes of shouts, explosions, and commands circled behind his hearing, thin and lingering at the edge of sensation.
When night came, he sat on the porch overlooking the yard.
Starlight spread faintly.
Frogs croaked, moonlight settled on the earthenware jars—it was fully summer.
When did it become summer?
The scenery of his childhood was breathing in the same place as before.
Sitting there, he regulated his breathing.
The times of war, of the mountain, of people, and of study passed silently through his lowered field of vision.
The world layered itself in new colors.
A single gust of wind passed by.
It carried neither the scent of Guwol Mountain nor the smell of the battlefield.
It was the scent of people living their lives.
A Conversation with Song Isul — The Study of Practice (行)
The next morning, there was a knock at the gate.
The chickens in the yard squawked in surprise, and his mother cracked the door open.
"A guest is here."
Song Isul stood at the entrance, just as he had looked on the bridge the day before, wearing old clothes dusted with earth.
When Seongjin introduced him, Song Isul dropped into a deep bow.
"He's a friend, Mother."
His mother looked startled.
"What kind of friend is this old?"
"That's from a hard life, Mother," Seongjin replied.
Song Isul spoke to another's mother as though she were his own, easy and shameless.
Fearing what embarrassing thing might come next, Seongjin hurried to cut him off.
"What brings you all the way here?"
Song Isul smiled faintly.
"Just thought I'd stop by. The bridge work's finished, and I wanted to rest a bit. Then I figured you'd be resting too."
"Yes. I've just started to rest."
"Have you learned how to rest?"
"Is there a special way to rest? Isn't doing nothing rest?"
Song Isul sat down beside the jars.
"The mind has to rest too. No matter how much the body rests, if the mind doesn't, you won't feel at ease."
"I agree."
"Study isn't just sitting still and regulating the breath. Resting, walking, eating—everything is a strand of study."
Seongjin asked,
"In the mountains, I sat quietly and tended my mind. That's also study, isn't it?"
"It is. But the world isn't quiet. Between people, there's always noise, emotion, and affairs overlapping. Dealing with that—that's the real study."
Brushing dust from the jars with his fingertips, Song Isul continued,
"That's why you need the study of practice—the study of observing the mind while the body moves."
His voice spread low and even.
"In the mountains, you see the mind in stillness. In the world, you protect that mind amid noise. The first is the power of stillness. The second is the power of movement."
Seongjin lowered his head slightly.
"I felt something similar on the battlefield. The closer death was, the clearer my mind became."
"That's the foundation of practice."
"The foundation?"
"The more urgent the moment, the clearer the mind. It means the path is already set within you."
Song Isul glanced up at the sky.
"The world is wide, and work never ends. Those who learn while moving never stop."
Seongjin asked quietly,
"Then should I start moving again?"
"Yes."
"Where should I go?"
"Anywhere. Go build bridges. Carry loads in the market. Work with your body—there's no difference. What matters is holding onto the flow of the mind."
Rising to his feet, Song Isul added,
"What you learned in the mountains was how to listen while standing still. What you must learn now is how to listen while walking."
"Ah…"
"I should've told you this earlier. Guess that's why I came so early."
"Senior…"
"I'm going."
He came and went without hesitation.
After he left, Seongjin stood in the yard for a long while.
It felt as though Song Isul had stopped by solely to deliver those words.
A breeze lifted the dust on the jars.
The wind of Guwol Mountain, the wind of the battlefield, and the wind passing through the yard now were all connected by the same grain.
---*
Chapter 173 Commentary (Daoist–Buddhist Conceptual Reading)
Wu-wei er hua (無爲而化) does not mean doing nothing.
It means that when one does not force change, the Way operates on its own and things transform naturally.
What Song Isul and the warrior group show in this chapter is precisely that.
Even when they are not fighting, they are still acting upon the world.
They do not command, instruct, or display themselves; instead, they carry stones and build a bridge.
They do not try to lead the world—
they prepare a place for the world to move through on its own.
Even without drawing a sword, the Way works here, quietly, in reality.
This scene also overlaps with the Buddhist idea of haeng-ju-jwa-wa (行住坐臥)—
the teaching that walking, standing, sitting, and lying down are all forms of practice.
They do not cultivate themselves only in the mountains.
They fight in war, and in ordinary times they labor.
Meditation and digging with a shovel are not separated;
practice and daily life are not divided.
Stillness does not exist only in immobility—
it can be preserved among people, within sweat and repetition.
For this reason, the stone bridge is not merely a structure.
It allows people to cross,
but it also stands as a passage where learning gained in the mountains flows into the secular world.
It is not a practice that ascends upward,
but one that descends and permeates.
When Park Seong-jin bows deeply as a general,
it is not a gesture toward authority,
but a bow toward practice itself.
In that moment, he recognizes those who uphold the world without fighting.
Here, he understands what his teacher meant—
that stillness in the mountains is easy to learn,
but stillness among people is far deeper,
and that this is the place where such teaching is realized.
Chapter 173 shows why awakening does not harden into withdrawal.
It opens the possibility of returning to the world.
A practitioner is not someone who leaves the world behind,
but someone who can quietly support it from within.