The Practice of Action (行) 2
The Way Built by the Hands**
"Good. Now it's time to move.
Practice is not something done while sitting.
It is done while walking, working, living among people."
Seongjin said nothing and picked up the shovel lying beside him once more.
Because this was work he was not used to, his palms split open at first and his lower back ached.
These were not muscles used in the army.
Each time he drove the shovel into the soil, the tendons in his arms pulled tight.
Sweat ran down from his brow.
Then he understood.
To use the body was to settle the mind.
Each time the shovel cut through the earth, thoughts peeled away with it.
Resentment and pride collapsed like mounds of soil.
Song Isul, sorting through clods of dirt, spoke.
"One gains through doing. That is the root of practice."
Seongjin caught his breath and asked,
"Is that what you mean by haeng—action?"
Song Isul replied,
"When you sit, the mind hardens.
When you move, the mind flows.
Flow does not clog.
The Way is in flow."
Those words stayed in Seongjin's chest for a long time.
As he exerted himself, thinking about how these people practiced, a sharp shout rang out.
"Hey! Don't use inner power, you fool!"
Seongjin flinched.
Without realizing it, he had begun circulating internal force.
At dusk, a red glow spread wide across the river.
After washing their hands from a day's labor, they sat atop the embankment.
Someone brewed tea with dirt-stained hands.
Even in such a place, there were people who brewed tea with elegance.
Steam rose.
The smell of sweat, soil, and warm tea mingled in the wind.
Seongjin closed his eyes for a moment.
Practice was not something grasped by the mind alone.
It seeped in through action.
Days passed.
Before the morning fog lifted, he was already at the worksite.
The riverbank was always collapsing, always being rebuilt.
The word completion was not used here.
Building, collapsing, rebuilding—this continued without end.
When he gripped the shovel, thoughts quieted.
As the movement of arms and shoulders found rhythm, breath and mind followed together.
Within that repetition, the mind settled evenly.
Song Isul tamped the soil and said,
"Work itself is the Way.
The Way is inside the work.
If it stays only in the head, it never reaches the hands."
Seongjin asked,
"Is this place a site of cultivation?"
Song Isul answered while sorting earth,
"One shovel of dirt is one act of cultivation.
One heavy stone is the Way itself."
"Then I suppose nothing is not the Way."
"Of course.
Realizing that everything is another name for the Way—that is study.
Everything made by human hands is a world shaped by the mind."
Around noon, everyone sat in the shade.
Some ate rice with their hands.
Others drank water with soil-stained palms.
On one side, someone scraped out strange sounds on a haegeum.
An odd hobby.
Elsewhere, bodies swayed to the rhythm.
Skill in drink and music made no distinction between worldly folk and cultivators.
Words were few, and quiet was shared.
Seongjin thought.
He measured the difference between gripping a sword on the battlefield and gripping a shovel now.
They were said to be the same, yet were absolutely not.
Both required strength.
Both demanded focus.
The sword cut people.
The shovel revived the earth.
The seasons turned.
The autumn of his seventeenth year arrived.
His body hardened.
His shoulders broadened, calluses formed on his palms.
Through days of packing earth and setting stone, his body came to resemble the weight of the land.
His breathing flowed evenly, like wind.
Still, no summons came.
From time to time he stopped by the Signal Guard,
but seeing Yi In-jung clutching his head and shouting, he would turn right back.
That man's cultivation included one more thing: loyalty.
While others tried to distance themselves from crude forms of power, Yi In-jung was different in that regard.
The battlefield had receded far away.
The world was catching its breath.
Song Isul always said the same thing.
"Ride yourself on the breath.
Place yourself in the space between inhaling and exhaling."
Seongjin asked,
"Do you mean empty the mind?"
Song Isul replied,
"Don't force it.
Let go of yourself and let go of practice.
Then practice remains in the body."
At first, the meaning did not come.
But after holding a shovel all day, thoughts faded on their own.
When the body is exhausted, what practice is there to speak of?
The best one can do is forget oneself while waiting for time to pass.
Breath, circulation—there was nothing to carry.
He simply sank into the work and forgot himself.
Breathing happened on its own.
What had changed was this:
there was another self that watched him forgetting himself.
Breath was not placed upon it—
yet it was seen.
No, it was visible.
Each time he packed the soil, vibrations rose from beneath his feet.
They were the breath of the earth, and his own pulse.
One day, he stopped and looked up at the sky.
Clouds shifted endlessly, changing form.
A flow that could not be grasped transformed again and again.
Practice, he had been told, was not stillness but flow.
Cultivation while sitting was the Way turned inward.
Cultivation while moving was the Way of the world.
That evening, brushing dirt from his clothes, Song Isul said,
"Now your body can bear the weight of the earth.
All that remains is to keep the mind light."
Seongjin did not answer.
He steadied his breath and placed his hand on the soil.
The wind blew.
The smell of earth rose.
Those words stayed only in his chest.