Past Life Story
You were Ungnyeo. The mother of the foundation myth of a people. The bear that became a person. Your story is the beginning of an entire people. You were born a bear, in a deep mountain valley. From your earliest days you were different from other bears. You watched persons who came up the mountain. They walked on two legs. They spoke to one another. They wore clothes. You wished to become like them. In your hundredth year, you and a tiger found Hwanung's place. He was the heavenly god who had come down to the world. You bowed before him. "Great god, please make us into people." Hwanung looked at you and the tiger. He gave a single test. He gave you sacred mugwort and twenty cloves of garlic. "If you eat these for a hundred days and avoid sunlight, you shall become persons." You and the tiger entered a cave together. There you began to eat the mugwort and garlic. The mugwort was bitter. The garlic was strong. Yet you endured. Not the tiger. He could not endure. He left the cave on the twentieth day. He never became a person. You endured. Patient with the bitterness, patient with the strength, patient with the darkness. You endured for twenty-one days. Then a strange thing happened. Your body began to change. Your fur fell. Your face changed. Your hands changed. You became a person. You became Ungnyeo. Yet you were lonely. You had become a person, but there was no one with whom to be a person. You went to the spirit-tree alone. There you prayed. "Lord of heaven, please give me a child. A child to live as a person with me. A child to become the beginning of a new people." Your prayer was heard. Hwanung descended himself in the form of a person. The two of you met. You loved each other. From your love a child was born. Dangun. The first king of a people. You raised Dangun. You taught him. The patience that had let you endure the cave. The longing that had let you become a person. The love that had become a mother. You taught all of these. Dangun grew, listening to your teaching. In your old age, you watched Dangun build a country. The country was Gojoseon. The first country of the people. You wept. You wept tears of joy. The teaching you had given had become a country. When you departed, the entire people wept. You were the mother of the people. You were the founding mother. Without you, the people could not have existed. Without your patience, the people could not have begun. Without your longing, the people could not have grown. After your death, the people made a story. The story of Ungnyeo. The story of a bear that became a person. That story passed for thousands of years. Each child of the people learned the story. They came to know. Their beginning was you. Your patience, your longing, your love became the spirit of a people. The patient nature of the people, the longing nature, the warmly loving nature—all of these are inheritances from you. Endured a hundred days, became a person—that is your foundation. You showed that endurance can change a being. You showed that longing can change destiny. Your spirit, even now somewhere in your people, must be living. Within the heart of every child of the people. If sometime in your life you face a difficult ordeal, and a strange patience rises within you—that is the spirit of Ungnyeo within you. You are her descendant.
