Past Life Story

Your birth was a secret. One day in the second year of King Gwanghae, an old man appeared in a small mountain village carrying an infant. That old man was a reader of heaven, and that infant was you. Who your parents were, you could never come to know. The old man only said to you, "You are a child the stars have sent." By five you heard the words of the stars for the first time. Lying in the courtyard gazing at the stars, you suddenly heard one star speaking to you. "You are the one who shall read us." From that day the stars spoke to you. The words others could not hear, only you could. In your tenth year, your adoptive father, the old man, departed. On the final night, the old man gave you an aged book. It was a book on astronomy, but not an ordinary one. It was a hidden text that read fate through the movements of the stars. The old man said, "I could not finish this. You must finish it." In your fifteenth year, you saw the fate of a single person for the first time. When an old man of the village asked about his son's fate, you gazed at the stars long and answered, "He shall meet a great trial. But if he passes through that trial, he shall do great things." Three days later, that son met with a great accident. Yet he survived. Ten years later, he became the village physician. At twenty, your name began to be known little by little. People came to you in fear, yet they came. You read any person's fate accurately, but you did not speak it lightly. To know a fate was not to speak it all—you had learned this early. In your twenty-fifth year, an envoy came searching for you. He said it was the king's command. The king had heard your name and summoned you. You went to Hanyang. Before the king you read the stars, and you spoke heavy words. "Your Majesty's path shall be hard. But if Your Majesty loves the people, that path shall have light." The king understood the meaning of those words only long after. At thirty, you returned to the mountain valley. Powerful men of Hanyang had tried to use you as their tool, and you could not bear it. You wished only to live looking at the stars. You did not wish to be drawn into the politics of men. In your thirty-fifth year, you set up a small shrine. There you met the poor and the wealthy alike. The fee for your service was a single meal—enough. To read the stars was not for wealth, but for people—that was your conviction. In your fortieth year, you saw your own fate. You knew the very day of your death precisely. You did not fear it. You only helped people more carefully to the end. Knowing your time was short, you read the stars with greater devotion. On that spring day in your forty-fifth year, you departed on the very day you had foreseen. You lay in the courtyard of your shrine and gazed at the stars one last time. The stars spoke to you. "Now come." You smiled. Your final words were, "Within the movement of the stars lies heaven's mandate." Your shrine later became a small sanctuary. People remembered you as a mystical being who had read heaven's signs. The book of astronomy you left was passed to one disciple, who passed it to another. Yet none ever heard the words of the stars as deeply as you did. You were a bridge between stars and humans. It was a lonely path, but the stars were your friends. Even now, if a single star shines particularly bright in some night sky—that, perhaps, may be your soul.