Past Life Story

In the fourth year of King Gwanghae, you were born into a commoner family. Your father lived as a hunter in a mountain valley, and your first toy was a small bow. Your first scenery was the mountain, your first friend the wind. The trembling of the bowstring drawing back was the sensation most familiar to you. By five you struck your first small bird. Your father did not praise you. "Do not take even a single arrow lightly. It is a single life." That day you came to know for the first time the weight borne by one who lifts a bow. In your tenth year, you began to walk the mountains alone. Tracking deer, you learned the breath. To kill the breath, to still the heart, to draw the bowstring slowly. To put everything into a single arrow. It was not merely the technique of hunting, but a discipline of governing yourself. In your fifteenth year, you entered the village archery contest. Against everyone's expectation, you took first place. There a martial officer saw you and said, "You must enter the army." You hesitated. You did not want to leave the mountain. But your mother said, "Talent must be used where it is needed." At seventeen you enlisted. The archery unit. There you were no longer a hunter of the mountain but a man of the army. You found comrades, you found discipline. At first you felt stifled, but soon you found new meaning within. To shoot together, to defend together against the enemy—that was a fulfillment different from hunting alone. By twenty your unit knew you as their finest archer. All saw you hit a target a hundred paces distant in a single shot. Yet you were not arrogant. Each dawn you practiced. "Place everything in a single arrow"—that was your motto. In your twenty-fifth year, a great battle came on the frontier. Jurchens had crossed. Your unit defended the mountain terrain with bows. You stopped countless enemies in that battle. When a comrade fell into peril, your single arrow saved him. Your fellow soldiers called you a hero, but you said you had only done your work. In your thirtieth year, you took a wife. A commoner girl from your home region. Yours was a late marriage, but deep. You had two children. Each dawn you practiced archery. When your two children grew, you taught them the bow as well. But you did not tell them they must enter the army. "Where you use your talent, you decide for yourselves." In your fortieth year, you received a great mission—to establish a new garrison on the frontier. There you spent ten years. Each day you drew the bowstring, each day you taught your subordinates. Your subordinates respected you, for you always shot more arrows than they did. In your fiftieth year, your eyesight weakened. You could no longer hit a target a hundred paces distant. You left the unit. With your children you returned to the mountain village. In an autumn of your fifty-eighth year, you took up the bow for the last time. You set up a small target in the yard and loosed a single arrow. It struck the very center of the target. You set down the bow and smiled. That night you slept as always, and you did not wake again. Your bow passed to your eldest son. Your eldest son also became a master archer. Your teaching passed even to your grandchildren. You lived like a single arrow. Precisely, without wavering, placing all into one point. That was your life, and that was the spirit you left behind.