Past Life Story

In the seventh year of King Gwanghae, you were born into a commoner family in Jongno, Hanyang. Your father had been a herb-gatherer in his time, and your mother was a woman who tended to small ailments in the neighborhood. You were poor, yet your home was always full of the scent of medicinal herbs. Your earliest memory was the smell of medicine your mother brewed. By five, you began to know the names of herbs. Ginseng, hwanggi, danggwi, cheongung—your mother taught you one at a time. You memorized them again and again. When you turned seven, you made a small herb garden in the yard. With small hands touching the soil, you watched the herbs grow. In your tenth year, a great pestilence swept through the village. Your father caught it. Your mother boiled medicine day and night, but your father departed within three days. That was the first time you saw the limits of medicine. Yet at the same time, you saw its meaning. Your mother's hands, brewing medicine until the very last moment—it was that touch which led you to the path of healing. At fifteen, you became a disciple of a physician. There you learned acupuncture, moxibustion, and herbs. Your master was strict and his teaching harsh. Yet you never once fled. If it was the work of saving lives, then any hardship had meaning. At twenty-five, you opened your own herb shop. It was small, yet you received the wealthy and the poor alike. To those who could not pay, you would gather herbs yourself and give them. People called you a physician of virtue. Lines of people always waited before your shop. Around thirty, you met a young woman, a commoner from the same village. You wed, and two children were born. It was an ordinary family, yet to you, it was the greatest happiness in the world. When you returned home after seeing patients, your wife's table and the laughter of your children were waiting. In your fortieth year, the great pestilence came again. You went from village to village, treating the sick. You could not sleep, you could not eat properly. People told you to rest, but you did not stop. "If I rest, who will tend to those people?" That was all you said. In a spring of your forty-fifth year, you yourself fell to that pestilence. You knew. You had been with the sick too long. In your final days, you lay in a corner of your own shop, writing prescriptions for patients. Your hand trembled, but your handwriting remained clear to the end. On the dawn of your departure, the entire village had gathered before your herb shop. They were the people you had saved. The sound of their weeping filled all of Jongno. Your wife held your hand and said, "You saved them." You smiled. "That was the work of my life." Those were your last words. Your art of healing was passed to your two children, and those children saved others in their turn. Your herb shop remained in that place for a hundred years. You departed, yet the descendants of those whom your hands saved are surely living somewhere even now. You loved the work of saving lives, and you did the work you loved until the very end. That was your life, and that was your soul.