| [Seeker's Journal] The Meeting
Place of Heaven and Earth
Jeff Kraus, London,
Canada, Jeung San Do International
Dept.
Originally printed in the Korea Times newspaper on March
15th, 2005
 If you desired to journey to a place between
this world and the next, to a hallowed place, a place of wonder and of myth,
where would you go? And if you found such a place, how would you judge it? How
would you decide if it were 몉eal�? How would you decide if you had truly found
a place between heaven and earth?
In the 1990s, I had been living in Korea for
about a year, and I had found that its concrete cities exacerbated my lifelong
yearning to travel in search of spiritual insight and for what I have always
termed to myself as 몋he real.� I fled for temples every weekend. But the sense
of sanctity one finds in temples is a distillation: the sounds, sights, and
ideas of mankind rendered into a purity preserved inside an absence, i.e.,
chanting or chimes within silence; candlelit icons within shadows; sermons
spoken within sanctuary. This distillation, this marvelous drop of crimson
sealing wax on pale paper, nevertheless belongs to the world of
mankind. But I wanted, as I explained to a sympathetic
Korean friend who designed web sites and wrote poetry, to step out of an office
building one day and find myself in a forest never before seen. 밒 don뭪 know
where to find that in Korea,� she told me. 밄ut I know of a place in the sky.�
Already familiar with Korea뭩 rich spiritual heritage, I instantly knew what she
meant. 밯hich mountain?� 밐ave you been to Jeju-do yet?� The island of Jeju-do, off Korea뭩 southwestern
coast, dwells in the ranks of those most compelling of places: the
legend-haunted. Jeju-do is an island of monstrous snakes lurking in caves, rocks
shaped like Buddha뭩 500 Arhats (enlightened students), harubang stone
guardians, giants, and the secret sources of the winds�. Many of the legends
involve Halla-san (밠ount Halla�), the volcanic peak that dominates the island.
At the peak of Halla-san, a volcanic bowl encloses a sheltered valley, and in
this valley glimmers a very deep lake, two kilometers in width and two
kilometers in the sky. Legends surround this valley as thickly as the clouds
around the mountain뭩 peak. The valley is famed as a place where spirits descend
from the sky to meet with supernatural white deer. (The lake뭩 name,
Baengnoktam, means 밯hite Deer Lake.�) This valley, legends say, is a
meeting place between heaven and earth.
 It was, I knew instantly, exactly where I
wanted to go. I arranged my journey for the middle of the workweek directly
following the Chusok holiday, hoping to avoid crowds. As I awaited my trip, I
compulsively fantasized about Jeju-do while on the subway and at my desk. I
would cross the sea to the island, climb the mountain to its valley, and
meditate on the shores of the lake at the rising of the moon.
My journey to Halla-san began exactly as such
journeys should: with a stormy sea voyage. As I boarded a modest-sized ferry at
Busan, I noticed that the video screens in the public areas were tuned to what I
assumed was the itinerary of our journey, showing the Korean Peninsula with a
dotted line leading from Busan. But I could not understand why this dotted line
terminated mid-sea near Jeju-do at the tiny image of a ship sinking beneath the
waves. As I stared, bemused, the monitor picture switched to a grave Korean news
anchor who was talking about 몋he typhoon.� The ferry set sail anyway, crashing
through heaving waves that occasionally sent spray flying the entire length of
the vessel from bow to stern. My Eastern sense of nature뭩 harmony found this
beginning inauspicious; my Western sense of adventure thought it was just
right. In contrast, my first impressions of the island
of Jeju-do unnerved me. I visited a rock formation on the south coast said to
resemble a dragon and I found that it did indeed, but perhaps only if one were
primed to look for a dragon shape. Hiking further along the coast to visit a
famed waterfall that one hyperbolic source termed as 밙orea뭩 Niagara,� I found
a modest brook falling over a modest cliff. I felt threatened. Not
bodily뾯ather, I felt my sense of adventure flicker, as when a movie in which
one has become immersed suddenly jumps as the film strip misfeeds in the
projector.
 Worried, I started climbing Halla-san the next
morning. A fairly constant trickle of hikers accompanied me. A confession:
inside all of us who consider ourselves seekers there lurks the 몋ourist troll.�
We begrudge the crowds who throng temples and shrines bearing cameras, water
bottles, and guidebooks, telling ourselves that we are the only respectable
visitors because we have cameras, water bottles, guidebooks, and a desire to
meditate. Climbing Halla-san, I felt a camaraderie with the many Korean hikers
on the trail, yet I also wished that they would take their pseudo-European
hiking gear and climbing sticks elsewhere.
But the mountain�. Pitted by hundreds of
volcanic bowls of various shapes, Halla-san has been described as possessing a
멿unar landscape.� Though I found that its bare rocks could indeed remind one of
the moon, surprisingly, Halla-san conveyed to me an overpowering sense of a
different land from fiction. Hiking up Halla-san뭩 Orimok Trail, I found myself
on wide plains of bare rock and hardy scrub surrounded by fog on all sides,
mists rising from low dales, and a constant stream of clouds seemingly only an
arm뭩 reach over my head. It was the Scottish moors, another haunted place of
legend.
Reaching Halla-san뭩 rim, wheezing and wet, I
found a small cabin with a man and his son selling instant Ramen, and a
barricade across the trail. The valley was off limits, the barricade뭩 sign
announced, to give the wildlife time to recover from the public. The valley in
the sky, White Deer Lake뾞ll of it, closed for repairs.
 Quite naturally, I started back down the
mountain� and snuck off the trail as soon as nobody was looking.
I circled, seeking a way into the valley. But
the volcanic cone뭩 sides were too steep and the night set in. I slept in a
patch of forest, no tent, with a cold rain falling on my hat and a barrage of
wind exploding against the peak overhead as though the world were coming apart.
The one time I dozed, I was awakened by a snuffling in my ear as some
night-hidden animal checked to see if I was still alive. Thinking longingly
about the resorts along the island뭩 coasts and even the Ramen shack, I solemnly
told myself that there was nobody on the entire island in as miserable a state
as I.
But the next morning, I found myself utterly
alone with the mountain. That day뭩 tourists were hours from arriving. I sat
eating my breakfast on an outcropping utterly devoid of any signs of man. Clouds
slept in a valley below me to one side, the mists curling in dreams. A falcon
soared past, never once beating its wings. On my other side, miniature deer
picked their silent way across a plain of stones. Every now and again, the
clouds below parted to reveal a glimpse of the glittering Yellow Sea. Thinking
on the vastness of the sea, I was struck by a thought that I have treasured to
this day, an epiphany about the meeting place of heaven and earth that I found
at the meeting place between two glorious thoughts. And these were the two
thoughts: 밢n all of the Yellow Sea, there is nobody as privileged as I, sitting
here on this mountain. And the very best part of this mountain is above me,
unseen, undeniable, and waiting.� That was the place between heaven and
earth.
-http://www.jeungsando.org-
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