- Deciding the Path of Life or Death
- 1 In Dae-heung Village, on a winter day in 1908, Sahng-jeh-nim wrote a message
- 2 horizontally on each of the first fifteen pages of a thirty-page notebook:
- 背恩忘德萬死身
- Those who betray the benevolent and are ungrateful will die ten thousand deaths.
- 3 In the middle of the same pages, He wrote vertically:
- 一分明 一陽始生
- This invariably becomes clear: one yang is born and becomes brighter.
- 4 On each of the remaining fifteen pages, He horizontally wrote:
- 作之不止聖醫雄藥
- Unceasingly carry out the great work of heaven and earth: sage healing that cures the world and heroic medicine that saves the world.
- In the middle, He wrote vertically:
- 一陰始生
- One yin is born and grows.
- 5 Having finished, He placed some cinnabar powder and a small bowl on the floor and said to Gim Gwahng-chahn, “This is the work to decide the path of life and the path of death. Consider this carefully and then tell Me your opinion.”
- 6 “Those who denounce or maltreat their ancestral spirits will find it difficult to receive the energy of life,” Gwahng-chahn replied.
- 7 Sahng-jeh-nim thought about this for a long time. “You are right.” He wrapped the bowl in paper, pressed the bottom of it into the cinnabar powder, and then stamped each page as if with a seal.
- 8 Then, He said, “This is the mark of the king’s authority.”
- (JSD Dojeon 7,50)
