Once I went to a slum village in Myanmar to offer my help.
I arrived to the sight of a cold dead body brought on a stretcher to a little yellow house.
The door opens and closes, a boring daily routine like floating clouds.

A woman fell in love and married an aids patient.
I had no idea how long or short, the new born life between them lived.
Hundreds of dogs born on the streets, barking all day long without any reason.

In the darkness under the roof, rows of hard beds seemed almost frozen.
Lives inside there, frequently screams before the door of death.
Rotten bent bodies, full of pus, powerlessly breathe.
They often sit together in the temple, praying nights and days with no hope.

Close your eyes and truly confront your pain, it will all pass.
Suffering of this lifetime is a blessing for a next life.

Listening and learning those words, smiling, the people were slowly dying.
Anyone can live there as long as they want, perhaps forever,
until entering the little yellow house to disappear.

Thousands of people living and dying there, and nobody knew why they should.
Anyone could help anybody, and everybody needed help.
Death is everywhere, I wasn’t aware, I’ve always been freaked out from so far away.

Just breath in, breath out, empty your mind.
Just breath in, and breath out, nothing is permanent.

One day I met an old Korean doctor at the acupuncture clinic in the village.
Last 6 years he’s barely met anyone who speaks the same language.
That must be why he was so excited like seeing his own grand child.

When he was my age, he was in Germany, working as a coal miner.
He is a bit deaf from going down so deep back then.
Trying to read my mouth, he turned up the volume of his hearing aid.
Few decades ago, he built some huge bridges around Seoul.
After retirement he learned an entirely new skill and came here to volunteer.

Because I refuse hanging out at the nursing home and doing nothing in my life,
I can’t live like that, I will go insane, he said.
He trembled a bit, bottomlessly afraid, thinking about the remaining days at that age, over 80.

It’s wholly different from worries of the future as a youth.
Complete darkness, he kept emphasizing.

Sometimes he cooks miso soup for volunteers to talk about things.
Otherwise how can I endure living here, he questioned.
Wrinkles around his eyes smiled forlorn.
At times, there is an unendurable loneliness.

Then he looked at the national flag of his country on his table.
He lives proud of his race, and he said I should, too.
I wondered if I have something even a tiny bit like that left, and he continued talking.

I had a very hard life, young people these days should live like that too.
They should try so hard whatever they do, so as to succeed.
He kept saying that, so I asked what it means to succeed?

Of course it’s not only about money, he answered.
Living and being humane, I mean.

Hearing an unexpected answer, I looked up and stared at his eyes.
thinking, what does it mean to live and be humane?

These sick people here dying so humanely,
with macerated toes, infected elbows, moldy butt and groin,
I felt so impatient thinking of them.

Patients’s hands, feet, arms and legs nonchalantly bending
into the evanescent whirlpool of life.
All their time being wordlessly extinguished.

Somehow people smile like everything is alright, and it is only I, who can’t.
Without knowing why, we born to die.
Statue of the Buddha expressionlessly looking down on us.

Don’t cry, don’t laugh, nothing is permanent.
Don't dance, don't sing, empty your mind.