Three Strings, One Note

We tend to picture becoming whole as a building job: find the missing pieces, add what is short, and at last put a self together. Yet some things are never assembled. Home is not built; the way back is walked, again and again. This week is about that return.

For three weeks we have read three lines from the Samil Singo's Truth Chapter: True Nature has no good or evil in it, True Vitality no clear or murky, True Essence no abundance or lack. Right after them comes this:

返眞一神 — "Returning to the true is becoming one with Il-sin."

Il-sin (일신, 一神) is the Universal Divine. As these letters read it, Il-sin is not an absolute being standing somewhere outside you; it is your own nature. And notice the verb. Not building, not earning, not being granted: returning. The three truths, 삼진 (sam-jin), were given whole; nothing needs adding to them. And the line says the true, in the singular, not the truths. The three were never three possessions to collect one by one. They are one wholeness, met in three ways.

Then why do they feel like three, and none of them whole? The next line answers: 惟衆迷地 三妄着根 — "But ordinary people lose the root and fall into confusion, and three false things take root." These are the three delusions, 삼망 (sam-mang), of the last three weeks, each splitting the true into a pair and then choosing one half over the other.

Becoming one with Il-sin is how the end of the road looks, not a task for this week. We walk the mirror season not because anything is missing, but because we are on the road.

Nothing to add, then, but much to do: what has taken root is cut away, again and again, and what is recovered is kept, day after day. This week, the three mirrors together: 지감 (ji-gam), stopping reactive feeling; 금촉 (geum-chok), guarding contact; 조식 (jo-sik), making the breath even. When something will not loosen under watching, take it to the sword of sunlight. Cut it, throw it into the sun, let it vanish, and return to 참 (cham), the true. Sword and mirror, in turn. The work does not make the true; it clears the way back.

Most keys on a piano strike not one string but three, all set to the same note. In tune, they sound as one note. Over the years the three drift, and the note begins to waver — the honky-tonk sound of an old upright. The tuner adds nothing to the note, yet works patiently, string by string: listening for the waver, adjusting, listening again, until it slows, and stops. Then three strings, one note, and you cannot hear where one ends. No tuning is the last. But the piano is only a picture: the three truths were never three strings pulled apart, and Il-sin is not a pitch outside you to be matched.

Here is something I find quietly wonderful. When two strings are nearly together, the waver has a speed, and the speed is exactly the gap that separates them. As the gap closes, the beating slows; with no gap, it is gone. Piano tuners tune by listening for it to stop.

30 minutes, once this week, on a day with room in it. Sit on a chair or cushion, back easy, eyes half open.

Five minutes — the sword. Let one moment come back when you split a day in two: a good day, a wasted one, not enough. See it exactly, and let the verdict rise with it. Cut them both with the sword of sunlight, throw them into the sun, and let them vanish. Then recover 참, the true.

Fifteen minutes — the three mirrors. Five minutes each, in this order.

Ji-gam: let feelings come and go. Notice the verdict — good, bad — and leave it unanswered.

Geum-chok: a sound, a sight, a pull in the body. Notice the lean toward one, away from another; follow neither.

Jo-sik: let the breath keep its own pace; do not deepen or slow it. Watch it without picking a side.

Whatever does not fade under watching, hand to the sunlight right there, then go back to watching.

Ten minutes — rest. Keep sitting, watching lightly. Do not check whether anything has come together. The checking is one string pulling against another.

The other days. When you catch yourself splitting a moment — good or bad, clear or foggy, enough or not — say quietly, one note, and go on.

Frost's Descent has come on the old calendar. Whatever this week splits in two, catch it, and come back.

셋으로 들려도, 한 소리다.

se-seu-ro deul-lyeo-do, han so-ri-da — Heard as three, it is one sound.

— zexeda K

This week on zexeda.com — What Is the Samil Singo? Korea's Scripture of the Three and the One A longer read on the whole scripture, from its five chapters to the line about returning to the true.