■ The ‘Untangodo’ (Coal Transport Road) lies at the foot of Mt. Hambak, which rises over 1,000 meters above sea level. If you climb the cliff path that was used to transport coal in the 1960s, a small hut appears deep in the mountains. Five years ago, Monk Jisan personally built this small mud house on the summit of the highest mountain in the village. Having been ordained at a major temple in Busan in his twenties and having once served as a ‘Senior Monk’ there, Monk Jisan’s entry into the deep mountains and nature after passing his early old age is a sort of ‘second ordination.’

Even when he served as a ‘Senior Monk’ at a city temple, the Monk’s practice was extraordinary. He devoted himself to spiritual practice for over a decade, befriending the ‘innocence’ of nearly 100 orphaned children. However, this was a place where neither electricity nor communication had been cut off! At the place of practice where he embarked on his second ordination, the monk’s only companion is "nature"—the deep mountains that "speak to him without words." The Baekdudaegan mountain range, visible as far as the peaks of Bonghwa in North Gyeongsang Province, unfolds layer upon layer like a folding screen, and along its ridges, clouds surrender themselves to the wind, floating through the open sky. This mystical scenery is the front yard watched over by Monk Jisan, the daily life of nature.

We convey the philosophy of life imbued with humor and satire of Monk Jisan, who continues his practice today atop a rock amidst the clouds, having become a part of nature himself.

Because he lives in a high valley, neither electricity nor telecommunications reach Monk Jisan’s quarters. The only way to communicate with the world is through the cell phone dangling precariously in the air above the entrance to the Dharma hall. They say the signal works only there. If the wind happens to blow it from side to side, even that connection is cut off. In Monk Jisan’s mountain hut, the day passes with things borrowed from nature. Monk Jisan hurries to prepare firewood to survive the cold winter. Although preparing for winter is the most arduous time of the four seasons, the monk says he lives for the "joy of playing" and for nature, which ceaselessly provides work even in the dead of winter.

As he gathers and carries discarded brushwood along the deserted Untangodo, all kinds of anxieties, delusions, and distracting thoughts vanish; for the monk, this, too, is a form of spiritual practice. The crackling of firewood in the hearth and the sound of wind chimes swaying in the breeze are the only sounds heard in the silent night. It has already been five years since he began living day by day like this. Has the monk found the path he intended to follow?

Crossing a valley from the monk's hut, a vast sorghum field spanning 8,000 pyeong unfolds. It is a neighbor's field awaiting harvest. Helping with the harvest in rural communities facing labor shortages due to COVID-19 is also an act of charity for the monk. Helping neighbors is a form of Zen meditation within his mountain life. From the time seedlings were planted until the harvest, he has lent a hand without any compensation whenever a neighbor called upon him. In response to the field owner’s question, “Why do you seek out such hardship in a remote mountain valley when you reside in a large temple?” the monk replies, “If every single grain of sorghum benefits everyone, isn’t this sorghum field also a place for spiritual practice?” The monk responds with laughter to the farmer’s humorous invitation to keep coming to help with the farming; the humorous Zen dialogue between the two harmonizes with the purple sorghum grains, becoming a beautiful natural landscape in itself.

The autumn foliage in the deep mountains of Gangwon-do is not flashy but subtle. The ancient, resplendent autumn of the Taebaek Mountains, which stretched along the ridges, has shed its leaves and entered winter, where the evergreen foliage of the Japanese holly stands out. Rain suddenly pouring down at Monk Jisan’s hut serves as an alarm for the season. It is winter, a time when food is scarce, yet the monk shows no concern. He gathers berries from the high-altitude mountain ash to brew tea, and cooks soybean paste soup using shepherd’s purse and wild chives that have sprouted from the frozen ground. And this winter, I plan to use solar power to resolve the inconvenience of not having electricity. Having spent decades living only in the temple, I have no way of knowing how to use solar panels, but I plan to ask for help from the monk's closest neighbors—the owners of the single hut located just over a mountain: the couple known as "Maria Bosal" (the monk adds "Bosal" to Maria's baptismal name, as she is a devout Catholic) and her husband. Since the monk's pace follows nature's timetable, life remains peaceful even in the bitter cold. "As the wind touches, with the sun as a companion, eating and sleeping according to what nature ...