Return to nature

Autumn is slowly pushing away the heat of summer. The chill in the wind makes my chest ache.
Watching people hunched over in long sleeves, I feel a strange heaviness, a quiet longing. Is it because, once again, I must let go of the year and surrender it to the harsh winter?

Even as a child, I felt sadness whenever the cool autumn wind began to blow—like someone who had already lived a whole life. Perhaps my frailty made me more sensitive to the changing seasons. Hoping fresh air and three warm meals a day would restore my health, my mother sent me to the countryside.

I would wander through fields and hills, dip my feet into streams, splash around, then lie on warm rocks and read. When the breeze turned cooler, I’d return to our Seoul home looking a little healthier.

One day, I came across the Won Dharma Center online. Set beyond a forest and open field, its simple, box-like structure built entirely of wood reminded me of my childhood and time spent in nature. I wanted to retreat into that modern wooden box and rest.

About three hours from New York City, near Albany, I entered the center and immediately began “noble silence,” as the rules required. As soon as I stopped talking, my eyes opened wide—and the green, lush forest felt closer. When my ears opened, I began to hear the chorus of insects, surrounding me in waves of sound.

I wandered through the fields and into the forest. With every step, startled bugs leapt into the air behind me. The chirping never stopped, and even the birds seemed to be answering them with cheerful replies. I met the eyes of a deer staring quietly at me. After a moment of stillness, it turned and disappeared into a cornfield, its white tail flicking as it led its family away. The wind slipping between the trees entered my empty water bottle, let out a teasing “whoosh,” then fled.

As I slid down a gently sloping hill, I heard the soft murmuring of water flowing over smooth stones.
“Welcome, welcome,” it seemed to whisper.
I dipped my hand into the crystal-clear stream and looked up— Sunlight streamed through old trees deep in the forest, clearing the dusty fog that had clouded my urban eyes. On the wide, open field, grasses shook off the morning dew, basking in the last stretch of summer. I, too, joined them—returning to nature, part of the landscape.

When the sound of the moktak (wooden temple instrument) echoed through the mountain monastery, I walked to the meditation hall. Another strike of the moktak meant it was time to eat.
Simple meals made only from vegetables brought back memories of food I ate long ago in the countryside.

I sat at a mountain temple nestled in the Catskills, letting the setting sun wash over me. The green mountain slowly darkened, turning blue, then black beneath the red sky. When the sun slipped completely away and night fell, I went to bed.

Meditation, I’ve come to feel, is perhaps the process of the simplified self slipping into emptiness and discovering a space even wider than that… Until finally, it leads us gently back to nature.