There is a Korean saying that goes something like, “even if the fabric of your clothes bristle for a moment you are bound together by in yeon”. So what is in yeon? It’s typically understood as something like “fate” or “personal destiny”, especially because the first letter “in” is a homophone of the word for “person”.
That’s what I thought it was for the majority of my life as well, and only in the past few years did I learn that it was actually a Buddhist term. It actually means cause and environment, and you know what? Usually I go all in on defining things and talking at length about conceptual things. Today I want to give you a more practical experience of in yeon to let you know what it feels like. (Also because I already wrote about the definition of it before)
My pre-meal prayer goes like this: “I think of the good will of the people who worked hard to bring the food in front of me like this and eat with gratitude. Namo buddha, namo dharma, namo sangha”. I had some food for lunch today and let’s just see how many people worked to feed me.
I had oysters. Dozen oysters, to be exact and they were 6 pairs of different kinds of oysters. So obviously I have servers and runners who brought me food; so that’s at least 2 people. The oysters were shucked and prepped on top of ice, so I have the shuckers to thank for.
But before that, some of the oysters were from Seattle, some from Virginia, some from British Columbia, some from San Diego. The oysters don’t magically land in the restaurant; there are groups of fishermen who get the oysters, the sourcers, the buyers, the transporters, and the receivers at the restaurant to get the oysters from the sea to the restaurant.
Wait, there’s more! The lemon I sprinkled on top of the oyster and the “atomic” horseradish I put on my oyster. Those all have to come from somewhere too, right? So I have to thank the lemon farmer, the transporter, sourcer, buyer, receiver for that. Same with horseradish, and horseradish is prepped so I also have to thank the cook to preparing it for me.
The oysters don’t float in thin air; it’s served in a tall steel framed plate. That means I need to thank the provider of the plate as well. Also the people who invented the concept of the plate, and the people who thought of using steel for serving food. I also used utensils, so I repeat the process for all of that. Moreover I’m sitting in front of a table on a chair so I need to do that.
Also I’m sitting in a restaurant and I walked into the restaurant because it was built and in service; so I have to thank the owner of the restaurant, the landlord, the interior designer, the cleaners, the tax people for the restaurant and the county of San Diego for keeping this restaurant open. Also without other patrons this restaurant wouldn’t be in business so I have them to thank for as well.
I learned of this restaurant thanks to Google Maps and that means I have to thank Google… Also I found it on my phone so I have to thank LTE providers and the people who developed the first idea of a cell phone and also the people who first invented the phone. I read and spoke English so I have to thank the people behind English as well.
I’m able to eat this today because I am alive today. I had many illnesses that could have taken my life but holy crap, I have all the doctors in the past who took care of me. Also for me to be alive today I needed to have eaten things to keep me alive. Suppose I eat 6 eggs every day. I’m 37 years old so that’s like 81030 eggs. Assuming one chicken lays about 300 eggs I have 270ish chickens to thank for.
Chickens also eat, right? So I also need to thank farmers and the bugs for being the chicken’s food. And this is just for eggs. I ate a whole lot more than just 6 eggs every day. I have so, so many things to be thankful for because while I take it for granted nothing guarantees that I have these resources available to me all the time.
Don’t you sometimes have experiences where you go to a restaurant and find that it’s closed? I mean literally, nobody owes me food. The restaurants can close whenever they want, grocery stores can close whenever they want, people can refuse service to me whenever I want.
What guarantees I’m going to have a place to stay? The wildfires showed me that my dwelling isn’t guaranteed. Many of the hotels I enjoyed going to closed. Planes got cancelled and cars got crashed. I used to think I was unfortunate when these things happened but that is such a backwards way of thinking about it, because again — what guarantees me anything? What makes me so great that all these things are guaranteed?
I ate lunch with my wife and she is a wonder of a human being as well. Since they started counting generations with my last name I’m the sixty somethingth descendant. That means at least 1.1529215e18 people are needed just for me, and that’s counting after they started having the last name Seol. But since my wife is alive at the same time as me, I’m gonna wager that she also needed 1.1529215e18 prior generations of people for her to exist.
Our love, which is entirely optional to both of us, is the result of 2.30584301e18 people propelling us from the past. No, actually our existence is the result of those people; for us to be alive today to experience our lives together and love together requires a hell lot of a more of people. I would go as far as to say, the entire history of humanity existed for me and my wife; I wouldn’t be that far off with this estimate.
There are many people I never had the opportunity to meet in my life because I wasn’t alive at the same time as them. But out of sheer luck and coincidence I’m living together with my wife at the same time and both of us are somehow still alive because the inevitable death hasn’t found us yet. This is the everyday that we usually take for granted, thinking that it’s a problem because we don’t have what we want.
None of the things I said are exaggerations or dramatizations to illustrate an imaginary point. The more you think about it, the more amazed you will be at the miracle of life. Just you, alone, how many cells need to collaborate together to keep you alive? Because we just talked about the human influence of everything. How many other universal miracles and threads of truth keep us intact and alive?
How can I not take my life as something to be grateful for, something that’s nothing short of a miracle? When I understand life, how can I use a single moment of it to suffer? This is what in yeon means, a personal fate met by cause and effect that’s almost too good to be true.