Quotes by South Korean Authors - Page 5

With the muscle of integrity, we can turn intention into powerful action. That's how we can earn trust form our conscience, and can truly believe in ourselves.
Ilchi Lee
Good memory skill is the offspring of good focus. If you find yourself becoming a little forgetful, it is probably not because there is something wrong with your brain. Rather, it is simply because your mind is too cluttered to allow things to stick.
Ilchi Lee
When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death.
Kyung-Sook Shin
the overall theme of theology can be twofold: the search for meaning and the responsibility one has to the others.
Namsoon Kang
Yellow is a very favorable vibration for mental or intellectual activity, as it promotes a clear state of mind. Yellow heightens your awareness and alleviates depression, sadness, or any kind of despondency. Yellow vibration foods are: pineapples, bananas, grapefruit, lemons and corn.
Tae Yun Kim
However much he denied it, he always hoped that they'd be kinder to each other one day, like people who were grateful to survive something instead of people still fighting to survive. Wherever that small seed of hope resided, it no longer exists, and what they were to each other is what they will always be. Tethered somehow. Dawn together by a force that should've kept them close but repelled them instead.
Jung Yun
Because everybody has a conscience, whether or not we can be great beings is not determined merely by its presence in us . Instead, it is determined by the choice to acknowledge its presence and follow its lead
Ilchi Lee
If you look within your heart, I am here, and you are free.
Ilchi Lee
Have you ever thought of yourself as a great being?Have you ever been deeply moved by a thought that came from inside? One day, I heard a voice inside me sincerely concerned for the future of the earth and humanity. That voice asked, Would a world where all life forms on this earth live together in peace and harmony be impossible? That voice answered, If all people really wanted that and chose that kind of world, why wouldn't it come true?
Ilchi Lee
Suffering is the noblest art, the quieter the better.
Chang-rae Lee
Orange strengthens your emotional body, encouraging a general feeling of joy, well-being, and cheerfulness. Orange vibration foods are: oranges, tangerines, apricots, mangoes, peaches and carrots.
Tae Yun Kim
Although I believe identity politics '"produces limited but real empowerment for its participants," it is important to note that it contains significant problems: first, its essentialist tendency; second, its fixed _we-they_ binary position; third, its homogenization of diverse social oppression; fourth, its simplification of the complexity and paradox of being privileged and unprivileged; and fifth its ruling out of intersectional space of diverse forms of oppression in reality.
Namsoon Kang
The more she laughs, the more he ups the ante with his clowning. By the time he finishes he will have run through all the secret mysteries of laughter that human beings have ever understood, mobilizing everything at his disposal. There is no way for him to know how guilty it makes his mother feel, seeing such a young child go to such lengths just to wring a bit of apparent happiness from her, or that her laughter will all eventually run out.
Han Kang
Theologians are to look to the _beyond_-community–– _beyond_ nationality; skin-color, gender; sexual orientation, citizenship, religious affiliation––because God, the Divine, who is the primary frame of reference for theologians, is for, with, in, among those individual human beings. It is to reaffirm the sheer truth: No one is better or worse, superior or inferior than any other; and, 'Ich bin du, wenn Ich Ich bin' [I am you, when Iam I.]
Namsoon Kang
When you express "purity" which is the truth about yourself, you feel a love for yourself that is expressed by self-respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence!
Tae Yun Kim
The key to meditation is to exist one hundred percent in the here and now.
Ilchi Lee
Cosmopolitanism has offered me an ethical perspective and a conceptual framework with which to read the _signs of our times_ as a theologian and intellectual who has a public responsibility for constantly offering a way to engage in this rapidly changing public world.
Namsoon Kang
Consciousness is part of our nature as sentient beings, but doesn’t mean we are aware at a particular moment. By perceiving our consciousness - becoming conscious of consciousness, we become aware.
Ilchi Lee
The time and space in which I have been working on this cosmopolitan project have convinced me that the disparity between the ideal of cosmopolitan theology and the current sociopolitical configuration of hospitality, welcoming others, unconditional forgiveness, is itself a _prophetic call_ to which we all have to respond––as humans, as person of faith. The _real_ is always about calculation and conditionality, whereas the _ideal_ of cosmopolitan theology is about incalculability, unconditionality, and planetarity of the _world-as-it-ought-to-be_. Therefore, the disparity between the reality and the ideality is not a space for despair but a space where one's sense of prophetic call_ and passion for _the impossible_ must come in.
Namsoon Kang
I believe the key to solving everything from individual problems to the global environmental crisis or political and religious conflicts is to be found in restoring this link with the great life force. By recovering our natural healing ability and the goodness of human nature, we can create a truly peaceful, sustainable world. And I don’t believe that these are things that social institutions or prestigious experts can do for us: they must happen within each and every one of us.
Ilchi Lee
I'm going to go where my heart takes me, even if it's a messy road.
Ha Myung-hee (writer)
. . . when you are stressed, if you take three deep breaths before you say or do anything, this will help prevent you from making choices you might regret later.
Ilchi Lee
A "positive, open consciousness" means looking at something as it is, without coating it in your own ideas or emotions and, furthermore, looking for hope and potential I in it. Thus, when you consciousness is open, you can communicate easily with another person and accept positively that person's actions or suggestions. An open person fundamentally has respect for all life. Additionally, that person readily accesses cosmic information, because the door of their consciousness is open and they are able to receive needed ideas and inspiration easily This leads to new creation.
Ilchi Lee
Religion is not God himself or herself. It is a system of teaching about God, an explanation of God’s way to human minds. But God doesn’t need explanations to exist.
Ilchi Lee
By becoming aware of how you eat your eating will become a rich experience blessed with tasteful flavor, joyful texture, a deep sense of gratitude, and pleasurable contentment.
Ilchi Lee
But, Aunt... I don't want to go to the grave site set aside for me a few years ago at the ancestral grave site. I don't want to go there. When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death. It was sunny, and I liked the pine tree that stood bent but tall, but remaining a member of this family even in death would be too much and too hard. To try to change my mind, I would sing and pull weeds, sitting there until the sun set, but nothing made me feel comfortable there. I lived with this family for over fifty years; please let me go now.
Kyung-Sook Shin
That's where we start making changes From the deepest and softest.It's not the world that we needed to change It is the people who inhabit the world. It's not machines that we need to change. It is the people who use those machines. Even with people we can start the change from the softer things such as the way we breathe, and the way we feel about or toward other people and other living beings. These soft parts shape Our behaviors and our choices, both on a personal and a global scale. In this respect, they are fundamental, more so than any material changes.
Ilchi Lee
I used to think that sharing secrets always brought people closer. So I revealed secrets I did not want known in order to feel closer to someone. Oh, the loss I felt when I found out the secrets that I had held dear, that were so difficult to say out loud, that I had kept to myself, were being spread around the next day as if they were nothing! I think that was the moment I realized that pouring your heart out to someone might not bring you closer but in fact make you poorer instead. I even though maybe growing close to someone was better achieved by empathizing in silence.
Kyung-Sook Shin
now the question we must ask is...what kind of _practices_ [theology] motivates, what kind of _gaze_ onto others, the guest, the new arrivant, it offers us to carry with us; _not_ who my neighbors are _but_ to whom I am being a neighbor.
Namsoon Kang
People believe in everything, except the reality.
Min Kim
Instead of others, ask yourself, “Are you really okay?” Check on yourself like this and do a warm “Goodnight” to yourself.
Jang Jae Yeol
Behind every person who’s committed an unimaginable crime is an adult who committed unimaginable violence against them as a child. All of them, as if it was plotted that way. Violence begets violence, and that violence begets even more violence.
Gong Jiyoung
The language of Energy-Consciousness, LifeParticles, can be universal for all life-forms. To enliven it ask yourself, “How would I feel if …” and just feel - how other people feel, how the oceans, forests, animals and the Earth feel. Through this language, you can deliver your feeling and intent to others and consciously experience your connection to all beings.
Ilchi Lee
People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.
Ha-Joon Chang
I know you . . .That you hold insideVast possibilities and dreamsAnd limitless love.
Ilchi Lee
On a day like this, we women would be completely and utterly happy just to have a man hold our cold hands and massage our aching backs. We'd be so blissfully happy we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. Men are never happy unless they're trying to do the impossible. It's why they roam about the world trying to conquer it.
Kim Dong Hwa
With her courage and determination, Malala has shown what terrorists fear most: a girl with a book.
Ban Ki-Moon
Feel the energy, starting with your hands, and if you maintain the sensation of being connected to that energy as you pray, you can be more deeply immersed in your prayer. The reason is that the entire universe is composed of the energy you're feeling with your hands right now. When you maintain that feeling of connection with the universe as you pray for the great hopes and dreams cherished by your soul, you are broadcasting your prayer to the entire universe as your audience. If the whole universe is resonating with your dream and working with you to make your dream come true, wouldn't that lend great strength to you?
Ilchi Lee
Observing is not just seeing. It is watching with attention.
Ilchi Lee
Boundaries, rulers, and names of nations can change, but the Earth is always our home and our source of life. Earth is the only indelible identity we can have. This is why I am suggesting that we expand our identities beyond the limits of nationality and culture to encompass the only identity that is definite and real by identifying ourselves, first and foremost, as Earth Citizens.
Ilchi Lee
Consciousness has power to create physical changes and requires no other medium than itself. It can reach the entire universe, inferring that consciousness energy is the very nature of the universe.
Ilchi Lee
How do we meditate? It is not thinking about the past or future. It starts with being present.
Ilchi Lee
I believe theology should be about one's way of life, a kind of gaze into onesself and others, and a mode of one's profound existence in the world.
Namsoon Kang
The truth, finally, is who can tell it.
Chang-rae Lee
I am a dumb piece of meatand I rot everydaymy flesh gives a rotting smelland people say it's the smell of lifeand they come to meand watch me rotand get happy and upset and annoyed and disgusted and maybe sometimes feelcompassionbut they don't realize they are rotting too.
Daul Kim
Many people hide inside of their “not-knowing” and, afraid of taking the risk, settle for mediocrity in their life. They imitate the same safe, easy life that other people walk. They mistake that for happiness and, inside of it, look for security. However, the moment that the defensive shields we’ve built up come down, all truths reveal themselves and speak to us. When we hear our inner voice and follow it, we can walk our own path.
Ilchi Lee
People say that when a baby is crying the paternal grandmother will say, "The baby is crying, you should feed her," and the maternal grandmother will say, "Why is that baby crying so much, making her mom so tired?
Kyung-Sook Shin
If we see our relationship to this planet in a wide perspective, one thing is clear: we belong to this planet, not the other way around.
Ilchi Lee
When you recognize or experience the truth about yourself you automatically feel love, because love is a quality of your true consciousness and true ideas.
Tae Yun Kim
You will be able to live as your authentic self when you find that infinite source of energy and that mind, bright and shining like the sun. Then you won’t need to become anyone other than yourself. You won’t need to depend on externals for your health and happiness, and you won’t need to look outside yourself to find passion and hope for life.
Ilchi Lee
Absolute values are the things that are important whether you like them or not. Relative values depend on social contexts and personal preferences and conditions of life. Our current market system pursues relative transient values at the cost of absolute lasting values.
Ilchi Lee
Breathing is the master key of life.
Ilchi Lee
Behind our behaviors are our beliefs. They determine how we think things are and what is possible. The foundation of these beliefs is our conception of who we are, whether we are conscious of it or not.
Ilchi Lee
Knowing that you have a soul bright and clear like the sun, perceiving and feeling that soul, you will realize that it is very precious and beautiful. Whenyou consider yourself important and precious, you will begin to feel the same way toward other forms of life and toward the world.
Ilchi Lee
It is the same principle as washing dirty clothes - the more you clean the dirt away, the more it goes back to its original state. A piece of paper, which has been scribbled on, gets cleaner the more the scribbling is erased. Enlightenment is the same as knowing the true state of the paper once it is clean.
Woo Myung
The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had never done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm.
Han Kang
Maintain an attitude of anticipating success!
Tae Yun Kim
Leaving North Korea is not like leaving any other country. It is more like leaving another universe. I will never truly be free of its gravity, no matter how far I journey.
Hyeonseo Lee
The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves.
Namsoon Kang
People hated and killed each other back then. Now even those who survived are dying, leaving this world one by one. Unless we find a way to forgive one another, none of us will ever be able to see each other again. (2007: 88)
Hwang Sok-yong