Silent teaching

My grandmother started writing the Heart Sutra every day. Each dawn she copied the one-page text in Chinese characters in her notebook. When the number of notebooks exceeded the number of her daughters, she gave one of the notebooks to each.

My grandmother never wasted a second. In her 90s too, she cooked rice every day, and made soybean paste and gave it to her daughters.

Last autumn, however, she was hospitalized after experiencing difficulty breathing. Not long after, she was bedridden. I was sitting next to her bed, holding her hand. In silence, I stroked her hand gently. Before going out of her hospital room, I leaned in close and said, "I love you, grandma." She said slowly, "I love you too."

Even in this difficult situation, my grandmother gave everything she could to the people around her. She said "I love you" to each of her children and her grandchildren who came to see her. She always said "thank you" to the nurses and doctors. She gave love to all of us with all her remaining energy.

On the way home from the hospital, tears rolled down my face. I thought I would never be able to see my grandmother again. But suddenly, it occurred to me that our bodies are not the "real" us. My grandmother would continue to exist after she died through all the people she loved.

On the day she began to be dosed with morphine, her children and grandchildren gathered in her hospital room. Her mind was still clear. My mother asked her, "Mom, isn't it good to have a big family, even though giving birth to us was hard?"

"Yes, I'm happy," my grandmother answered clearly. When my mother talked about something funny that happened in the past, my grandmother smiled. It was a rich time when all my family and relatives cried and laughed beside my grandmother who was very near to death. We sometimes shed tears, but we were happy to be together at that moment. Death and life were mysteries.

The next day, with her morphine injections increasing, my grandmother seemed to be sleeping. Although her lung disease was serious, she was still breathing. Life is what people close to death hold onto until the end, despite extreme pain. Life is that precious. To teach this silently, my grandmother was breathing with her whole body and mind.

Sitting next to her, I decided to live full of love, not wasting my remaining time. She wasn't leaving; just transforming. She would melt into a vast sea of love, and then reappear wearing another body.

After her funeral, I borrowed a Korean edition of the Heart Sutra from a library. Through our influence on other beings, we continue to live after death. My grandmother was with me through the book I borrowed.