Jul 29th, 2008
Ilchi Lee: It was 1950. On June 25.
I was born in Korea in midst of chaos and change.
It was 1950. On June 25 of that year, the Soviet-trained and -equipped armies of North Korea invaded the woefully unprepared South Korea all along the Thirty-eighth Parallel, an imaginary line along an expanse of lush greenery marked by an unending stretch of razor-sharp wire fence that divided North from South Korea, forcibly separating families, friends, and lovers. The North Koreans sought to unify the whole Korean Peninsula and free us from the evil American imperialists, and the South Koreans resisted the insidious encroachment of the Stalinist communist dictatorship with equal fervor. Both claimed to be the true inheritors of the new Korea, after the long and torturous Japanese occupation. For the next three years, the forces of socialism and capitalism came together with a cataclysmic effect on the Korean continent with all the power and fanaticism of young ideologies, eventually involving more than sixteen countries and marking the beginning of the Cold War. At the end, the war would claim more than four million lives on borth sides, including those of more than fifty thousand American GIs.
To the Koreans, the war was brutal, yet eye-opening, introduction to the world at large. We saw that there existed in the world all different types of people: whites, blacks, Indians, large, small, and dark. We were introduced to different indeas and ways of living, acting, laughing, and crying. We saw that people spoke different tongues, mind-boggling in all their variety and complexities. It was a world of stark contrasts, immediate fear of death and constant struggle for life, grief-stricken chant over a lost son and bright laughter at the sight of a returning daughtr, the sight of corpses littering the streets and cries of newborns amidst the rubble.
It was in the world that I grew up, asking questions about life and death as early as I can remember, questions that were eventually answered in that one spectacular moment of enlightenment after countless years of all-consuming search. And I write this book now because I want to call upon the world to embark on an Enlightenment Revolution, a massive spiritual awakening that will sweep across the Earth with a thundering speed, bringing the joy of enlightenment to everyone. I write this book now to let everyone know of their own right to enlightenment, that enlightenment is not only the realm of the saintly, and that the massive enlightenment of humanity is the only lasting solution to our real problems.