Santa Clara Meditation Personal Growth – Two Men Talk About Their Army Service And Mind Training
Choi Yong-hae and Yoon Chang-bae
Military obligation is one of the biggest life challenges for men living in Korea. All men are required to serve in the army when they come of age. Even among the most vigorous youth, the two years of close group life, taking orders and enduring obedience are huge burdens for soldiers. The trauma of military life continues for a while after discharge. Some say they have reintegrated into society, while others say an aftereffect remains. Can’t we go without pressure, live naturally, and take advantage of this precious time in life? The following is the story of two men who turned their army life into an opportunity to study their own minds.
Military life: If I only think about me, it’s going to be hard.
Choi Yong-hae: I used to be in the 60th Division artillery, but I heard that the artillery is very difficult, so as soon as I got there, I transferred to become an administrative officer. That’s when the hard times began.
Yoon Chang-bae: I was in the 11th Infantry Division in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province. I used to be a driver, but I had fun in the army. I thought it was a good opportunity to learn life from the beginning.
Choi Yong-hae: That’s great. I wasn’t motivated or confident to do anything before I went into the army. When I was in college, I tried to find a way out, so I thought, “Hey, I will join the army.” The reason I became an administrative soldier was because I thought I was the only one who needed to be comfortable there. After the incoming soldiers had suffered in training camp that day, I just sat in the administration office and looked at them with fear of entering training camp. I stayed totally out of site.
Yoon Chang-bae: It was very helpful for me to meditate and then go into the military. Before I joined the military, I heard a lot of the words from the older men who went to the meditation center. They always warned me not to look for and stay in the most comfortable positions, but instead to do the hard work before everyone else and then people would love me. I was told not to hate people because there’s a reason why people curse at me.
Choi Yong-hae: I wish I could have done that before I went into the army. When you meditate, you understand how to think from the other person’s perspective and you can treat everything with ease. I couldn’t even think of helping my colleague even when he was lying down with a back injury. I only knew myself.
After being discharged, I had nightmares about once a week.
Yoon Chang-bae: Transport Ministry has strong military discipline. Driving and maintenance can lead to big accidents, so people are criticized for not being alert. When I was a private, the senior officer was picking on me. One day I didn’t clean out the locker according to the standard and he took everything out and told me to clean it again. He asked me why I didn’t throw out the trash or organize the shoes properly, and he kept giving me more work to the point where I hardly had a chance to sit down. Even as I came up in ranking, he scolded me for not doing things properly. He said, “Since you don’t do things the right way, the lower ranking officers just follow your lead and do the same thing.” Then he punished me again.
Choi Yong-hae: It was hard for me because I tended to keep it in my mind. Being cursed at, especially, causes a huge wound. I was so intimidated that I couldn’t even look straight at people. I always thought I was doing well in the army so I blamed my seniors. Since I was discharged, I had nightmares every week. I would have two distinct dreams: a dream of going back into the army and unable to escape and a dream where I was sitting in a line waiting to be punished, without being able to escape (Laughing).
Yoon Chang-bae: A senior officer once asked me, “I can’t tell if you are serious. Are you taking a break?” At first I just thought he hated me. Every time I meditated and threw away my mind, I would wonder about why he had cursed at me. It turns out that he did it to teach me how to lead my subordinates. I started to understand it objectively. Later we resolved the misunderstanding and became close friends.
There is a huge difference between meditating and not meditating before joining the army.
Choi Yong-hae: You were able to take it in a positive way because you could throw it away every time you were faced with the situation. It was very painful for me to receive the punishment which comes down from senior officers as ‘Top-Down-Punishment.’ Because of my mistakes, I, my colleagues and even my seniors were punished together. Then about a year ago, the administration said, “Hey! The senior soldiers called you a ‘torturer’.” A “torturer” is a person one who can’t really serve in the army, who makes a lot of mistakes and who burdens people around him. It’s a label which completely crushes a man’s pride.
Yoon Chang-bae: At first I felt like a fool too. Even though I didn’t make any big mistakes, I was scolded over and over again by the senior officer, “You don’t have any ideas, you’re stupid!” If I hadn’t been trained through meditation, I would have exploded at some point.
Choi Yong-hae: What’s more difficult is that it follows you in society. You become self-conscious and watchful of yourself. When I feel myself getting slow at work or something like that, the word “torture officer” comes to my mind. If I feel slow when I brush my teeth, I just rinse it out quickly and finish. It sounds like I’m hearing it every moment, so it’s a real nightmare. I was lost for a while after I was discharged from the army, and I kept thinking negative thoughts. It was only through this meditation that my wounds healed.
Yoon Chang-bae: Wow, that’s a relief, great!
Choi Yong-hae: When I first threw away my mind through meditation, I could recall my seniors surrounding me. And then, at some point, I realized something and I started to see from a senior soldier’s point of view and I realized I didn’t do anything really well. When I changed my point of view like that, I could then throw away my hatred and resentment, and I subtracted all my vanity and the delusion that I was doing a very good job. If I hadn’t meditated, I’d have continued to hate them until my death and continued to suffer. Just the thought of that makes me sick.
Yoon Chang-bae: Since the army is a place where various people gather, I had to empty my mind for the first time to adapt well. Obviously, the people I knew who had meditated first and gone to the military were able to adapt more easily to the harsher environment, but those who hadn’t meditated had a hard time. Studying about my mind changed my life.
The Army: A good opportunity to look back one’s self.
Choi Yong-hae: I’m grateful that the meditation center members treated me so warmly. Because they led and patted me on the back, I felt good and I didn’t have any pimples. I realized that people can be nice and alright. I gradually became motivated and passed the civil service exam and gained much more confidence. I believe in the fact that personalities can change. It changed because I meditated. I’m getting more energetic, and I’m starting to feel like I’m in the mood to lead others at work.
Yoon Chang-bae: Leadership and confidence are what helped me a lot after learning about that principle in the military. Thanks to the army, my school life changed also. I used to be a joker and I only did what I wanted to do, but now I’m the person in the building who does things that people don’t want to do yet are essential.
Choi Yong-hae: In fact, it’s rare to experience group life for two years like the military life. The army was my mirror and I denied it. Looking back, the army was a great opportunity to look back on myself. Embracing those aspects gives me a lot of strength in my organizational life.
Yoon Chang-bae: I think I learned that I need to be a necessary person in society rather than just thinking about it. I also learned that sincerity works.
Choi Yong-hae: It really does. I hit my successors when I was angry. When I meditated later, I felt really sorry to them. Oh, that wasn’t my true mind! As I realized it, I was deeply repenting, and then my own mind pictures of the army disappeared!
The secret to a wise military life is meditation
Yoon Chang-bae: In fact, we’re all brothers and friends aside from the military rank. I felt it when I practiced shooting, but if one of us made a mistake, all of our lives were in danger. So I started to feel fond of them. I gave advice to people and later, the executives told me to tell them a lot about my story.
Choi Yong-hae: To me, such a person looks like a god in the army. Those who do well in the military don’t bother their successors. I also saw a nice old man who had appeared my mind as I looked back at my life. Every time other senior officers bothered and scolded me he came by and stopped. I was always envious of him for his exemplary work. I wanted to be like him. I’m so touched. But I couldn’t change that. I had to throw away my wounds, my memories, my pictures first, and then I changed.
Yoon Chang-bae: I was able to feel deeply grateful to everyone around me because I was in the army after practicing meditation. These people who were really there for me were telling me one by one, “You have this kind of mind clutter, so throw it away.” It was amazing that I could accept everything that was happening to me and I realized that everything that was happening to me was an opportunity to reflect on myself and clean up my mind.
Choi Yong-hae: Like Chang-bae, in meditation before going to the army, everyone would meditate and look at the feelings that came up inside them whenever they had interacted with other people. I wish I could have thrown it away. Then there would be more opportunities to look at myself. Anyway, it’s only my frame of mind not to hurt or be hurt. If I don’t give up that mind, I’ll, you know, live with that mind. It’s unfortunate that you have to live with that mind forever.
Yoon Chang-bae: That’s right. It was a great opportunity for me to mature in the army. I thought I would just become an adult when I turned 20, but I don’t think so now. You need to know what condition the person is in whom you are interacting with, take it into consideration and know how to act appropriately. You can do that one day. I want to tell you that if you really want to spend two years of military service well, you should train your mind and meditate first.
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Choi Yong-hae was born in Gwangju in 1972 and graduated from Chosun University. As the current administrative chief at Seongnam Jeil Elementary School, he joined the army in 1993 and trained his mind through meditation in 1998.
Yoon Chang-bae was born in Seoul in 1986 and graduated from Chung-Ang University majoring in Chinese culture. He started training his mind through meditation when he was a freshman in high school in 2002 and joined the army in 2007.
