The main character of a book I was reading (The Orphan Master’s Son) was part of an elite unit of North Korean soldiers stationed to guard the country’s border. Other members of the unit used to like to go peek over the fence and peer into South Korea, to see what life was like there. But, the main character never looked:

“He knew the televisions were huge and there was all the rice you could eat. Yet he wanted no part of it—he was scared that if he saw it with his own eyes, his entire life would mean nothing. Stealing turnips from an old man who’d gone blind from hunger? That would have been for nothing. Sending another boy (to his death) instead of himself to clean vats at the paint factory? For nothing.   

When I read this paragraph it squeezed the hell out of my heart and I started wondering  what there is in my own life, my own experience, that I shut my eyes to? When do I refuse to peek because I am afraid what I see will make me question my life, myself, and the way I see the world.

Shortly after I finished this book I was cleaning the house and came across a calendar with quotes from Luang Por Thoon. One quote in particular really stood out, “ignorance of reality is the cause of becoming.” And in that moment I realized, it was time to toughen-up, to open my eyes, to start really looking more closely at all those things in the world that I have been trying to ignore. The next phase of my practice is when I decided it was time to start peeking over the fence.