Ilchi Lee

Then one day, while wandering around town, I saw a huge trash heap under a bridge. Looking at the trash, it suddenly occurred to me that, “I am no better than that trash. So if I clean it, something might change inside of me.”

I had never done anything particularly impressive before. But this time I heard a voice from within telling me to clean up the trash. I also heard another voice inside that said, “What in the world does the trash have to do with me?” However, this voice felt discouraging and I had a desire and will to do something beneficial. I felt it would be very virtuous to clean up the trash so I decided to listen to the first voice. This trash had been accumulating since before I was born, so there was a lot of it and it smelled terribly. I wondered how I could clean it. The answer came to me right away.

Since the rubbish was over 100 years old, nothing could be better manure. So I decided to dig holes in a nearby hill to bury the trash and grow pumpkins with it. It made me feel really happy to think that I would eventually share pumpkins with my family, neighbors and domestic animals.

Within a few days of starting to bury the rubbish with a shovel, I had bruises and cuts in many places on my body. I also hurt myself from carrying the trash with a Korean carrying rack. My mother held me and cried when she saw them. She pleaded with me, “If you really want to clean this, I will hire laborers. Please don’t do this.”

When neighbors crossed the bridge and saw me cleaning the rubbish they felt sorry for me. “Tut, tut!” some of them clicked their tongues. After all, I had failed the college entrance exam for two years and was cleaning trash there without any plan for my future.

However, in spite of what my neighbors and mother thought, I cleaned and cleaned there. After a month or so, the rubbish heap was gone, completely cleaned.

Not long after sowing the pumpkins, the nearby hill was filled with fresh green pumpkin runners, leaves and soon flowers. It was a magnificent sight. Pumpkins grew rapidly and very well in the 100-year-old manure. As autumn came, the hill turned into a huge farm of big delicious pumpkins.

Looking at the pumpkins, I felt my inner world mature and become purified. I felt a lamplight of hope turn on in my heart. The happiness of working and joy of creation awakened in my brain. When I shared the pumpkins, I found my self-value and felt the joy of contributing to others.

After that experience, I had the conviction, “Just do it and you will achieve it.” I had learned that the principle of creation was very simple—just take action according to one’s inner voices in order to grow.