Twelve Kilometers from Enlightenment

🕊️ Impact #2: On poverty, privilege, and the moment I chose to become a modern bodhisattva

Although the Buddha taught non-attachment and non-self, there are a few intangible things—ideas, memories, moments, feelings—that I still return to and quietly hold with my heart.
One of them is the moment I decided to become a modern-day bodhisattva and walk this path.

Day after day, I stood before children with small, bare feet—darkened, scarred, callused. Shirts stretched thin like sackcloth. Collar bones and shoulders exposed. Eyes shining clearly beneath dust-matted hair.

This was Dungeshwari—“abandoned land.”
A place where people live who are excluded even from the lowest rung of India’s caste system. Once a dumping ground for corpses, it sits only twelve kilometers from Bodh Gaya—where the Buddha, after six years of extreme asceticism, chose the Middle Way.

Since 1999, with support from JTS (Join Together Society), founded by Ven. Pomnyun Sunim, this community had slowly gained access to education, medical care, and sustained village development. Relief work had restored something fragile but real: hope.
The initial thrill of being posted there faded quickly. Each day demanded full attention just to meet the reality unfolding moment by moment.

In September 2009, I experienced extreme heat for the first time—over 35°C. Heat rashes and eczema spread across my body. I lost five kilograms in weeks, probably all water. I joked that the heat had cured my cravings for food and comfort—but there was another reason I wasn’t hungry.

Standing before bodies so thin and worn, I felt an endless shame.
My unscarred skin. My fullness. My sturdy clothes and shoes that could last a decade. Clean hair. A body that had never known hunger.

From head to toe, I felt exposed by privilege. Simply by standing there, my presence felt like a confession—of how freely and comfortably I had lived.

Each morning, I greeted the children at the school gate.
Were their uniforms torn? Did they know how to button them?
Were they wearing shoes today?
Were their nails clean?

The day began with roll call and cleanliness checks.