“As he looked around, he was filled with melancholy thoughts, and he sighed. “My mind is tired and my nerves are frayed from the war. Why must I be so engaged with worldly troubles? After I have fulfilled my duties I will retire and live in nature, detached from the cares of this world of dust.”
김만중. 구운몽. (Kim Manjung, The Nine Cloud Dream.)
It has been a while since I last read a fictional text, much less a whole book. As much as I have been wanting to venture into other worlds while remaining firming in this reality drinking coffee with the warm sunlight or cold air-conditioned breeze, I couldn’t seem to find a book that intrigues me enough to take a momentary break from all the articles my present requires. That is, until I chanced upon ‘The Nine Cloud Dream‘ while on a quick break looking at books on my trusted online bookstore. The description said something like: a book about why a perfect life is not a worthwhile go—along those lines. At least that was how I read it while I was also partly thinking of how to better live and partly thinking of how I ought not to waste further time and energy on something we know is futile.
That is, the idea of aiming for a perfect life. The logic that would support my hypothesis that the way to the most ideal life is to simply follow the nature flow of everything, Tao as some schools of Asian philosophical thought would put it, is yet to arrive to me. Perhaps that maybe because I have yet to try to comprehensively verbalise it, the why of my current ways of going about the every day; maybe it is because it is not yet the right moment to do so.
Either way, it looked like the perfect book for answers to all my questions. Alas, had I listened to myself clearly, I would have quickly been reminded of the flaw in that objective: that there is no “perfect book” for such thing, at least not one that would give the “perfect” answer or answers. There is, however, only the “perfect book” in that it would lead me to more questions than I had before.
Such was The Nine Cloud Dream. Toward the last two chapters, I was filled with both anxious excitement and inevitable confusion: the whole time I had kept myself calm through the strange occurrences of the story with the thought that what I’m reading is an “ideal life”—the ending, at least for that one specific lifetime, ought to be “happy”—but the lesson at the end ought to be that such is not as worthwhile as it seems, how is that so when so far all has been… astoundingly luck-filled.
There are thoughts flying around regarding the ending and while I cannot yet fully grasp the entirety of the how of its morals, the book did inspire me to go back to my many other readings. I saw in this dream a glimpse of the complexity of some of the major Asian philosophies and an idea on how to connect some dots in this field.
I cannot help but think every time I look at the book: “What does it all mean?!” I want answers—I want to figure it all out. Yet at times I feel an unusual sort of puzzlement: so is it the dreamer or the butterfly? Which is real? Are they both real? Where am I? Followed by an even weirder resignation: maybe I really ought to not stress about… everything I am trying not to think about at the moment because I might simply be dreaming about this whole lifetime anyway. Or: but still, one lived one’s life well even as a dream.
Again: what is the point?
Now I am thinking: if I had not read the description, would I be thinking about the story this way? Maybe the point is simpler: if this were a dream, we would wake up eventually; answers would be given with full consciousness; if it were not, the only way still is to… perhaps live? The answers, if ever there are such things, would arrive… eventually.
