Korean Drama Dharma

On Saturday 18 Apr, my wife and I finished watching the hit Korean TV series Crash Landing on You. It felt, as my wife put it, “like they had run out of steam and were rushing to finish the series!”

But there was one part that resonated with the Dhamma practitioner in me. -SPOILER ALERT-

At one point, the lead actress Yoon Seri was about to die on the hospital bed, and she narrated her “dream”. In her “dream, she was back in the office when she made her fateful decision to test her company’s product through paragliding. Except that she had full knowledge of everything that was going to happen after her fateful decision: all the pain, suffering, excitement, that came from meeting and coming to know her love, North Korean Captain Ri Jeong Heok. And in her dream, she still chose to proceed.

(Concurrently, Captain Ri was desperately hoping for her to be alive, and was saying that if he had to choose, he would choose for them not to meet, so that she would live. -cue collective awwwwWW-)

On the surface, it seems like Yoon Seri made a very romantic choice while Captain Ri made a self-sacrificial choice.

Here’s the thing: this calculation was solely based on the assumption that YOLO (you only live once). In that dream, Seri could only see her future of the relatively-short term pain, suffering, excitement of her time with Captain Ri.

But what if she also had the power to see all the previous lifetimes of pain, suffering, excitements, with Captain Ri (and his previous incarnations) that they had to go through? What if she saw all the blood, angst, violence, hate, etc. that came as a result of their desire and attachment to each other?

Would she still have chosen to be with him?

Or would she turn away from the desire, as she realises how pointless this all is? This feeling of pointlessness is nibbida, the revulsion of rebirth that is needed to cut off the fuel for being.

The flow of blood you’ve shed when your head was chopped off while roaming and transmigrating (note: this is Ajahn Sujato’s translation of rebirth) is indeed more than the water in the four oceans. https://suttacentral.net/sn15.13/en/sujato

The flow of tears you’ve shed while roaming and transmigrating is indeed more than the water in the four oceans. For a long time you’ve undergone the death of a mother … father … brother … sister … son … daughter … loss of relatives … loss of wealth … or loss through illness. https://suttacentral.net/sn15.3/en/sujato

One person roaming and transmigrating for an eon would amass a heap of bones the size of this Mount Vepulla, if they were gathered together and not lost.
https://suttacentral.net/sn15.10/en/sujato