Philippe Thiébault

10.18399/acta.2011.14.2.004

Human fulfillment Emotion meditation T’oegye Yulgok Yijing Chasŏngnok Sŏnghak chibyo

When we reflect with sincerity we recognize that human development is often not on a par with economic development and all the material acquisitions that go along with it. True developmental success needs a higher human maturity and relationship with the natural environment. In our search for well being, something finally escaped us. We did not achieve the “supplement of soul/supplément d’âme” as Bergson suggested at the beginning of the twentieth century. This essay attempts to react to the distance and the split which were created, especially since the eighteenth century, between nature and man which are also linked to a break which is noticed in us, particularly when we consider emotion. Our decisions have led us progressively to “err.” To avoid working against ourselves, we need a profound experience which helps us to understand more who we are, what the universe represents, and to act accordingly. Ecology is more than a political strategy, a technical problem, or an academic subject. Ecology leads us to reconsider our relationship with all beings. Do we use the earth to dominate it or do we respect it? Are we only the conquerors or do we truly love the universe? This essay wishes to reconnect with the beauty and the significance of our environment with the help of certain Korean and Chinese thinkers who were great admirers of life and the universe, watching daily, seasonal, yearly and generational changes. Beyond theories, let us discover a mind awakening, a sensitiveness and an approach distinctive to certain Far Eastern sources like the Yijing/Book of Changes, The Chasŏngnok of Yi Hwang, T’oegye, and the Sŏnghak chibyo of Yi I, Yulgok, among others, which would help to ease the impoverishments of the spirit and the heart and arouse this “supplement of soul” which was hoped for by Bergson. Thus, overcoming the tendency to mechanization and functionalism, causes of indifference which hinder our in-depth maturation and our relationships, we will have to develop a more adequate vision, an interiorization and new ways of emotional expression and a necessary care concerning the future even of life which risks not inspiring us anymore with wonderment and gratitude.