The Five Mysteries of Life 5

Jaewon Kang

Description

The information about the book is not available as of the moment.

Sujets

• Développement personnel
• Développement personnel
• développement personnel
• Développement personnel
• Self-help
• Inspirational
• Motivational

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 01 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669835585
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Five Mysteries of Life 삶의 5대 불가사의
Jaewon Kang



Copyright © 2022 by Jaewon Kang.

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-6698-3559-2
eBook 978-1-6698-3558-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.



Rev. date: 07/28/2022



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Book Review
Jaewon Kang’s meditation on the meaning of life and the best way to live it, As the Wind Becomes a Flower, combines insights about human nature, the universe, and philosophy.
The book is divided into three sections. Within each, chapters explore concepts of morality, faith, relationships, and virtues that contribute to living a better life. These chapters include short, numbered entries intended to be savored. One grain of wisdom says, “Five is a secret number that life organisms choose after many trials and errors for a long time, and there is a sense of security, practicality, balance, and control in the number five.”
Exemplifying the notion that spirituality is for everyone, this book is a gentle, informative collection of ideas that prompt spiritual growth through self-assessment. It includes assertions such as that a good life is available to anyone who applies spiritual principles and lives up to their own ideals, and its poetry and short sermons are easy to read, understand, and relate to.
Its real-life examples are grounded in common experiences, such as saving for retirement and caring for children. The book’s tone, which is balanced and sounds like “the voice of reason,” is comforting.







The book makes an effort to link everyday details with the laws of the universe. It suggests reading its entries slowly, with a group, and in contemplation. Although its focus is on spirituality, it mixes a variety of esoteric observations and mini-sermons in with its straight talk about commonsense topics like financial planning and manners.
Poetic language and abstract concepts saturate the book with mixed results. Some entries are paragraphs; others are poems. Individual pieces are organized by theme, but have no narrative arcs, references to other spiritual writings, or recurring characters. The links within them are also thematic rather than explicit, which makes chapters difficult to follow.
Without a throughline, the book becomes essentially a catalog of ideas: inclusive, with a generic faith angle, and which don’t push one particular faith or spiritual path (though the introduction focuses on Christianity). Most of the book’s notions could be applied to any major religion, and principles, not dogma, guide the chapters. Ideas are presented with sincerity, but are not groundbreaking in the field of spiritual writing.
Wind and flower are accessible, intriguing assortment of spiritual adages and imagery that encourages self-reflection and personal growth.
ForeWord’s Clarion Review (Traverse city, MI, USA, Reviewed: July 25, 2019)







Book Review
Author Jaewon Kang has taken on a monumental task: to try to answer the question posed in the beginning of his book: “What is the secret of mysterious life that nobody teaches though everybody wants to know while alive?”
In As the Wind Becomes a Flower , Kang presents nearly 400 philosophical thoughts, opinions and commentaries—some a sentence or two, some several pages— in his attempt to bring The Big Picture into focus. They offer the author’s reflections on a variety of topics: God, eternity, life and death (and everything in between), religion, our place in the universe. Some are presented in verse; others are stories, almost parables designed to impart a lesson.
Kang’s reflections can be instructive: “Enjoy whatever you want. However, no debt, no gambling, no drug, [sic] no alcohol, no smoking. Regardless of any reasons, the less tempted you are to these five evils, the more sustainable your life becomes.” Some provoke thought: “If you think you ought to do something, it is stressful. However, if you think there is something new to do, it is a joy.”







Unfortunately, most are difficult to grasp, even remotely. Consider, for example: “As humanity has a peculiar existence among all existences, a human being is more peculiar because he is alive. It is even more peculiar that life is mortal, so it is very meaningful that such a peculiar existence is united with the universal whole.”
Even the author seems to realize most readers will be challenged. He says the book shouldn’t be read in one sitting because “you are apt to lose its meaning” and recommends one topic at a time to allow for reflection.
Someone with a passing interest in different philosophies might pick up an interesting thought or two here. Most readers, though, will likely find As the Wind Becomes a Flower more puzzling than profound.
BlueInk Review ( Founded by an internationally known literary agent and an award winning book review editor, Reviewed: August 2019)







Book Review
A writer reflects on life, love, and human nature in a series of brief, abstract offerings.
The first section of Kang’s debut collection, “Amoros Thought,” focuses on fundamental notions about life, ranging from the pleasures of the senses to his views on government bureaucracy.
“Coolness of beer and sweetness of wine,” the author writes on the subject of “Amusement,” “sometimes both of them can make our lives comfortable.”
Interwoven with these short, impressionistic passages are longer stories, which deliver snapshots in time: a young disabled girl crying because her father cannot provide her a dress, a poor foreigner begging for money, men robbing and raping a young college woman. “Vices rise from weak minds, then disappear with the weak,” Kang surmises.
The second section, “As the Wind Becomes a Flower,” turns increasingly more metaphysical. He explores vast subjects like “light” and “darkness,” mixing in more poetry and metaphors, especially when he writes of the windflowers that he often saw living on the banks of Seoul’s Han River: “The coming and going of life is like that of a windflower.”







The book’s third section deals with the five mysteries of life: What is God?; where does all existence come from?; what am I?; what is death?; and, lastly, what is love?
The author responds to these questions, as in the other sections, with tales and poetic reflections, but uses them to further delve into religion and history.
Throughout each chapter, Kang’s longer pieces tend to be surprisingly proscriptive and filled with heavy and repetitive phrasing. He commands that people should not smoke or drink and often returns to very traditional values and gender roles with statements like “It is fundamental that a husband earns a living, and it is also natural that a wife does housework.” This aspect of moral judgment feels at odds with the author’s shorter, wispy passages in which he ruminates on flowers or physical sensations.
It’s in those sparser portions that he delivers some truly beautiful and startling imagery, and it’s where fans of New Age and Eastern philosophy will most appreciate his meditations.
Long, harsh passages overshadow the simpler, serene, and lovely observations in this uneven collection.
Kirkus Indie Review, (Kirkus Media LLC, 2600 Via Fortuna Suite 130 Austin, TX, USA, Reviewed: August 2019)







Reader’s Voice
God is perceived differently by several kinds of people in the world, but I know that even if we perceive God differently, still God is who He is. What is important is when we believe in God, we should manifest our faith as actions for the common good. The author’s idea is reasonable for us to believe God is within our faith.
-Lito Galinada, Teacher
The ideology of God may be divided by the times, and a major factor of the variation is very much connected to the many ethnicities around the world, e.g., Elohim for Israel, Allah for Muslim countries, the 10 million gods of India, etc. The idea of divine existence is often taken as human beings’ effort to justify unexplainable events or circumstances in their lives. In addition, the idea of a good-hearted, watchful and rewarding God serves as a moral imperative for the strong and able to help the weak. Greece and India are two of the many ancient nations that have a polytheistic faith. The oldest monotheistic faith and the pioneer to monotheism is Zoroastrianism. In addition, Greek myths in modern society have been reduced from a form of faith to literary studies, e.g., Zeus is recognized by Greeks as no longer a god but a literary character. As humans, curious by nature, we have the tendency to sensationalize any or every claim for mystical performance. I like the author’s insight.
-Manasseh Mark Bombeo, Journalist







Genes that cause aging is now deeply studied because humans believe that there is something from it that can bring human lives on the same level of supreme individuals. It is always a desire of human beings to have immortal lives and be superior over their environment. It rests u