Book 1 Chapter 4

Dreaded Steel Clothespins

Along with firewood chopping, the next thing my master taught me was laundry.

About an hour's walk (30 minutes) from the thatched hut was a valley with clear water. The master took me there, dumped a load of stinky laundry on me, and told me to wash it all. I resisted. But then I thought, "Yeah, let's at least do some laundry for the poor(?) master!" ……!

With these thoughts in mind, I obeyed my master's instructions.

"Chet, okay, you can do that."

"What's wrong with you, you little bastard? If you don't have it, take this!"

Then he held out a small stick. It was as long as a man's forearm and rounded with a slight curve like a new moon.

"What is this, Master?"

"You can't tell by looking at it, it's a laundry bat. You'll know it when you see it, but it's an essential item for doing laundry. What are you doing, hurting your arm, get it!"

'Chet, what's a bat for…….'

I thought to myself, accepting the clothespin in question.

"Ouch!"

Like the axe, the clothespin was damn heavy. It turned out to be a steel clothespin. It was a moment that could have snapped my shoulder off with a bang.

"Sai, Sai, what kind of laundry bat is this, how damn heavy is this, how much does it weigh?"

I shouted at him with a sulky face. I could hear his voice faintly. At this point, I was so focused on the laundry bat that I couldn't hear his voice.

"What do you mean heavy? It's only 50 pounds. It's only half the weight of a sledgehammer."

"What? It weighs 800,000 li (30 kilograms)! It's got all these things, and my slender body is overwhelmed by just a stupid sledgehammer. How am I supposed to wash my clothes with a stupid sledgehammer? If I wash my clothes with something like this, I'll end up with nothing but rags, not laundry!"

I shouted at my master with a now suffocating look on my face.

"Of course, if you wash your clothes in the usual way, you'll end up with nothing but a rag, and you won't be able to avoid hitting a thin piece of fabric with an iron bar that weighs dozens of tons. To prevent that, you need to learn the discipline of yu. Only when you are able to incorporate gentleness into your strength will you be able to do a good job of washing clothes. It also develops your shoulders and wrists, so it has the interlocking effect of killing two birds with one stone. This is the officially designated method of washing clothes that has been handed down from generation to generation in our secret laundry. Stop talking and start washing your clothes!"

He tried to convince me with all kinds of rhetoric. For a man who was trying to convince me to do laundry, he was pretty loud. But what can I say, it was part of the training. I had no choice but to submit to my fate. I felt pathetic for not having the strength to resist, and I hated him. When I had calmed down enough to accept my fate, I asked him about the question I had had when I picked up the black steel laundry bat.

"Master, doesn't this steel washcloth have a legend, like the axe of gold, like the story that the monk was washing his clothes in a valley with this steel washcloth, and he struck a fairy who came down to bathe in the valley with it, killing her and taking her gold."

With eyes as clear as the Milky Way, I asked him innocently, and he gave me a blunt answer, along with a handful of almonds.

"Such stories are not passed down in the texts. If you want to make up a legend, you can do it yourself. Anyway, don't think about it, just do your laundry."

With these words, the master left the laundromat.

At first, the steel bat was so heavy that I had to use two hands to hold it. I had to use one hand to hold the laundry and the other hand to hold the bat. To make matters worse, the foolish teacher talked a lot of nonsense, but didn't teach me any of the important techniques, so I never got the clothes right. Later on, she couldn't tell if the clothes had become butterflies in her dream or if the rag had become clothes in her dream.

That day, I went home and got a good beating from my master. I had to see a lot of blood. It's a bitter memory I don't want to relive, and my thumb and index finger still tingle when I think about it, and I stayed up all night stitching up my ragged clothes. It was faster and more profitable to buy new ones, but my master, a dictator and tyrant, didn't have the patience to listen to his loyal subjects. Instead, he just spouted useless platitudes about how sewing helps you develop fine motor skills. Anyway, I had to sew, and the mop really did become a young mop with my sweat. I named the rag Manseobok (萬結服). It means "ten thousand stitches.

I put on a full robe and went to the creek every day to continue washing, and after a month, I was finally able to hold the clothes in my left hand and wash them. It had taken me about a month to get used to holding a steel laundry bat with one hand. I had to alternate one week with another, one week holding the clothespin in my right hand and the next week holding the clothespin in my left hand.

It took me about a year and a half to realize that the Ten Thousand Buddhas had become the Ten Thousand Buddhas, and the Ten Thousand Buddhas had become the Hundred Buddhas, and the Hundred Buddhas had become the Ten Thousand Buddhas, and the Ten Thousand Buddhas had become the One Buddha, and the One Buddha had become the Infinite Buddha.

From then on, I was able to do laundry naturally, with a very relaxed posture, and I was able to combine strength with tenderness. My sewing skills had already reached a new level.