On Being Hwarang

A sharp blade dulls quickly, a dull blade is useless, sharpening the blade is a warrior’s life.

Hwarang pays homage to beauty in nature as beauty exemplifies the glory of God’s creation.

Through understanding the nature of beauty, one gains greater appreciation of the mystery and majesty of God.

When we stay together, we must make each other more beautiful. Vanity for vanity sake is futile and only enhances the worship of the “self”.

We’re warriors! We must be unafraid to battle. However, fighters fight because they like to fight, but warriors fight because we must. The most noble path is to fight to save a life.

Being a warrior means to walk with death, side-by-side, like it’s your best friend.

Flowers possess the essence of beauty without effort. That’s the ideal we should all strive for – be strong without force, be wise without pretense, be beautiful without effort, just by being.

Warriors are not lucky or unlucky: their training will determine their luck, and win or lose, live or die, only God will judge the victor!

Winning is not everything and losing is not nothing. It is why you fight that’s everything.

It is better to die for something than to live for nothing.

NO TRAINING NO LOVE!!! It is to say that expecting to be loved without working on bettering oneself is fool’s toil.

Student: “Sun Tzu said: do not engage in a war that you’re not sure to win.”
Kuk Sa Nim: “Yes, in a military for a general that is suitable, but what is noble in winning a war that you’re sure to win? That’s the difference between being practical and being noble – to fight for what is right with faith in God.”

Our tradition is in our way to live. Maybe one day I will decide to pick flowers, it would be the same for me.

Warriors don’t retire, they die.

SARANG HAP MI DA = I LOVE YOU. Notice that the sound of SARANG is quite similar to HWARANG! If fact, all things are for love because God first loved us, so that we may know love.

Don’t try to be the best if you don’t want to be expected to do the most.

DO not do Hwa Rang Do. BE a Hwarang.

If something is 2000 years old, it should be 2000 times better.

Esthetics is about symmetry and balance.

This is the problem with people: they don’t want what they need; they only want what they want and what they want is not necessarily what they need. Our goal is to understand what we need and pursue it.

As warriors, when we lose, we must lose graciously; when we win, we must win even more graciously.

We are only as strong as our weakest self. As in a group, like a chain it is only as strong as its weakest link.

I’m here today because I’m a dreamer. However, it is because I am a warrior that I never gave up on my dream.

Testing for me is a Sunday at church.

Testing is a truth revealer, so all things must be tested to see whether it will stand or fall, whether it is true or false.

You must be poets – to express not only what you know, but what you feel.

We are who we are. We are Hwarang and if this has no meaning and does not burden you, then it should be obvious that you are not what we are.

2000 years from now, when they talk about the Hwarang, I want them to talk about us.

We make history. Time doesn’t make history. People using time wisely make good history.

God is Infinite. He is timeless. People who are wise know that history is only His will for the finite.

Grass must be cut constantly. As a Hwarang we must always be cutting in our own garden first, then the rest.