The Pursuit of Happiness

By Janet Shin

Do you believe there are people out there who are satisfied with all aspects of their lives? If someone you consider to be very successful turns out to be unhappy, what do you think?

We've all heard stories of people who achieve their life goals after undergoing a lot of hardship. We also hear stories about people who are seemingly very successful ― for example, a CEO of a world class company or a famous celebrity ― and then they suddenly commit suicide due to unrevealed personal problems.

Recently we've seen articles about people who earned annual salaries topping one billion won, or almost $1 million, last year, but their personal stories are not reported. Recently, we also saw on the news that a vice president of one of Korea's biggest companies was found dead in front of his apartment building. According to the police, the cause of death was suicide. The victim left a note saying that he was under high stress at work, especially with the impending announcement of the company's earnings report.

What can be gleaned from these life stories?

We have been discussing how the universe, earth, heaven and human beings, relate to the terms of yin, yang and the five elements from ancient times. People believed that the harmonized relationship of yin and yang, and that of the five elements would make their lives happy.

Saju is the four pillars of destiny. If we consider the five elements as a happy life, the four pillars make the destiny of a life incomplete.

While there are eight aspects in saju, the four are celestial stems and the other four are terrestrial branches. The stems represent an ideal pursuit and the branches represent the reality. The stems are social status while the branches are more about family relations. So although the five elements are sometimes filled either by stems or by branches, there's always room for contradiction between the ideal and the reality. In order to realize the ideal goal of the stems, people need support from branches, while the branches also require support from stems in order to become reality.

Owing to the fact that we were born with four pillars instead of five, people are always lacking one or more things in their lives. While struggling to make money, to achieve a career or to gain love, people may forget this ``lacking pillar'' for certain period of time.

Taking the missing pillar into consideration, if we had to choose between financial and spiritual satisfaction, which would you pursue?

Some people may answer that in order to pursue spiritual satisfaction, financial satisfaction cannot be abandoned. However, as you all know, financial satisfaction cannot fulfill the happiness of the inner spirit. If we have to go in a different direction from our spiritual satisfaction just for money, success cannot last long.

Furthermore, the quirk of fate is that it does not leave saju as is. Saju is not fixed but falters when it meets exterior energy. Each new year, we face a change of energy. They do not only add fortune to one's fate but also clash with certain valuable energy in saju. Owing to this fact, we are facing challenges of fortune and misfortune in every moment.

It is not easy for people to accept their fate as it is. People always compare themselves with others. Although they know the truth that there is nothing complete, they always push themselves to get more than they have now, while they already have something that others don't. Sometimes, the spiritual frustration for what's lacking is so severe that they even abandon their lives.

Studying saju is meant to help understand and fill the cracks in your life. It is to understand the fact that the universe is changing but it is also consistent according to the fundamental law underlying everything. Human beings in the universe are born with deficiencies. The way we live our lives is to supplement the deficiency. Yet, it is not always happening in everybody's life and it sometimes disappears, with all our efforts in vain. The passage of time may heal the scars but this is not always the case. Saju helps you read the energy, maximize good fortune and minimize bad fortune, and sometimes it tells you to wait.

The writer is the president of Heavenly Garden, a saju research center in Korea. She is the author of the book "Learning Four Pillars." She offers saju courses to all who are interested. For more information, visit her Web site (http://blog.naver.com/janet_shin) or email janetshin@hotmail.com.