Home

Featured Writer #116: Yuhan Su

Jun is stuck at a crossroads.

After the death of their mother, since his teens Jun has served as a mentor and protector for his younger sister Gui. Now in their twenties, Jun and Gui have forged the beginnings of separate adult lives. But as the years pass, Jun still cannot manage a firm hold on the material world; instead, the prospect of a more private, meditative life increasingly calls to him.

Though he has recently neglected his mediative practice, at the tail end of a trip through Europe Jun decides to join a meditation retreat at a Buddhist monastery, a retreat led by a teacher he respects. Here, he might be able to decide which path to follow for the rest of his life. While Jun may appear calm from the outside as he sits on a cushion and tries to clear his mind, all he feels is pain. His muscles tighten from the extended sessions of sitting still, and his restless mind circles through a different kind of pain: uncertainty, regret, memories of the past and concern for the future.

Can he calm his mind? He has one week of meditative sessions to find his way.

Ninth Letter is pleased to offer our readers this clear-eyed and yet profoundly sympathetic excerpt from Yuhan Su’s novel-in-progress, Finding Dry Land.

—Philip Graham, Editor-at-Large