The Second Frame of Reference
As you sit here with this bundle of feelings, there are lots of different feelings you could focus on. There are pains in some parts of your body, pleasant feelings in other parts, and nondescript neutral feelings in still other parts. It’s not that you have just one feeling at any one time. It’s not the case that there’s nothing but pain. As Ajaan Lee once said, if your body were totally in pain with no pleasure at all, you’d die. You’re alive, so there is pleasure someplace. Ferret it out. Look for it.
In the beginning, it may not seem all that impressive, but there already are pleasant feelings in different parts of the body. The mind has a tendency to focus on the pains because that’s what its early warning system is for: to figure out where there’s pain that you’ve got to do something about. But you can cut that switch and focus instead on where the pleasure is instead.
It’s like that old book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, where the author teaches you not to draw eyes, noses, mouths, or other recognizable features of the faces you’re trying to draw. Instead, you focus on drawing the space, say, between the eye and nose, the space between the nose and the mouth. And you end up with a much better likeness because you’re focusing on things you don’t normally focus on.
So it’s the same with the pleasures and pains in the body. Instead of complaining about where there’s stiffness or soreness or a sense of blockage in the body, focus on the areas where things are going well. Again Ajaan Lee: He says it’s like going into a house where you know some of the floorboards are rotten, so you don’t step there. You step where the floorboards are sound. Or when you’re eating a mango, you don’t eat the rotten spots. You eat the spots that are good. And you make the most of them. What this means is that you focus on the pleasure in a way that helps to maintain it and allow it to grow. When it feels good, you can spread it around. As the Buddha says, you want to suffuse the body with the sense of ease, the sense of fullness that grows as you focus on the breath.
All this comes under the second frame of reference: feelings in and of themselves as your frame of reference.
If you read the Mahasatipatthana Sutta on the topic, it’s possible to understand it as telling you simply to stick with whatever feeling comes up, because there’s just a list of the different types of feeling you could focus on:
- pleasant feelings,
- painful feelings, and
- neutral feelings;
- pleasure of the flesh—i.e., pleasures, physical or mental, relating to sensuality;
- pleasure not of the flesh—related to the practice of concentration— pain of the flesh, pain not of the flesh, and so on.
The way these things are simply listed makes it sound like you just watch these feelings as they arise and pass away, without getting involved in them, without trying to foster skillful feelings or abandon unskillful ones.
But if you read the Mahasatipatthana Sutta in context, you realize that the Buddha is not telling you just to focus on whatever comes up willy-nilly. There’s a sutta where he asks,
“How do you develop the four establishings of mindfulness?
You develop them by developing the eightfold path”—
and that includes everything from right view on down through right effort and right concentration.
Right mindfulness builds on right effort and is a natural continuation of it; it’s meant to lead toward right concentration.
The Mahasatipatthana Sutta itself talks about ardency as one of the qualities you bring to this practice. The sutta itself doesn’t explain ardency—that’s one of the reasons that it’s not a comprehensive treatment of mindfulness practice—but other passages in the Canon show that ardency means right effort, generating the desire to do what’s skillful and to abandon what’s unskillful.
So in this context,
- some ways of focusing on pleasure are unskillful, and
- some ways of focusing on pleasure are skillful.
In some of the other suttas where the Buddha discusses feeling, he explicitly recommends ways to respond to different types of feelings. For example, with physical feelings:
- When pleasures of the flesh arise, you have to watch out for the tendency to get obsessed with passion around them.
- When pains of the flesh arise, watch out for the tendency to get obsessed with irritation around them.
- If you’re trying to find a good basis for a solid happiness inside, you want to develop the pleasures not of the flesh, i.e., the pleasure that comes from concentration.
So learn how to gain some control over your feelings. Now this may sound strange. How can you control your feelings?
Sometimes we have the sense that our feelings are who we really are, and that they’re a given.
But that’s not how the Buddha explains them. He says that
- in every feeling there’s an element of fabrication, i.e., an element of intention.
- This applies to physical feelings as well as to mental feelings.
You want to learn how to see where that element of intention is, and how to engage in that element skillfully.
As he says that, for the sake of having a feeling, we fabricate these feelings. We take a potential for a feeling and, through our intention to have a feeling, turn it into an actual experience of a feeling.
You wouldn’t think that we would want to fabricate pain, but we’re not skillful in our fabrication, so that’s what we sometimes end up with.
We want feelings of pleasure, but we often end up creating pain.
Now there are certain givens: You’ve got a disease in your body, you’ve got aches and pains in your body that come from old kamma. You can’t do much about that.
But, as Ajaan Lee says, it’s not that your body is totally pained.
And you do have the choice:
- Where do you want to focus your attention?
- What do you want to maximize?
- Do you want to maximize the pain or maximize the pleasure?
What we’re doing as we’re sitting here meditating is learning how to develop the skills for maximizing skillful kinds of pleasure, skillful ways of approaching the pleasure.
There are even skillful forms of distress.
The Buddha talks about household distress and renunciation distress.
Household distress is when you’re not getting the physical feelings you want: You don’t see the sights you’d like to see or hear the sounds you’d like to hear, smell the smells, taste the tastes, get the physical contacts you’d like to feel.
Then you get upset. And for most of us, the way of dealing with this kind of distress is to try to find the things we want, i.e., replace household grief with household joy. That’s when you get the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and tactile sensations and ideas you’d like.
But the Buddha says that the better course is to abandon household grief by relying on renunciate grief.
Renunciate grief is when you think about the fact that you haven’t gained awakening yet.
You’d really like to gain the peace, you’d really like to gain the happiness and the freedom that come with awakening, and the fact disturbs you.
Now this kind of grief actually goes someplace. It’s like the tension when you pull back on a bow to shoot an arrow. It’s what allows the arrow to fly. This kind of grief focuses you on what you really would like to do, and it focuses you on the fact that there is a path to that awakening.
So instead of just mucking around in the grief and joy that come from losing and then gaining, and losing and then gaining, and losing again the pleasures of the senses, you focus on developing the elements of the path.
And notice: The Buddha says to
- abandon household grief by relying on renunciate grief. And then he goes on to say,
- abandon renunciate grief by relying on renunciate joy, i.e., when you finally do attain some of that freedom, some of that happiness, some of that peace, through the practice.
But how do you abandon a feeling?
When the Buddha talks about abandoning, or letting go, it’s not that your mind has a hand that’s grasping things.
You’re engaged in habitual activities, habitual ways of reacting, habitual ways of thinking, habitual ways of breathing, habitual ways of perceiving things, habitual ways of fashioning feelings.
And as long as you keep repeating those habitual patterns, you’re holding on.
To let go means to stop. You realize that those old habits are not getting you what you want, so you just stop.
Or you learn how to stop.
It’s not always automatic, but that’s what you’re aiming for: learning to see where your habitual ways of fabricating your experience are causing stress and pain, realizing that you can develop some alternative skills that don’t produce that pain, and then focusing more and more on those skills.
As I said earlier, there is an element of fabrication, an element of intention in all of our feelings, and so you want to focus on that.
There’s bodily fabrication, the way you breathe;
verbal fabrication, the way you direct your thoughts to a topic, such as a feeling, and then
evaluate that feeling: Is it potentially skillful? Potentially not? What are you going to do with it?
And then there’s mental fabrication, which consists of the feelings themselves plus the perceptions that you hold in mind.
Now all those fabrications are things you can learn how to manipulate, learn how to shape. You’ve got the raw materials. Sometimes the raw materials are a little recalcitrant, but there are things you can do with them.
So even though there’s a pain or a weakness in the body, you don’t have to obsess about the pain or the weakness.
You can focus on where your strengths are; you can focus on where your pleasures are.
Focus on different ways of breathing: What kind of breathing would give you more strength? What kind of breathing would give you more pleasure? Experiment. Learn about these things.
Which ways of thinking about the breath and evaluating the breath give more pleasure?
Which perceptions of the breath give more pleasure, give you more strength?
These are all things you can manipulate, things you can play with.
And just knowing that you’re not simply a hapless victim of your pains helps get you on the right side.
Sometimes a useful perception is seeing the pain as something receding from you.
Think of yourself as sitting in the back of one of those old station wagons where the back seats face back.
You’re sitting there watching the road recede away from you as you’re actually headed in the direction behind your back.
So when a pain comes, it’s not that it’s actually coming at you.
The pain is going, going, going, going away.
You’re watching it go, go, go away.
Another pain may come to replace it, but that’s just another pain that you’re going to watch go, go, go. Hold that perception in mind, that you’re not on the receiving end of a lot of this stuff, and things will be a lot easier to take. Because you do see that the individual moments of pain do go, go, go, go, go. And as you focus on that, it gives you less of a sense of being a victim, of being a target, and more of a sense of being in charge, of the choices you have.
I was involved in a psych experiment years back when I was in college. They had computers generating random numbers, and if your number came up for a particular psych experiment, you had to go. It was as if everyone in the whole college was a guinea pig for the Psych Department. And so it happened that during my four years as a student at the college, my name came up only once. But then when I returned after my time in Thailand, the fellowship that had sent me to Thailand gave me a free year back. In the course of that one year, I came up for experiments twice. And both of the experiments were related to meditation—which was useful because I had been meditating already.
The relevant experiment was this: They would have you put your hand in a bucket of ice water with lots of ice, very cold. And then you were told to imagine that the cold in your hand, in this case it was my right hand, could somehow travel over to the left hand, and the warmth in the left hand could travel back to the right hand. “Just visualize that happening,” they said, “and see how long you can keep your hand in the bucket.” That’s what I was told. So I sat there with my hand in the bucket for five minutes. The experimenter finally said, “Okay, you can stop now. You’re breaking the curve.”
It turned out that I was in one of three groups. And fortunately I had been put in the group where you were given a handle on the pain. The first group was told, “Put your hand in the ice water and then take it out as soon as it gets unpleasant, as soon as you can’t stand it any longer.” The second group was told, “Put your hand in the bucket and just try to hold it there as long as you can.” And the third group was told what I was told. They gave you something to do with the pain, using your perception, using your breath, and a sense of the breath energy. They wouldn’t have explained it that way, but that’s what it was. And sure enough, the people in the third group could keep their hands in the ice water a lot longer than the other two.
So simply having that perception that you have a role to play in how much pain there’s going to be, and how much suffering there’s going to be: That gives you the confidence to face down a lot of pains that otherwise you couldn’t stand.
This is what mindfulness of feelings is all about:
learning how to see the intentional element in the feeling you’re focusing on, and
learning how to change the intentional element so that you’re not suffering so much, so that you can abandon unskillful ways of dealing with feelings and replace them with more skillful ones.
Instead of jumping back and forth between household grief and household joy, or householder distress and householder joy, you jump over to renunciate grief, which, as I said, is like pulling back the bow that shoots the arrow over to renunciate joy.
It’s what allows you to give rise not only to physical pleasure but also to mental pleasure, mental ease.
Even when there are pains that you can’t change, you can still have a sense of mental ease around them. This is what that second frame of reference, feelings in and of themselves, is all about.
So always keep in mind the fact you do have some control over these things, that you want to find where the control is, and that you want to maximize it for the purpose of what’s skillful. That’s how you bring ardency to the practice of mindfulness.
And that’s how mindfulness is part of the path, because mindfulness is not just a matter of bringing bare attention to things. It’s a matter of keeping something in mind. In this case, you’re keeping in mind the fact that there is an intentional element in your feelings, and you can do something about it. You don’t want to forget that. You’ve got to keep that in mind at all times. That’s what you’re being mindful of. When you combine that with ardency and alertness, you get closer and closer to the point where you develop renunciate joy, seeing the results of your practice, seeing that the Buddha really did know what he was talking about: that we can find a peace, a freedom, and a happiness that are deathless. These aren’t just things written in books, or words in Dhamma talks. They’re things you can actually find inside.
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1. 느낌의 구분: 쾌 vs. 불쾌, 육체적 vs. 정신적, 세속적 vs. 탈세속적.
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2. 어떤 사건에 대한 우리의 느낌이나 해석에는 우리 자신의 태도/의도가 개입됨. 즉, 과거 업의 영향으로 형성된 ‘조건’을 ‘경험’으로 확정짓는 것은 우리 자신의 fabrication. 그렇기 때문에 설사 누군가가 내게 ‘잘못’을 한다 해도, 잘못은 상대의 업이고 상대의 잘못으로 인한 분노/짜증은 나의 업. 삶과 ‘운명’의 결정은 우리 자신의 fabrication에 의해 확정되는 것임을 기억할 것.
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3. 우리는 보통 쾌락이 느껴질 때는 집착을 하고, 불쾌감이 느껴질 때는 화/짜증을 일으키며, 이 화/짜증을 쾌락의 추구를 통해 해소하고자 함. 그러나 쾌락이 일어날 때도 탐닉하지 않고, 불쾌감이 일어날 때는 ‘해탈하지 않는 한 괴로움은 피할 수 없음’을 기억하는 것이 수행자의 자세. 명상을 하면 괴로움이 joy로 바뀔 수 있음.
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4. 호흡에 집중하다가 편안한 느낌이 들면 그 느낌이 몸전체로 퍼지도록 이렇게 저렇게 해 봄. Perception 중요. 얼음통에 손넣기 실험.
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[참고] ‘마음공부라는 것’
https://www.facebook.com/keepsurfinglife/posts/1237079003330847
希修 added 67 new photos to the album First Things First by Venerable Ṭhānissaro.
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'Mindfulness' (2020.10.29)
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1248721142166633&set=a.777942775911141
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8박정미, 이인자 and 6 others
Hanjin Kang
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· 25 w
希修
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'Mindfulness' (2020.10.29)
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1248721142166633&set=a.777942775911141
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希修
Favourites · eg30h OctutontbcSiphoodetrhnhsoi 2r02s0ed ·
< Mindfulness 마음챙김 >
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종교 유무/종류에 대한 문제도, 선의/호의나 평정심의 문제도, 성격적 특징에 대한 문제도, 가방끈 길이나 사회 경제적 지위에 대한 문제도 아님. 자신이든 타인이든 모든 인간이 갖고 있는 탐진치에 대한 경계심을 매순간, 매찰나, 갱신하는 부단한 노력이 바로 mindfulness. 분별 못/안 하는 평정심이나 무조건 긍정적인 사고, carpe diem 식의 낭만주의 등은 오히려 초기경전에서 말하는 mindfulness와 180도 정반대. 6감각 (5감 + 의식)에 집중하는 것은 감각적 자극에 휘둘려 탐진치가 활성화되는 것을 방지하려는 목적일 뿐, 흔히 오해되듯 현재를 fully enjoy/appreciate 하기 위해서가 결코 아님. (현재를 감각적으로 fully enjoy/appreciate하는 종류의 'mindfulness'는, 부처님의 가르침을 원래와는 전혀 다르게 변용한 '힐링 상품'일 뿐.)
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자동차 여행과도 같은 삶에서 나 자신 포함 모든 운전자들은 음주운전자. 각자의 탐진치가 바로 알콜인지라, 남에게 상처/피해주려는 의도를 갖지 않아도 교통사고는 늘상 무수하게 일어남. 상대의 실수로 사고에 휘말리면 나도 억울하지만, 상대방도 술취한 정도가 심할수록 잦은 사고를 통해 부상과 소송 등의 골칫거리를 끊임없이 스스로 야기하니 결국 본인도 다칠 수밖에 없고 그러니 과실자도 불쌍한 것. 그러므로 내 자신 술에서 깨도록 노력해야 함과 동시에, 많이 취한 사람에 대해서는 연민을 갖되 감당할 수 있을 만큼만 다가갈 것. 물론, 내가 경계와 주의를 늦추지 않는다고 해서 사고가 100% 예방되지는 않으며, 이런 위험은 인간계의 본질적 조건.
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또 모든 인간은 에너지 뱀파이어이기도 함. (종의 차원에서 지구에 행하는 일을 봐도 그렇고 개개인의 차원에서 봐도 그렇고.) 인간은 단 1초도 끊임없이 무한정으로 에너지를 추구하는데, 우리가 추구하는 에너지는 대개 감각적 쾌락이나 타인의 관심 (우정과 사랑 포함)의 형태를 취하지만, 스스로도 의식 못 하는 차원에서 불건강한 에너지를 추구하는 경우들도 많음, e.g., 드라마 퀸, 드라마 킹, 피해의식을 정체성으로 삼은 이들. 그러니, 내가 '타인을 위해' 한다는 일이 실은 내 자신 모종의 에너지 (타인의 칭찬이든 나 혼자의 보람이든)를 원해서 하는 일임을 자각하고, 그 에너지의 추구 방법이 무례, 부당, 이기적이 되지 않도록 늘 주의해야.
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* Sn 2:4 lists "not associating with foolish people" ('foolish' meaning 'having no understanding/discernment of causality/conditionality') as one of the best "protective charms" for you.
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* The Buddha said that there are two factors which are most helpful with awakening or discernment: appropriate attention and friendship with admirable people.
https://www.dhammatalks.org/.../0211n2b2%20M1%20Admirable...
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* "We praise companionship - yes! Those on a par, or better, should be chosen as friends. If they're not to be found, living faultlessly, wander alone like a rhinoceros." -- Khaggavisana Sutta: A Rhinoceros.
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[추가]
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부처님은 당신을 의사에 인간들을 탐진치라는 병에 걸려 있는 환자에 비유하셨음.
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인간은 신뢰해야 할 대상이 아니라 이해와 연민/동병상련의 대상일 뿐.
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많은 종교들이 인간의 '神聖한 본성'을 말하지만
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내 자신도 내 맘대로 안 되는 마당에 타인에 대해 내 멋대로 "믿는다"는 둥 "믿었는데 실망했다"는 둥 하는 게 얼마나 자기중심적이며 실은 오만하기도 한 일인지..
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希修
https://nypost.com/.../homeless-man-charged-with-killing.../
NYPOST.COM
Homeless man charged with killing taco shop worker who fed him ‘every day’Homeless man charged with killing taco shop worker who fed him ‘every day’
https://news.lawtalk.co.kr/2935
NEWS.LAWTALK.CO.KR
4년간 돌봐준 은인 무참히 살해한 노숙인의 범행 이유 "다른 사람에게 잘해줘서⋯"4년간 돌봐준 은인 무참히 살해한 노숙인의 범행 이유 "다른 사람에게 잘해줘서⋯"
Hanjin Kang
최고의 강의입니다 ^^
· 24 w
希修
Hanjin Kang 근데 이런 얘기는 시장성은 전혀 없죠. 그러니 대승불교가 시장성 있는 '따뜻하고 희망적이고 comforting'한 방향으로 점점 발전한 것이구요.
Hanjin Kang
혜민스님은 잘 팔리는 걸 선별해서 세일즈 잘 한 유능한 비즈니스맨이네요 ^^
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‘마우스’ 이승기의 연쇄살인, 조두순·이춘재를 타깃 삼은 걸까
기자명 정덕현 칼럼니스트
입력 2021.04.16 16:10
‘마우스’ 속 사건들, 어딘지 실제 사건이 연상되는 까닭
[엔터미디어=정덕현] ‘본 드라마는 픽션이며, 등장하는 인물, 기업, 지명, 종교, 사건 등은 실제와 관련 없음을 알려드립니다.’ tvN 수목드라마 <마우스>는 드라마 시작 전 이런 사전고지를 해놨다. 그래서 이 드라마 속에 등장하는 사건들은 분명한 허구다.
하지만 이상하게도 드라마 속 사건이 낯설지가 않다. 그 광경만 봐도 어디선가 봤던 실제 사건이 떠오른다. 성폭행범으로 검거되었다 심신미약이 인정되어 비교적 짧은 형기를 마치고 출소한 강덕수(정은표)는 누가 봐도 지난해 12월 12일 출소한 조두순을 떠올리게 한다. 그가 출소하는 날 많은 시위자들이 남부교도소 앞으로 몰려가 반대시위와 비판의 목소리를 냈던 그 풍경 역시 고스란히 드라마 속에 등장했다.
물론 이런 장면이 <마우스>에만 등장하는 건 아니다. 연쇄살인범이 등장하는 범죄스릴러에 이런 장면은 흔하다. 강력범죄를 저지른 인물이 법망을 빠져나와 빨리 출소해 또 다른 사건을 저지르는 이야기는 범죄스릴러에서 흔하디흔한 클리셰처럼 나오는 장면이니 말이다.
하지만 <마우스> 속 강덕수의 사례는 그 범죄가 성 폭행범, 그것도 아동 성 폭행범이라는 사실 때문에 조두순을 떠올리지 않을 수 없다. 하지만 드라마는 이런 인물을 세워놓고 전혀 다른 이야기를 풀어낸다. 그것은 법이 풀어준 강덕수를, 사이코패스가 되어 살인본능을 통제하기 어려운 정바름(이승기)이, 그가 피해자에게 했던 방식 그대로 되돌려주는 이야기로 풀어낸 것.
이런 실제 사건과 유사한 사례는 그 후에 정바름이 예고 살인을 하게 되는 이른바 ‘수성연쇄살인사건’에서도 그대로 이어진다. 누가 봐도 ‘화성연쇄살인사건’을 떠올리게 하는 이 에피소드는 ‘화성연쇄살인사건’에서 억울하게 누명을 쓴 채 20년간이나 복역을 한 윤성여씨와 후에 진범으로 붙잡힌 이춘재를 떠올리게 한다.
어려서 앓은 소아마비로 다리를 저는 장애를 갖고 쉽지 않은 삶을 버텨왔던 윤성여씨가, 그 장애를 갖고 담을 넘어 10대 소녀를 강간하고 죽였다는 건 사실 애초 불가능한 이야기였지만 죄를 뒤집어쓴 안타까운 사연은, <마우스>에서도 비슷한 이야기로 전개된다. 누명을 쓰고 감옥에 간 김씨는 언어 장애와 청각 장애가 있는 인물로 설정되어 있다. 그래서 수성연쇄살인사건의 유일한 생존자였던 성지은(김정난)이 증언한 것처럼 “차라리 날 죽이라”는 말에 대꾸를 한 살인범일 수 없다는 결론이 나온다.
결국 진범인 이재식이 출소하는 날, 정바름은 기다렸다는 듯이 자신이 예고한대로 그를 풀숲으로 끌고 가 그가 했던 그대로 살해한다. 뒤늦게 그 사실을 알고 풀숲을 찾아간 고무치(이희준)가 그 광경을 보게 되면서 드라마는 극적 긴장감을 높여 놓았다.
그런데 <마우스>가 꺼내 온 살인사건들이 물론 고지대로 실제 사건과 관련이 없다고 해도, 너무나 그 실제 사건들을 떠올리게 그려낸 건 작가의 의도를 읽어낼 수 있는 대목이다. 사람을 처참하게 살해하고도 전혀 죄책감을 느끼지 않고 따라서 진실된 사죄를 하지도 않는 범죄자들과, 이들을 제대로 처벌하지 못하는 법의 한계 속에서 온전히 고통은 피해자들의 몫일 수밖에 없는 현실을 애써 드라마 속으로 끌어온 것. 그것은 이런 현실에 대한 문제의식을 드러내는 것이다.
<마우스>가 뇌 이식이라는 상상을 통해 반은 사이코패스지만 반은 바른 청년인 정바름이라는 인물을 창조해낸 건, 이 결코 풀어내기가 쉽지 않은 현실을 풀어내기 위함이다. 그래서 그건 허구로 각색된 사건들이지만, 너무나 익숙하게 실제 사건들을 떠오르게 한다. 정바름이라는 허구의 인물이 겨냥한 칼이 현실의 저들을 향해 있다는 느낌이 들 정도로.
정덕현 칼럼니스트 thekian1@entermedia.co.kr
[사진=tvN]
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