Author: Chong Go Sunim

For all those who bear the secret sign of the woodcarvers’ guild (scars on the thumbs and index fingers from slips with the knife 😉 ), here’s a photo essay on how a wooden Buddha statue is carved. This display is at the Mok-A Museum in Korea, with the finished statue about 10 inches high. The founder is officially designated as what can best be described as National Living Treasure #108. Here’s a link to his site, and here’s a link to some photos of his work. (Click on the images here to see them up close.)

  o o o o o o o o i p p   o

This is one of my favorite Dharma talks by Daehaeng Kun Sunim, where she talks about spiritual practice and the importance of “dying.” She isn’t talking about the death of the body, but rather letting go of this sense of “me” and what “I” want. There are many aspects to this, but one question often asked is, “If I let go like this, won’t I become a fool or taken advantage of by others?” The short answer is “no.” As you let go of both sides, both good and bad, likes and dislikes, you see things more clearly, and discover the courage to do what needs to be done, whether it’s confrontation, accepting, or running away! 

One of the other incredibly huge things about this practice is that the beginning and the end are both the same. Whether you don’t know anything or are completely enlightened, the letting go and entrusting is done exactly the same.

 
You should entrust everything that comes up in your life – solitude, poverty, loneliness, anxiety, and illness – to your foundation and live freely. Entrusting everything is letting go of everything. This is the way to die. The phrase “First, you must die!” means unconditionally releasing everything, without any excuses or reasons, including both what you understand and what you don’t understand. When things go well, you should release them with gratitude. When things don’t go well, you should also release them with the faith that “My foundation can solve this and lead me in the right direction. Because nothing is fixed, this too can change.” You should keep letting go like this. For it is only by dying unconditionally that you can discover your true self, your eternal root.

Second, you must die again. While studying here, some of you have discovered yourself. Yet you still have not discarded your habits and your thoughts of “I,” “me,” and “mine.” So you’re happy if you see a Buddha in your dreams, but you’re scared if you see a ghost. When you feel or experience something extraordinary, you carelessly talk to others about what you experienced. What you see and hear is just an illusion, but nevertheless you still tend to cling to it. This is why you must die again.

Now do you understand why first you must die and keep what you experience to yourself, and why you must die yet again, keeping what you experience secret? Even though you are able to see or hear certain things after you discover your true self, those powers are not the Way. Even though you have obtained the five subtle powers – the abilities to know others’ thoughts and feelings, to know past lives, to hear anything, to see anything at any place, and to appear anywhere without moving your body – this is still not the Way. You can truly master the five subtle powers only when you are free from them. If you reveal what you hear, see, or know, it will only bring trouble. First, it will cause trouble for the Buddha-dharma, second, for sunims and the Seon center, and third, it will cause trouble for you.

Once you discover yourself, you enter the stage of experimenting. Don’t regard what you learn in your dreams as different from what you learn while awake. And keep everything you learn secret. Although you are able to see, hear, and know things that others are unaware of, do it without clinging to any thought of “I see,” “I hear,” “I know,” and do not reveal to others what you experience. This is a very powerful stage of practice in which you experiment with what you have learned. Your experiments result in experiences, and then you put those experiences into action. This is the meaning of dying a second time and keeping what you experience to yourself.

 
 
 
 
 Daehaeng Kun Sunim goes on to talk about the need for also dying a third time. There are a couple of very advanced aspects to that, but the main point is the need to continuously keep letting go, and to not dwell on what we experience.  (This talk has been excerpted from the book, Wake Up and Laugh.)

In this next section of Admonitions to Myself, the Venerable Ya-un warns us to settle our bodies and be careful with our words. On the surface, this section seems to be written for monastics, yet it also applies quite well to our modern form of laziness: Busyness. 

Refrain from unnecessary speech and movement:

If your body is settled, then confusion will cease and samadhi will be attained. If you speak little, foolishness will be transformed into wisdom. The true foundation is devoid of words and the ultimate principle is unmoving. The mouth is the door of calamity and so must be guarded carefully. The body is the root of disaster, so do not travel around unnecessarily. A bird that often flies back and forth is in danger of being caught in a net; an animal that roams around will have the misfortune of being struck by an arrow.

Thus the Buddha sat without moving for six years and Bodhidharma spent nine years in the Shaolin cave without saying a word. How then can later practitioners not follow these examples?

 
Enter meditation while holding mind and body still,
sit by yourself in a hermitage,
without leaving and returning.
Observing your own mind,
return to and rely on the Buddha
that is within.

An Eyebrow Hair
Here’s one of my favorite stories about Korea, which also involves a tiger.

Long ago, a young man was traveling through the mountains, when he ran across an old monk struggling to repair a tiny shrine. At a glance he saw what needed to be done, and after asking the monk to take a rest, he set about fixing the shrine.  For him it would only take a couple of hours, whereas it would have taken days for the monk, who seemed quite clumsy with his hands. While the man was working, the monk was silent, and seemed to be watching him closely. But then, mountain monks always did tend to be a bit strange, so he didn’t think much about it.   

 At last, he finished and, sweating, sat down next to the monk, who continued to stare at him. Finally, the monk spoke, “It must have been tough growing up without parents or family. I too, lost my mother at a young age. Looking at you, I think a wife and family of your own is what you want more than anything else in the world. Am I right?” The young man shivered despite the heat, for it was as if the monk had seen into the very depths of his heart. How had he known those things?   

 The monk spoke again, “Well, if marriage and a family are what you have your heart set on, it won’t do to marry just any woman. You have to see clearly. Here.” With that, the monk plucked out one of his long, white eyebrow hairs, and handed it to the young man. “Now,” said the monk, “hold it in front of your eye and look at me.” The young man did this, and almost died of fright! For where he had been talking to an old man, he now saw a huge mountain tiger!   

 The young man quickly lowered the eyebrow hair, and there was the old monk again. He raised the hair to his eye again, and the monk had become a tiger again. The man thought he was either crazy or about to die, or both! The monk smirked at him, and then said, “Don’t worry, I don’t eat humans.” Well, this seemed like a lie, for the tigers in those mountains were notorious man-eaters.  The monk seemed to read the man’s thoughts, and said again, “We’re actually quite spiritual, so we don’t eat humans. Only pigs and dogs, and maybe a donkey or fox, once in a while.”    

The old monk sighed in response to the dubious stare he was getting, “Take that hair with you and use it to look at the people you meet. You’ll see what I mean.” With this they parted, and the man made his way back down to his village. It was still hard to believe what had happened, but he was dying to try out the hair on other people.   
   

So early the next morning, he found a nice spot near the main road into the village and sat there waiting. Before long, the proud village mayor came by. Everyone treated him with much respect, but when the young man looked at him, he saw a great slobbering pig wearing clothes! Well, this was a shock! He next saw a line of woodcutters returning from the mountains, so he held up the hair, and to his amazement, most of them were dogs or pigs! Only two were actually human beings. This went on for a while, until he saw a beautiful young woman and her mother approaching. Just sight of the woman made his heart race, but when he held up the hair, he saw that she was really a fox-spirit!   

This went on all day, and he was amazed at how few human beings he was seeing. Neither fine silk, Confucian hats, or monks robes were any guarantee of finding a human being. Finally, he looked through the hair at a plain-looking woman who was walking by, and discovered that she was a radiant human being. They were eventually married, and became the joyful family the young man had always wanted.   

Well, the moral of this story isn’t about finding a spouse! (Though that is a topic that does tend to get young people to pay attention.)  The heart of this story is the importance of seeing beyond appearances and learning to become a true human being. 
  
In this story, the eyebrow hair of the tiger can become compared to our true nature, our foundation and Buddha-essence. When we can get in touch with this, and learn to see through it, then we’ll be able to truly see what is going on, and we’ll be able to respond in ways that go right to the heart of the situation.

It’s one thing to be born as a human being, but we still have to become true human beings. For while many are born with human bodies, many are still controled by the habits developed during animal incarnations.  So a lot of spiritual practice is simply working on letting go of animal habits, and learning the ways of a true human being. Let’s all become great beings who can see clearly and respond appropriately with infinite power of our Buddha-nature.

One of the interesting things about Korea are the tigers.  Where I grew up, team mascots were always fierce and realistic. Perhaps it’s about balance: we, who knew basically nothing of real violence, chose mascots that had a threat of violence. Yet in Korea, where every man serves in the army, where there are tank traps and massive artillery bases north of Seoul, this was the mascot they chose for the 1988 Seoul olympics:     

  

 
   

 
 

 

 
 
 
Often tigers were used as comic relief, according to David Mason. With their fierce pride and dignity, they resembled the yangban, or aristocratic class. In images like this tiger, you can see the puffed out chest and aggressive expression, filled with pride about its noble heritage and superiority to all, but, where did those spots come from?    

It seems the tiger’s mother had an affair with a lowly leopard!  Here the tiger is used to mock the arrogance and unearned pride of the yangban.  

 
   

 
 
 
 
 On the other hand,  in mountain-spirit portraits, images of tigers often served to symbolize the power of the mountains and nature, as well as the power of spiritual practice to help us become one with this.     

More tomorrow about tigers and spiritual practice.  

    

In his post a few days ago, Joseph relayed the story of a monk who died in the Jiri Mountains (A glimpse). It highlighted two critical truths, namely, that we are not our bodies, and the importance of how we use our minds. 

In Chapter 2 of No River to Cross, Daehaeng Kun Sunim also covers these points: 

Even after your body falls away, your consciousness remains. It often happens that people do not understand that their body does not exist anymore, and they do not realize that living people cannot see or hear them. So, sometimes, in their confusion and desire, they cause other people to suffer. If you sincerely cultivate mind while you have a body, then you can leave without having any attachments. However, if you don’t practice, then even though you’re dead, you’ll be caught up in all of your old relationships, and won’t be able to freely leave. Instead, you may just wander around, stuck in that state for a very long time. When people die, if they have never practiced spiritual cultivation, their consciousness cannot see and cannot hear. In the middle of the darkness, their consciousness cannot correctly perceive things, so those people may (accidently) enter the womb of a pig or a magpie. However, people who have cultivated mind give off a great light and thoroughly illuminate their surroundings. Even their families tend to live brightly, although individually they may not know anything about spiritual practice. (p 20-21)  

Have you ever gotten caught up in a dream about walking through a building that no longer exists? Those steps you were walking up are now only empty sky a hundred feet off the ground. After we die, we no longer have physical senses, so with what are we seeing and hearing? If we haven’t practiced while alive, then we’re only experiencing the arising of karmic states of consciousness. However, we think those things are really happening, and so chase or flee them. In essence, we’re running outdoors at full speed, while blindfolded.  

Thus, how we use our minds while alive is critically important to us.  

In order to be born as a human being, it may have taken a thousand years of accumulated virtue and merit. It’s so hard to become a human being. Nevertheless, if you don’t let go of the habits you developed prior to becoming a human being, and if you think of only yourself, your suffering will be endless. If you live this way, you may live like this for many, many lives, stuck like a hamster on a wheel, unable to evolve. Or you may devolve and be reborn as an animal. Once you are reborn as an animal, you will suffer a lot, having to eat others or be eaten. There will be very little opportunity to reflect upon your state, and if you develop the habits of an animal, it will be even more difficult to free yourself from that state, even over billions of eons. (p 19)  

We go where we look. Or in this case, where we think.  

Once the level of mind changes, the body also changes accordingly. Evolution is the process of the mind becoming brighter, while creation is the outward manifestation of the minds design. Thus, while this process is evolution, it is also creation.  

Mind is the basis of both evolution and devolution; they aren’t separate forces. Devolution is also done by mind. All of this is the manifestation of our fundamental mind (and how we use it.) (p 22) 

In a previous post featuring books about Korea, readers pointed out a couple of truly great books that been overlooked.

The first one is The Zen Monastic Experience, by Robert Buswell. Written about life in a major Korean zen monastery, this is based upon the years he spent at Songgwa Temple. He lived here as monk for about five years, under the great master Kusan Sunim. Buswell also does a great job of explaining the different jobs and positions at a large monastery.

As I think about it, I could do an entire post on the books of Robert Buswell! He’s really done some great ones about Korean Buddhism. One of the most influential is The Collected Works of Chinul: The Korean Approach to Zen. This is the only English translation of the complete works of one of Korea’s most important thinkers. However, used copies of this one sell for over $200, so it’s probably better to get the excerpted version, Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul’s Korean Way of Zen. All of the works in this book are full-length; it’s only the longer, and more obscure works of Chinul that were left out. Buswell was also the editior of Religions of Korea in Practice, and Currents and Countercurrents: Korean Influences on the East Asian Buddhist Traditions.  This second one is definitely an under-appreciated gem. Most of us bought into the idea of a linear transmission of Buddhism. However, Buswell shows that this was much more dynamic, with Buddhist practitioners and teachers traveled throughout the region learning and influencing as they went. 

 
Similar to Religions of Korea in Practice is Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism. This is quite a nice volume about modern Korean Buddhism, with many chapters about the history and key figures of Korean Buddhism during the turbulent 20th century.

  
 

 
 
 Here’s a nice book about the life of modern Korean Buddhist nuns, Women in Korean Zen: Lives And Practices. Martine Bachelor was also another person who lived at Songgwa Temple and practiced under Kusan Sunim. She talks about the life of Korean Buddhist nuns, the difficulties of a westerner adjusting to both the monastic and Korean culture, and in the second half of the book, Martine includes the autobiography of the outstanding nun, Son’gyong Sunim.
 
 
 
   
One of the great works in Korean Buddhism is The Mirror of Zen, by Seon master Sosan. This one is studied by most of the monks and nuns in Korea, and here is widely availiable in English for the first time. My only complaint, and it’s not a reason to avoid this book, is that this book is only one section of Sosan Sunim’s original work, Mirror of the Three Religions: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. (The only attempt at this work in English is a MA thesis at the University of Hawaii by Jinwol Sunim.*) In it, Sosan Sunim compares the three religions then prevalent in Korea, and shows their common characteristics and beliefs, explaining why there is no need for conflict between them. In a sense, Sosan Sunim’s original work may be one of the first “Appreciation of” textbooks in the world.
 

Another neat book is Temples of Korea.  With beautiful photos, information, history about a number of important temples in Korea, I doubt you could go wrong with this one. 

 
 
 
 
 

There’s an interesting couple of books that resemble the “How it’s made” series, in the sense that they show and explain all of the components of various temples in detail. The first is called Korean Temple Motifs, and is quite a nice, if expensive, book.  

The second, Korean Cultural Heritage (Vol. 1), is perhaps even better. There is a volume 2, but it doesn’t cover Buddhism. This book (volume 1) is definitely worthwhile, but hard to find. It’s at Kyobo Books in Seoul, and I found my copy at the Bandi and Luni’s at Jongno 1ga (in Seoul), but apart from that, it doesn’t seem to be in many other places.

 
 
 

 
 
 
These are just some of the many books about Korea. I haven’t posted anything by my Dharma teacher, Daehaeng Kun Sunim, because you’ve probably already seen information about her books if you’ve visited this blog before. Likewise, most westerners interested in Buddhism already have at least a passing familiarity with the works Seung Sahn Kun Sunim. I’ve also avoided posting much about Korean art for two reasons. One, I don’t know anything! And two, there are a lot of newish books about Korean art that I haven’t looked at. Many of them aren’t available outside of Korea, but the bookstore Seoul Selection has a very good selection.

If you know of any books about Korea that left a good impression, please share them in the comments section. And I’ll try to include them in a future post.

 
 
 *  Common Themes of the Three Religions (Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism): The Samga Kwigam of Hyujong (1520-1604)  (University of Hawaii, 1990)

Korea has one of the most vibrant communities of Buddhist nuns in the world. To my knowledge, only Taiwan has anything even close. While there are still some inequities, such as the tendency for monk’s temples to attract more donations, in terms of practice, the nun’s community is outstanding.     

Two of the major institutions for nuns (and also monks) are the meditation hall, the seonbang, and the sutra study program, the kangwon.  This is a four-year course of study where one lives at the kangwon with Korean sunims,* while attending lectures and commentaries. This involves massive amounts of memorization and traditional sino-Korean (Chinese) characters, as well as the daily work you’d expect at a large temple. Only upon completion of one of these courses is a nun (or monk) allowed to take full ordination in Korea. (This applies to only the Jogye Order, although it is by far the largest Buddhist order in Korea.)   

However, Jaeun Sunim (/ja-un/), a Canadian, did not choose this path. She was one of two bikkhunis** who were the first to take full ordination after graduating from the kangwon. This interview examines her experiences and why she endeavored to spend years training in a completely different cultural environment.  This interview originally appeared in the Lotus Lantern magazine.
 
* Sunim is the Korean title of respect and address for both nuns and monks. It’s similar to “venerable.”
**Bikkhuni is the term for a fully ordained Buddhist nun.  

By the numbers:
7000+  The number of nuns in Korea’s Jogye Order.
 6   –   Kangwons attended by Buddhist nuns
18  –   Meditation halls exclusive to nuns  

All of these kangwons and meditation halls are run by the nuns.  Men (including monks) are generally not allowed in these temples.

 
 
How did you become interested in Buddhism?

I think it would be truthful to say that I have always been a Buddhist. However, as I was born in a country where there is no indigenous Buddhist tradition, it was many years before I was able to recognize it.When I was in the first grade at school, a student asked our teacher, “Who made the world?” and she said, “God made the world”. Another student asked, “Then, who made God?” and she said, “We shouldn’t ask questions like that”. I remember asking, “Why not?” I had many questions about life that nobody seemed to want to talk about. My experiences with Christianity were similar: I was told to just have faith and that we shouldn’t try to understand the mind of God. These attitudes served to quell my interest in religion. So I redirected my inquisitiveness in a more “acceptable” direction and studied science, eventually majoring in biochemistry.     

When I was a university student, I did volunteer work with the local chapter of Amnesty International, and was shocked by the stories of torture and injustice that are committed so routinely around the world. I realized how well off and comfortable I was compared to most people in the world. My life seemed so useless in the face of all that suffering, and this brought back many of the unanswered questions of my childhood. So as a graduate student I did research in virology, with the idea that I could do some good in the world by helping to understand diseases so that they could be more effectively treated and prevented. At the same time, I started to read more in philosophy and psychology, and to explore some alternative spiritual paths.     

One day a friend told me she was learning to meditate and suddenly I found myself saying that I wanted to learn too. She loaned me a book by Vietnamese master Thich Nhat Hanh and as I read it, I simply knew that I was a Buddhist. My friend introduced me to a woman who was teaching meditation, and eventually I met her teacher, the late Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche, and other students of his who were teaching Buddha Dharma. From them, I began to learn the fundamentals of Buddhist theory and practice     

It was such a relief! In Buddhism, I not only found others who were asking the same kinds of questions that had nagged me since childhood, but a way of spiritual life in which this kind of questioning is in fact necessary and encouraged.

Most Korean Bikkhunis believe that training in the seminary is necessary for novice nuns to provide a foundation for their monastic life and practice, and the vast majority of nuns in Korea attend the seminary for four years as the basic training before full ordination. The only way to really understand something is to experience it yourself. And for a Westerner to understand a particular Buddhist tradition, it’s important to get as close to the roots of that tradition as possible. Because Western culture is so different from Korean culture, life in the seminary would also teach me how to live together harmoniously with Korean nuns. So it seemed attending the seminary would be the best way for me to get a good foundation to monastic life and a deeper appreciation of the Jogye tradition and life as a Korean Buddhist nun.  

 

This post continues the Venerable Ya-un’s Admonitions to Myself. Here he warns us about the limitations of desire, while encouraging us to pay attention to what lasts and what benefits us longterm.

Greed is the foremost cause of a suffering-filled rebirth.[1]  Giving is foremost among the six good practices.[2]  Stinginess and greed prevent you from attaining the true path, while compassion and giving help protect you from falling into evil ways. If a poor person comes to you begging for help, you should not be reluctant, even if you are in hard circumstances yourself. You came into this world with nothing and you will leave it with nothing. You should not cling to even your own possessions, so how can you think about other’s belongings? When this body dies, what will you take with you? 

The only thing that will follow you is the karma that you have made. If you cultivate your mind for three days, it can become a treasure that lasts for a thousand years. However, the accumulated possessions of a hundred years of desire will all be reduced to dust in the span of a few hours. 

            Where does the suffering of the three evil rebirths come from?
            From greed and desire accumulated over many lifetimes.
            Contenting myself with the Buddha’s robe and bowl,
            why should I accumulate ignorance?  

  

  

 
 
 
  

  

 
 
 
 

At the Buddhist English Library of Seoul, we’ve been going over No River to Cross, by Seon Master Daehaeng.  Chapter 2 has a nice section about cause and effect, and how our mind functions.

Mind is tilted towards the things that arise often. So, if you do not manage your thoughts well, they will grow and eventually become actions.

Any thought once raised, is perfectly recorded. You might think that a thought is finished because you’re no longer aware of it, but that thought did not disappear:  it is perfectly recorded inside your mind. That thought is stored in your subconsciousness and causes a similar thought to arise next time. Further, the second thought is stronger than the first thought.

For example, if the first thought was bad, then the second thought is often a little worse. In this way, the thought keeps repeating time after time, and grows stronger and stronger. (page 17)

So, how do we manage thoughts? For one thing, we actually have a huge amount of choice in what we do once thoughts have arisen. It’s up to us if we want to continue to follow a thought, or to cease feeding it energy. But on a more fundamental level those can be dissolved, thus also dissolving the potential effects that would have resulted, had those thoughts continued unchecked.

If you record over a tape recording, the previous recording is erased and the new material is recorded. So it’s better to record good karma rather than bad karma. However, instead of just recording good karma, it’s even better to completely erase all of the recordings. The way to do this is by entrusting everything that confronts you, both good and bad, to your fundamental nature. It’s like cleaning a mirror. Even though the mirror has been covered by dust for a long time, once you wipe it off, it immediately becomes clean. (p 18)

We often naturally think that if we can understand the cause of something, we can control and cure it. But with karma, Daehaeng Kun Sunim explains that this is a futile exercise.

Karma is a tangle of uncountable causes and effects. Some people try to use their intellect to unravel their karma, but this is like trying to melt a frozen lake by pouring one bucket of hot water onto the ice. It seems to melt a little, but before long the water freezes, and you have only added more ice.

We’re stuck inside this barrel of “I,” and because what we do is contaminated with this smell of “I,” our efforts just makes things worse. The only way out of this mess is to completely jump over “I.”

So don’t get caught up in worldly things, just release them all to your fundamental mind, your Buddha-nature, and let them melt down automatically. When spring comes, the frozen lake will melt naturally and completely. Returning to your fundamental mind is like a warm spring coming after a cold winter. (p 18-19)