Author: marcusp

Most temples in Korea publish newsletters, some just a few pages long, others big glossy things with a print-run of tens of thousands, and I think the fact that most include some English, and that the Jogye Order publishes a magazine entirely in English, is a real indication of the openness and forward-thinking of Korean Buddhism. The Hanmaum Journal, which is now in its 9th year and fifty-first edition in its current colourful format, is no exception. Through its fabulous photos and great articles and translations it provides a real connection to the Hanmaum Sangha, and is a delight to look through.

The current issue of the Journal has two main articles in English, the opening teaching by Seon Master Daehaeng Sunim, a regular feature of the magazine, and the second of a two-part article by Ki Sang Kim on the building of the Gujeong Pagoda at the Hanmaum Seon Centre in Anyang. I never realised just what a huge task building that pagoda was. Ki Sang describes in detail how he literally searched the globe, “led by unseen hands”, for just the right stone, finally finding marble of the right size, strength, quality, and whiteness in the Italian alps. Mr Kim will finish his account of how the stone was quarried and the pagoda built in the next edition of the journal.

The teachings from Kun Daehaeng Sunim toward the front of the journal are always something to look forward to. I’m told that they are not actually poems at all, but they always look like poems to me, and one day I’d love to see Hanmaum publish a small, good-quality, hardback edition of them. I’m sure that would be of great benefit to many people. This month’s teaching is called ‘A True Human Being’ and begins like this:

Our true mind is a great brightness that can lead us all.
This one mind, this one point
is the foundation of the Earth,
the foundation of the sun,
and the foundation of the universe.
With perfect wisdom it accepts everything and responds accordingly.
It is brightness itself, what could possibly hinder it?

A few weeks ago Chong Go Sunim posted another of these teachings from the Hanmaum Journal, called ‘Practicing through our Fundamental Mind’, on this blog, and so perhaps he’ll post this one too one day soon. In fact, that’s one of the things that’s so great about this blog – how it goes beyond being just a small group blog by a bunch of Dharma brothers and their teacher. Looking back over the past few months of posts I see that, right here, we have an Internet Hanmaum Journal, in English, which is updated almost every day!

So thank you to Chong Go Sunim and Joseph. Thank you to Carl and Joe, who helped set this blog up and who will soon be contributing articles, and thank you to everyone who has left comments and to everyone who reads. I hope that in the future we can bring in guest posts from across the entire Hanmaum Sangha and beyond. So if you feel inspired to write a post here that fits the theme of this blog, do get in touch, and help make ‘Wake Up and Laugh’ a journal for everyone.

Link:
Practicing through our Fundamental Mind

The colour of the mountain is the eye of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva,
The sound of the river is the ear of Manjushri Bodhisattva,
Mr Chang and Mrs Lee are Vairochana Buddha.
 – Seon Master Kyong Ho (1849 – 1912)

A few days ago my partner flew back to Japan, and after all the excitement of a week together, after far too long apart, I was left feeling sad and empty. Of course I know what I should have done, I should have sat on my meditation block and watched my breath, something I’ve done countless times before and which always makes me feel better. I could have watched the emotions and feelings rise and fall away, I could have allowed each to settle back from where they’d come. I could have practiced letting go, entrusting them all.

Instead I carried the loneliness around with me and tried to fill the gap I felt inside, and one of the ways I did that was in the spiritual section of the bookshop, looking through the latest books on Buddhism and browsing through the Christian section, trying to find the volume that contained the perfect teaching that would solve all my problems. Later, when I did finally manage to sit, I thought a little more about that search, and how it connects to what Chong Go Sunim was saying the other day about finding a teacher.

There are no shortage of teachers. Just the books I already have, each is a perfect teacher. On my desk right now I have stacks of wisdom from a number of traditions going back thousands of years. A simple click away and I have even more. Finding a teacher isn’t the problem. And not just books, I don’t know how many Dharma talks I’ve attended over the past few years. Plus, my oldest friend is a Catholic priest, my partner is a Pure Land practitioner, my best friend lives the very spirit of Zen, my Dharma brothers are just an email away.

The problem isn’t finding a teacher, I’m spoilt for choice, the problem is finding the willingness to learn. A single word of wisdom from any one of my teachers could be enough to sustain me for a lifetime, but instead I skim over spiritual advice in the same way I’d read a novel on the beach. I’m like the dried sponge that Father Laurence of New Skete talks about, “a sponge that is so old, that has sat around collecting the dust and grime of life, that when you throw it into a bathtub it simply floats! It doesn’t absorb water!”

The fact is, we really do live in a bathtub, an ocean even, of teachers – if we are willing to learn. With that willingness, every single thing, not just monks and spiritual books, can be our teacher. Daehaeng Sunim writes that the mountain teaches us to live resolute and unflinching, the flowing waters teach us to live like water, and weeds sprouting up through harsh soil teach us to live courageously in the midst of adversity. “Bad circumstances are, in fact,” Daehaeng Sunim writes elsewhere, “an opportunity to learn.”

 
Chong Go Sunim said last week that when learning from all that life gives us, the key “is this upright center we are all part of. This is the thing that we must never abandon. While trying to be humble and uphold the precepts, we must always keep returning to this.” For me, this means slowing down and letting go. It means accepting myself and the circumstances I find myself in. How else could I learn? It’s not in any book, it’s in my daily, moment by moment life. My practice is to open up to those lessons and allow them to flow through me.
 
 

Link:
What will you rely upon: Raising up teachers

Sources of quotations:
– “Don’t Know Mind: The Spirit of Korean Zen”, Richard Shrobe
– “In the Spirit of Happiness”, the monks of New Skete
– “No River to Cross”, Zen Master Daehaeng Sunim

I arrived yesterday afternoon just in time for the final rehearsals, with the altar looking just as gorgeous as it did for the Buddha’s Birthday last year, if not more so. Seeing all the offerings arranged before the Buddha image, fruit and flowers, candles and boxes, and so many people busy with the final touches for their performances, you’d never have believed this is just a small overseas branch temple with just two resident sunims. The energy was intense.

At six o’clock sharp everyone settled down for a short evening ceremony of chants, containing some refrains and mantras I found familiar and lovely, and then there was, just as the lantern lights were switched on, a circumambulation in the temple grounds and everyone chanted the Buddha’s name. With a short period of meditation too, this first part of the evening contained something for every style of practice. And then the festival began.

The stage doors were pulled back and first off was a choir with all the women in gorgeous hanboks and all the men in white shirts, and English translations to some of the Dharma songs on a screen to one side. In the audience, as well as dozens of Korean families, was our small English-language Seon Club, trying not to compare our upcoming efforts with the magnificent voices on stage!

The anticipation must have effected my memory because I can’t remember the order of the acts that followed, but I remember being stunned by the drumming performance, oooing and aaahing at the wonderful magic tricks some of the kids performed, and clapping along as some younger and very cute kids danced to a song about Superman. There was a traditional Thai dance and during a Korean dance the Seon Club slipped behind the stage door ready to go on.

Daily life in Bangkok has been much disrupted over the past few weeks and two of our regular members, both with superb voices, have recently had to leave, but, as our singing coaches Jo and Mrs Nam emphasised again and again during rehearsals, the point isn’t the sound of our voices, but the expression of the Dharma. And in the end we had a respectable little group with singers from England, Australia, and Japan, and Eun Young, our extraordinarily talented and enthusiastic translator from Korea, and we sang with all our hearts.

The Seon Club is only a year old, it was at the last Buddha’s Birthday celebration that we first discussed the idea of an English-language group, and during the second verse the whole audience joined in. I looked out and saw other Seon Club members in the audience giving us the thumbs up, and all over the hall so many familiar faces from the Seonwon singing along and wishing us well, and I understood that nothing is separate here, that every single one of us is together supporting each other.

So thank you to everyone that sang last night, thank you to everyone that attended rehearsals, even if you couldn’t make it on the night, thank you to those who coached us over the weeks of preparation, to everyone who supported us and watched us and joined in with us, and to all the wonderful people from the Hanmaum Seonwon in Bangkok and in Korea and throughout the world. Thank you all!

Our song finished and we bowed and hurried back into the audience smiling and elated and watched others take their turns. There was some acting, a wild but tightly controlled performance of swordmanship, and everything was rounded off with more singing and the handing out of some small gifts. And again I was left amazed at how this little community manages to find such time and such talent. It was a fabulous way to celebrate the coming of Buddha, and a lovely example for every day of the coming year of energy and joy and togetherness. Wonderful!

Seon Master Toeong Seongcheol, the late Patriarch of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, wrote a wonderful poem for Buddha’s Birthday in 1986 which was printed in ‘Echoes from Mt. Kaya’, a book of his teachings now sadly out of print. The book was translated by Brian Barry, the Korean-based artist who painted, among other things, the platform doors in the preaching hall at Wat Suthat here in Bangkok.

The poem, which you can read on Barry’s site under the section entitled Dharma Drumming, or at the website of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, is a hugely energetic birthday greeting to all living beings, and beyond. Happy Birthday, Seongcheol calls out, to the Buddhas in prisons, in taverns, in gardens, and in the skies.

“To all you Buddhas who have become endlessly changing clouds drifting across the sky, to all you Buddhas who are quietly biding your time as boulders — a very happy birthday to you, too. / And happy birthday to all you cute little Buddhas swimming in the waters. To all you lively Buddhas soaring about the sky. To all you reverential Buddhas singing hymns in churches, and to all you handsome Buddhas chanting in temples”.

Written when he was 74 years old, the poem goes on to wish a happy birthday to farm workers, factory workers, and students. Everyone, and everything, he says, is a manifestation of Buddha. Every place is “a site for liberation from suffering and ignorance”, and every day is a day to respect and congratulate each other. It’s a call to happiness. Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!

Links:
Brian Barry’s webpage
Jogye Order: Brian Barry
Jogye Order: Happy Birthday
Wikipedia: Master Seongcheol
Return to the Center: Happy Buddha’s Birthday

“It is gratitude for somebody who wanted to teach us. It is not a coincidence that Parents’ Day and Teachers’ Day are always around Buddha’s birthday. In this sense, its gratitude to teachers, but also a reminder of the potential within each of us.”
– Chong Go Sunim

“There is a beautiful place in the mind, peaceful, bright and aware, that shows itself when you put everything down. It is free to all who undertake the search.”
– Phra Cittasamvaro Bhikku

For most of the last eleven years I’ve lived in Bangkok, and it’s here that my interest in Buddhism started. But to be honest at first there was very little support on this path for an English (only!) speaker like myself. That all changed three or four years ago when the Venerable Phra Cittasamvaro Bhikku delivered his first series of rains-retreat talks at the Baan Aree Library and Community centre.

To accompany the talks Phra Cittasamvaro, popularly known as Phra Pandit, set up the Littlebang website, which he still runs and which is the main centre for information on English-language Dharma events here. From the website a real Sangha has emerged, with a regular weekly meditation session very kindly hosted by the gorgeous Ariyasom Villa, frequent retreats, social events, and a growing network of Dharma friendships.

That network also encompasses the Bangkok Hanmaum Seon Centre. The Littlebang site regularly makes announcements of upcoming Seon Club meetings, and last year Phra Cittasamvaro joined Chong Go Sunim in delivering a joint talk on Buddha-nature at the Bangkok Seonwon, which was well attended and which presented a fascinating insight into areas where these two wonderful Buddhist traditions overlap and agree.

The reason I mention all this today is to thank Phra Pandit and the Littlebang Sangha for their support of our English-languge Seon Club over the past year, and to point out a very wonderful blog post made by Phra Pandit today in response to the news many people may have seen coming from Bangkok regarding recent political violence. I know that I’ve had a few emails from some very kind people asking if I’m okay, and today’s Littlebang post would be a wonderful response.

“For most of us here the only real impact is loss of that precious Skytrain service” Phra Pandit writes, “and some inconvenience travelling around. In terms of danger, you are far more likely to lose your life or get injured on any normal day in a taxi ride, than you are by any violence in Bangkok protests.” And I agree with this completely. You are more likely to come to harm crossing the road in Bangkok, even breathing the air, than at the hands of political demonstrators. 

But this has always been the case in my experience. Of all the hundreds of demonstrations I attended when younger, when I was very much a left-wing activist,  the vast majority were perfectly peaceful. And when violence did break out, as deplorable and as awful as it is for the victims, the chances of someone being caught up in it who did not want to be is very remote indeed.

Phra Pandit addresses just this I think when he compares the numbers involved in demonstrations (the Red and Yellow Shirts) with the numbers of people who regularly attend Dharma events in the city – ‘the white shirts’. “Much as the protests grab headlines” he writes, “there is much more going on that is wholesome, but does not get headlines. Dhamma is greater here than any political movement.”

But Phra Pandit’s post today isn’t just about reassuring people of the safety of Bangkok or countering the usual sensationalism of the news media; he takes from the political situation here a Dharma message that applies to each and every one of us. If you want real change, he suggests, using the Buddha’s analogy of the two acrobats, the place to start is within.

“By doing so” Phra Pandit writes, “you learn, bit by bit, part by part, about your own motivations, and thoughts. You observe from the angle of a witness, and let wisdom bring a growth in consciousness.” And I think he is completely right in this. It’s not that the practitioner drops concern for and engagement with the world, but that he or she is re-orientated.

Starting from the basis of one’s own fundamental wisdom, the Buddha-nature within, engagement on social and political issues becomes not the addiction to political strife and pushing of views that Phra Pandit describes, and that I experienced as a young radical, but more like the hand of compassion that reaches for the pillow in the night. In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

 
Namo Avalokiteshvara
Please come with me to the war zones
to stop the killing and bombing.
Please walk with me to the places of sickness and suffering,
bringing compassionate nectar and medicine.
Please walk with me to the realm of the hungry ghosts
bringing the Dharma food of understanding and love.
Please walk with me to the realm of hell
in order to cool the heat of afflictions.
Please walk with me to places of conflict
in order to remove hatred and anger
and help the source of love to flow again.

“If you live harmoniously, knowing that there is nothing that is not yourself, you will be able to take everything in the world as material for your spiritual practice. If you are truly able to live like this, your every thought and word will manifest in the physical world. At this stage, you will understand the meaning of ‘the all-reaching hands and feet of Buddha’.”
 – Seon Master Daehaeng Sunim

Link: Littlebang: Red, Yellow and White Shirts…

Having searched for myself in all myriad things
True Self (Juingong) appeared right before my eyes
Ha! Ha! Meeting it now, there is no doubt
Brilliant hues of udumbara flowers spill over the whole world
– Seon Master Gyeongbong Jeongseok (1892 – 1982)
 

The focus of this blog are the teachings of Seon Master Daehaeng Sunim and their relevance in the life and practice of each of us in this small group of Dharma friends. We first came together in the Buddhist English Library of Seoul to study Kun Sunim’s book ‘No River to Cross’ and I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all found the book of huge usefulness in our practice ever since. I know that I’ve been drawn back to it time and time again.

One of the remarkable things about it, although I hardly know why I’m surprised, is how whenever I hear other teachings, even from other Buddhist traditions, they fit so well into the framework ‘No River to Cross’ provides. Take that first chapter,which, despite being just five pages long, gets off to such a rigorous start: “Above all else” Seon Master Daehaeng writes, and I’m sure this is the essence of so much Buddhist teaching, “you have to truly know yourself.”

It’s easy to respond with a knee-jerk reaction to this, saying “ah, but there is no self”, while missing precisely what we are being asked to do. I remember hearing Venerable U Vamsarakkhita speak in Bangkok about this. The Buddha did not tell people, he said, to cast aside their bodies and thoughts and feelings, but to examine them. And then, through this investigation, be better able to live in the moment, experiencing a richer more fulfilling life.

We are asked to find out for ourselves. And even if you find, as I heard Ajarn Brahm once put it, that you are a bus without a driver, that you are not your body, you are not your intelligence, you are not your job or even your gender, then you can just relax. As he said, you can let go. There is nothing to feel proud of, and nothing you can’t let go of. “But what” one questioner asked, “CAN we hold on to?” And Ajahn Brahm answered “Wisdom, virtue, and peace”.

A little bell went off somewhere over my head! It’s the very same! What all these teachers urge is to keep looking to see what is beyond the truth of my everyday self, to that which we can most rely on. Beyond this self, which we learn is constantly changing and connected in every way to everything else, is what? “The purpose of studying Buddhism” Kun Daehaeng Sunim writes, “is to discover who I am. Discovering who I am means returning to my foundation.”

So I come back again to Kun Sunim and see how so much wisdom is packed into so few lines. She takes us through the practice of deep investigation to a joyful meeting with the True Self in no time at all, and then tells us to have faith in that foundation and entrust everything to it. Yet what she does is actually no more than repeat the message of all the masters through all of history. What can you rely on? Wisdom, virtue, and peace: our true foundation, our True Self.

“It is like coming across a light in thick darkness; it is like receiving treasure in poverty. The four elements and the five aggregates are no more felt as burdens; so light, so easy, so free you are. Your very existence has been delivered from all limitations; you have become open, light, and transparent. You gain an illuminating insight into the very nature of things, which now appear to you as so many fairylike flowers having no graspable realities. Here is manifested the unsophisticated self which is the original face of your being; here is shown all bare the most beautiful landscape of your birthplace. There is but one straight passage open and unobstructed through and through. This is so when you surrender all – your body, your life, and all that belongs to your inmost self. This is where you gain peace, ease, non-doing, and inexpressible delight. All the sutras and sastras are no more than communications of this fact; all the sages, ancient as well as modern, have exhausted their ingenuity and imagination to no other purpose than to point the way to this. ”

 – From a letter by Yengo (Yuan-wu), quoted by D.T.Suzuki in ‘An Introduction to Zen Buddhism’, Grove Press, 1964

Toward the great bodhisattvas in all directions
Who practice the Way out of sympathy for all,
One should have reverence and respect,
Saying ‘These are my great teachers’.
– The Lotus Sutra, Chapter 14

Entrusting and devotion. Thank you to everyone who has brought this discussion into being; these are questions I’ve been struggling with for years, and what follows are my own personal thoughts and tentative conclusions based on my own feelings and practice. I offer this not as a replacement or supplement to the wonderful articles already submitted by Joseph and Chong Go Sunim, but just as a personal account of what is true for me.

But I start with Zen Master Daehaeng, who gave me my Dharma name and whose words I’ve found to be invariably wise and relevant. “First,” she says (in ‘No River to Cross’), “sincerely believe in your inherent nature, Juingong, and know that it is taking care of everything. Second, go forward with courage. Third, experiment with how Juingong takes care of everything, continuously apply what you experience, and never let yourself be daunted by anything”.

What Master Daehaeng Sunim does is invite us to know, for ourselves, that Juingong, Buddha-nature, is taking take of everything, that everything arises from it and returns to it. So entrust everything, she writes, “entrust the things you understand and the things you don’t understand, entrust happiness and entrust suffering, entrust poverty and entrust disease.” But let go to what? Entrust to what? To emptiness, Daehaeng Sunim says, to emptiness.

Emptiness, One Mind, True Self, the fundamental place. Daehaeng Sunim calls it ‘Juingong’ but she says “you can call it Amida Buddha, or the main Buddha. You can call it God or my love because it is the fundamental place… the true self that leads you, no matter what name is used.” The experience is the very same. The most pure and fundamental part of you responding to what is most pure and fundamental. And this call to the fundamental place is universal.

For me, this is the emptiness that manifests as Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva or Amida Buddha, or in a church I may feel it as the Christ. I am held in the warm arms of the Buddha, wrapped in the loving cloak of the Bodhisttva. This is not poetry, it’s true. True not just because it’s in countless Sutras, but because I know it. When I die I will be met by Amida Buddha and the Bodhisttvas. Yet they are also here now, all I need do is remember. And to live well, all I need do, and here’s the thing, is entrust.

Perhaps that which we entrust to may best be described through rhythm, or art, or silence. When asked for highest wisdom, the ancient masters said ‘mu!’ – ‘nothing!’. But emptiness is also form, so then they told their students to chop wood, to carry water, to find that emptiness, that eternal ever changing flow, that fullness of love and awareness that sunders the bonds of suffering, in their every activity, in their work, in the very depths of their lives.

Where names are, for me at least, important. I’ll happily admit to being a beginner. I’ve tried, but cannot reach the most difficult philosophical heights of the Dharma. I’ve been to many Buddhist discussion groups where I’ve been lost at the complexity of it all. And I’m rubbish at meditation. But I look around at the good people in the temples, in Thailand and Korea, the places I know best, and see that Buddhist life is the precepts, generosity, chanting, and reliance upon the Buddha. That is enough. And difficult enough.

So faith is vital to me. I remember many times at Bonguensa with my Dharma friends performing prostrations and chanting Kwan Seum Bosal. The temple would be full of people, their practice clearly coming from faith. It rubbed off on me and I find myself often drawn to the Boddhisattva, with devotion and gratitude. Many times a day I chant the Bodhisattva’s name and feel her presence. I feel grateful for this and my practice is to entrust everything to her. Yet I also know that she is no different to my fundamental Buddha-nature.

Perhaps I’m in the wrong Buddhist group for this to find its full expression, but I don’t think so. Rather, I think the teachings of Master Daehaeng Sunim gives a depth to this faith that places it where it most belongs, right in my heart. Know that you are connected to all, believe, entrust, observe. For me, there is no contradiction between a devotional practice towards the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (or whatever figure one is drawn towards) and faith in one’s fundamental Buddha-nature. How could there be?

“Because mind has no form, tens of thousands of different shapes can come out from it. This is called the ten billion transformation bodies of Buddha. Why is it called the ten billion transformation bodies? It’s because Buddha responds to you as you request: if you want the mountain god, Buddha manifests as the mountain god. If you want Avalokitesvara, Buddha manifests as Avalokitesvara. Like this, Buddha manifests in various forms. Furthermore, Buddha responds not only with certain shapes, but also with compassion and warmth.”
– Seon Master Daehaeng Sunim
 

Links:
Chong Go Sunim: Entrusting
Joseph: Entrusting/Green Tara
Master Daehaeng Sunim: To Discover Your True Self, “I” Must Die