No Master Criminals Here

Chong Go Sunim5 Comments
Tongdo Temple, one of the three treasures of Korean Buddhism

The Jogye Order had arranged for a professional nurse to be present during our 23-day ordination training session. A Buddhist nun herself, she had already probably saved the life of a male postulant. He had such a terrible cough I half wondered if he wasn’t there for some spiritual benefit that might come from dying as an ordained monk. Hearing him cough as she passed by, the nurse read the riot act to the overseers and had the trainee brought to her office, where she immediately started injections of antibiotics. By the time the training was over, his cough had almost completely disappeared.

           As time went on, she became concerned that some postulants weren’t getting enough calories. With over 1,000 full bows a day, and only two moderate meals, we were certainly going through the calories. On top of this, many of the men were already quite skinny when they arrived; I would have guessed that some had less than five percent body fat. Seeing this, the nurse began to surreptitiously give out food, usually pastries, chocolate, or bars of sweet, red bean-paste.  A trip to the nurse’s office became more and more popular!  Disappointingly, whenever I went, I was always escorted by one of the overseers. The result: no food for me. For which I was soon to be grateful.

             Sunims, I’ve noticed, are not particularly good at deception!

The hall where we had lectures, and did most of our bowing (photo by Jung Yeon)

Part of me, the one that spent my last year in high school trying to buy beer, shook my head in disapproval at seeing chocolate and bean-paste wrappers just sitting on top of the toilet wastebasket. “You have to hide the evidence better than that,” I wanted to tutor the unknown snacker.   The inevitable soon happened: A postulant was walking by the front doors, in front of everyone, eating a bean-paste snack. He walked right past an overseer, who twisted around so fast that he must have sprained something.             

        Within the hour, all 150 men were lined up with their grey backpacks in front of them. The overseers started with first person, thoroughly searching all of his belongings. We didn’t know what would happen to those caught with food, but we all knew it would be serious. Expulsion was a real possibility. But for all of the postulants’ incompetence at deception, the overseers had no better understanding of the sport. As four of them focused on the first few people, nobody was looking down the lines at the other postulants. At least a dozen of them were slipping pastries and other food out of their bag and down their pants legs where the material bugled out over their leggings. Further, while the overseers diligently checked the contents of pockets, it never occurred to them to actually frisk anyone.

             Disgraceful, I thought, as I stood there, with a rumbling stomach. I couldn’t help smiling though:  I suppose it speaks well of those choosing a spiritual path that they were so unpracticed in the ways of deception.

Dawn at Tongdo Temple. The pudo with the relics of Shakyamuni Buddha (photo by Jung Yeon)

Buddha’s Birthday parade

Chong Go Sunim10 Comments

Here are some photos of the Buddha’s Birthday celebrations in Seoul on Sunday. It’s always amazing to see, and Korea feels like a crossroads of Buddhism. In addition to all of the Korean-flavored events, there were booths or floats from every Buddhist country, offering culture and information, food and art. These are a few pictures from the day, with some nice ones contributed by Joseph, of Somewhere in Dhamma.  Go ahead and click on the photos to see a larger image.

the street in front of Jogye Temple
Must be a convention somewhere!
playing a scaled-down version of a temple drum
Buddhists from Mongolia
Friendly folks! (by Joseph)
I really loved the horn section! (A great offering by the Tibetan monks of Korea)
Enthusiastic Nepalis! (by Joseph)
Make your own mini Lotus Lantern
or your own wrist mala
with beads for all ages!
or you could make your own incense (It was really good!)
sign me up!

 

Traditional Korean dance and music

 

A river of lanterns (by Joseph)
Watch out for the Dragon! (by Joseph)
Under the lanterns at Jogye Temple (by Joseph)

red, yellow, and white

marcusp2 Comments

“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…

Teachers’ Day

Chong Go Sunim2 Comments

This Saturday is Teachers’ Day in Korea, when people go to pay their respects to those teachers who’ve had an impact in their lives.  Seeing a group middle-aged men, made up of sun-burnt farmers in cheap suits and manicured business men all laughing and joking together, everyone passing by knows they were once fellow students, now come  together to greet their old teacher.

 
 
 
Korea’s Song for a Teacher

My teacher’s heart is like the sky above,
the more I see of it, the more noble and wonderful it seems.
Teaching us what’s true and upright
like a loving parent,
how can I express my gratitude?
Ah, how can I repay such kindness and love?

(Well, in Korean, and with the melody, it’s much more touching!)  It actually has a lot of the same feeling as To Sir, With Love.

 
Thank you to all who have been my teachers
to all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
as well as the heretics and demons.
From a mountain in Korea,
I bow to you all.

The Blame Game

Chong Go Sunim7 Comments

As soon as you concern yourself with the “good” and “bad” of your fellows,
you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter.
Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weakens and defeats you.

Morihei Ueshiba, The Art of Peace, page 55 

 

This is such a wonderful verse. Like other truly profound teachings, it causes everything within me to settle deep down. It’s a lot like the deep-centered feeling of sitting in the full lotus posture (assuming one isn’t being tormented by rending knee pain!) 

I think the reason for this is that it acknowledges and reinforces the fundamental truth of our lives: that we are not separate.  We’re living together as one, and anything I direct towards someone else is felt equally (or more!) by myself.  It’s as if we’re living in the same room, breathing the same air, and eating from the same plate.  If I said I was going to poison the plate of food we’re eating from in order to “get” one person, everyone would think I’m nuts.

 
“But you’re eating the same food!?!  It’ll kill you as well!”  To poison the air we all breathe, thinking “Hah! I really showed you!,” would be the act of a lunatic.  Yet the actions and thoughts we give rise to continue to act through this unseen connection we all share.  This isn’t to say don’t ever have harsh thoughts; everyone has them, and they tend to arise out of habit before we realize it.  Rather, when you realize you’re caught up in them, stop feeding them energy.  Entrust that situation, as best you can, to your inherent Buddha, the source of all energy, and that which is truly taking care of things.

Another thing about blame and criticism, is that it’s often dumping the entire cause for something onto the other person(s). When in reality, if there’s something going back and forth between us, then I also share partial responsibility for it.  At the very minimum, I’m at this place now as the karmic result of the choices I’ve made, so there’s no use in blaming others. And in fact, acknowledging that I have a share of the blame often feels very liberating.  Look at how you feel when you get caught up trying to defend yourself and justify your actions. Now look at how you feel when you say “I’m sorry,” even if only silently, to yourself.

 
Daehaeng Kun Sunim often teaches that everything gathers together because of its similar level of growth and its similar karma. She gives the example parents and children, saying that they’ve gathered together because they created similar karma, although it’s not always apparent. Parents chose their children, and children chose their parents, because that was the level that looked most appealing to them. 

Thus, for all these reasons, Daehaeng Kun Sunim has always emphasized that blaming and criticizing others is one of the most spiritually harmful things we can do. She tells people to be generous in how they view others, and to interpret the things in their lives positively. For everything in this world manifests according to the thoughts we give rise to. Whether this world is a hell realm or a heavenly realm depends upon the thoughts we choose.

 
Over these many kalpas of our evolution, there’s no one who hasn’t been our father or our mother, our son, our daughter, our husband or our wife. Let’s remember the love we once felt for them, and raise the desire to see them grow and succeed, and know peace and liberation.

 

  

Lotus Lantern Festival

Chong Go Sunim6 Comments

Just for fun, here’s a few photos from past years’ Lotus Lantern parade, which will be held in Seoul this Sunday (May 16). Following it, are some photos from Dharma Halls on Korean army bases.

 

Getting ready for Buddha's Birthday on an army base.

 

 

Barbwire and lotus lanterns
A Dharma Hall on a small base
The Dharma Hall on a much larger base

 

Lunch with Buddha

 

The beautiful photos at the top were taken by Park Youngwoo, and the rest by me! 

Ps. please let me know if your computer has trouble loading this page, I may have overdone it with the photos!  With palms together, Chong Go.

the Jewel Within

Ox Herder9 Comments

If there were a clump of gold buried in a yard, people would dig and dig until they found it, regardless of how deep it was. The original, infinite, absolute jewel buried within us is incomprehensibly more significant than the clump of gold in the yard. So we should try to find this incredible jewel within.

-Zen Master Song Cheol

I can’t look at this without thinking of the disasters in the world that are created by digging for the jewel in the yard. One by one, as we learn to shift our seeking inward, there will fewer and fewer holes to fill.

May we all find our jewel within together!

a light in thick darkness

marcusp4 Comments

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

The pillar of all work on behalf of Buddhism…

Chong Go Sunim11 Comments

In a short letter, the Korean Seon master Hanam (han-am) Sunim, said something that’s stuck with me ever since:

The pillar of all work on behalf of Buddhism is harmony.

That’s all.  Nothing fancy.  But it packs such a wallop.  Everything about interconnectedness and nonduality is right there, together with tremendous power to guide.

Am I feeling harmonious as I approach this issue?
Am I viewing the others involved in a harmonious way?
Will my intentions and behavior result in a harmonious outcome?

Although obvious in hindsight, this is such a critical issue, for we are all inherently connected, as Daehaeng Kun Sunim says, sharing the same life, the same mind, the same body, and working together as one while freely giving and receiving whatever is needed. 

There’s only helping, not “helping her.”  There’s only loving, not “loving them.”  There’s only hating, not “hating them.”  There’s only defeat and humiliation, not “defeating them.” 

May all beings know happiness and harmony, joy and wisdom, virtue and merit.

with palms together,

Seon Master Hanam Sunim

Chong Go

Protein supplements in my dinner: or, The unhappy fate of rice bugs

Chong Go Sunim7 Comments

Technically, those gray specks in my rice weren’t supposed to be there. Perhaps if they’d been millet, added to give the rice a nice multi-grain taste. Or maybe a little wild sesame. Alas, they were neither.

    
   
Tongdo Temple, where we were undertaking our ordination training, is beautiful.  Ancient and sprawling, it is one of the few large temples to survive the destruction of the Korean War. 
 
 
  
    Situated in a green valley with a soaring mountain range behind, Tongdo Temple is truly a treasure of Korean Buddhism.  It also has the worst food of any large temple in Korea!

    Normally, Korean housewives will soak and wash rice before boiling it.  This ensures the rice is clean and also rinses away any rice weevils that may have been enjoying a meal before they were interrupted. With an extra 300 mouths to feed for our training session, it appeared the kitchen monk had skipped this step.

    Picking the steamed weevils out of the rice wasn’t even an option: every last morsel had to be consumed, down to a single flake of red pepper or sesame seed. We would wash our bowls afterwards, and if even the tiniest bit of food was found in the bucket that collected the water, the twenty postulants in my row would have to drink the entire bucket of wash water.

    “Well,” I thought, as I looked at the gray specks in my rice, “eating these won’t kill me. And actually, it won’t even kill them.”

    With that I began to eat, letting go, as best I could, of my fixed ideas of right and wrong, which are more often than not manifestations of ego.

    Daehaeng Kun Sunim had once gently confronted my vegetarian moral superiority, saying about the beings whose cooked flesh was sometimes served to me, “Don’t hate them because they are poor and unfortunate. Become one with them and let them experience the human level of consciousness.”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Bugs in my rice! (at the Dharma Folk blog)