Wake Up and Laugh!

Daehaeng Kun Sunim’s teaching was summed up to me in two words, “Letting go.”

When Joe first encouraged me to join the group discussions, it took a bit to convince me. The thought of sitting inside a library on a Saturday afternoon, when I could be out in the mountains or traveling around Korea somewhere, didn’t appeal to me.

In the end, Joe played the “there’s a cute girl there I think you’ll like” card and I agreed to check it out. Incidentally, “the cute girl” didn’t show up that week, or the next, but I didn’t really care. The content of the group was enough. Besides, even better than meeting a cute girl, I got to meet Marcus, Chong Go Sunim, and Carl!

At first, I was a little naïve about the teaching. “Let go… Okay, I can do that! There are many things in my life I’ve let of.” But wait, why am I still thinking about them? Why do I still want to replace that hat I lost on the bus? Why do I still miss those photos I accidentally deleted three years ago? Why am I still upset by what people said about me in high school? I realized letting go wasn’t just giving something away, or distracting myself with something new. And it wasn’t that easy either!

Sometimes, letting go can be like pealing the price tag off of something and as you go to toss it, you notice it’s stuck to your thumb. You flick at it with your index but instead of flying toward the trash like you anticipated, now it’s stuck to your finger nail. You keep at it, as it travels from finger to finger, right hand to left, until finally, success! It’s gone.

When I was young, I remember playing in the woods behind the house with my neighbors. We used to enjoy searching for little bubbles of sap on the trunks of trees and popping them. It would only take a few before my hands were a sticky mess, picking up every tiny bit of dirt I touched in the forest. Our attachments are like this. We cover our ourselves in the sap of our desires and get covered in dirt. It sometimes took a couple of days worth of scrubbing to get my hands clean. Learning to let go is taking much longer. Eventually, I learned to keep my hands clean. Maybe I can learn to do the same with my mind!

I am so happy to be here on this brand new blog. For years I kept another (‘Marcus’ Journal’), and old readers of that will know me very well. But this new group blog, headed by the wonderful Chong Go Sunim, will have a much wider audience – and for all those new readers I’ll start with a brief outline of how I come to be here at all.

My journey into Buddhism goes back to my arrival in Thailand over ten years ago, but the greatest impact was when, a few years ago, I was lucky enough to be back in Korea. One day I stumbled across a beautiful little book called “My Heart is a Golden Buddha”. I thought the title alone was amazing, and I carried that book around with me for weeks.

Inside were many stories from Korea, stories of farmers and kings, animals and sages, wives and wisdom, and fabulous illustrations. A little later I saw that there was an American monk running a Dharma group on Saturday afternoons studying another book by the same writer.

That monk turned out to be, of course, Venerable Chong Go Sunim, and the writer of the book was Seon Master Daehaeng KunSunim. And my time in that little group, which we all came to know as Saturday Sangha, became one of the most significant periods of my life.

Over the weeks and months we met together Chong Go Sunim pointed to a teaching at once simple and profound. “Just trust in your foundation” he said, “Juingong, your Buddha-nature, is the only thing that can truly solve everything, so entrust everything that confronts you to your foundation and let go to that.”

The name is not the most important thing, the faith and the entrusting is, and it’s something that has deeply influenced my own spiritual practice. For me it points a way through all the various approaches, and places practice where it really belongs – in one’s own heart.

And that heart is also, we learn, the source of connection; something that has been very important to me personally. “Just keep letting go to your foundation” Kun Daehaeng Sunim says. “Then you can communicate with each other. If you dial a telephone on your side, the phone will ring on the other side. When you do this, your sincerity can be transmitted. This is truly loving [your family] and is the expression of the Buddha-Dharma.”

Well, eventually, our little Saturday group decided to formalise our commitment to the teachings and in May 2008, just days away from Buddha’s Birthday that year, four of us – myself, Joe, Joseph, and Carl – took formal refuge at the Hanmaum Seonwon in Anyang. Chong Go Sunim led the ceremony and Seon Master Daehaeng Sunim gave us our Dharma names.  It was a deeply beautiful and meaningful day.

I’ve returned to Thailand since then but have been delighted to find that there is a Hanmaum Seon Centre here too, and I’ve been astounded by the kindness and generosity of the Sunims and lay followers here who have done so much in facilitating, leading, and building the English-language Seon club.

And with ever more English-speaking people like myself being drawn to the teachings of Kun Daehaeng Sunim and to her message of entrusting to one’s own True Self, I’m sure this blog will go some considerable way in terms of connecting people, discussing the teachings, and helping everyone discover together that our hearts really are all a Golden Buddha.