Sunday Photo; Pagoda at SsangGye Temple

They further asked, “In the future, there won’t be any difficulties, will there? The Master said, “Five or six years after my extinction, a man will come to take my head. Listen to my verse: Offerings to the parents with bowed head. There must be food in the mouth. When the difficulty of ‘Man’ is [...]

Read Full Post »

Completing Yourself

Here’s a translation of a short but powerful Dharma talk by Daehaeng Kun Sunim. Everything that confronts you- take it all and entrust it to one place, one hole, change negative things into wholesome things by firmly entrusting them to that one place. Do this with everything that confronts you. Even when something arises from [...]

Read Full Post »

Exhibit of Goryeo dynasty Korean Buddhist Paintings

An exhibit of Goryeo dynasty (918-1392) Buddhist paintings is being held at the National Museum of Korea until November 21. There are only 160 of these paintings in the world, and 61 are displayed here. Chances to see these paintings are very rare, so don’t miss this exhibition if you’re interested. These tend to be wall-size paintings, and [...]

Read Full Post »

Buddhist Swag

A while back, Barry at Ox Herding had a great cartoon about spiritual swag that reminded me of an amazing street in Seoul. It’s the street in front of the main Buddhist temple in Seoul, Jogye Temple. What I love is the variety of stuff that’s available. When I was practicing in the US (twenty years ago), [...]

Read Full Post »

Sunday Photo; Parinirvana Buddha at Wa’u'jeong Temple

About an hour and a bit south-east of Seoul, tucked in the hilly countryside of YongIn is Waujeongsa, head temple of Korea’s lesser known Yeolban Jong, the Nirvana Order. Near the top of the path that circles the steep grounds is a small grotto shrine in which lies this beautiful Parinirvana Buddha, carved from a [...]

Read Full Post »

back from Germany

Well, we made it back from Frankfurt with no major problems, and even met some great people and publishers at the book fair. It’ll be a few months of back and forth before anything’s finalized, but things look promising. A professor of mine once said, “You can have a great teacher, but you still need to [...]

Read Full Post »

Sunday Photo; Maitreya Hall

Though the grounds of the Gold Mountain Temple are scattered with National Treasures, the most striking of them all is the three storied Maitreya Hall, the only one of its kind remaining in Korea. Originally built in 599, the current buildings have been standing since 1635, after the entire complex was burned to the ground due [...]

Read Full Post »

Spiritual Practice at the Frankfurt Bookfair

Spiritual Practice and the Book Fair It’s actually difficult for me to write about my experiences there, because they were so wonderful and so many. In Korean we speak of jeong jin, or intensive practice. And that is truly what the book fair was for all of us. Every evening we would all gather at [...]

Read Full Post »

Sunday Photo; Great Unification Buddha

Well, finally a Buddha that isn’t a Mireuk Buddha! This is none other than the Great Unification Medicine Buddha of Donghwa Temple, in Daegu. Standing at 33m (108 feet, by chance…), locals claim that it is the largest in the world. Though, I’m not sure how many other “Great Unification Medicine Buddhas” there are to [...]

Read Full Post »

Forum on the Thousand Hands Sutra

The German publisher, Diederichs, had just published a German/Korean translation of Daehaeng Kun Sunim’s version of the Thousand Hands Sutra, called Umarmt von Mitgefühl, and everyone thought this was a good time to tell people more about the history of the Thousand Hands Sutra, and the significance of Kun Sunim’s edition. The forum was held in Hall [...]

Read Full Post »