Hyunoong

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Hyunoong Sunim
Information
Place of birth: South Korea
Religion: Seon
also Taoist
Title(s): Sunim
Workplace: Sixth Patriarch Zen Center
Sixth Patriarch Temple
Predecessor(s): Kusan Sunim
Website

Portal:Buddhism

Hyunoong Sunim is a Korean Zen master as well as a Taoist Master born in South Korea. He is a Dharma heir of Ku San Sunim and entered Songkwang-sa Buddhist Monastery when he was 20 years old. After ten years of training in Zen Meditation halls, he spent some years training under Taoist Master Chong San and in 1982 was sanctioned as a Taoist Master. Master Sunim spent six years in rigorous practice alone in hermitages in remote mountain areas. There he followed a raw food diet, eating what the mountains made available. One early spring day while sitting in the Zen hall suddenly all his doubts were resolved and he wrote the following song of enlightenment:


               " Even existing dharmas must be discarded,
                 So how can we cling to Dharmas which don't exist!
                 Ah ha! Futilely the Ancients busily pursued
                 enlightenment, then departed.
                 The countenance, existing of its own accord
                 I wonder who named it buddha or sentient being?
                 Even one true Dharma cannot survive.
                 Outside the window, the cherry tree
                 is singing this news. "[citation needed]

He is currently head abbot of temples on two continents, the Sixth Patriarch Zen Center in Berkeley, CA and the Sixth Patriarch Temple in Seoul, South Korea. He has taught in various Zen centers throughout the United States and Switzerland.