First exposure to Korean Zen

I mentioned before that I hoped to go along to a Dharma talk in Lavender on Thursday night.

Well, I went along. Luckily, I went a bit early, because the centre wasn’t all that easy to find!

The talk was given by a visiting American Zen master, Dae Kwan. It was about the basics of Buddhism – and zen in particular – which I’ve read a lot about, so it was nothing new to me – and yet, I must say, the talk brought it home to me, and I left feeling I had gained some valuable insights. One thing that struck me was that he used a lot of Christian analogies to explain Buddhist concepts like ‘detachment’; I can see that maybe that would be useful in the States, but I’m not sure how well it comes across in Singapore – apart from me, the audience all seemed to be Chinese, and I’m guessing that most of them are from a Buddhist background anyway. Well, everybody seemed to enjoy the talk, and there were a lot of questions afterwards.

The Zen master was accompanied by a nun, Kwan Mi, who gave an introductory talk. She’s originally from Wroclaw, in Poland, though she said she’d been in Korea since the 80s. We talked for a short while after the meeting, which I enjoyed. She and the zenmaster were leaving for Malaysia the following morning, to lead a long meditation retreat.

There was also another nun – Sister Sujatin – in the audience, a young Singaporean woman who is now a member of a Theravada community in Myanmar, and we spoke briefly. I was a little surprised that foreigners could go to live in Myanmar, but she said that the government is very supportive of the Buddhist community, and if you have an invitation from a local monastery then there are no problems with visas, or with staying pretty much indefinitely. Of course, you have to agree to avoid any involvement with politics.

The two nuns spoke about meditation retreats in the jungle – the Polish nun was interested in doing one, but was worried about snakes! The Singaporean said not to worry, there are snakes around, but they weren’t too much of a problem.

It was an enjoyable introduction to the Korean tradition of Zen, or Seon. They will be running a six-session course beginning in September; this will cover zen meditation, and an introduction to “no-mind” thought. It will also include interviews and discussion with the local zen master, which will be challenging, I suspect. I’ve signed up, anyway, though September seems a long way off just now! I’ve brought away a couple of free vcds and cds about zen, which I’ll watch soon…