In 1994, I was having a \u201cdark night of the soul\u201d in the midst of college at UC Santa Barbara.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know who I was, but I knew the answer must lie somewhere very far away.\u00a0 I saw a flier advertising study abroad in China, and I signed right up.\u00a0 On the way, we stopped in Korea for a week, and on a jet-lagged evening stroll, I wandered the streets of Seoul.\u00a0 I made my way through a dark alley to Chogye Sah Temple, where there was a large crowd gathered.<\/p>\n
The temple abbot approached me aggressively saying \u201cYou!\u201d then pointed into the temple building saying \u201cZen Master Seung Sahn!\u201d and shoved me inside.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t understand a word of the Korean Dharma speech, but I watched as the master raised his stick above his head and shouted with the utmost confidence and energy, bringing the stick slamming down with a loud THUD!\u00a0 I was hooked.<\/p>\n
Afterward, as the master was blessing his fans at the gate, the abbot introduced us, and the master turned around and shot his eyes into mine, shouting, \u201cWhere you come from?!\u201d\u00a0 I experienced his question, his direction \u2013 that was transmission of Zen mind.\u00a0 Emerging from that spacious moment that lasted forever, I muddled some weeny response, \u201cuh, California\u201d.\u00a0 He shook his head and turned around, resuming his blessings.<\/p>\n
Thus began my practice of Korean Zen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1994, I was having a \u201cdark night of the soul\u201d in the midst of college at UC Santa Barbara.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know who I was, but I knew the answer must lie somewhere very far away.\u00a0 I saw a flier advertising study abroad in China, and I signed right up.\u00a0 On the way, we … Continue reading “Zen Master Seung Sahn (Part 1: Dark Night of the Seoul)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}