Over 30 years ago, after graduating from university, Paul J. Muenzen was ordained “Hyon Gak Sunim” in a secret ceremony in the Temple of the Sixth Patriarch, on Chogye Mountain in Guangzhou, the People’s Republic of China, by his Teacher – the legendary Zen Master Seung Sahn.
Since then, Sunim has been constantly engaged in intensive traditional 90-day silent retreats (ango) in the ancient temples of China, Korea and Japan – completely cut off from news of the outside world, from family, from conversation, drilling down completely into the question of our very existence — “Why was I born in this world, why must I die? What am I?”
An earth-shattering insight of awakening during an intensive solo retreat in the mountains was later confirmed by Zen Master Seung Sahn in 2000, and in 2001, Hyon Gak Sunim was publicly authorised to bring these teachings to the world.
Sunim has recently decided to share here, for the first time in an online course format, the training fundamentals that have been passed down from teacher to student for 2,500 years, unbroken since the time of the Buddha.
“The technology of Zen is not a belief, a system or an ideology. It is not a religion or a theology.”
Hyon Gak Sunim
The Mirror of Zen is a classic 500 year-old text of admonitions and supports for Zen practice and the Great Bodhisattva Way, by Zen Master So Sahn (1520-1604). It was written in a time of strife and war, urging monks to wake up to their true nature.
