This one's for my Buddhist blogging colleague in Korea, Big Hairy Hominid. Buddhism entered Korea in the 4th century C.E., and Wonhyo's syncretic Popsong ("Dharma Nature") school became one of the most influential in Korean Zen.
While on his way to China to find a teacher and learn more about Buddhism, Wonhyo had a dramatic awakening. Resting one evening at the end of a gruelling day, the monk-aspirant was consumed with thirst. As he groped around on the ground, however, he found a bowl. Miraculously, it contained fresh, thirst-quenching water.
The next morning he awoke... and saw that he had slept in an old tomb. His "bowl" had been a shattered skull filled with stagnant water. Shock led to realization, as Wonhyo grasped:
bq. "...thinking makes good and bad, life and death. and without thinking there is no universe, no Buddha, no dharma. All is one, and this one is empty. There is no need now to find a master."
There was not. Enlightment attained, he returned to Korea.
(From Martine Batchelor's "Way of Zen")
It's a good little story. "Mind is moving." Thanks.
People looking for a concentrated dose of Korean Buddhism-- or a certain form of it, anyway-- might think about looking into the works of Seung Sahn (pronounced "soong sahn").
[NB: Seung Sahn's famous Western disciple, Peter Muenzen, took the dharma name Hyon Gak and gives weekly dharma talks at Hwagye-sa, a temple in the northern part of Seoul. Hyon Gak wrote Man Haeng: Harvard aeseo Hwagye-sa Ggaji, or Ten Thousand Ways: From Harvard to Hwagye-sa. I don't know if this book is available in English, but it was a huge hit in Korea. Thich Nhat Hanh's also getting a lot of play here.]
Seung Sahn's books include:
Only Don't Know,
The Whole World is a Single Flower,
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha,
and perhaps most important,
The Compass of Zen.
A big academic in the field (aside from Lewis Lancaster) is Dr. Robert Buswell of UCLA. I recommend his The Zen Monastic Experience and a book on Chinul, considered the father of Korean Zen, called Tracing Back the Radiance. Buswell's written a number of good books.
For people looking for some critical Western appraisals of Zen, Bernard Fauré is a good author.
If you can find them, articles by Sung-bae Park of SUNY Stony Brook are also very good. Dr. Park's also a former monk. He likes ignoring stop signs while driving on SUNY campus, something I noticed while we were on our way to lunch with a couple other people last year. Perhaps this means he has no fear of death, or that starting and stopping are not-two. I don't know.
Hapjang,
Kevin
Only the Chewiest Tumors!
PS: I thought it was hilarious that the Alta Vista Babel Fish translator program rendered "Hwagye-sa"-- which I'd typed in Korean and whose Sino-Korean characters can be translated "Shining/Flower Stream Temple"-- as "Anger Poultry House."