Hyungak Sunim is an American who has established himself in Korea as a Buddhist monk and thoughtful commentator on spiritual issues. It so happens that the two of us were classmates at Yale College and have communicated on various matters over the years. Hyungak Sunim lived many years in Korea and is well-known for his book about his experiences in the practice of Buddhism.<\/p>\n
He was kind enough to write this preface for my recent book\u00a0\u00a0“A Robinson Crusoe in Korea: Life is a Matter of Direction, not Speed.”<\/p>\n
Introduction to “A Robinson Crusoe in Korea: Life is a Matter of Direction, not Speed”<\/p>\n
By Hyon Gak Sunim<\/p>\n
Writing in the mid-19th century, the Father of American Philosophy,<\/p>\n
Ralph Waldo Emerson, made strong and radical attempts to unshackle<\/p>\n
his American contemporaries from the chains of their strict,<\/p>\n
conservative, book-only views of education. Though he himself was a<\/p>\n
child of the ancient Greek and Roman classics, graduated from<\/p>\n
Harvard College with a classical education, as a mature philosopher<\/p>\n
he urged his countrymen — and beyond them, their European docents<\/p>\n
— to shake off the shackles, to move beyond a mere rote form of<\/p>\n
education for youth. Emerson decried the mere memorization of<\/p>\n
phrases and texts, the repetition back of trigonometric formulae, the<\/p>\n
recitation of dusty speeches and moldy poems just for the sake of<\/p>\n
accumulating a raw tonnage of knowledge. He hated the use of<\/p>\n
human potential merely in the service of producing more and more<\/p>\n
merchants, more and more producers and more and more<\/p>\n
accumulators of capital. Emerson believed in the potential of the<\/p>\n
complete person who could be produced by education, not merely the<\/p>\n
greatest accumulators who could be produced by a structure or a<\/p>\n
form.<\/p>\n
So, Emerson\u2019s vision for a philosophy of education was one that<\/p>\n
taught the WHOLE person; which connected him or her to the world<\/p>\n
not so much through the grammars and stanzas expressed on a two-dimensional<\/p>\n
page, but rather an education that led youth to a firmer<\/p>\n
trust in their own inborn completeness and greatness as human<\/p>\n
beings. Emerson warns us, above all, that if we use education to<\/p>\n
merely produce better machines, we are not truly educating: we are<\/p>\n
merely \u201cmanufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his timeless essay, \u201cOn Education,\u201d he wrote, \u201cThe great object of Education should be commensurate with the object of life. It should<\/p>\n
be a moral one; to teach self-trust; to inspire the youthful man with<\/p>\n
an interest in himself; with a curiosity touching his own nature; to<\/p>\n
acquaint him with the resources of his mind, and to teach him that<\/p>\n
there is all his strength, and to inflame him with a piety towards the<\/p>\n
Grand Mind in which he lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the transcendental view: true education is not the amount that<\/p>\n
we accumulate, but the depth that we can know of our world, our<\/p>\n
place in this world, our proper use of its resources: our existence.<\/p>\n
The teachings of Emerson were a great revolution for my mind. I<\/p>\n
read his essays over and over and over again. In utter devotion, I<\/p>\n
made pilgrimages to his home outside of Boston, to see and smell the<\/p>\n
air in the rooms where this great man (\u5927\u4eba) attempted to<\/p>\n
revolutionize a young country\u2019s future leaders about the proper path<\/p>\n
of study. Emerson was my hero at the beginning of my spiritual quest.<\/p>\n
Though I have not read him often, since then, his eternal thoughts<\/p>\n
had a profound effect on my own view of the human condition.<\/p>\n
Emerson was — like Jesus, Plato, William Shakespeare, William Blake,<\/p>\n
Ludwig von Beethoven, Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Gustav<\/p>\n
Mahler, Sigmund Freud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, the Beatles,<\/p>\n
Led Zeppelin, The Clash, and a few others — a central spiritual<\/p>\n
teacher. He was — and remains — the Teacher of Teachers.<\/p>\n
But how could I, growing up in the Western context, find the real-life<\/p>\n
tools for realizing this inner human completeness and greatness which<\/p>\n
Emerson, Plato, Beethoven, Mahler, et al. so eloquently mapped out?<\/p>\n
How attain the heights of ecstasy which Beethoven and Mahler<\/p>\n
blasted so deeply into my soul? How could I find the road for<\/p>\n
concretely realizing its goals? Those first steps were, sadly, not<\/p>\n
taught to me by the modern Western educational system in which I<\/p>\n
was raised. I found myself strangled like a slave by \u201cmere religion\u201d<\/p>\n
and rote learning; although I had caught a glance of dizzying heights,<\/p>\n
I was bound to remain on the dirty ground of exploiting great<\/p>\n
educations at Yale and Harvard to \u201cmerely\u201d for the force of making<\/p>\n
money and establishing wealth, power and prestige. I was taught to<\/p>\n
accept a remarkable education as a \u201croute\u201d to a good job. The<\/p>\n
Classics were a route to a better socio-economic class.<\/p>\n
In 1989, I came to know the teachings of Buddhism. More than a<\/p>\n
religion, I was searching for a \u201ctechnology\u201d of looking deeply inward<\/p>\n
to find a reason for going through with the seeming exercises of<\/p>\n
answering an empty human existence.<\/p>\n
In 1990, I was given a chance to meet a certain Korean monk who<\/p>\n
taught widely in the West from the early 1970s. His name was Seung<\/p>\n
Sahn Sunim. A native of what is now North Korea, he had become<\/p>\n
known in many intellectual circles in Europe and America for his<\/p>\n
radical, pointed, spontaneous teachings to people on countless<\/p>\n
American college campuses, especially the Ivy League campuses<\/p>\n
where he later established meditation centers, called \u201cZen centers.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was there in the audience for one public talk he gave on an<\/p>\n
American college campus. I was so enthralled and moved by his<\/p>\n
extraordinary spiritual charisma, standing there before the greatest<\/p>\n
minds of my generation, that I asked one of his closest students for a<\/p>\n
chance to meet him in person, alone. Directly.<\/p>\n
One morning, after a breakfast at his meditation center in Providence,<\/p>\n
Rhode Island, word came that I would be granted a short 10-minute<\/p>\n
meeting with him. My whole body began to shake and tremble: this<\/p>\n
man, shorter than me, with scalp shaved to mirror-like clarity, whose<\/p>\n
broken and incomplete English-language skills challenged both the ear<\/p>\n
and the mind of the audience, appeared in my presence for 10<\/p>\n
minutes.<\/p>\n
I entered his room, and bowed three times. (Bowing before another<\/p>\n
human being was an entirely new experience! But I later realized, it wasn\u2019t an act of bowing to someone \u201cgreater\u201d than me: it was merely my own current state bowing to the potential of my own possibilities to realize my fullest potential as a human being.)<\/p>\n
He sat cross-legged on the floor. But his energy and focus had the<\/p>\n
focused intensity of a tiger, crouched \u2013 wound-up with unreleased<\/p>\n
energy \u2014 and poised before its unknowing prey. I had heard that he<\/p>\n
was educated in Western philosophy before he became a monk, that<\/p>\n
he was a big fan of the teachings of Socrates, and that he had been<\/p>\n
raised, like me, a Christian. It all seemed like a perfect opportunity to<\/p>\n
exchange views and insights with a like-minded soul.<\/p>\n
I said something like, \u201cI am a student at Harvard. I graduated from<\/p>\n
Yale. I study Western philosophy and Christian theology. I believe<\/p>\n
that there are insights in Western philosophy which corroborate the<\/p>\n
insights of the East. I would like to use the insights of<\/p>\n
Schopenhauer\u2019s analysis of religion to gain insights into Eastern<\/p>\n
religion. I understand this and that, and this and that, and this and<\/p>\n
this and this, and that and that and that. Blah blah blah…..\u201d<\/p>\n
I was very happy, and proud, to show off my jewels of understanding<\/p>\n
to this rather short messenger from the East. Surely he would be<\/p>\n
most impressed by the breadth and depth of my Yale-and-Harvardearned<\/p>\n
sophistication. People in Asia were really, really impressed<\/p>\n
with Harvard and Yale, after all, so I had heard….<\/p>\n
Suddenly, an explosion of thunder in a cloudless sky at noon,<\/p>\n
magnified by the force of a million atomic bombs:<\/p>\n
\u201cWHO<\/p>\n
ARE<\/p>\n
YOU?!!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
I stopped short. He was screaming this and pointing his finger<\/p>\n
directly at my 25 year-old chest. I stopped cold.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Paul,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just your BODY\u2019s name! Your Momma gave you that name.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just your BODY\u2019s name. Before she gave you that, you had NO<\/p>\n
name! WHO IS THAT???!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
I was stuck. None of my Yale professors had ever taught me like this.<\/p>\n
None of my Harvard professors had ever taught me like that. In fact,<\/p>\n
no one in the WORLD had ever insulted my intellect so deeply, so<\/p>\n
radically, and so TRULY as this. He was pointing PAST my formal<\/p>\n
education, past my FORMAL accumulation of thinking and ideas, to<\/p>\n
something else. I had never experienced such a sensation.<\/p>\n
I stammered. \u201cI…I…I…I…I don\u2019t know…!\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled. \u201cFrom now on, study THAT. YOU don\u2019t know YOU. Study<\/p>\n
that!\u201d I could only nod — a weak nod, but a nod of acknowledgment.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom now on, no more books for you. (Pointing at my chest, where<\/p>\n
Koreans traditionally believe the \u201cmind\u201d resides) Study THAT book.<\/p>\n
Not other peoples\u2019 words, OK?\u201d<\/p>\n
In this moment, I found my Teacher, the teacher who gave me a very,<\/p>\n
very, simple tool for entering the road that Emerson had explained to<\/p>\n
me previously in words. A Korean man, born far away in a land<\/p>\n
divided, became the living pointer to a place that Emerson was only<\/p>\n
able to suggest to me in words.<\/p>\n
The eminent British historian Arnold Toynbee was once asked how<\/p>\n
human beings of the far future would record the most important<\/p>\n
event of the 20th century. He answered simply, \u201cThe coming of<\/p>\n
Buddhism to the West.\u201d Many people did not understand his<\/p>\n
statement, at the time. He was not referring to the religion. He was<\/p>\n
talking about the crossing of an ancient technology of mind from East<\/p>\n
to West — the technology that allowed insight into the fundamental<\/p>\n
human condition. He was speaking of a post-monotheistic world.<\/p>\n
Korea is a great country. Ranked as the 11th most powerful economy<\/p>\n
on Earth, the Republic of Korea\u2019s achievements give every Korean<\/p>\n
justified pride. And I share this pride. There is something potently<\/p>\n
dynamic about the Korean mind, especially when we observe Korea is<\/p>\n
poised between a rapidly rising China, and an eternally powerful<\/p>\n
Japan. The mystery of how the Koreans have not only survived, but<\/p>\n
succeeded, is NOT a mystery to those who have a familiarity with<\/p>\n
Korea\u2019s deep and ancient traditions.<\/p>\n
But, the power of a great chip-maker or great boat-maker can be<\/p>\n
short-lived, in these ever-changing economic times. Wasn\u2019t the<\/p>\n
Republic of Ireland recently declared to be one of the richest nations<\/p>\n
on Earth?<\/p>\n
I do not know for sure if Emannuel Pastreich is a practicing Buddhist;<\/p>\n
anyway, it does not matter at all. This is not why I write these words<\/p>\n
about his insights and about this book. But he has deep insight into<\/p>\n
the structural problems which might prevent an ancient Korea — everbent<\/p>\n
on equaling its colonial foes and internationalist dominators —<\/p>\n
from achieving the greatness that is in its cultural DNA to achieve. I<\/p>\n
think that his insights are worth listening to, and disseminating, to as<\/p>\n
many corners of Korea as possible.<\/p>\n
Although Emanuel and I attended Yale at the same time, we never<\/p>\n
knew each other. As you will read, we only came to know each other<\/p>\n
when he came to a temple in Korea where I was devoted to an<\/p>\n
intensive three-month struggle in silence to attain the nature of my<\/p>\n
fundamental existence. He met me while I was pursuing the rigors of<\/p>\n
a life based on the ancient technologies of the Korean ancients who<\/p>\n
are my teachers and who are the forefathers of the children he has<\/p>\n
brought into this world.<\/p>\n
I believe in the death of a mono-polar world and the death of the<\/p>\n
narrow, science-denying monotheistic world views which limited<\/p>\n
humans\u2019 imaginations to narrow horizons. I believe very strongly that<\/p>\n
people like Emanuel, through their immersion in both the Western<\/p>\n
experience and Eastern thought, PROVE the words of Professor<\/p>\n
Toynbee: the greatest event of the 20th century is the coming of the<\/p>\n
Eastern technologies of mind to the West, where they can<\/p>\n
reinvigorate and rejuvenate the traditions which we have developed<\/p>\n
for so long.<\/p>\n
Emerson is my \u201cson bae\u201d and he is Emanuel\u2019s \u201cson bae,\u201d as well. I<\/p>\n
hope, through this book, that the Korean nation can take a deeper,<\/p>\n
fresher look at the ancient technologies which they have developed —<\/p>\n
far far earlier than the works of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs — for<\/p>\n
human beings to realize their potential, not as great \u201caccumulators\u201d<\/p>\n
or \u201cproducers,\u201d but as people better able to stand on their own two<\/p>\n
feet and say, \u201cI, so-and-so, I am here and this is who I am, and this is<\/p>\n
why and how I exist, irrespective of some mythic god of moldied<\/p>\n
pages. As a human this is how I propose to contend with and accept<\/p>\n
and love my fellow suffering humans.\u201d Koreans had this advanced<\/p>\n
technology before there was any Samsung, before there was an<\/p>\n
Einstein, an Edison or even an Isaac Newton. And yet, in the intense<\/p>\n
drive for Westernization, and aping American spiritualities, perhaps<\/p>\n
they have forgotten this a little. People like Emanuel can help to<\/p>\n
correct this, and return Koreans to their true original spiritual posture<\/p>\n
— not as a religion, but in the educational forces that help them to<\/p>\n
shape their people in the true form of their ancestors, taking the<\/p>\n
wealth of the West while respecting the treasures of Korea\u2019s own<\/p>\n
native impulses.<\/p>\n
If you find this path from this book, you will answer to neither Buddha<\/p>\n
nor Jesus nor Mohammed nor Plato nor Schopenhauer nor Beethoven<\/p>\n
nor Mahler nor Freud. You answer clearly to your SELF.\u201d That is the<\/p>\n
purpose of any true education: answering directly to the question of<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat am I?\u201d<\/p>\n
Munich, Bavaria, Germany<\/p>\n
Hyon gak<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hyungak Sunim is an American who has established himself in Korea as a Buddhist monk and thoughtful commentator on spiritual issues. It so happens that the two of us were classmates at Yale College and have communicated on various matters over the years. Hyungak Sunim lived many years in Korea and is well-known for his … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9296425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[178,1342,10990001],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-education","category-today-in-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9296425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}