Animal Crackers

Thirty days hath November and this day, today, is that 30th day.  It's the 334th day of 2021 and all we have left are the 31 days of December before 2022.

Today is the day for right livelihood, for with it we get rid of all evil ways.

On this day in 2004, Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn died at the age of 77 in Seoul, South Korea. Impermanence is swift.  Arriving in the United States in 1972, he settled in Providence, Rhode Island and worked at a laundromat as a repairman, spending much of his time improving his English. Shortly after his arrival, however, he started the Providence Zen Center. In 1974, Seung Sahn began founding more Zen centers in the United States, beginning with Dharma Zen Center in Los Angeles. The following year, he went on to found the Chogye International Zen Center of New York City, and then, in 1977, Empty Gate Zen Center. In 1986, along with a former student and Dharma heir Dae Gak, Seung Sahn founded a retreat center and temple in Clay City, Kentucky called Furnace Mountain (for whatever it's worth, I participated in a weekend meditation retreat with Dae  Gak here in Atlanta). At present, there are some 34 centers in his lineage in North America alone.  Starting in 1990, under an invitation from Mikhail Gorbachev, Seung Sahn began making trips to the Soviet Union to teach, and a student there later opened a practice center (Novgorod Center of Zen Meditation) in Russia.  

An imperfect person (aren't we all?), he admitted in 1988 to having sexual relationships with several students.  Because Seung Sahn was understood to be a celibate monk, the revelation of the affairs caused some members to leave the school. As described by writer James Ishmael Ford (Zen Master Who?), "It is not possible to adequately acknowledge the hurt and dismay that followed in the wake of these and similar scandals at other Zen centers." But in the wake of these disclosures, new systems were instituted that relied more on boards of directors than a single charismatic teacher. Seung Sahn participated in two repentance ceremonies, and now his organization is the single largest Zen institution in the West.  Ford notes that Seung Sahn is second only to Thich Nhat Hanh in guaranteeing that Western Zen will not simply be derived from Japanese Zen.

The book Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Zen Teachings of Seung Sahn (Stephen Mitchell, 1976) opens with the following passage:

One day a student from Chicago came to the Providence Zen Center and asked Seung Sahn Soen-sa, "What is Zen?"

Soen-sa held his Zen stick over his head and said, "Do you understand?"

The student said, "I don't know."

Soen-sa said, "This don't-know mind is you.  Zen is understanding yourself."

"What do you understand about me? Teach me."

Soen-sa said, "In a cookie factory, different cookies are baked in the shape of animals, cars, people, and airplanes.  They all have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same dough, and they all taste the same.

"In the same way, all things in the universe - the sun, the moon, the stars, mountains, rivers, people, and so forth - have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same substance.  The universe is organized into pairs of opposites: light and darkness, man and woman, sound and silence, good and bad. But all these opposites are mutual, because they are all made from the same substance.  Their names and their forms are different, but their substance is the same.  Names and forms are made by your thinking.  If you are not thinking, and have no attachment to name and form, then all substance is one.  Your don't-know mind cuts off all thinking.  This is your substance.  The substance of this Zen stick and your own substance are the same.  You are this stick; this stick is you."