Dae Haeng Sunim visited the Washington, D.C. area for a public
speech at Richard J Ernst Community Cultural Center at Annandale's
Northern Virginia Community college at 7:00 pm on Sunday, June
7, 1998. The topic of her speech was "Life is Not Suffering".
Chongwol Sunim from Chicago summarizes her speech as "focused
on her central teaching, the liberation of oneself from distress
and hardships through the search to know genuine self, and inner
source of compassion and strength".
The inner self search for Dae Haeng Sunim started at an early
age. In the middle of political turmoil in Korea which had brought
her family sudden poverty in 1930, the five year old girl was
forced to think who was behind forced to think who was behind
all this life's misery. She spent time frequently on a mountain
to avoid her father's beatings in her early years and gradually
spent nights on the mountain. This provided time for her to think
about life's important questions and to pursue the search for
answers. When she was 10, she was already questioning the real
meaning of this life. When she was 20, she left home for good
without any thoughts of returning and roamed aroung the mountain
all alone, sleeping wherever she found a place and eating mountain
greens and berries. Placing herself as a part of nature, she contemplated
this life's intrinsic questions.
She climbed to the ridge of a mountain on a winter day, when she
looked down below, she could ciearly see herself, the sky, the
land, and trees and connecting these as the essential oneness
of all being.
She continued her search of life's essential questions until she
realized that the whole universe is of one body and one mind.
After spending 12 years in the mountain by herself and reassured
by her findings, she entered a Buddhist monastery to be ordained
a Zen nun. She wanted to test and share her ideas with others
in the world.
The simplicity of her message-"finding genuine self and the
belief that each person can touch a center of awareness and vitality"
helped people throughout the world in finding their inner self.
She founded a centerm the Han Ma Um (One Mind) Zen Center, near
her mountain retreat, at Anyang, Korea. In the next decade she
opened 13 branch centers in Korea. She established Zen centers
in Canada, Argentina, Germany, and five in the United States.