On
Saturday November 9th the Namsan International Zen Center held its opening ceremony.
The abbot of the Center is the Venerable Mu Shim Sunim, originally from America.
This ceremony saw a coming together of Mu Shim's friends and fellow Zen students
that had studied under the internationally known Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn.
The day was coming together of old friends and new to welcome the center and what
it will bring to the community. This Center will be a place to learn about Zen,
mediation and practice. Mu Shim Sunim will be organizing and holding Dharma talks
in English on Sunday afternoons at 3:00. These talks are open to anyone interested
in learning more about Zen
The first Dharma talk was given by a nun from
Lithuania who is the vice-abbot of the Zen Center in Hong Kong. Her talk introduced
us to what the practice of Zen has done for her and introduced what Zen is. She
told the old story about the two monks who decided to walk home from a conference
in silence. As they were walking home they came to a river, not a deep river,
but a river none the less. At this river there was woman who was wearing fine
clothes and did not want to get them wet. She was motioning for someone to help
her cross the river. So, one monk went up to her, picked her up and carried her
across the river. The other monk was shocked; "How could he pick her up?",
he thought." "He is a monk, he cannot touch a woman , no less pick her
up and hold her."This monk thought about this and because he could not speak
until they reached the temple, just kept thinking about it. Finally they came
near the temple and the angry monk finally had to say something. So he said to
the monk, " How could you pick up that woman and carry her across the river?"
The other monk answered, " I put the woman down beside the river, while you
are still carrying her." That is the idea of Zen. At these talks there is
a meditation period, followed by a talk and then a question and answer period.
For more information, please call Stephanie Gonda at 011-9395-4830. To get to
the temple from PNU take the number 80 or 80-1 bus near the monk. |It takes about
ten minutes. The temple is near Namsan highschool. The bus will take a left and
go up a hill, keep on the bus until you pass David's coffee (white shop with red
letters) and then it will take another turn and then you will see an LG25. The
temple is on the second floor. 
There
is an English sign as well.
Remember:
Mountain is blue,
water is flowing.
Salt is salty. Sugar is sweet.
