This Harvard-Educated Monk Is Reintroducing Buddhism To The Western World

[cbayer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/26/hwansan-sunim-buddhism_n_4978581.html

Carolyn Gregoire

Posted: 03/26/2014 11:00 am EDT Updated: 03/26/2014 11:59 am EDT



Hwansan Sunim had a pretty typical suburban American childhood. Born to Korean-American parents in Westchester County, N.Y., he grew up in Irvington, an idyllic small town on the Hudson River.

Though Sunim strived to be a model student for his parents and get accepted to a good college, he said he always felt somehow different from his peers, and had the sense of living a "double life." His childhood and adolescence were marked by existential and spiritual questions, and early on he decided that he was more interested in seeking answers to those questions than in achieving conventional success.

Sunim's commitment to schoolwork paid off; he attended Harvard, where he majored in comparative religion and took courses in each of the major world traditions. But what he craved couldn't be found in books. He zeroed in on Zen Buddhism, which appealed to him with its emphasis on the importance of direct experience over theory and doctrine.

"What every Zen text tells you is that you can't learn it from books, you have to find an enlightened master," Sunim told The Huffington Post.

more at link

[upaloopa]

1. There are a lot of Buddhists in the western world

Lots of Buddhists here at DU.
Buddhism has been important to my life

[cbayer]

2. I'm not a Buddhist but I have drawn on it at several critical points in my life.

And from time to time, I refresh my memory and continue to find it very helpful.