Zen Master Seung Sahn - Wanting Enlightenment Is a Big Mistake

Now that Soen Sa Nim [Zen Master Seung Sahn] is gone, we have only the stories, and, thankfully, books such as this one, to help bring him alive to those who never had a chance to encounter him in the flesh. In these pages, if you linger in them long enough, and let them soak into you, you will indeed meet him in his inimitable suchness, and perhaps much more important, as would have been his hope, you will meet yourself.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Coming to Our Senses

Zen Master Seung Sahns teachings will always bring great light into the world. His extraordinary wit, intelligence, courage, and compassion are brought to us in this wonderful and important book. Thousands of students have benefited from his great understanding. Now more will come to know the heart of this rare and profound human being.

Joan Halifax, Abbot, Upaya Zen Center

ABOUT THE BOOK

A major figure in the transmission of Zen to the West, Zen Master Seung Sahn was known for his powerful teaching style, which was direct, surprising, and often humorous. He taught that Zen is not about achieving a goal, but about acting spontaneously from dont-know mind. It is from this before-thinking nature, he taught, that true compassion and the desire to serve others naturally arises. This collection of teaching stories, talks, and spontaneous dialogues with students offers readers a fresh and immediate encounter with one of the great Zen masters of the twentieth century.

HYON GAK SUNIM, a Zen monk, was born Paul Muenzen in Rahway, New Jersey. Educated at Yale College and Harvard University, he was ordained a monk under Zen Master Seung Sahn in 1992 at Nam Hwa Sah Temple, the temple of the Sixth Patriarch, Guangzhou, Peoples Republic of China. He has completed more than twenty intensive ninety-day meditation retreats and three arduous hundred-day solo meditation retreats in the mountains of Korea. He has compiled and edited a number of Zen Master Seung Sahns texts, including The Compass of Zen and Only Dont Know. He received inga from Zen Master Seung Sahn in 2001, and is currently guiding teacher of the Seoul International Zen Center at Hwa Gye Sah Temple, Seoul.

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Wanting Enlightenment Is a Big Mistake

TEACHINGS OF ZEN MASTER SEUNG SAHN

COMPILED AND EDITED BY

Hyon Gak

Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn

SHAMBHALA

BOSTON & LONDON

2012

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2006 by Paul Muenzen

Cover design by Graciela Galup

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sungsan [Seung Sahn] Tae Sonsa.

Wanting enlightenment is a big mistake: the teachings of zen master

Seung Sahn.

p. cm.

Original title unknown.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2562-8

ISBN 978-1-59030-340-5 (alk. paper)

1. Zen Buddhism. 2. Spiritual lifeBuddhism. 3. Sungsan Tae Sonsa. I. Title.

BQ9266.S92 2006

294.3420427dc22

2006000545

CONTENTS

Zen Master Seung Sahn first came into my life in 1971. I was teaching at Brandeis at the time, and one of my students told me about a Korean Zen master she had been studying with in Providence, Rhode Island, at a Zen center he had established there. She said he was quite a character, with an unusual teaching style. He was not to be missed, for the show of it, if for no other reason, and she recommended that I check him out, knowing of my strong interest in Zen. So I went. And it all turned out to be true.

Soen Sa Nim, as he was known to his students at the time, was indeed a character. Very informal, he often sat around in what can only be described as monk-leisurewear, when he wasnt wearing his formal robes. He hardly knew English, but that didnt stop him from teaching in English anyway. His sheer determination to communicate the Dharma and his Zen perspective to Americans overcame any liability stemming from his lack of fluency. The fact that English grammar eluded him almost completely made his teaching even more powerful and unique. You really had to drop underneath his words to grasp his true intention and meaning. But he said things so powerfully and so uniquely that, after a while, they took on a life of their own, in a language all their own that gradually or suddenly found its way into our hearts and into our bones. His teaching often made an end run around our thinking minds and intellects, which were perpetually flummoxed by his efforts to circumvent them or cancel them out completely. It was like swallowing one hologram and another, like great poetry, and feeling them blossom inwardly, revealing a rich dimensionality we were somehow missing in our highly regimented and quotidian lives.

This book is the first collection of Soen Sa Nims Dharma talks and other material to be published since his death, and it is likely the last to be gathered together at his behest by his first generation of Western students. You will notice that certain phrases and themes repeat over and over again. That is because Soen Sa Nim actually said them over and over again in his Dharma talks. One such phrase is You must attain no attainment. Another is, Open your mouth and youre wrong. He was always talking about not making things. Dont make anything he would say. Not I-me-my; good, bad; me, you; difficult, easy; Buddha, enlightenment; the examples would go on and on. It was his way of saying that the truth is before thinking. Just keep clear mind, go straight ahead, try, try, try for ten thousand years, or from moment to moment for that matterthey were the same to himbecause he wasnt making time either: Only just like this! This ouch (after hitting a studentsymbolically) is your original mind.

His exchanges with those who came to hear him and had the temerity to ask him questions and engage in his Zen dialogues were sometimes illuminating, sometimes confusing, but always compelling... leaving the whole room feeling that these koans were lingering, tweaking the ways we would relate to our interior experience on the cushion, and in our lives. For example:

Q: Is there such a thing as a clean mind?

A: If you have a mind, then you must clean your mind. If you have no mind, cleaning is not necessary. So I ask you, do you have a mind?

And on it would go. As long as we were trying to understand or respond out of thought, we were in deep trouble. It just wasnt possible. But the primary point, as he liked to call it, kept manifesting out of all these paradoxical exchanges and teachings. Who are you? Dont know. You must keep this dont know mind. Only when he said it, it came out sounding more like Donnnnno.

His irreverence was fantastic. It was so outrageous, it took on the qualities of a reverence all its own. For example (from Zen Master Ko Bongs Try-Mind in this book):

This is a very interesting try-mind story. It means, from moment to moment only do it. Only keep a try-mind, only one mind: only do-it mind. When chanting, or sitting, or bowing, even special practicing cannot help you if you are attached to your thinking. Taoist chanting, Confucian chanting, Christian chanting, Buddhist chanting dont matter. Chanting Coca Cola, Coca Cola, Coca Cola... can be just as good if you keep a clear mind. But if you dont keep a clear mind, and are only following your thinking as you mouth the words, even the Buddha cannot help you.