Zen and Politics
by Senior Dharma Teacher RB StewartZen Master Seung Sahn was born in Sun ch'on in what is now North Korea in the summer of 1927. At this time, life in Korea was difficult. The Japanese Army occupied Korea and was systematically dismantling Korean society. History books and traditional songs were rewritten, and the Korean language outlawed. An arm of the Japanese government, the Oriental Development Company, controled the economy, seizing land and profits. Young women were forced into military brothels, while young men were conscripted into the army or sent to work in the mines.
As a teenager Seung Sahn, bright and strong-willed, managed through family connection to be sent to a technical high school. But even at a young age, he wanted to help his country. In 1944, he joined the underground Korean independence movement and built a shortwave radio. Within a few months he was caught by the Japanese police and narrowly escaped a death sentence. After his release from prison, he and two friends stole money from their parents and crossed the heavily-patrolled Manchurian border in an unsuccessful attempt to join the Free Korean Army.
A few months later, after 50 years of occupation, the Japanese were simply gone. Into that void two groups, each with their own ideology, rose to compete for power: one Marxist and the other built on a combination of Christianity and capitalism. The Christian capitalists were educated and had lead the independence movement for years, organizing in Christian churches; they hoped for a new Korea based on Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points of self-determination. Years earlier, in 1919, this group led a year-long series of protests against Japanese rule. The ÔMarch UprisingÕ as it was called began with a reading of the 'Korean Declaration of Independance' at the Seoul Train Station. The Japanese response left 7,500 dead, 16,000 wounded, and 46,000 imprisioned.
The Marxists were largely illiterate peasants who in the years following liberation offered a remarkable combination of education, healthcare, equality for women, and childcare to the masses. They also wanted land reform, which meant seizing land worked by families for generations, as well as compulsory communal action. Fearing for their lives, many families sent their children South or abandoned their property altogether.
Seung Sahn went to Seoul to attend university, though he remained politicallly active. On March 1, 1948, he attended the anniversary rally of the March Uprising at Seoul Station. In the face of an increasingly well-armed and organized military in the North, the American occupation force chose this anniversary to declare the Republic of South Korea and announced elections. The rally quickly devolved into violent chaos as the communists and capitalists rioted. Disillusioned with politics and organizing, Seung Sahn dropped out and went into the mountains. He later explained:
When I was young before I became a monk, I had many, many suffering. In my country, fighting with policemen, and Japanese menÉmany fights. Then after this also Communism, Capitalism appeared. Many hurt my mind. Many hurt my mind. Not smooth grow up. Never think about myself. Never thought about my clothes, my house, my family, never thought about these matters. My country, my country, only my country. How make it become independent. This style mind. So then my country become independent, but Korean people were fighting each other. If people not fighting then only one mind, then become independent. But now become one, why Korean people fighting each other? Killing each other? Fighting each other? I didnÕt like that. ThatÕs bullshit. I donÕt like society. Before I only thought about how to make correct society, but society is rotten. So I go to mountain, cut my hair, no more go out into society.*
On that day I think his hope to help society opened to a deep and abiding question, ÔWhat am I?Õ Ô What is this life?Õ
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He left Seoul and traveled further south, eventually arriving at Ma Gok Sah temple. There he found a small hermitage on the side of Won Gak mountain and began an incredibly rigourous one hundred day retreat, leading to his enlightenment and receiving Dharma transmission from Zen Master Ko Bong in the Spring of 1949. (See ÔThe Story of Seung Sahn Soen-saÕ in Dropping Ashes on the Buddha; The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn by Stephen Mitchell.)
When I met Seung Sahn, I had just graduated from UC Berkeley and participated in some social action there, so meeting someone who abandoned politics for a hermitage while World War III was beginning around him was a revalation to me. Even more astounding was the simplicity and clarity of his teaching. I wanted desperately to change the World. I was even more desperate to change myself. Big ideas and big changes. But he would always say, very simply, ÔWhat are you doing right now?Õ
Another teacher put it this way: ÔOne of the most powerful teachings of the Buddhist tradition is that as long as you are wishing for things to change, they never will. As long a youÕre wanting yourself to get better, you wonÕt. As long as you have an orientation toward the future, you can never just relax into what you already have or already are.Õ*
So what, then, are we to do? The desire to help this World and a deep question about our own experience are hallmarks of Zen Practice. Zen students are taught to keep this question - while chanting or sitting, working, eating, even sleeping, constantly returning to this one point. After some time, a clear and compassionate insight into our question appears. When we attain this insight, we can then understand our correct situation, correct relationship, and correct function moment-to-moment, and helping this World is possible. If not, then our actions arise out of an opposites mind and thus will ultimately fall short, and perhaps create even bigger problems.
So any kind of job, carpenter, school teacher, monk, parent, protestor, politician, democrat, republican, communist or capitalist is no problem, but why do that? What is our direction? If only for oneself; me, my family, my country, then thatÕs a problem. But if our action is Ôfor all beings,Õ then any action is possible. So many people have come to Denver this week. Why? Because we want to change our country? Gain power? Speak Truth to power? Witness history? To meditate and develop compassion?
The time we spend at Meditate 08 is insignificant if we measure it by the clock. But it is a precious opportunity to ask ourselves deep and important questions, and get to know our own minds and experience a little better. ItÕs not necessary to abandon society. We only need to honestly and completely open to this moment, to experience the sound of cars in the street, the sunlight on our faces, the anxiety or happiness in our bellies. From this very simple experience we can change the World. ¥
