Category Archives: reflections

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Journey of Spirit – Sunim Daeung’s visit

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A little update on hosting Korean monk, Daeung Sunim at our farm.  It was a hectic schedule as Frank and I were leading a teacher training retreat from July 13-15 at our clinic.  Of course it was Friday the 13th which completely explained the sweltering heat, the broken air conditioning at the office, 21 people crammed into an already small space, and no available venue to move to.  We did find a landing place for the retreat (without much a/c) and coped.  By 6PM on Sunday the 15th, the appointed time to meet with Sunim and his other Ottawa host, we were physically limp and mentally fried.  And I truly hoped Sunim was not going to mind if I face-planted in a bowl of mac and cheese for dinner (his host kindly agreed to feed him so as to spare me the embarrassment of serving junk food on his first evening with us).

Sunim arrived at the farm with Frank as I completed grocery rounds.  We had an interesting evening learning about his life at his temple and he was fascinated by our lifestyle.  Two adults with only one child who didn’t live at home, Frank was not retired, and it wasn’t until the next evening that he clued into the big empty room being a “zendo.”  I thought we would have snags in understanding around words or food or the cats who were skittish around new people.  Those didn’t pose any problems; Sunim’s English is relatively good and when propped up with mime gestures or shifts in words, communication flowed quite nicely.

He was totally taken by the number of books in the house.  However, I think he was a bit taken aback by the lack of Korean Zen books.  “Books.  Japanese Zen big.  Korean Zen small small.”  I thought he was talking about the zeitgeist of Zen in Canada so launched into a seminar on the state of Buddhism in Canada.  Communication difficulties always highlight our blind spots.  And yet, there were so many commonalities: relationships with family and teachers, finding a path that challenged us, and not encouraging the fear that can so easily surface to defeat our intentions to practice.

One of the best part of his visit was showing him my little art table.  He immediately gravitated to Kaz Tanahashi’s calligraphy of “compassion” and explained to me how the terms come together in Korean.  Suddenly his English was precise and without hesitation.  We laughed over my herd of Mu paintings (see last week’s series) and he was excited by my attempts at the ox herding pictures.  The next morning, Sunim lead a Korean chant and prostrations as the morning service and declared it “a good experience.”  As I was preparing supper, he came into the kitchen beaming from ear-to-ear: “Ginger and garlic fry.  Good.”  I explained that we were having a Burmese dish normally reserved for weddings and blessing ceremonies.  “Ah,” he laughed.  “No junka food?”

I caught myself wanting to give him a good visit.  In fact, he was quite happy sitting in the library with the cats, plotting his route on his netbook.  I wondered how these somewhat intense connections with his hosts balanced with the solitary long distances he cycles.  And then, it seemed irrelevant as he headed down the Rails to Trails path to Montreal.

Sunim is headed to Newfoundland and then through the US.  If you can help in any way by providing a place to stay or food and rest along the way, please contact Dave via the Journey of Spirit website.   

Sunim’s Canadian route is here.  The US route is here.

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rampant mu

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For all our best intentions, it became an inadvertent 10 km journey of back-tracking.  We started the day in a compassionate-mind state, choosing only to cover what distance would be possible.  That got us to the car from the kitchen.  It was a good start followed by an hour-long drive to the Gatineau Hills and Trail #3.  Sure it was coded as “difficult” but we had that compassionate-mind which was going to allow us to be wherever difficult joined us on the trail.

Trail #3 starts out at a lovely lookout point, Étienne Brûlé, and descends quickly to a flat run through the forest.  The implication of that drop didn’t escape me; it would be there as the last leg of the hike when we returned.  I knew better than to project into the return trip and set my mind into my feet.  Mu.  The trail markers named #3 the Huron Trail which crossed others that lead to Meech Lake, the Western Trail, or up to the Rampart Lookout.  It was fun and games; we were actually enjoying the slopes and slides, enjoying the feeling of effort and lifting of the mental fog that held us earlier in the day.

Alone on the trail, I was happy when we met another hiker.  My mind could finally stop trying not to think of black bears, hungry black bears, hungry black bears looking for a quick meal deal.  Mu.  We stood and chatted for a while, the hiker subtly assessing our capabilities, asking us if we’d been on these trails before.  And where were we headed and when had we started out and yes, the trail up to the Rampart Lookout was quite easy.  No, not steep at all; a few ups and downs but not steep.  I was so relieved I failed to note he was wearing a tee-shirt that advertised the Meech Lake Trail; he may have been inclined to experience a different version of steep.

Mu.

We overshot the trail leading to the Ramparts and wandered about 1.5 kms further east before turning around.  Getting to the lookout from the trail junction was another 800 meters; a kilometer and a half there and back again.  I dithered about it as the start into the trail looked chancy and then decided that trusting in difficult to join us had worked so far.  It met us about two-thirds of the way up and set its challenge.  Not in the steepness of the trail but in the sheer drop off the edge of my mind as old stories surfaced about what should have been, what is, and what may never be.  Mu.

Mu is this large, this wide, this deep, and this penetrable when you’re sitting on a log wondering why 800 meters is so large, so wide, so deep and so impenetrable.  It sits on your chest and clutches at your throat, willing you to be someone else.  Someone who says Mu! to wanting the world to shift, the ups and downs to smooth out, the forest to open and the way to be passable.

It runs rampant over your life and confirms, “Now, you can never say never again.”

(Interesting factoid: Trail #3 is locally called, by hikers and skiers, Burma Road.  The trail builders found it so tough to cut the route that they felt they were building the Bridge on the River Kwai.  A bit of a stretch to calling it the Burma Road (which is whole different part of Burma’s war history) but I’m not about to take it away from these folks who hand sawed the trail open.  You can read more about it here.)