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Hyon Gak [현각 / 玄覺 Hyeongak]
(born Paul J. Muenzen in 1964)

Hyon Gak Sunim

Hyon Gak Sunim was born Paul J. Muenzen in 1964 to a family of devout Catholics in New Jersey, U.S.A. He was educated in literature, literary theory, and philosophy at Yale University (Class of 1987) and comparative religions at Harvard Divinity School, where he received the degree of Master of Theological Studies in 1992.

Hyon Gak Sunim became a student of Zen Master Seung Sahn while studying in Cambridge, Mass., and lived for several years at the Cambridge Zen Center. He was ordained in 1992 in China, at the Temple of the Sixth Patriarch, on Chogye Mountain: he was the first Westerner to be ordained in the People’s Republic of China since the Communist Revolution. He has been doing training in various remote mountain places, including 3 intensive 100-day solo meditation retreats and some thirty-five 3-month intensive meditation retreats (“ango”). In August 2001, in a public ceremony at Hwa Gye Sah Temple, he was publicly tested in Dharma combat before an assembly of monks, and received “inka” (formal approval, and certification of teaching authorization) from Zen Master Seung Sahn, the 78th Patriarch in a lineage stretching back to Shakyamuni Buddha.

Zen Master Seung Sahn personally requested Hyon Gak Sunim to compile and edit several of his books, including, The Whole World is a Single Flower (1992), The Compass of Zen (1997), and Only Don’t Know (1999). Sunim published his Harvard Master’s thesis as Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake (2006). He also translated the 500 year-old classic of Zen Master So Sahn, The Mirror of Zen (2006), into English.

Hyon Gak Sunim is also the author of the Korean mega-bestseller, Man Haeng: From Harvard to Hwa Gye Sah Temple (1999), a story of his path to the Way. The book is widely credited with leading a sudden revival in interest in Korean Zen Buddhism, especially among younger generation in Korea, where Buddhism had been in decline. He donated all of the royalties from this book to his Teacher, to aid in the construction of Mu Sang Sah International Zen Center. As a result of the great celebrity which this brought to Sunim, he cancelled the book’s publication when the original five-year contract ran out. He refuses to permit a re-edition of this book.

Sunim is also the editor or translator of several best-selling translations into Korean of Zen Master Seung Sahn’s English-language books.

The former Buddhist Chaplain at Harvard University, Hyon Gak Sumin has given public talks at Harvard University, Yale University, Oxford University, Columbia University, New York University, Brown University, Charles University (Prague), Universite de Paris, University of London, among many others, in addition to colleges, divinity schools, and countless temples throughout Korea.

After practicing for nearly 20 years in Korea, he is currently leading a group of meditators at a small Zen center he founded in Munich, Germany. He is also devoting himself to the study of Astanga Yoga, under the direction of Kristina Karitinou-Ireland.

PDF: The Ten Oxherding Pictures by Hyon Gak

PDF: The mirror of zen : the classic guide to Buddhist practice by Zen master So Sahn
= Sŏsan Taesa, 1520-1604. Sŏn'ga kwigam [禪家龜鑑 Seongaguigam]
translated from the Chinese by Boep Joeng; translated from the Korean by Hyon Gak
Boston : Shambhala; [New York]: Distributed in the United States by Random House, 2006. 159 p.