The Zen of Perception: Mastering Suffering and Pain | Ven. Hyon Gak Sunim | TEDxBerlin
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- Опубликовано: 24 мар 2024
- NOTE FROM TED: Please do not look to this talk for health advice. Some viewers may find elements to be objectionable. This talk only represents the speaker's personal views and understanding of mindset, breathwork, and healing which lacks scientific support. We've flagged this talk because it falls outside the content guidelines TED gives TEDx organizers. TEDx events are independently organized by volunteers. The guidelines we give TEDx organizers are described in more detail here: storage.ted.com/tedx/manuals/t...
Leading neuroscientists and the world’s most ancient meditative traditions converge in the understanding that “everything is created by mind alone.” Our minds construct - and all of our perceptions only inhabit - a hallucinated reality which exists merely as a vague approximation of the truth of our real, “lived” experience. This “controlled hallucination” (Anil Seth, et al.) of existence presents itself just in order for our brains to navigate the dangers and opportunities of a challenging world. In this talk, the renowned Zen monk Hyon Gak Sunim uses simple examples from science and his own three decades of deep meditative exploration to present the ways in which we might master the tools of perceptions for living more meaningfully and purposefully in this vast web of life - and perhaps bring world peace, along the way.
Hyon Gak Sunim was born Paul J. Muenzen in 1964 to a family of devout Catholics in New Jersey, U.S.A. A graduate of Yale College ('87) and comparative religions at Harvard Divinity School (MTS, '92), Sunim was ordained as a Buddhist monk in China by the legendary Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn, in 1992. He has completed some 45 of the 3-month intensive traditional silent meditation retreats in various remote mountain places in Korea, including 3 intensive 100-day solo meditation retreats. He received inka(formal approval of enlightenment, and certification of teaching authorization) from Zen Master Seung Sahn in 2001. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
“We are all hallucinating all the time. And when we agree on that hallucination, we call that reality.” Brilliant
A true zen master! 🙏❤️
Excellent Dharma lecture👌🙏🙂
Very nice talk!
True teacher. His teachings are what we need in the 21st century.
I am watching this talk repeatedly. It is really refreshing.
Over a period of time, I tried to make myself aware that there is no past and no future. It is always now. If we weren’t able to remember things and if there wasn’t a certain periodicity within the events of life, like night is followed by day and vice versa, I am not sure we could define what time is. So, time is a construct of mind. When we are fully present at the place where we currently are, let‘s say the kitchen in the 1st floor of our house, the living room in the 2nd floor does not exist unless there is interaction with us, for example through our senses or our memories. However, through our ability to remember things and to move through space and time we can bring the living room in the 2nd floor back in to appearance. I am not quite sure, if that is correct, but for me it makes life much more fascinating.
I’ve long followed Sunim and I deeply respect him. I credit him with deepening my practice and opening my eyes to ordinary mind.
It doesn’t sit well with me that he allowed a Ukrainian and a Russian oligarch to attend a retreat without telling them of this situation beforehand. I say this because there’s severe trauma that could’ve occurred.
Am I misunderstanding? I’m open to being (and would love to be, in this situation) wrong.
Nearly all forms of medical treatments - especially for grave sickness or injury - entail risks, dangers, or side-effects. And for some afflictions, novel means of treatment can be helpful, even if they were once (or still) considered to be unconventional or unorthodox. A vaccine is often made from weakened forms of the “adversarial” microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. Homeopathy works by principle known as "similia similibus curentur" or "let like be cured by like”: a substance that causes symptoms in a healthy person can be used to treat similar symptoms in a sick person. In psychotherapy, strong anxiety disorders such as phobias are often treated through a controlled “exposure therapy” which brings the person into direct or simulated contact with the very source or trigger of their anxiety and terror, and this can be extremely effective in bringing relief and liberation, especially when used together with meditation and breath-attention. (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, emphasizes such an approach quite strongly, and produces impressive results thereby.)
In the retreat cited in Hyon Gak Sunim’s TED Talk, the Zen Center community was left with no other choice in this extremely painful situation. More importantly, “Maria” and “Natascha” were left with no other choice (and, sadly, “Maria” was left with the least of all, and that is most important.) So, what to do? And how can the tools of Zen be applied?
In this situation, while it is somewhat easier to judge from outside and imagine better hypotheticals, Hyon Gak Sunim was not careless or random or unfeeling in his approach: Faced with this kind of absurdly tragic coming-together of forces, he applied his several decades of intensive meditation experience in a way that such treatment modalities as vaccines, homeopathy, or psychotherapy long recognize to be effective: He patiently guided the elements into position - through breath and attention - where things could be “seen”, at the root, and therefore liberated. “Similia similibus curentur" may be effectuated through the care and attention of a meditative approach to the very real and true terror.
While the “results” of this encounter could by no means be claimed to be any permanent solution whatsoever -- either for "Maria" or for other similar traumas as hers -- and might not be reproducible in every such case like the unimaginable injustice that gives rise to “Maria’s” profound, lifelong trauma, most everyone in that retreat was definitely able to witness at least some possibility for self-transformation and transcendence or transmutation of suffering. And "Maria" herself reported at least some "relief", for however long it lasted.
This is what Zen teachers do: they have the freedom to “step outside the box” of what is expected, to let “don’t-know mind” speak some newer possibility of Being. Yes, it might seem not to follow the normal conventions, but then, if it did, it wouldn't really be Zen.
Such an approach as happened in that retreat would perhaps not be tried again, given other considerations ("Maria" applied quite late in our application process, when things could not be changed or explained better.) Hyon Gak Sunim would be the first to say “don’t try this at home”. Only in the hands of a skilled practitioner, therapist, or guided -- and one more skilled in trauma therapy than Hyon Gak Sunim, ideally -- could such an approach be reliably trusted.
(One point: this story did not involve "a Russian oligarch", as your question states: such speech is simply not in Sunim's talk. It involved a then-long-term resident member of the local community who was the child of parents who had connections Kremlin elite, whatever that means.)
Thank you very much for your question. We hope this answers your concerns.
Thank You
현각스님. I miss you a lot.
I respect you high.
I love you deep. Whenever I see you on, I think of 법정스님.
The "NOTE FROM TED" above is RIDICULOUS. Sigh, This World!!
🙏💗
💎🙏🙏🙏❤️ 🍵📿🙏
Study the tradition of Advaitha Vedanta which is well known.
not study.. study is intellectual approach and only bring more suffering. This monk is sitting in silent with great intensity and without interruption.
Good talk. Annoying theatricals.
Truly enlightening.