Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn
Kwan Um School of Zen (Providence) · 1976
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Seung Sahn
Seung Sahn
1927 CE–2004 CE · Modern · Kwan Um School of Zen (Providence)
August 1, 1927 – November 30, 2004
Seung Sahn (1927–2004) was the first teacher to bring Korean Sŏn (Zen) Buddhism to the United States in a sustained way. A Sŏn master of the Korean Jogye Order, he arrived in 1972 and founded the Providence Zen Center in Rhode Island, which grew into the international Kwan Um School of Zen with dozens of centers worldwide. He was known for a direct, question-driven teaching style ('only don't know'). In 1988, disclosures of relationships with students led him to undertake public repentance and prompted the Kwan Um School to adopt formal ethics guidelines. He died in 2004.
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Kwan Um School of Zen (Providence)
What they did here
DOCUMENTED: built the Kwan Um School into an international network of dozens of centers.
About Kwan Um School of Zen (Providence)
Providence, Rhode Island, USA, is the headquarters of the Kwan Um School of Zen, an international Korean Sŏn (Zen) network. It was founded there in 1983 by the Korean master Seung Sahn, who had come to the United States in 1972 and established the Providence Zen Center.
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The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Seung Sahn’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.