Shamanism, Korea's spiritual core

Bowls of fruit are laid out on the altar. There are also bottles of whiskey and a meter-high stack of Marlboro cigarette cartons. With a grin, Korean shaman Tae Eul says his gods like to drink and smoke.

You'd be mistaken if you thought tech-savvy South Koreans only worshiped smartphones and the latest cars -- many believe in an ancient, animistic spirituality. At the center of Korean shamanism is the mudang, or shaman, the medium between the material and spirit world.

"People hear about me through word of mouth," explains Eul, from inside his temple on the slopes of Korea's Mt Samgak. "I try to figure out how the energy of the universe flows through, then the gods show the way." The 38-year-old shaman says that even if he wanted to stop being a mudang, he couldn't -- the spirits control him now. Inside his mountain temple, a robed Eul asks a Korean woman to light candles and bow in front of an altar as he summons the gods of the mountain and sky and calls out to her ancestors.

Amid the crashing of cymbals and the blaring of a horn, Tae Eul stands barefoot on knife blades that somehow do not puncture his skin. He spins in circles waving a sword in one hand and a silk scarf in the other.

After the ceremony is complete, Tae Eul says his client will be fine. The gods have opened a door for her to solve her financial problems, he says, and will make sure she'll spend her money more wisely and have a luckier future.

Shamanism is the indigenous faith of the Korean people and despite centuries of influence from other religions, it still appears in many aspects of modern life there. Tae Eul says that many of his clients are not necessarily believers in shamanism. Some are often devoutly religious in other faiths.

In Korea, religious beliefs are not always mutually exclusive. For example, a mother might pray at a church, then a Buddhist temple, and then visit a mudang all in hope of bringing good luck to her family. It's this intrinsic search for spiritually divined good luck that keeps the nation's 50,000 mudangs in business, says David Mason, author of Sacred Mountains, a book on Korean shamanism.

"He adds: Koreans are still shamanic believers at the core of their psychology and then layers of Buddhism or Confucianism, then Christianity and modern scientific thinking as the outer layers."

The Power of Words

This is a very powerful video that was shared with me by one of my wonderful Zen Students, Rev. Bill Charama. I must say that it is important for all of us to realize in our hearts that even the little things we do can have a dramatic impact on this world if our intentions are pure.

Hyon Gak Sunim on World Peace

Zen Master Seung Sahn (1927-2004) was one of the greatest Zen teachers of the 20th-century. And he always taught about world peace. But one day, a student of his, who was deeply involved in peace-work and social justice issues, said to the Master, "I think that working for social justice should precede my work in meditation. So, I won't meditate until we have become closer to world peace." Zen Master Seung Sahn replied, "World peace is not possible." After a pause of a few moments, he continued, "Also it's not necessary."

Hyon Gak Sunim is an American-born Zen monk who received inga, or "formal authorization to teach," by Zen Master Seung Sahn in a public ceremony in August 2001. In this talk, Hyon Gak Sunim "riffs" on his Teacher's startling insight to the real meaning of meditation and world peace. He improvises, as a commentary, on his Teacher's view that "world peace" and the struggle for social justice -- the most important social and political issues of our time, and things of great and searing urgency in these times of oligarchs and international financial control by the few -- should not be "required" or "expected" by one who sets insight into the nature of self as their goal.

If "world peace" and the struggle for social justice are predicated on thinking and philosophy alone -- on conceptual critiques and analyses with no interior looking, or meditation -- then they can be just another form of opposites' thinking. To truly bring world peace, as Zen Master Seung Sahn emphasized, we must all look deeply inside, find our original "root," our True Nature, which all beings share, and then act from THAT to bring acts of love and compassion to this world. THAT is the true meaning of "think globally, act locally." There is nothing more local than our own original nature, which connects us to the infinite web of all life.

Jakusho Kwong-roshi: On Becoming a Teacher

Jakusho Kwong-roshi: On Becoming a Teacher from Bill Scheffel on Vimeo.

My old friend Jakusho Kwong-roshi is the abbot of Sonoma Mountain Zen Center, a country zendo and retreat center in Northern California. Kwong-roshi is a dharma heir of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and also had a close relationship with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In this video, Kwong-roshi discusses his own path of becoming a Zen practitioner and eventually a teacher.


I spent many retreats at his Zen Center outside Santa Rosa sitting solo retreats and enjoying the scenery. There are many nice shots of the property in this video. For anyone seeking a place to do a solo retreat, please consider the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center as a place for a wonderful experience.