I’m late. By a grand total of ten minutes, but late none-the-less. I’m panicking. For good reason too, because though I’ve been late to many meetings before, this one is with the world’s chief proponent of Zen Buddhism. I huff and puff as I sprint into ITC Grand Chola, and the abbot of the Beomeosa Buddhist temple waits patiently. He is surrounded by an entourage of people, including three high priests, two interpreters and one world-renowned photographer. I apologise furiously and the abbot smiles. He speaks in Korean, with a twinkle in his eyes, and interpreter Miri Vasu translates, “I have travelled in Chennai traffic; I understand any delay you may have experienced.”
Subul Sunim is the abbot of the head temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism in South Korea. Until he was 21, however, he hadn’t even found Buddhism, and his family followed the Korean religion Ch’ondogyo. “When I was 21, I naturally came to enter a Buddhist temple as if it were my own home and I was asked if I wanted to shave my head and became a monk. It was my karma,” says the abbot, “Even now, I feel I was a monk in my previous life.”
The abbot met Venu Srinivasan, chairman of TVS, at the Biennale in Busan, Korea, and was in turn invited to inaugurate the Chennai Biennale. The abbot feels this was his karma and says that he finds “order in disorder” in this city. He refers to its people as the descendants of Master Bodhidharma, a prince of Kanchipuram and the founder of Zen Buddhism. Bodhidharma moved to China in the sixth century to spread the spiritual teachings of Zen because, says the abbot, it was his karma. Zen buddhism teaches one about the enlightened mind of the Buddha, by making one look inward and see one’s true nature. A fan of the Zen school of thought, I was hoping the abbot would help me understand it better. “Zen Buddhism combines the world of consciousness and unconsciousness, tangibility and intangibility, subjectiveness and objectiveness, and looks beyond all of them to achieve absolute truth,” says the abbot. He poses a question, “When I talk to you, who listens?” Me, my ears, my mind, a combination of the three, or maybe an eavesdropping bystander? He smiles, and poses another question: If you say your eyes see things, then why can’t a dead person see? I mumble something about the importance of being alive and another question comes my way: If being alive is what defines how you see, then what does life look like? I’m stumped.
An hour later, I’m thoroughly flummoxed. These zen koans, I confess, clearly elude me. The abbot explains, “Zen Buddhism is something beyond religion — it is enlightenment. And enlightenment is not something you can teach people. It’s something you experience directly.” To ask and answer is the practice of zen, he explains, and even though I didn’t know the answers, at least I have many questions. Perhaps, I feel, that is my karma.
