My Zen Journey Started 

with Friendship

Richard Kahn | Dharma Teacher at Kwan Um School of Zen

I practice Korean Zen and I’m a Dharma teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen, founded by Zen Master Sueng Sahn Sunim. After 24 years of practice and 67 years of life, I have one foot in Korea and one in New York.   

Like nearly all New Yorkers, I put my fork in many kinds of plates. New York life includes learning to appreciate the diverse food and cultures that make up this great city. Just about everyone here knows at least a few phrases in two or three languages. Children learn about each other in school and friends’ homes or religious life cycle events. Cultural exchange is the in and out breath of NYC. 

An American friend started me on my Zen journey. When we were both about 14, my friend lent me The Three Pillars of Zen by Phillip Kapleau, which I quickly devoured. Kapleau’s description of his breakthrough inspired me. We soon went to a Japanese Rinzai Zen temple in New York City, but I was too jittery to sit still. I returned 18 years later after learning to sit still, count my breaths, and work with gongans (Jap: koans). On one retreat, we were served Japanese matcha tea in ceremonial bowls before morning practice. How dozens of us were served frothy matcha at the same time still amazes me. My first experience with Zen and tea introduced me to matcha’s blend of energizing caffeine and relaxing theanine, a natural amino acid found in tea. 

My practice led me to Philadelphia where two students of the Rinzai master had set up their own center. They maintained the strict silence of a traditional Zen retreat, meaning communication was by note, and phone calls were not allowed. Philadelphia is about 80 minutes by express train from NYC. The distance and the discipline had intensifying advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage was family life as I was about to become a father. 

I had already discovered the Chogye International Zen Center (CIZC), the NY affiliate of the Kwan Um School of Zen. CIZC was to be my first stop in looking for a New York Zen home, but I also planned to visit many other centers. However, my first stop became my last. Their more relaxed style allowed me to check in at home with my pregnant wife and family, and later on while on retreat. Part of the relaxed style was their approach to excessive pain or drowsiness during sitting meditation because we could stand up and do a hapjang, a Korean-style bow. Caffeinated tea, at that time, was not served at Kwan Um School retreats.

One Decision Led to 28 Years of Study in Korean Zen Buddhism

A decision had to be made. I had to choose between a week-long retreat in Philadelphia and a weekend retreat at the Korean center in NYC. That decision decided my Zen life. 

My wife wanted me to remain in touch, but I had to decide between the Big Apple and Philly, the City of Brotherly Love. My pregnant wife had justifiable worries about being apart from me, in part because she was just getting over the flu, and friends and family were not enough. Previously, my retreat pilgrimages to Philadelphia had aroused no objections. We had become friends with the teachers there, even though my wife has no interest in Zen. She always supported my practice. At the same time, I also knew that I was faced with the possibility of being manipulated or tested. I did not know what to do or how to decide, the old or the new, wife or practice. The CIZC Zen master, Wu Kwang, told me on another occasion not to make Zen practice an issue in my marriage.

Dharma Teacher Ceremony of Richard Kahn (far right) with accompanying certificate held at Providence Zen Center

While deciding, I still had household errands to run. On one such errand, my mind stopped as I passed the corner down the hill from my apartment. I “saw” internally the travel time, her isolation while pregnant, my feelings of being manipulated, phone calls and lack of phone calls, all at once. I became free to choose. I chose to go to the Korean center. My wife was happy, and as it turned out, so was I. I had a wonderful feeling about my role in the world even before the retreat. That decision led to my 28 years of studying Korean Seon/Zen. I was better off at a center closer to home. I got to practice with people on a regular basis, and have since made and kept friends, including the folks in Pennsylvania. I imagine that I made the lives easier of at least two beings. After two decades of persistent practice, I was asked to become a Dharma teacher, which allows me to teach meditation basics.

My Encounter with Korean culture

That commitment helped me learn about Korean culture. I learned about holding the right forearm while offering something with the right hand, and about boricha, a caffeine-free roasted barley tea. Of course, I also learned to enjoy eating healthy kimchi, a home staple now. I even ran out to buy a Korean cookbook, and minari-namul, a watercress salad, joined the household menu.

A more in-depth look at Korean culture and Seon began with meeting Myoji Sunim JDPSN, a Seon nun. She was the abbess at an ethnic Korean-oriented Zen temple of the Jogye Order in a Manhattan townhouse off Central Park. Whenever we met, she always graciously asked after my children. In the Seon interview room, she roared at my inadequate responses to her fierce questioning. Unfortunately, she died young. At her memorial, a well-known NYC politician, Gail Brewer, spoke, and we learned she had been active in neighborhood projects.

One of her projects was an annual Korean cultural fair at the temple townhouse where some of her students performed Korean dances and songs, and others prepared Korean snacks. The 4.5-meter-wide frontage turned into a storefront for selling snacks and Korean crafts. A single-person tea brewer, modeled after a kimchi onggi urn, caught my eye. The tea brews inside a strainer in the cup. The glaze had yellow “spots” randomly spread across the tea bowl. The spots are a common design, but their placement and size are determined by the kiln fire on the glaze. My relationship with tea, Seon and Korea grew stronger, and it fed my curiosity.

In the 16th century, tea ceremony-loving Japanese generals abducted Korean master potters and their families, who then fell victim to Japanese tea ceremonialists who admired the buncheong style of pottery made in Korea. Buncheong played a foundational role in creating the tea ceremony bowl styles called mishima and kohiki. The bowls quickly became and still remain prized possessions and prestigious gifts.

Buncheong began as elaborately glazed and expensive household and ritual ware. Fashion turned buncheong into an inexpensive, rapidly glazed form of ceramics for the masses. Rapid execution allowed potters to apply the individualistic, creative spontaneity that has appealed to the Japanese elite for centuries and now to the minimalist, modern spirit. The buncheong spirit came to potter Mark Mohler after a 30-day encounter with Korean master potter Lee Kang Hyo while at university. Mark’s actual task was to make tea for him. That meeting inspired him to create buncheong teaware in the reinvigorated style of spontaneity resulting in unplanned patterns. Mohler’s tea cups’ feel and appearance combine with the tea’s flavor to enhance my ability to enjoy the tea with mindfulness. 

Seemingly incoherent patterns deeply engage our minds. Scottish naturalist Nan Shepherd wondered about unstructured patterns in her book, The Living Mountain: “Why some blocks of stone, hacked into violent and tortured shapes could so profoundly tranquilize the mind I do not know.” Shepherd grasped nature’s wordless glamour that underlies the aesthetic that keeps buncheong alive. Sometimes I serve my wife, family and guests jasmine tea in these cups; I know my wife’s favorite cup. When we watch subtitled K-dramas referencing Joseon times, I serve tea and point out details of traditional Korean culture. My wife helps me keep track of the plot. We have both embraced Korean culture.   

Richard Kahn was born in NYC in 1953 and remains a native. He has a BA in English, MS in Nutrition, and PhD in Social Welfare. He works as a nutritionist and writes on nutrition and Zen. He is a Dharma teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen where he has practiced for 28 years. (rkahn33@gmail.com)