Meditation, meditation,
meditation. Haemin
Sunim is bringing his
simple brand of
everyday Buddhism
to the worldBODY & SEOUL
TheHaeminSunimCV
interestedinhelpingpeoplepsychologically.” He
livesinSeoulandattendsa meditation retreat every
autumn.Haemin’sinteraction with others, in person
andviasocialmedia,isa keypart of his work: “It opens
myheartandgivesmeinspiration to write, too.”
Haeminalsorunsa not-for-profit School for Broken
HeartsinSeoulandinSouthKorea’s second city
Busan,offeringcoursesthatrelate to people’s lives,
includingoneforparentswhohave lost a child and
anotherforpeoplediagnosedwith cancer.ABORNTHINKER
Haemin’sownspiritualjourney began as a teenager
inSouthKoreawhenheaskedhimself philosophical
questions;“Ifeltverymuchasif I was thrown into this
world.Someoneoncedescribed it as waking up in a
movietheatrewhenthefilm’sbeen playing for ten
minutesalready.I feltI hadtoidentify myself with this
body,thisnationality.”Desperately trying to achieve
aff luence,SouthKoreawasraising its children with a
relentlessregimeofallworkand no play. “We were
forcedtostudyuntil10pmevery night in the highschool library. And the thing was, I wasn’t even
allowed to discuss what I was curious about – Who am
I? Why am I here?” He sought books that would help
sate his appetite for philosophy, including Freedom
from the Known by J. Krishnamurti, in which Haemin
first learned that revolution starts not out in society
but in one’s own mind. At 18, as soon as he was able to,
he f led his country to study in California: “It was a
difficult decision, I was scared to death, but I had to do
it. The social pressure was incredible. I listened to
what my spirit was saying to me.”
He went to study film at the University of California
in Berkeley. “I was moved by some of the beautiful
stories in movies – such as the minister’s struggle with
his younger son’s bad behaviour and yet his deep love
for him in A River Runs Through It.” Disillusioned by
the film-making process, which he found too time-
consuming and felt he couldn’t control as much as he
wished, he soon switched to Religious Studies, in a bid
to explore the big unanswered questions, which led
him to discover more about Buddhism. There was no
looking back: he trained to become a monk in the US1973 Bornin SouthKoreafollowedby
a brotherfouryearslater
1992 Watchesandis inspiredbythefilm
A RiverRunsThroughIt
1995 Works as an interpreter and has
anaudiencewiththeDalaiLama
in India
1996 TravelstoEuropeforthefirsttime
2000 Ordained as a monk in Korea and
worksin master’stemple,
Bulkwang-sa
2003-4 Livesin ChinaandJapanfor
languagestudyandPhDresearch
2012 PublishesThingsYouCanSeeOnly
WhenYouSlowDownin Korea
2014 ReachesonemillionTwitter
followers
2015 OpenstheSchoolof BrokenHearts
in Seoul;andin Busan, 2018
2019 Publishes Love for Imperfect Things
in English