Come into the tea-room & with Zen monks Hwalson, and his student Myungju, at the Detroit Zen Center, as they read spiritual folk-tales, and share conversations about them.
A thief becomes a sage, after his foot is chopped off as punishment for his crimes. As a transformed man, people trust and follow him. Join us in the tea room as Sunim reads the story of the great sage Tumbledown, as told by Confucius, and then he and Myungju asks Sunim to share his thoughts on the path.
War: The curse of humanity. An old man with a wrangled & broken arm shares his story from youth, of being the lone surviving man in the entire region, of a long & bloody war in 8th century China that killed 10 million men over the course of decades. A story in the book of prose & poems by Po Ch'u I, a famous poet & Taoist of 8th century China. Translated by David Hinton.
The 4 Adepts is a story read from the Chuang Tzu. The theme is 'yielding'. Story read by Abbot Hwalson Sunim, then a conversation afterward together with Vice-Abbot Myungju Sunim. On the 4 Adepts (Taoist Sages): As Adept Cart becomes sick and faces death, he shares with us & his fellow sages his own fearless and yielding view of death, as a simple extension of the eventual passing of all things.... This version of Chuang Tzu has been translated by David Hinton, and is part of his collection The 4 Classics (of Taoism). Thank you for listening...
