US scholar recounts how Korean Zen master shaped his life
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Peter Hershock, director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, during an interview on June 20 / Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung
By Kang Hyun-kyung
HONOLULU — Peter Hershock, director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the University of Hawaii-based think tank East-West Center, had enjoyed his wanderlust until he met Korean Zen master Seung Sahn in the early 1980s.
Hershock’s life has since made a drastic turn. Not only did he convert to Buddhism from Catholicism, but he has also educated the public to use their energy and creativity to improve their community, rather than for mindless or purposeless consumption.
Born into and raised in a conservative Catholic family, Hershock was encouraged by his pious parents to attend Mass every Sunday. However, he later realized that no one in the church could give a satisfactory answer to the question that had been in his heart since he was six years old — Where is God?
As his question remained unanswered, he began to wonder what the purpose of attending Mass every Sunday was.
The turning point came years after he graduated from Yale. After seeing a billboard for Seung Sahn’s lecture, Hershock became determined to go there to listen to what the Korean Zen master was going to say.
“His English was okay, although it was not great,” Hershock said during a recent interview with The Korea Times at the institute in Honolulu. “But everything he was saying made sense. His lecture went on for about 20 to 30 minutes, but I couldn’t think of a single question to ask him that he had not already answered.”
Seung Sahn (1927-2004) is a towering figure in Korean Buddhism overseas, particularly in the United States. As a master of the Jorgye Order of Korean Seon, he went to the United States in 1974 and established several Buddhist organizations, including the Cambridge Zen Center near Harvard and the International Kwan Um School of Zen, to spread Buddhism there.
His concise but insightful lectures made him a prominent teacher. Students from Harvard, Yale and Brown attended his lectures, with some becoming so inspired by his teachings that they eventually converted to Buddhism, such as Harvard alumnus-turned-Buddhist monk Hyon Gak. Born Paul Muenzen in a conservative Catholic family in New Jersey, Hyon Gak wrote the best-selling autobiography “From Harvard to Hawgesa.”
Seung Sahn had been a relatively unknown figure in Korea until 1999 when the book was published.
In the autobiography, the American Buddhist elaborated on how his life made a turn for the better after he attended Seung Sahn’s lecture at Harvard in the 1980s. He was ordained a monk under the Zen master in 1992.
Seung Shan’s lecture also changed many others, including the self-described self-centered and arrogant Hershock. He joined the weekend meditation retreat, which included six hours of meditation per day and silence. “At the end of the retreat, I thought this is it. I’ll do this for the rest of my life,” he said.
Thereafter, he practiced Buddhism for six years under Seung Sahn. He said the late Zen master helped him understand the world from the Buddhist perspective.
“His teaching was very direct and straightforward and he used lots of common examples,” Hershock said.
At the first retreat Hershock attended, Seung Sahn asked his students what the Buddhist word “mu” meant. The word means “to not have” or “to go without.”
“I was sitting there and knew what it meant, but I was thinking about how I would answer that question because his English was not so good,” Hershock said. “He looked into my eyes and took his wooden stick, pushing it really hard into my spine. It really hurt. He said, “‘The bus is already in downtown,’ meaning I missed the opportunity to respond.”
It was Seung Sahn who encouraged Hershock to pursue an academic career. Hershock said he had three career options — becoming a carpenter, a scholar or a Buddhist monk. Seung Sahn told him that an academic career is more suitable for him than the other two. Hershock was considering studying at Harvard, Stanford, Yale or the University of Hawaii. Seung Sahn recommended the last university.
Hershock said one of the most memorable teachings of the Buddhist leader was about the importance of a tiny little thing. “Basically, he was saying that nothing here goes to waste. If you take it seriously, whether it is food, a teaching or a smile that somebody gives you in passing, everything from the world is a gift .... Every tiny little thing teaches us.”
Hershock’s conversion to Buddhism, however, cost him his relationship with his mother.
“My mother was very disappointed because you can imagine the kind of a child I was. She wanted me to become a priest,” he said. “In our family, there were five children, four boys and a daughter, who was the eldest. I was in the middle. In a Catholic family, if you have four boys, at least one of them should become a priest, and I was the most likely candidate.”
The tense mother-son relationship gradually eased over time as the two tried to understand each other.
After graduating from Yale and after six years under Seung Sahn’s mentorship, Hershock followed his teacher’s advice and met with Honolulu-based Buddhist master Jikwang Daebeop. While it was Seung Sahn who encouraged Hershock to enter the world of Buddhism, the female master has also had a lasting impact on Hershock’s scholarly work.
Jikwang Daebeop’s teachings centered on social Buddhism or engaged Buddhism, a movement that seeks to apply the religion’s values and teachings to solve the current issues in the real world, including environmental, political and social justice issues. She inspired Hershock to focus his academic activities on enlightening the world to use its energy and creativity for productive outcomes that can benefit the community.
Hershock considers his 1999 book, “Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age,” as an exemplary publication that suggests solutions to real-world problems.
“People talk about the world economy running on fossil fuels such as oil and coal, but that’s not really what the global economy runs on. It really runs on human beings’ attention. Our awareness is the basic commodity that runs the global economy,” he said.
According to him, people spend too much time using social media or watching television, which are not likely to improve human beings’ living conditions.
“If you are spending four hours of your attention every day on television or radio or the Internet, it’s not going to help our families or neighbors. And I started to think that’s what the global economy is running on. We are just taking our attention and putting it into global circulation,” he said.
He said in 2008, 20 billion hours of human energy were spent on watching the Olympic Games, which lasted for two weeks. If such an amount of time, energy and creativity could be spent instead on daunting issues like climate change that troubles the world, he said a great deal of those problems would be solved.