Venerable Bom Hyon Sunim is from the Korean Zen tradition and is resident at the Korean Jong Bop Sa Temple in Sydney. Sunim has recently relocated to Sydney, having lived in Victoria for the past 8 years, where she was the resident teacher of the Bodhi Ahm Buddhist Centre and founded the Healthcare Chaplaincy program for the Buddhist Council. She is also the Senior Buddhist Chaplain for the Australian Defence Forces.

Sunim conducts regular teachings and retreats and continues to teach regularly with the Melbourne Sakya group. She is active in interfaith and welcomes engagement with all who are spiritually & ecologically motivated to live in right relationship to the planet & all beings.

Everyone can do haiku!

It’s fun, playful, insightful.

It challenges our habitual grasping and concept-forming mind activity.

Haiku is a traditional form of Zen poetry consisting of 3 lines.

It focuses on one brief moment in time, employs provocative, colorful imagery, and provides a sudden moment of illumination. The essence of haiku is cutting through. This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a ‘cutting word’ or image between them - a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation, and colours the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related. Haiku can also be expressed in image and line drawings.

Moon is moon & trees are trees.

On the other hand, moon and trees

are not what they seem to be.

Learning to move between the two

we delight in the dance of life.

 

At the ultimate heart of the body,

and at the heart of the universe,

there is no solidity,

there is only the dance.

All things vanish like the imprint of a bird in the sky, a flash of lightening in

the dark, a surge of waves on the surface of the ocean, a reflection in a mirror,

a film projected on the screen, words on a blackboard, a sand mandala -poof!

“An old silent pond...

A frog jumps into the pond,

Splash! Silence again.”

Basho