Kwan Haeng Sunim is an American monk ordained in the Korean Zen tradition. He first went to Korea in 1997 and took full monk precepts in 2003. He is currently the Abbot and co-Guiding Teacher of Providence Zen Center in Rhode Island. As a Ji Do Poep Sa Nim (authorized koan teacher) he often gives talks as part of the PZC Sunday Dharma Program, which can be found here: https://providencezen.org/programs. This is an excerpt from a conversation we had in October 2024.
CT: How have you seen difficult feelings such as anger emerge in your own life and how did you practice with it?
KHS: I’ve been practicing since age 32. [At that time] I went out and I started a job and something appeared for me – a personal interaction with somebody. I went home and I had kind of like this pressure on my chest, which brought me back to a time when I was really young and something which made me really angry. The anger had appeared in my life time and time again and I had no idea what it was until I was 32 years old. I went to a therapist asked him about it and he said that this was not an unusual thing to happen later on in life when you got distance from the from the experience.
I [had started Zen] practice after having found out what trauma was at the root of my anger, yet the anger still appeared and it got to the point where I had to drop everything in my life and I went to Korea [for a long meditation retreat]. I want to point out that I’ve also had many years of therapy, in fact I started in the 80s. In the 80s they didn’t understand at that point how strongly our past experiences could affect you in your present day. So then I went to Korea and I sat and while I sat I began to look at this this thing and there were some things that are very important that appeared to me, [things about] anger that are just universal.
One is that anger has no self nature. That means that the more you dwell on it the bigger it gets, the less you dwell on it the smaller it gets. It’s very simple, very simple.
The second phase of this is that if you’ve had anger in your life for a long time what happens is you’ve been using it as a crutch. You’ve been hiding a lot of things [but] these things are still appearing. Once you deal with that anger then [you start to see the] stuff that you’ve been covering up with that anger.
I found [all of this] through the technique of sitting. When you sit you simply come back to this moment and breath in [while saying] ‘clear mind, clear mind, clear mind’ and breathe out [saying] ‘don’t know’. As you do that then whatever is in your psyche begins to appear, if you do this on a regular basis. It’s very important that you don’t hold on to [anything] and you don’t push [anything] away. If you don’t hold on to it and you don’t push it away then whatever appears begins to have less of a hold on you.
I had so much anger. I sat there and it didn’t just float away, it didn’t just disappear. I sat there angry and I had to look at it. [I was so angry that] I decided I’m leaving this [retreat], these guys are knuckleheads. (laughter) That was halfway through, but the Zen master came and gave a talk, which was about coming back to the center and just staying there. The practice you have is your anchor. Breathing with “clear mind” or mantra or whatever. That is your anchor. In that way, you can allow whatever appears to fall away. So that’s what I did. I said I’ve got nothing to lose, I may as well go ahead and try it.
The second half of that retreat [was] coming back and coming back and I watched the anger rise and I watched it fall. Some people are afraid that their anger is going to destroy them. It doesn’t, it can’t. As big and as high as it got it just would fall away at some point. Once you attain this point then you can teach it to other people, how to not dwell on the anger.
CT: Are there times when people have come struggling with anger and you recommend things other than sitting?
KHS: Oh for sure. One of the most important things, especially for people that work, and you come home upset and you’ve been practicing – instead of coming home and folding your legs when you’re angry that’s not a good time. A lot of anger is not easily taken care of by sitting. You know, you have to have a lot of a lot of strength. In my case [I was] somewhat hopeless in this situation and had no choice. But a good way to deal with it is doing something physical like running. When somebody finishes a marathon you go up and say “What is Bob’s phone number?” You both know Bob, and you ask his phone number and he’s huffing and puffing. He can’t remember, he can’t think. That’s the idea. Someone who does a marathon can’t hold anger like that. Bowing is very good. Chanting is very good. If you have a lot of anger bowing and chanting are good.
CT: You had told me one story, that you recommended somebody go do 3000 bows.
KHS: The whole thing about that is that you don’t wanna do too much of something when you have a lot of anger because anger is gonna come up fast. 108 bows in the morning is good. I recommend 3000 bows when somebody has a question and they don’t have an answer. Should I move to Korea? Should I become a monk? Should I get married? Those kinds of questions if you do 3000 bows, when you’re bowing all you can do is bow. Your mind becomes clear in that sense in those times. And then what happens a couple days later you’re walking around on the street and that clarity that you had when you were bowing all of a sudden it appears and the answer just jumps out at you. That comes from your intuitive mind, your before thinking mind, universal mind, and that’s your answer. That’s not the Buddha’s answer, that’s not your mother’s answer, it’s not your friend’s answer, it’s not society’s answer, that’s your answer. Sometimes I’ll do some practice and get an answer and it’ll be a scary answer. I don’t know if I want to do that. (laughter)
CT: You have a lot of people coming to you asking questions about all kinds of things. When do you feel like it makes sense to recommend that somebody seek out therapy in addition to practice?
KHS: Sadness and depression, I mean I don’t have a lot of that in my life because I went the way of anger (laughter). It’s interesting. Some people go the way of sadness and depression.
I’ve known people I’ve talked to about sadness and what happens sometimes when they sit or practice is that they go into it deeper. In that case I do recommend therapy. In Korea there’s stigma for people to see a therapist. Sometimes people come to me and sometimes my job was to just have them relax with the idea of taking psychiatric medicine. Taking the medicine for depression or something like that. I found that once they started doing that their practicing improved a lot and maybe they get to have a handle on their life.
Whatever happened originally that made me quite angry also made me quite sad. I draw a difference between sadness and depression. So there’s clinical depression. You definitely need to see a therapist on that, but regular sadness … you just bring yourself back to where you are, with “clear mind, clear mind, clear mind, don’t know”. As time goes by that sadness has less of a hold on you and you can understand that sadness, what it is, and get some wisdom from digesting that. Anger and sadness have utility, they’re there for a reason. I would say, yeah, if [a kid] runs out in the street you reach out and grab that youngster and pull them back. A mother does that. She’s going to get really angry at that kid and rightfully so. That’s a way you use anger.
CT: [We can also talk about] trauma. What you described about anger that it came up from long ago and it seemed almost like an alien thing. Trauma is a dissociative process that can break the links between things.
KHS: It didn’t feel like a cause and effect thing until I put the two things together … I learned while I was working in prison … you can’t sit there and give them meditation [instruction] because they’ve got so much trauma, especially women. One of the things that we would do is teach that if you started to get angry you gotta be able to count to 10. It’s very simple just to count to 10. The inmates at the prison, there was this one big guy who said that someone got him angry and you know how the prison has tiers. He picked the guy up and held him over the [tier]. But he did his thing (counted to ten) and [pulled him back] and put him back down. He somehow interrupted that anger. You’ve got to step back. When you get angry you’ve got to get in the habit of stepping back.
Also, Zen Master Seung Sahn would say “what are you doing just now?” You can bring yourself into this moment. This fear, butterflies in the belly with no reason. If you sit there and it’s going to be there, what can I do with it? I would say [you can use a mantra]. Just keep doing that. It can get you through that. You can get physically active, huffing and puffing. Some of us are too old to run. But mantra and “What am I doing just now?” Zen Master Soeng Hyang always says “What is this?” If you say “What is this?” and you don’t try to intellectualize it. It’s just what’s in front of you.
Just to say that [anger] has no self nature doesn’t make sense, you have to do it in the context of practice. When sitting and that anger appears you simply come back the best you can. Of course your mind goes to anger and then you bring it back. In that way you can cut down on the power of the anger. The thing, it’s not going to go away so it will always be there. Your mind is a good servant and a bad master. If you can just come back to this moment then you are in charge of how your mind is.