Rev. Danny Fisher

One of our Ph.D. students at University of the West, Venerable Hyun Gak Sunim, served as the English translator for Master Sul Jung Sunim, the P’ang Jang (or, spiritual head) of the Chogye Order of Korean Buddhism, during his recent visit to the United States.  Master Sul Jung came to the Detroit Zen Center from November 5^th-8^th for a series of events, including lecture, a precept ceremony, and an ordination ceremony.  Representatives of the Chogye Order of South Korea were tasked with selecting one venerable from all of the members of the Chogye Order in North America for this duty, and they selected Ven. Hyun Gak.  This was not only a great personal honor for her, but a point of pride for our university to be able to say that one of our students did this.  We in the Religious Studies Department were especially proud of her.

Ven. Hyun Gak has been a friend since I first came to the institution as a student.  (If memory serves, we were the only two doctoral students to begin in the spring semester of 2007, so we did all of our orientation activities together.)  Among other things, we travelled with some of our fellow classmates to Taiwan in January 2008.  She has one of the best hearts of anybody I’ve ever known, and has been more of a teacher for me than a colleague. 

As usual, she came back from her trip bearing gifts.  I received the flower pictured above (the big one), which has been at my shrine keeping me company until recently.  It has reminded me of something Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche wrote in his book Turning the Mind into an Ally, pg. 7:

A society of hard and inflexible minds is a society that is incapable of nurturing the flowers of love and compassion. This is the source of the dark age. We tend to question our goodness and our wisdom. When we question these things, we begin to use seemingly more convenient ways to deal with our problems. We are less ready to use love and compassion, more ready to use aggression. So we have to continuously remind ourselves of basic goodness.