Zen Master Seung Sahn (Dae Soen Sa Nim) is the founding teacher of the Kwan Um School of Zen, and is the seventy-eighth Patriarch in the line of Transmission in the Chogye order of Korean Buddhism.

He received transmission at the age of twenty-two years from the famous Korean Zen Master Ko Bong, so becoming the youngest Zen Master in Korea. After three years of silent meditation, he devoted himself to the renovation of the Chogye Order and founded an important lay organization, the United Buddhism Association. After founding temples in Tokyo and Hong Kong, Zen Master Seung Sahn came to the United States, becoming the first Korean Zen Master to live and teach in the West.

With the aid of a small number of students, he founded the Providence Zen Center, which eventually became the headquarters of more than one hundred centers throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Zen Master Seung Sahn is the author of ‘Compass of Zen’, ‘The Whole World is a Single Flower – 365 Kong-Ans For Everyday Life’, ‘Dropping Ashes on the Buddha’, ‘Only Don’t Know’, ‘Ten Gates’ and ‘Bone of Space’.  Dae Soen Sa Nim died on 30th November 2004.

•   Teaching articles from Zen Master Seung Sahn

Jo-Alma Potter was born in Arizona 1954 and grew up in a Mexican-American family.  She studied clinical nutrition and graduated from Arizona State University.

She began to practice meditation when she was seventeen years old and traveled to India in early 1980.  She began to study Zen and Buddhism in India. In 1986, she moved to Berlin Germany, living there for 25 years, learned the German language and worked for a financial office.

She met Zen Master Seung Sahn and his teachings in the early 1990’s and intensified her meditation practice in the Kwan Um School of Zen with Zen Master Seung Sahn and his successors. She worked as the Abbot of the Berlin Zen Center from 1995 until 2006 and helped to build and establish that the Zen Center.

In 2008, she  received the title Ji Do Poep Sa and Inka the official seal of approval to teach Kong-an- from Zen Master Wu Bong .  She has traveled worldwide leading and teaching Zen retreats.

She lives in Vienna now since one year and directs her energy to establish and teach in the Vienna Zen Center.  She guides the Kwan Um Zen Groups in Vienna, Palma de Mallorca, Hungary and Mexico City.

“We intuit in the depth of each night, that life is so precious and nevertheless we often have the feeling that we do not really know what our work on the earth should be, that we do not know ourselves.  What are we meant to do during our lifetime?  What direction should we give our lives.  When and where should we begin to investigate?”    (Jo-Alma Potter)

•   Inka Speech (pdf)

Knud Rosenmayr begann im Jahr 1995 zu praktizieren als er Zen-Meister Seung Sahn in Korea traf. Nach Abschluss seines Studiums an der Universität in Wien, begann er bei einer Sprachschule zu arbeiten und heiratete 2008 in Nepal. Seit 1999 ist er der Gruppenleiter der Wiener Kwan Um Zen-Gruppe und wurde 2013 Abt des Zen-Zentrums in Wien. Er erhielt im März 2016 Inka (Lehrbefugnis) von Zen-Meister Ji Kwang in Wu Bong Sa, Polen.

• Inka Dharma Speech