Video

Ted O’Toole –  It Is Like a Quilt: How Can I Care for All Beings and Still Care for Myself?

Talk Title: It Is Like a Quilt: How Can I Care for All Beings and Still Care for Myself?

Talk Summary: Shinshu Roberts says in Meeting the Myriad Things that all aspects of Buddhism are one thing. “It is like a quilt,” she says, in that “we work one piece at a time, but there is a larger project – the quilt itself.” She also says that “even after a practitioner has experienced the time of working on the whole, it is okay to respond to each piece as it arises, because that is often how life meets us.” If all beings make up the quilt as a whole, and each of us is an individual piece, when must we work to free all beings, and when must we work on caring for our own individual selves? How do we find the proper balance in difficult times?

Peace Begins Within – Sung Ha Yun, PhD

Talk Summary (as stated by Dr Yun):  

“Not long ago, I received a heartfelt letter from a fellow Won Buddhist practitioner. He spoke of the turmoil and conflicts spreading across our world, and he asked with sincerity: ‘In such troubled times, how should I, as a practitioner, steady my heart and live my life?’  His words carried both the weight of deep concern and the gentle wish to bring even a small measure of healing to the world.

We live in an age filled with uncertainty, restlessness, and fear. In such a time, how do we walk the path of practice? How do we nurture peace in our own hearts so that it may ripple outward to others?

This Dharma talk invites you to reflect with me on these questions and to explore together how peace can begin within each of us.

Biography:  Professor Yun received her M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014 and her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2021. She was ordained as a Won Buddhist kyomu (priest) in 2007 and was awarded the prestigious ACLS/Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies in 2020.

Dr. Yun is currently preparing her book manuscript, Making a ‘Congregation of a Thousand Buddhas and a Million Bodhisattvas’: A Study of the Formation of Won Buddhism, a New Korean Buddhist Religion. The manuscript explores the dynamic interplay between indigenous Korean spirituality, East Asian Buddhistpractices, modernity, and evolving interpretations of the concept of “religion.”

Since Fall 2021, Dr. Yun has served as an Assistant Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at St. Olaf College, where she teaches courses on Buddhism, Asian cultures and religions, and East Asian new religious movements. Her research interests include Korean Buddhism, gender and Buddhism, East Asian new religious movements, and Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy.