Hyunoong

Infobox Buddhist biography
name = Hyunoong Sunim


img_size =
img_capt =
landscape =
birth_name =
other_names =
dharma_name =
birth_date =
birth_place = South Korea
death_date =
death_place =
nationality =
denomination = Seon
also Taoist
school =
lineage =
title = Sunim
workplace = Sixth Patriarch Zen Center
Sixth Patriarch Temple
education =
occupation =
teacher =
reincarnation_of =
predecessor = Kusan Sunim
successor =
student =
spouse =
partner =
children =
website =

Hyunoong Sunim is a Korean Zen master as well as a Taoist Master born in South Korea. He is a Dharma heir of Ku San Sunim and entered Songkwang-sa Buddhist Monastery when he was 20 years old. After ten years of training in Zen Meditation halls, he spent some years training under Taoist Master Chong San and in 1982 was sanctioned as a Taoist Master. Master Sunim spent six years in rigorous practice alone in hermitages in remote mountain areas. There he followed a raw food diet, eating what the mountains made available. One early spring day while sitting in the Zen hall suddenly all his doubts were resolved and he wrote the following song of enlightenment:

" Even existing dharmas must be discarded, So how can we cling to Dharmas which don't exist! Ah ha! Futilely the Ancients busily pursued enlightenment, then departed. The countenance, existing of its own accord I wonder who named it buddha or sentient being? Even one true Dharma cannot survive. Outside the window, the cherry tree is singing this news. "Fact|date=January 2008

He is currently head abbot of temples on two continents, the Sixth Patriarch Zen Center in Berkeley, CA and the Sixth Patriarch Temple in Seoul, South Korea. He has taught in various Zen centers throughout the United States and Switzerland.