Yeondeung International Seon Center, Where Mountain and Sea Become One

The practice ground where mountain and sea become one: Yeondeung International Seon Center.

Yeondeung International Seon Center has two halls: Snow Mountain Hall (雪山堂) and Jade Sea Hall (碧海堂).

The mountain (山) of Snow Mountain Hall symbolizes practice that is high and unshakable, while the sea (海) of Jade Sea Hall symbolizes wisdom and compassion as vast and deep as the ocean.

A mountain does not waver; it silently holds its ground. A practitioner, too, amid countless trials and difficulties, must walk their own path with a mind as unmoved as a mountain.

The sea accepts every river without discrimination. Taking in both clear water and murky water, the sea never loses its vastness and depth. In the same way, a practitioner's mind must set down discriminating thought and attachment, and widen into the compassion and wisdom that can hold every being.

So Yeondeung International Seon Center, where Snow Mountain Hall and Jade Sea Hall stand together, can be called a practice ground that embraces both mountain and sea.

Here, the meaning naturally continues from Seongcheol Keun Sunim's famous teaching, “Mountains are mountains, waters are waters.”

At first, we see a mountain as a mountain and water as water. But as practice deepens, we come to question everything we once took for granted.

‘Who am I?’ ‘What is this world I am looking at?’ ‘Where do liking and disliking arise from?’ ‘Where does this discrimination that divides self and other come from?’

As this practice deepens, the discriminating view of ‘self’ and ‘world’ that we had firmly held onto begins to collapse.

But awakening is not about leaving this world to seek out another.

When discrimination and attachment fall away and we see our original mind directly, the mountain is once again a mountain, and the water is once again water.

Only, they are not the mountain and water of before.

It is not that the mountain and the water have changed; it is the mind that beholds them that has changed.

That is why Seongcheol Keun Sunim's words, “Mountains are mountains, waters are waters,” awaken in us the eye of awakening that sees truth exactly as it is.

In that sense, the mountain of Snow Mountain Hall and the sea of Jade Sea Hall carry an even deeper symbolism.

The mountain is unwavering practice. The sea is boundless compassion. And to behold that mountain and sea exactly as they are is wisdom.

To practice steadfastly like a mountain, to embrace widely like the sea, and at last to see everything exactly as it is, beyond the discrimination of mountain and sea, self and other, inside and outside.

That is the place toward which practice is heading.

So, with Snow Mountain Hall and Jade Sea Hall standing together, Yeondeung International Seon Center is not a practice ground completed merely by adding one more building.

It is becoming complete as a ground of practice where mountain and sea blend together, where practice and compassion accompany each other, and where wisdom and action become one.

The mountain is a mountain, and the sea is a sea.

But just as mountain and sea are not separate from each other, awakening and our everyday life are not two.

At Yeondeung International Seon Center, which holds both mountain and sea, practitioners from around the world cultivate the mind together, see themselves directly, awaken to their original mind, and carry that wisdom and compassion back out into the world—

This is the deep meaning that Snow Mountain Hall and Jade Sea Hall together fulfill at Yeondeung International Seon Center, and it can be called the path of practice and awakening toward which this ground of practice aspires.