In the Lake View area of the North Side of Chicago, three blocks west of Wrigley Field, sits the Chicago Zen Buddhist Temple of the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom. The temple follows the same architectural design of the apartments next-door, distinguished only by the walls of red and yellow brick and the Japanese characters above the door that read “Zen Lotus Temple.” From the outside, there’s nothing traditionally temple-like about it—a casual passerby might confuse it for a shop or a language school—but it’s been a Buddhist temple for nearly 25 years. In 1991, the Venerable Samu Sunim and his disciples renovated this building, creating the third official temple for the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom. Since then, the temple has served as a place for hundreds of Chicagoans to practice, study, and worship Buddhism under the Mahayana teachings of Samu Sunim.
Samu Sunim didn’t head to North America with the express interest of teaching Buddhist thought. An article published in a 1999 edition of the Chicago Reader, titled “Have Hammer, Will Travel,” provides a brief summary of Samu Sunim’s life. He was born in Korea in 1941, but orphaned at the age of 11 after his father died in war and his mother died from illness. He spent the next few years living on the streets, taking up jobs, and attending school. When he was 15, he became attracted to Buddhism. He claims that he became a Buddhist for “all the wrong reasons,” opting to join a monastery simply because it was a comparatively nicer place to live than the side of the road. Sunim continued his studies, however, and in 1983, he was transmitted dharma from his master Weolha Sunim. The article explains how Sunim later moved from Korea to Japan to North America, settling in New York City in 1967. While there, he founded the Zen Lotus Society. His teachings, however, didn’t pick up much steam in New York and his credit card had expired, so Sunim decided to move to Canada in 1968. By 1976, he had 15 followers, mostly college-aged hippies. His group built temples in Toronto and Ann Arbor, Michigan, eventually traveling to Chicago, Illinois in 1991. Samu Sunim and his followers constructed every aspect of these temples. They fixed plumbing, scrubbed floors, purchased furniture, tore down old walls, put up new walls, and transformed urban dwellings into Buddhist spaces. Sunim claims that the process of building the temple was more difficult in Chicago than in the first two cities. He said that his followers in Canada and Michigan were young and willing to labor, while those in Chicago were “professional people” and “not used to manual work.” Eventually, the temple was built and Sunim began teaching in Chicago. Today, Samu Sunim is still the “spiritual director and head” of the temples in Chicago and Ann Arbor. He leads meditation retreats, teaches dharma classes, writes spring newsletters and email blasts, and continues to spread the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism that he learned as a teenager.
Samu Sunim is a mostly respected member of the Buddhist community, but some people doubt his legitimacy as an officially trained monk. In 2006, James Ford published a book called Zen Master Who? that discusses the spread of Zen Buddhism in North America. In the book, he claims that Samu Sunim broke his celibacy while serving as a monk and that he never actually received the dharma transmission to make him a valid Zen teacher. Since Mahayana Buddhism is dependent on the transfer of dharma from teacher to student, this was a serious allegation. Two years later, the author posted an apology on his blog along with corrected facts and a promise to fix Samu Sunim’s narrative in future editions of the book. It was too little, too late, however, and there are still many blogs and online chat forums that claim Sunim is an improper teacher.
Sunim’s main desire as a Buddhist teacher is to help others become enlightened beings by spreading Mahayana Buddhism. On his website, the Society lists the “Nine Statements” that people should follow. Most of the statements are straightforward and in line with traditional Mahayana teachings and Zen practices. Most statements emphasize how we are all interconnected and have a Buddha nature that can be found through the practice of meditation. They also state that the Three Jewels, the Threefold Trainings, and the Three Canons are essential teachings that all Buddhists should live by. Only the last few Statements start to stray away from the direct words of the Buddha, asserting that we should follow Right Livelihood to escape temptations of technology and that we should have inter-religious and inter-Buddhist conversations to create peace in our divided world.
The community has its foundation in the Mahayana view that anybody who wants to work to achieve enlightenment is a bodhisattva. Followers do not have to be monastic in order to realize their own Buddha-nature. Thus, laypeople can visit the monastery once a month and still consider themselves bodhisattvas so long as they are committed to working toward awakening. Additionally, the community seems to focus heavily on following the teachings of the Lotus Sutra and the Heart Sutra. Both sutras are discussed or referred to in the common chants and recitations contained in Moon Journeying Through the Clouds, a book written by Samu Sunim for the Buddhist Society of Compassionate Wisdoms’s services. Members of the community also follow Maitreya Buddhism, believing that Maitreya, the next Buddha to turn the Wheel of Dharma, is responsible for helping people master meditation and achieve awakening. The main emphasis of the community is on the Zen practices of achieving awakening through meditation. Sunim’s newsletters and webpages lack an explicit description of the Society’s view of karma or acts of merit. It appears that the only way for people to achieve awakening is through mindful practice and attending classes and retreats to attain a deeper understanding of Buddhism.
In 1990, The Zen Lotus Society changed its name to the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom. According to the Society’s website, this new name signifies a “transition from Asian forms of monastic Buddhism to salvation and enlightenment for all.” The Chicago Zen Buddhist Temple provides many opportunities for “urban professionals,” the laymen of urban life, to find enlightenment. From the pictures posted over the years on the website, it seems as though the main demographic at this temple is white, young and middle-aged adults. There appears to be some diversity, but the overwhelming majority of people in the pictures seem to be white Americans.
For those with the desire and resources to get involved, there are four levels of commitment a person can make at the Chicago temple. The lowest commitment is attendance at public services. On the side of the building there is a painted scroll that says the temple holds public services every Sunday at 9:00 am, serving as a permanent advertisement for people walking past the building on their way to services at the Community Church across the street. Most of these public services are held on Sunday mornings. These services involve stretching, meditation, dharma talks, and tea. There are also concurrent Sunday Children’s Services that involve yoga and meditation. All public services suggest providing a $5 donation to the temple. These Sunday morning meetings strongly resemble other Western religious practices, demonstrating how this community is making an effort to meld Buddhist tradition with the routines of Western religions and the scheduled nature of urban life.
A larger commitment to the temple is demonstrated by routinely attending Meditation Courses. The Chicago temple offers two levels of Meditation Courses, Intermediate and Advanced. It costs $160 dollars for either of the courses and you can pay an additional $160 for the opportunity to participate in a Zen retreat at the temple. Community members who frequent the temple can benefit by becoming general or regular members, free to attend temple as often as desired with a monthly fee of $20 or $40, respectively. This process of paying to use the resources and the temple seems very similar to the system of membership discussed in Wendy Cage’s discussion of Buddhist practices at CIMC. The Chicago Zen Buddhist Temple, however, is unique in that it is also a seminary. People can apply and pay to attend a three or five year course to become educated as “Buddhist teachers without renouncing their worldly life pursuits” or to gain “full monastic training in an urban setting.” The temple does, however, attempt to make Buddhist teachings freely accessible to those who cannot afford a course or membership. Many of the Venerable Samu Sunim’s dharma talks are available as mp3s and PDFs on the Society’s website.
The temple in Chicago maintains strong ties with the four other temples in the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom. The different temples often organize group retreats and lecture conferences that can be attended by anybody who is interested. Additionally, the temple works to draw on its Korean roots. The seminary reaches out to Korean Buddhist students, providing them with the opportunity to attend and teach courses in the temple. On the Society’s website, there is a separate tab completely in Korean that (according to Google Translate) explains why it is important for Koreans to work to share their understanding of the world in the setting of a Western Buddhist temple.
The ultimate goal of the Chicago Zen Buddhist Temple is to spread Buddhist thought to as many people as possible. At this temple, Buddhism is viewed less as a religion and more as a way to lead one’s life. Buddhism helps people in this community to see their place in the world and find peace amid the chaos of urban society, spreading compassion and wisdom along the way.
