Daehaeng Kun Sunim

Daehaeng Kun Sunim (大行, 1927–2012) is one of the most important Korean female Sŏn masters of the twentieth century and the founder of the Hanmaum Seonwon ('One-Mind Sŏn Centre') network, which by her death numbered fifteen branches in Korea and another fifteen abroad^[1]. Ordained in 1950 in the wake of the Korean War, she spent her early years in mountain hermitages refusing the formal Jogye Order monastic curriculum, working instead from her own awakening — a position the Order later affirmed by recognising her teaching authority and granting her dharma-name lineage status^[1]. Her teaching, distilled in dozens of dharma talks published as *No River to Cross* and *Wake Up and Laugh*, centres on Han Maeum, 'one mind' — the invitation to entrust everything to the foundation of one's own true nature rather than to method, ritual, or teacher^[2]. Daehaeng's significance is doubled: she is both a major modern Sŏn teacher in her own right and a watershed figure for Korean Buddhist nuns, having opened formal teaching paths in a tradition where female lineage transmission had long been informal^[1].