Zen Master?

A Zen Master: Fool, Fraud or Genuine?

From 1977 until 1990 I was intensely involved in a purported zen martial art, Shim Gum Do (SGD), or the Mind Sword Path, under the leadership of its founding master, Chang Sik Kim (CSK).  His teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn (SSN), fostered the discovery through meditation of this martial art, Shim Gum Do. Both emigrated to Providence, Rhode Island from S. Korea and I met them in Boston. After I left the practice in mid 1990, I wrote a long essay about my reasons for abandoning this martial art. I have taken that essay and enlarged it to read as a history and a cautionary tale. 

This month marks a year since I left Shim Gum Do. For thirteen years with an absence of two years as an orthodox Jew in Far Rockaway I trained as a martial artist and practitioner of zen under the direction of Chang Sik Kim.  He was a self professed zen master and founding master of Shim Gum Do. He told everyone he had spent one hundred days on top of a mountain in S. Korea in deep meditation during which Buddha taught him the arts of sword, karate, long stick, short stick, two sword and street defense. These encompass approximately one thousand forms. He claimed to be a student of Seung Sahn, a famous zen master in Korea and America of the Chogya Sa Order of Zen Buddhism. 

During my time as a student, Seung Sahn did visit SGD and did give dharma talks and interviews. That he came to Shim Gum Do augured the belief that Chang Sik Kim was one of his chief students and possibly the only enlightened one. In 1985 SSN stopped visiting Shim Gum Do due to some bitter disagreement between them. Seung Sahn Nim had  established several zen centers, the first one in Providence, R.I., and relations between those centers and Shim Gum Do were severed. Michael Elta, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, an advanced student of both Shim Gum Do and of Seung Sahn’s zen centers simultaneously, was thrown out of Shim Gum Do though he wished to remain a student. Elta had criticised the way Chang Sik Kim administered Shim Gum Do in letters he wrote to him. He was a professor of Electrical Engineering at University of Michigan, and he ran a zen center. On November 25, 1985, he wrote a letter to Chang Sik Kim and the directors of Shim Gum Do, of which I was one. 

He explains that he held a retreat in the beginning of November which involved fifteen people, five of whom were not members of the center. The retreat consisted of meditation and free fighting. He alludes to a ‘minor political skirmish’ that occurred in the summer, which has caused some concern in the Head Temple in Boston.   That is, some of the people didn’t know the forms correctly, and free fighting was not a core part of the practice. It appears he is talking about a rearrangement in how the affiliate centers will be administered.  He wants them to be primarily independent from and only associated with Boston. 

This caused Chang Sik Kim to break up with Elta. He wanted to propose some commonsensical changes, and that was too much for Chang Sik Kim to bear, for it would lead to a dilution of his authority. 

This letter was the subject of a meeting to which all of the directors of Shim Gum Do were called to discuss. Chang Sik Kim said this letter proved Elta was a traitor, that it demeaned Shim Gum Do and Chang Sik Kim. He made threats to go after and hurt Elta if he continued to teach Shim Gum Do to his students in Ann Arbor. He cut him off from any association.  Seung Sahn Nim, on the contrary, advised Elta to continue teaching despite what Chang Sik Kim had said. This angered Chang Sik Kim,  and he offered it to us as the motivation for cutting him off.

Chang Sik Kim further complained, in support of his grievance against Elta, that the other students of Seung Sahn who had been awarded inka (a degree of enlightenment and permission to teach) did not show sufficient honor to him when he visited the Providence Zen Center. They treated him as a lower student since he had not earned inka yet. He made a big point of showing us that he too was a great master of koans. Koans are the classic way of interviewing a student of zen and measuring the level of his understanding. They are always puzzling to the rational mind and often self contradictory. Seung Sahn conducted his interviews with koans. Chang Sik Kim said he had originated many koans  and that his understanding of them was supreme and amazingly subtle. 

He turned from writing koans to poems in Korean that he swore were works of genius. Sang Won Park, who has some affiliation with Harvard, and who often visited Chang Sik Kim, offered faint praise of these works, “The poems are very fine considering the level of his education, the third grade.” 

Chang Sik Kim did read me a few of his poems in 1989 when he was in the furor of creation. He haltingly translated them and I thought them confusing. I gave him the benefit of the doubt since he had already created the beautiful art of Shim Gum Do. Appreciating poems written in a different language is always difficult. 

I forgave many things about him and the art since I had invested years of training. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. I began by separating the art from its inventor, as if the art, like Pinnochio, once created had a life of its own. In hindsight, I admit that I had cast my lot with this man Chang Sik Kim, and come hell or high water, I would stay with him. I believed that I could walk the high road and reap the rewards of correct practice. The precepts he gave were simple, “Only go straight, don’t look left or right, and believe in yourself one-hundred percent.” This practice was straightforward in both its meditational form and its active form. They acted in harmony. I had found as predicted by him that the clearer the meditation on the forms, the better the physical manifestation of them. He gave the example of showing the 35th form in magnificent style, exceedingly quick and with precision. He arrived there by the pristine quality of his meditation. He needn’t say it as it was obvious to the practitioner. That others descended into the pit of attachment to pleasure through drink, drugs and sex had little to do with me, or so I thought. Eventually the stink of his behavior especially toward his wife, Maria Rowe, pushed me out. The width of the separation between him and his art grew too large to swallow.

Over the preceding few years he had grown more and more unattractive. He began to drink, at first only on weekends to relieve the tension, and then all week. His drinking buddies were several of the senior students including Bob Britton, a house builder in Newburyport, MA,  David Mercinyak, a resident at the dojo, Mary Stackhouse who later married Chang Sik Kim,  Anthony Sanchez who with Stackhouse had been students of mine in Northampton, MA, Mark Fortin, one of the original students, and more, who sat around the large kitchen table downing vodka, whiskey, wine, beer and whatever else.  One time I joined them at the far corner of the table. At their request, I poured a tall glass of vodka. They dared me to drink it. I did. After a few minutes I went back to my room. I was still living there.  And collapsed on my bed. A distorted vision of myself as a fly swirling down a funnel into a hole overwhelmed me. 

Several of these students also smoked marijauna and used cocaine regularly. Once Sanchez, who liked to challenge me, fought me with bamboo swords we used for that purpose. As he moved incredibly fast I thought something was unusual. It was cocaine. Chang Sik Kim did nothing to stop it. He encouraged it by his own habit. I believe he had already become an alcoholic but like many refused to admit it. 

Zen masters follow the path of crazy wisdom. Chang Sik Kim possessed precious little merciful wisdom. I do not believe that all teachers have to be as pure as snow.  It is not even wisdom they require in order to teach.  A teacher and student can form a polarity. In this case, he set up an opposition that his students had to cross without guidance. He provided the first steps: the meditation, the martial art forms, the morning practice of chanting and bowing, the heart sutra, and his precepts. It was up to the student. The teacher’s job was done. If he, as he did, goes astray, his students don’t need to follow. It is not his fault that they are so weak.

Let us consider his wife, Maria Rowe, his highest ranking student whom he said was enlightened. She drank and used drugs with the rest of them.  Catherine Simmons, an erstwhile student, and though I only vaguely remember her, was evidently charming to Chang Sik Kim. He said he loved her, even while Maria was just giving birth to their second son. If my theory of teachers is correct, then here he was setting up an opposition that his wife had to cross to reach the higher stages of enlightenment. He crazily brought another woman into their relationship to test her stamina, strength and perseverance. He took one of the most primal relationships, that between husband and wife, and used it as a teaching tool. This is certainly immoral. But the received wisdom from the dominant western religions is more for the run-of-the-mill sort of being, who could’t find the middle path if his life was at stake, and it is. We who chose Shim Gum Do as our path had already departed from what was broadly thought of as respectable. One must commit oneself, if one is to break through the walls of conventionality and find the middle path.

Chang Sik Kim explained his divided love for both women. In a past life both women had been rivals for his affection. Accordingly, in this life he had a strong feeling for Catherine. This drove Maria wild with anger. The entire household of which I was a part, as my divorce had just happened, was in turmoil. To lend us moorings he revealed to us our past lives. On its face, what he was doing was both immoral and foolish. He told Mercinyak  he had been Tamourlane in a past life and was a worthy lover of Maria, and he urged him to bed her. He divulged to me that Maria and I had been sister and brother. This explained my enduring attachment to Shim Gum Do. He added that in my latest life I had been a poet in Europe who had drunk so much and dabbled with drugs to excess that I had died of it. This explained my writing and my unwillingness to drink with them. 

His comment that Maria and I had been sister and brother had some resonance. Our relationship was close. We both loved Shim Gum Do and I had risen near to her black belt levels. I taught almost all the classes at one point, and later, during Chang Sik Kim’s second one-hundred day retreat, we took over running of the school. One night we both gave a dharma talk to a group of students who came every month to hear Chang Sik Kim speak. My topic was ‘At The Drop Of A Hat’, having something to do with moment to moment consciousness and non-attachment. So his comment did not come out of left field. That he was talking about past lives does not hit me as strange. I know of no one who knows definitely about the reality of past lives, or even if anything exists after one’s death. In Hinduism, the belief in reincarnation and past lives is quite real. Even Judaism, normally thought to have no truck with reincarnation, has the belief of gilgul, or waves, in Hebrew. Each wave is another life, sometimes thought to be placed somewhere in the anatomy of Adam Kadmon, the first Adam, as tall as the sky.

His other comment about me being a writer who had died of excess alcoholism and drug use also rang true. For my entire life people have thought I took drugs, even though I have never tried even one. That happened especially in college. Later others thought I was naive. I certainly did not treat life in the normal fashion. Plus I did write, though I did not try to publish and wouldn’t join any writing groups. In some way, my disgust with their drinking stemmed from a repugnance I couldn’t place. Maybe it did come from a memory of a past life.

Then Chang Sik Kim announced he was giving up his dalliance with Catherine. He vowed he would go into another one- hundred day meditation retreat to cleanse himself  and to further develop the art of Shim Gum Do.  One outcome of this retreat he said would enable him to directly influence world events, such as weapon systems, money flow, and the weather, with his mere thoughts. In fact, he already did have two of these powers. He had only to add the power to affect the weather. He took our money that we paid for membership and dan levels. He taught martial arts with a sword, a weapon, and how to use it. The weather could mean how we, his students, moved through life, in fair weather because we succeeded in crossing the plain of opposition or foul if we went astray and got lost.

This emphasis on previous lives was a ploy to redirect our focus away from the breakdown of his moral and spiritual authority. His net of lies about us knotted us with him. That we were again gathered around him as we had been countless other times in other lives justified whatever he did to and for us. For what other reason were we with him now in this crazy ship heaving to and fro? He foretold that when he died he would fly through outer space to a better planet and that we were beholden to follow him. In a sense, indeed, we had departed from regular life already, and were flying through space to another planet, or another way of being in the world. It wasn’t a total fabrication, merely a hint for those who could hear.

These thoughts are outrageous, yet they were lodged in our subconsciousness like many of his comments and promises. He was the founding master of an art  we all studied so intensely. Some of us made this more important than familial relationships or career opportunities. This was our spiritual path, and if one was to succeed, it demanded supreme sacrifice. Sadhana of any type requires sacrifice of everything.

He spent the one hundred day retreat in one of the rooms of the dojo that was in the front hall under the stairs. He did not come out except to use the bathrooms on the second floor.  Then he draped a towel over his head so that he could not be seen. He was meditating all day, and so we who were still in the building had to be quiet.

Life went on, however. On the weekends my daughters stayed with me as part of the custody agreement with my former wife.  Aviva was five and Ilana three. One day we were leaving by the main exit which was near the room where he was meditating. Aviva was speaking loudly to me when he hysterically opened the door and yelled at Aviva to shut up. This so terrorized her that she refused to travel in my car for the next three weeks when I went to pick her up for the weekend. Clearly, Chang Sik Kim was mindless of the harm he had done to her. The harm was evident to me, yet I did not quit. I rationalized that he was lonely and in the middle of a hard quest. I now believe that he was unguarded at that moment and revealed his cruelty and meanness. This was a window into his true self.

At the end of the 100 days he emerged thinner. He had been overweight and out of shape before the retreat. If nothing else, he had eaten and drunk less. His emergence was cause for celebration and he gave a talk. He promised that the way he taught Shim Gum Do would change and that he would start showing us special breathing techniques. He said he had created thirty more forms of Shim Gum Do.

As it turned out he only showed us one simple breathing exercise and then nothing more. We never saw the new forms. We never saw any of the forms of sword beyond form 100, the place where Maria Rowe, his wife, had attained, and she was his most advanced student. There were supposedly 330 forms. Every so often he would demonstrate a form. He invariably would demonstrate form 35. He was able to move through that form in a matter of seconds and with perfect balance and extension. That is much faster than anyone else could manage. Even his students in Korea only learned to form 36, in this system the equivalent of a 3rd degree blackbelt. None of these students ever visited us in Boston. He went back to S. Korea only twice while I was involved. Evidently there weren’t his close adherents. 

Probably the forms higher than 100 didn’t exist. It is very possible he made them up as he went along. There were slight changes for those of us learning them in the first or second wave. He boasted he was the world’s greatest swordsman on posters or to anyone who would listen. Occasionally he gave public exhibitions. He did show an uncanny ability to move quickly and with great showmanship with a sword. His best trick was cutting while blindfolded a watermelon placed on a student’s stomach. He did have a great talent for this and it was most impressive. Trickery does not make one the world’s greatest swordsman.

He was an isolated man who refused to meet with other martial arts teachers or to teach any student of another martial art. He did not appear in the martial art magazines though these magazines knew about him and came by to see for themselves. Chang Sik Kim said the magazines didn’t print a story about him because he would not give them money. This is probably false. Yang Jwing Ming, a kung fu teacher in another part of Boston, was featured on more than one cover of Inside Kung Fu, a well distributed periodical.  After Shim Gum Do I joined the classes there on his version of kung fu. Yang Jwing Ming had already published several books on kung fu and its philosophy. 

The magazine writers saw Chang Sik KIm for what he was, an egomaniac of the first order and a possible fraud. His most advanced student was his wife, and she was not a strong martial artist, more a dancer. She was distracted from developing herself as a martial artist by the marital turmoil, the drinking and the drug taking, and the giving birth to three children among several abortions. He refused to teach anyone faster than his wife could learn. Until I made a large amount of money I could not begin to afford to challenge her position as most advanced student since he charged $2000 per dan level or what encompassed ten forms, plus other significant expenses. Over the years students more advanced than I left Shim Gum Do once they obtained the level of sixth dan. Or they just stopped participating for other reasons. No one could challenge her. She wasn’t  that good, but Chang Sik Kim protected her.

I thought I was a good martial artist. To my chagrin, after joining Yang Jwing Ming Martial Arts I saw that I was not that good and that I need a lot of retraining. Many of the principles of Shim Gum Do according to Kung Fu are incorrect, even in something as basic as kicking and punching. The kicks of Shim Gum Do are simple and not even first level kung fu kicks. The strict attention to form and generation of power are more sophisticated as well. It makes me wonder what in the world I was learning from Chang Sik Kim. Dance?

Perhaps it was martial arts unlike other martial arts, in that, it was in the form of a martial art, but its purpose was to teach its practitioners the roots of zen. The Proclamation of Korean Buddhist Shim Gum Do is printed in the book Maria Rowe wrote and published in 1985, The Art of Zen Sword, The History of Shim Gum Do, Part One, which says:

What is Shim (mind)? Avatamsaka Sutra says, ‘If you want to understand that all three worlds are Buddha, you must perceive world substance. All things are created by mind alone. This means that if you want to understand the true way, you must perceive where name and form come from, and you must understand that name and form come from you. And you must understand that name and form are created by mind. In this world, one by one, each thing is complete, one by one, each thing has substance, and universal substance. We call this primary point. If you keep this mind, you and everything, you and the universe become one. Clear like space, with name and form, without opposites, that is the Absolute. We call it Mind or Buddha or God or Truth or Energy. This is Shim.

What Gum (sword)? An eminent teacher said, ‘There are two kinds of Gum, the killing Gum and the life-giving Gum.’ Breaking all demons, it helps us find the truth. Whether killing or bestowing life, without hindrance, it has complete freedom. Therefore, our Gum chases away evil, helps goodness, makes the correct way, manifests Great Love, Great Compassion, the Great Bodhisattva Way, and fights for the cause of justice. Sometimes this Gum appears as a steel sword, sometimes as a wooden sword, a fist sword, a mind sword, or a name-no-form-energy sword. On the outside it repulses enemies of peace, internally it cuts off our ignorance, makes our bad karma disappear, and enables us to get complete freedom and to find the True Light.

What is Do (path)? Zen Master Nam Cheon said, ‘Everyday mind is the path.’ This means the true way. Without hindrance anywhere, the Great Way has no gate. If you make your opinion, your condition, and your situation disappear, then your true self appears and finding the correct opinion, correct situation and correct condition is possible. Then all that you can see, hear, smell is the truth. All is ‘Do’. Do not make ‘I, my, me.’ Then everyday life is the truth and the path. Then you will get the Great Bodhisattva Way and it will be possible to call all beings from suffering. The name for this is ‘Do’.

Shim is Buddha, which is clear like space.

Gum is Dharma, which is the correct function of energy.

Do is Sangha, which is great love and great compassion.

This is only part of the Proclamation written by Seung Sahn and Chang Sik Kim in 1971.

From the above, one would think Shim Gum Do is a valid practice. I chose that path and chose to believe it was following the way shown in the Proclamation. It was obvious to me and it didn’t matter that others did not agree.

He told lies. He said he stopped hurricanes from coming to Boston. He claimed he was enlightened. He said his wife was enlightened. He said he saw other people’s past lives, and that a person’s prosperity depended on how well he listened to him. He warned that going to bars and drinking was not a good use of time, while he drank too much and actively encouraged others to follow. He said he was a zen master. He said he could see how a student was living and could correct that person’s path to a better way. For him vows and oaths were only a distant goal to be tried, even regarding the abuse of drugs and alcohol. Stretching before class was unnecessary. Only he who was tight needed to stretch. He promised to continue the pursuit for deeper powers through meditation. He gossipped about people’s relationships in Shim Gum Do, charging, for instance, that Michael Elta had sex in the dharma room with Lisa Cinchetti, and that he enjoyed having many women. One of the biggest lies was the ranking system. A student advanced by paying money. Ability had nothing to do with it. One had only to remember the forms and how to perform them. Money was everything. Maria Rowe told me that she also has had to pay $2000 for the forms like everyone else, and I believed her since Chang Sik Kim is avaricious.

A student could be called a master and not be a master of anything, not himself nor the martial art. Because we spent so much time in training we half believed we knew something. We paid dearly for this belief. Mary Stackhouse is another example of a person who did not pay her way. In lieu of money she performed services for him. Maria Rowe charged that Mary Stackhouse and he had sex long before her marriage broke up with him. 

Now that Maria was gone, Mary moved in and took her place. Chang Sik Kim denied all of this.  He charged that John Aldridge, another student, and Maria and he formed a triangle of tangled sexual relationships. 

It is a fact that Chang Sik Kim liked women. He often went to the Combat Zone to watch strippers and probably have sex with the whores. One time he drank so much he passed out at a red light right in front of the Brighton Police Station after a rollicking time in the Zone. Bill Jarcho, an artist, and another student, told me that at one of the Shim Gum Do picnics Chang Sik Kim came on strong to two women who were with him, making lewd comments and touching their breasts. He had had too much to drink. Other women have similar complaints, Maria Rowe has told me.

In 1983 I visited Chang Sik Kim on Christmas Day and he was in the kitchen with a young woman, probably underage. The table was littered with glasses and bottles of liquor. The two of them had the feverish look of those who have drunk beyond the capacity to think clearly and who have had sex together. Her name was Crystal. She was the type of tortured soul who would have sex with anybody, and he was the type of man who felt no compunction about obliging. Soon after this he threatened his marriage by pursuing Catherine Crimmins without abashment.

The crown of it all was the menage a trois of John Aldridge, Maria Rowe and Chang Sik Kim. Aldrige was a pathetic martial artist  since his leg muscles were so tight he could not adequately kick. Chang Sik Kim reported that his wife is a nymphomaniac who desired above all to have sex with Aldrige. He added that after continual pining from Maria, he relented and allowed her to go to Aldrige. She flew into his arms and they fucked their brains out. 

He confided in me when I was divorcing my wife that because he knew the secret of fulfilling every desire of a woman with his wonderful penis he would never suffer the same experience. While Aldridge and Maria went at it, he turned to alcohol for solace in his loneliness. That, he said, was the cause of his drinking.

Aldridge would the next morning eat breakfast with Chang Sik Kim after a night of licking his wife. Chang Sik Kim said he showed the compassion and moral strength of Jesus by not becoming angry with him. This triangle of lust went on for three years. Maria said she visited Alridge because she was lonely and in need of affection. Perhaps she was reliving her experience when as a child her older brother raped her. Whatever the reason he did not banish Aldridge from Shim Gum Do, but brought  him closer to his bosom while he was cuckolding him proves that he was abnormal and perverse. He had no regard for women, not even his wife.

He maintained that she was insane.

Maria was a romantic and a tart. She was by no measure a nymphomaniac. She defended her drinking as a way of pleasure and openness. She teased me saying I was too closed and ought to follow her way of pleasure. I was not interested in her taunts. She might have justified her relationship with Aldridge as a way of artistically enjoying life. However, she also told me she was hypnotised by Chang Sik Kim and forced to act against her better judgment. He did have a powerful control over her. Once she awoke from this slavery, she did so with a vengence. She went to Italy and began an amorous relationship with Jerry Carson who was an old student of Chang Sik Kim’s and an old dear friend of hers. He used the discovery of this relationship as a pretext to accuse her of being a whore. But the menage a trois had been a fact for three years and Chang Sik Kim said nothing about it. If he was not upset with Aldridge sharing his marriage bed, there should have been no problem with Carson. The difference is that Jerry Carson was thousands of miles away and out of Chang Sik Kim’s control. That is what irritated him. Aldridge lived upstairs. Maybe Chang Sik Kim became impotent with Maria and wanted to enjoy sex vicariously. 

Chang Sik Kim used to comment about little penises. Maria says that during his one hundred day retreat and after the affair with Catherine Crimmins he would nightly leave his strict meditation and make love to her in their bedroom. So much for the saintly Chang Sik Kim. They even bore another son.

He was like a mirror. He could be anything: parent, master, fool, enemy, lover, friend, tyrant. I suggest he was like this because there wasn’t a wholly formed individual. He was half grown and the one interacting with him fetches from his memory or his needs the other half of Chang Sik Kim and then proceeds to have intercourse with it. His deprived childhood during the Korean War might have stripped him of the possibility to have a fully evolved being. Or the fact that he was a provincial Korean in the United States might have been too much for him and made him feel inadequate. On the other hand, he had achieved non-self to a degree that he could act as a mirror to whatever would enhance our growth. The task of the teacher is not kindness, but the presentation of the hard truth that is even harder to swallow.

In the latter years of my association with Shim Gum Do he spent most of the day watching television and napping. He suffered from diabetes and the drinking only exacerbated the condition. I asked him to stop drinking for reasons of his health. He answered that he would live longer than I would and that I had nothing to worry about. Another time when he and Maria were having a fight over this issue among others, he told me that he would stop drinking if I moved back into the dojo. Somehow I would be a shoulder to lean on. I refused. The idea that I was important to him gratified me and made all the effort I had put into Shim Gum Do worthwhile. Another time he was sitting on the sofa in the front hallway. He told me that in a dream he had seen me as the tree that upheld Shim Gum Do. All well and good. I was at that time the second highest ranked student, under Maria and higher than Mary Stackhouse. I had been a large financial donor by paying for dan levels and for two swords, and I had been teaching most of the classes in sword and karate. Chang Sik Kim’s role in the day to day teaching had dropped precipitously since he did not have the necessary physical energy due to his illness. 

My relationship with the residents of the dojo was not good. Disrespect toward me was very real.  He told stories about me that lowered me in their eyes. I had certain privileges such as staying later to train when everyone else had gone, and going there to train on weekends. Sometimes I went early in the morning to join in the meditation. On Sundays I occasionally joined them in their chores. The place was like a home. I believed in and tried to live the maxim ‘only go straight’ and I didn’t care what the others thought of me. I cherished the ideal of a martial artist that I deluded myself I was following.   

The meditation involved reviewing in the mind’s eye the forms of sword, karate, long stick or two-sword. Each form had up to approximately one hundred separate movements, depending on what constitutes a movement. The idea was that mind and body are one and that by meditating on the movements one could improve dexterity, speed and skill. Also this discipline was a system to train the mind to remember with clarity. There was a saying: Clear mind, clear body. According to him this was the true zen path.

He never revealed to me how this would enable one to move as quickly as he did through form 35 of sword, or how remembering so many forms would lead one to enlightenment. Just do it, and see for yourself. In general, this is good advice.

Only I can see for myself. However, after many years of training I was nowhere nearer to attaining great energy or enlightenment. He did not teach a system like the microcosmic orbit in Chinese martial arts or any system like that found in yoga. He had deteriorated over the years and he was the founding master of this art. In 1977 when I first encountered him he seemed a different man altogether: bright, tremendous energy, generally in high spirits, and ambitious. At his first dojo at Boylston St there were many students more advanced than I. Over the next thirteen years they all left or were driven out by Chang Sik Kim. Perhaps they all sensed that his inner light was dimming. 

On the other hand, he told me at least twice that I was a pillar for the maintenance of Shim Gum Do, and that I had a fundamentally important relationship with him. The others fell away because they were unworthy and the current sexual tumult in the dojo was part of the crazy wisdom with no end in sight. I kept myself apart from all the madness and honed as closely as possible to his precepts, ‘only go straight, believe in yourself one hundred percent, and don’t look left or right’. He had really created out of thin air the art of Shim Gum Do, and it was a vehicle toward enlightenment. That he the founder was slipping was no measure of the gift he had brought to the world. The true measuring stick was its effect on those who walked on the high road as defined by the art. Now being 66 years old and looking back, I look with fondness toward him even though his particular brand of personal behavior and his mistreatment of his students including his wife are despicable. I think the art of Shim Gum Do is, despite all of that static, a beautiful creation worthy of lifelong practice. That at 66 I am as fit in mind and body as I am is a testament to it.

I have experienced other men who have attained greatness in meditation other than Chang Sik Kim. They are different. The meditation these men prescribe has an uplifting effect and fills the body and psyche with energy. Also these men lead moral lives and they strive to continually improve themselves. This is true, but I don’t really know these men like I knew Chang Sik Kim. All men have flaws, some more flagrant than others, but no mortal is perfected. One man stands out from the others I have come across, and that is Shivabalayogi. He meditated alone and like Chang Sik Kim his teacher was unearthly. Shivabalayogi spent twelve years meditating in a strict practice taught him by Shiva. CSK says Buddha showed him Shim Gum Do and that he brought it to earth during a one hundred day meditation. For a few years I practiced Shivabalayogi’s meditation practice of lifting the eyes toward the third eye and repeating the Om Namaha Shivaya mantra. He gave me a supply of vibhuti or a kind of chalk to aid me by making a spot on my forehead. The years I spent sitting in Shim Gum Do meditation did teach me how to sit and to focus my mind energy. It  is a self enclosed system of attachment to Shim Gum Do. For others it was a system of hypnotic attachment to Chang Sik Kim. I have heard of no mistakes of attachment by Shivabalayogi to women or drink or seeking money that have plagued other men who came to America to spread their particular brand of meditation. The list of these men is legion, and is spread to figures in government and entertainment. But I only visited with Shivabalayogi during his short sojourns in Boston. After his death, some pretenders emerged in India who say they are him reincarnated.

The authenticity of Chang Sik Kim is problematic and an important issue. He claimed to have learned martial arts and that he is the master of all of them without the guidance of a teacher. If Buddha was his teacher, as he claims, then why the antics? Do the students who failed by immersing themselves in drugs and alcohol under his eye make him a bad teacher? By their fruits you shall know them. He was a man who cheated on his wife and then accused her of adultery, who taught that alcohol is a bad use of energy and then drowned his loneliness in drink leading his students down the drain with him. Let us grant that Maria was a difficult woman, but even so, how could a master have married such a woman and then brought into this world three children and then to be in the midst of a bitterly fought divorce? It is odd that he could see the shortcomings of others, but he couldn’t see his own. He should never have made her pregnant. He says he had control over his ejaculation, so he could have rocked back and forth with her in a tantric embrace forever. As his most special student he ought to have given her great teaching, not misery and many abortions. Who is the sexual maniac? Why drink so much? He excused this by saying that great past zen masters and poets used alcohol as a means to inspiration. Some of them might have been nasty men. CSK showed a malicious heart sometimes. But so what? As long as he guided his students to true self knowledge, the way might be harsh and medicine strong, but the end will justify the means. 

He was the shepherd to cowardly little boys who couldn’t see who he really was. They lacked the courage to ask questions. The masters meetings were a joke, primarily because  the masters themselves were weak, directionless men and women. They couldn’t maintain disciplined training or a teaching schedule. None of them were credible martial artists. Bob Britton, one of CSK’s favorites, left SGD because he preferred golf. Mark Fortin, another favorite, spent a year in a detoxification facility. When in one meeting I charged that Mercinyak taught a karate class stoned, the masters had nothing to say. “A person has the right to do as he pleases,”  they told me. For many years Maria defended her own drinking and smoking marijuana by saying she was pursuing pleasure. 

Here I will show a letter from Zen Master Seung Sahn taken from an online source containing all his teaching letters. Maria Rowe wrote a letter to him and he answered back.

March 4, 1978

Dear Sang Gwang Rowe Sa Bom, (Maria Rowe)

Next, I will talk a little to you about the Shim Gum Do Zen Center. The Shim Gum Do Zen Center is a strong Providence Zen Center branch Zen Center. So I think everyday service, correct Zen Center style, is necessary. And the Shim Gum Do School is bigger than many other Zen Centers, so organization is very important, which means having a Directors’ Meeting, house meeting, working together, which means if everything is not organized, in the future, many problems will appear. If you are only dependent on Gwang Jang Nim, this is not so good. For example, now at Providence Zen Center, all the directors are very strong. Also, everything is organized. Once a week is a Directors’ Meeting, and once a week is a house meeting for the whole house. If you have a problem, or if you have something happening or plans for the future, decide all this at your Directors’ Meeting.

Then, next, announce it at a house meeting. Then everyone will understand the Zen Center’s situation, Zen Center’s business, and the Zen Center’s future. Then everybody’s Zen Center, everybody’s business, and everybody’s future will be clear. So some day, Gwang Jang Nim will go to Korea and come and go to other places, and this will be no problem. Also, the Zen Center will be no problem. If you only depend on Gwang Jang Nim, then when he goes to Korea, there will be no head, so how will you control the Zen Center and Shim Gum Do School? I’m only worried about this. I think you are a good director, a good Sa Bom, and a good Zen student. You must fix your Zen Center’s present situation.

Next, I want to talk about Zen interviews with you. At any Zen Center, together action is very important. Why is it only the Shim Gum Do Zen Center has no interviews? If you are attached to “I”, “my , “me”, attached to my condition, my situation, you cannot attain the True Way, cannot attain correct Shim Gum Do. Gwang Jang Nim is a Shim Gum Do Master. Learn Shim Gum Do from him. Learn Zen from me. Very clear. When Shim Gum Do and Zen come together, then this is a complete Shim Gum Do Zen Center. Somebody said, “Shim Gum Do School is different.” Then, only a Shim Gum Do school is good, and a Shim Gum Do Zen Center is not possible. If you have a Shim Gum Do Zen Center, then you must do the same action as any other Zen Center. This is very necessary. Also, I am the Shim Gum Do School president. Then, all Shim Gum Do students must listen to the president’s idea. That is the correct way. Master Dharma Teacher George is not only Providence’s Master Dharma Teacher; he is all our school’s Zen Centers’ Master Dharma Teacher. Instead of me. So his and my teaching are not different.

So I often say if you keep your opinion, your condition, your situation, then you have a problem. Already, the problem appeared. Not only Zen, not only Shim Gum Do School, any person, any people, any country, any politicians, if they keep their opinion, their condition, their situation, they will have a problem. If those things disappear, then the correct opinion, correct condition, and correct situation appear. This is called the True Way and Great Bodhisattva, Great Compassion, and Great Love. I know your mind. You already understand this way. Also, I know your difficult situation. But you try, try, try. Then you will get it. I already told these things to Gwang Jang Nim. Gwang Jang Nim said everything is O.K., and he said, “I will follow Soen Sa Nim.” Maybe this is good. Sometime, have a good talk with Gwang Jang Nim (Chang Sik Kim).

This letter is very early in Shim Gum Do’s evolution. Zen Master Seung Sahn perceived the flaws in Chang Sik Kim from the very beginning. By this time in June, 1978 I had been a student there for about a year. Many of the original members were active: Michael Elta, Mark Fortin, Jacob Perl, Jeff Stephenson, Bob Coyle. I don’t remember Elta so much as a presence. Mark Fortin was an energetic man who was very strong and enthusiastic about SGD. Jacob Perl was noticeably European from Poland and was a serious student at the Providence Zen Center who at least once attempted a one hundred day retreat. Jeff Stephenson resides at the edges of my memory as a very good student and always laughing and smiling. Bob Coyle was a big man from southeastern Massachusetts near the Rhode Island border and was in the building trades. 

Seung Sahn states unequivocally that Shim Gum Do is a subsidiary part of the Providence Zen Center.  He explicitly spells out the relationship between him and Chang Sik Kim. Chang Sik Kim is a Shim Gum Do master. Learn that art from him. To learn zen, go to Seung Sahn, a zen master. Shim Gum Do and zen go together, so that the organization becomes the Shim Gum Do Zen Center. Otherwise, if Shim Gum Do is separate, it is not a zen center, nor is it a place to learn zen.

Furthermore, Seung Sahn states that Master Dharma Teacher George is the Master Teacher over Chang Sik Kim.  Seung Sahn charges Maria Rowe with fixing this situation. Chang Sik Kim does not accept that anyone is a Master Teacher over him. 

His relationship with Seung Sahn was already deteriorating so that sometime in mid 1980’s he split from the Providence Zen Center and from Seung Sahn directorship of Shim Gum Do. Zen Master Seung Sahn correctly perceived the problem in believing in Chang Sik Kim. When he is not there, in any capacity, by physically leaving and going to Korea, for instance, or by drinking inordinately and acting like a drunken fool, or be indulging in sex and sexual bondage of others and absenting himself from the correct way, or by encouraging others to sexual and drug and drink deviency he betrays his responsibility to his teacher and his art. Maria Rowe was in no position to fix Chang Sik Kim. He used his position as head of Shim Gum Do and as her husband to control her. 

I just watched the history of the Providence Zen Center in slides showing all the places where Zen Master Seung Sahn established centers throughout the world. Shim Gum Do is not mentioned at all. Chang Sik Kim is not mentioned at all.  My disenchantment with Shim Gum Do soured my regard for zen. 

Let us grant that Chang Sik Kim spent 100 days in meditation under the direction of his teacher Zen Master Seung Sahn. Seung Sahn acknowledged him as a Shim Gum Do master. Curiously he says ‘a’ rather than ‘the’ as if there could be many SGD masters. Perhaps this is a matter of the writer, Seung Sahn, not being a native English speaker. I do not think so, as it fits logically in his precise perception of Chang Sik Kim. Chang Sik Kim left Korea because Seung Sahn asked him to come over to the United States. He could not establish Shim Gum Do as a practice in the Providence Zen Center. Apparently they were unappreciative, and thought it better to follow Seung Sahn and not dilute their practice. Later they learned tai chi and yoga. Jacob Perl, who according to the Providence Zen Center history received inka, or the authority to teach zen, and one of Seung Sahn’s and Chang Sik Kim’s first students, no longer has any association with Shim Gum Do. 

Chang Sik Kim gave many indications that Shim Gum Do was a zen path. First he called himself Gwan Ja Nim which means ‘instructor’ then after his second 100 day retreat he named himself Sa Bu Nim, which means ‘master’. Then he told us that Maria was to be called Gwan Ja Nim and that we were to bow down to her as we had bowed down to CSK. He asserted that Maria was enlightened. We bowed down to him as a matter of respect . We also bowed down to the statue of the Buddha as a matter of ritual and reverence. It equated him with the Buddha, a realized being, who knew the difference between cabbage and cucumbers, a metaphor used in his dharma talks. After a while, Maria told me to stop bowing down to her. Perhaps she was awakening from her nightmare. Bowing is a way to empty the self of thinking and naming and attachment. 

I think the bowing began in Boylston, the first dojo. A group of students including me were sitting on the carpeted portion of the floor near the altar after working out in the late afternoon. John Avault spoke. He was one of the most senior students. He announced that Chang Sik Kim was a keen eyed zen master, and that we were graced to know him, and that to show our appreciation we should bow to him.  We all did. He told us keen eyed zen masters were rare. I don’t remember if that is when the practice of bowing became standard. Avault’s statement struck me as strange, and that is why it stands out in my memory. I hadn’t considered CSK in that light. Rather he was just a martial artist. 

Later I considered myself lucky to have met a keen eyed zen master. I bowed to him not for him as he was, but for what I thought he should be. I ignored the reality of his condition and replaced it with my own picture of a true zen master. My sight was dazzling. 

Seung Sahn’s picture hung on the walls of the dojo.  Chang Sik Kim valued him as his teacher even though he did not learn Shim Gum Do from him. According to the story of his initial 100 day retreat Seung Sahn appeared to Chang Sik Kim during that meditation and helped him conquer inner demons. He had chosen him as a young man to foretold that he would one day be a great martial artist. He was a lowly floor and clothes washer in the temple. Fact or fiction? We never had this authenticated by Seung Sahn. Perhaps all of us thought it improper to challenge Chang Sik Kim by asking Seung Sahn such a silly question. Seung Sahn was then the president of the ABSGDA, the American Boston Shim Gum Do Association. He did write the long statement called The Proclamation of Korean Shim Gum Do in 1971. He did visit the Shim Gum Do dojo with regularity in the late 1970’s through early 80’s. In the 80’s, however, his schedule became busier with the founding of temples and administering his growing empire. It was heard that he broke his vows as a monk and enjoyed sexual play with his close women disciples. His sperm was the strong foundation for his zen centers. Seung Sahn visited SGD less often, and then there was a break.

CSK removed Seung Sahn’s pictures from the dojo and put up his own pictures. Seung Sahn never said that Chang Sik Kim was his chief disciple. However, in our hazy perception of their relationship we just assumed this was the situation. The importance of this relationship is that it validated Shm Gum Do as a zen practice, an action meditation beside the still meditation.  I can recall talking of the succession of principal zen masters of each era beginning with Bodhidharma and fitting Seung Sahn and Chang Sik Kim into that stream. What Shim Gum Do was in the world history of martial arts was puzzling. After the first 100 day retreat Chang Sik Kim displayed the newly found martial art to a conclave of Korean zen masters, and they awarded him a 15th dan blackbelt. It was said that he was the reincarnation of the ancient Korean martial artist Hwarang Do. This gave it an antecedent it otherwise sorely lacked. 

How could we ever establish that Chang Sik Kim was Hwarang Do? It was a matter of faith. Little concerning him could be validated. He was Korean, had an aged mother who did spend a month with him at the dojo with his unmarried sister who did not speak any English. He knew some Buddhist sutras and possessed a rather large estimation of his own worth. 

I began Shim Gum Do after college. In my senior year at Brandeis I used to wander the stacks of books in the library during my respites from translating Latin and Greek texts. I visited the stacks concerning the history of ideas over and over again. The books on zen particularly interested me. Suzuki’s book on Japanese zen made mention of the combination of sword and meditation. I found that fascinating. I saw some Kurosawa films about samurai  warriors in Central Square, Cambridge, and at other cinemas that are no longer existent due to gentrification. Tatsuya Nakadai and Toshio Mifune strongly affected me. Mifune’s way of walking in Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy impressed me and I thought it would be an achievement if I too learned to walk with such command of space.  These movie heroes were the opposite of my father who dying of ALS and who was totally incapacitated. They captivated my dreams.

One day walking in Back Bay looking for a job after my graduation I noticed a flyer taped against a mailbox advertising zen sword. The address was only a few blocks away. I walked over there. At that time the dojo was at 1112 Boylston St on the 3rd floor over a pizza shop. Mark Fortin gave me the introductory welcome. He was then fit and strong and he impressed me. I joined and began to practice hard every day. Even during the blizzard of 1978 I walked to the dojo from Central Square, Cambridge, and worked out in the freezing room.  There was so much snow the authorities closed down the highways. 

I was dedicated. I did not research Shim Gum Do’s reputation nor did I visit other styles. I was naive. I urged my wife, Nancy, to join and she passed the first degree blackbelt and did show some enthusiasm.  While she was pregnant with Aviva, our first born, we lived at the dojo for the first six months of her pregnancy. We slept on a mat in the karate room. From there we moved to the Odd Fellows Hall building in downtown Waltham, MA, near the train station to Cambridge and Boston. We had a loft in which Nancy drew and painted, and I began a short lived SGD school. 

One day CSK took me aside and told me I should open a larger school. I found a place in Northampton, MA, the upstairs of the Polish Bar and Club. It was a fabulous ballroom, with wood floors, a stage, a kitchen, high ceilings and a balcony with rooms for living.  We lived on the financial edge. The rent was $1000 per month and I took on any employment I could find and Nancy sold some paintings. Eventually we had about 25 students, and a few who lived with us, and that helped. About five of my students came every morning for meditation and chanting the heart sutra. One day I asked if any of them were Jews and if he knew about his heritage. The disconnect between my Buddhist practice and myself as a Jew who knew little about the essence of Judaism grew heavier. As Nancy and I were about 25 years old and with one beautiful child, Aviva, and we were not encumbered with any debt or obligations, it was a good time to try another lifestyle in order to satisfy my ever widening urge to learn about being a Jew. I forced Nancy to move with me to a Hasidic community in Far Rockaway. Chang Sik Kim told me to do whatever I liked with my school in Northampton. I handed it over to Winston Weatherall, another blackbelt, who agreed to carry on. He ran it into the ground and it closed down.

I spent thirteen years in Shim Gum Do including an interlude in Far Rockaway. While there I used to go at night to practice my forms in the kitchen of the shul. Rabbi Freifeld permitted it. I pushed the chairs to the sides of the room and continued practicing my sword and karate forms. I loved the practice. One of my principal joys is pressing my body to its limits. Even today I am happiest when I am faced with a bar over my head for pull ups. In southern California I am always outside when I am exercising and it is paradise. 

It is obvious now that the demon I faced was my father’s death from ALS. It was particularly difficult for me to peel myself off the image of him lying on his bed a vegetable and then dead in his coffin. I self medicated by exercise. Every rep signaled to that part of my mind where fear dominates that I was whole and not diseased.  As I have grown older exercising has become habitual and thoroughly enjoyable. I can see no reason to stop it as long as I live.

The other thirst was for knowledge. It appeared to me early that words were a key to knowledge, and as a boy of ten I would copy the words from the dictionary with which I was unfamiliar and tape those lists on the wall over my desk. That love of words changed into a love of reading and studying. I approached the knowledge, the possession of which, I saw was lacking in the adults who surrounded me to be about religion and spirituality. Twice I entered to study at higher levels at Jewish Orthodox schools to begin to apprehend and appreciate the hidden jewels of the Torah, other exegetical books like Job, and the Gemara in their original languages, as in college I chose my major to be Classics or the study of the great ancient works such as Homer in Homeric Greek. I extended that to an investigation into the nature and practice of different styles of meditation, active and still, from many directions. It became clear that at the core of Judaism is meditation in the daily davening of the shemona esrei. I wouldn’t have recognized that if I hadn’t spent a decade meditating on the forms of Shim Gum Do. One practice informs another. 

I also wanted to be a writer. In sixth grade I began to write poems and I still can quote the first quatrain. My Bubby typed my poems, such as they were, literally treacle. To wit:

John Abram’s turd

Was a merry old bird.

He lived in a bowl

And tried many souls.

Over the years I have attempted to write something of value. For one of my assignments in college I wrote a long poem for Latin in which I recalled a vivid scene of two dogs mating. I tried to write it in the style of the author we were reading, and the professor did not like my offering as it was not what he assigned. Then I sat in the closet of the apartment where I lived with Nancy and Aviva and Ilana and started my warrior stories. I do these things, like jump headfirst into Shim Gum Do, because I realize that I can use these experiences for my writing. In all fairness, even though Chang Sik Kim had flaws as all mortals do, I learned from him.