When asked what one should do as spiritual practice, Zen Master Dae Gak offered the following:
Find your original job and do it impeccably. Never give up.
While failure is possible, there is nothing that cannot be transmuted.
Our mistakes are our teachers and our alchemy is in our heart’s blood.
Our breath is our point of entry to truth. It is with us always, as us, as all of creation.
Find the breath in everything.
Witzenhausen, Germany November 24, 2005

Biography of Zen Master Dae Gak

Zen Master Dae Gak is the Guiding Teacher for these groups: The Dae Do Sah Zen Group Washington DC, Northern Virginia, and Rockville MD The Cincinnati Zen Center Cincinnati OH The Hamilton Zen Center Hamilton OH The Still Water Zen Center Richmond VA Zen Island Fellowship, Galveston, TX Zen Master Dae Gak also serves as Guiding Teacher for groups in Lexington, KY; Bristol, England; and Leipzig and Kassel, Germany.

this page last updated on November 24, 2005

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Furnace Mountain is a practice center established for those inquiring into the nature of self and the causes of suffering. We are located on 650 acres of rugged woodland (part of the Daniel Boone National Forest) in the Red River Gorge region of eastern Kentucky. Our residents and visitors keep a regular practice schedule that includes both formal meditation practice and the work of maintaining the buildings and grounds. In addition to this daily schedule we also have monthly retreats lasting from 2 to 10 days. For more information on our schedule of retreats through early 2006 see our retreat schedule web page.

Our guiding teacher, Zen Master Dae Gak, received Dharma transmission from the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn in 1994. He has practiced Zen for over thirty years. Before becoming a student of Zen Master Seung Sahn, he studied extensively with other teachers in Japanese lineages.

Zen Master Dae Gak has taught internationally for over fifteen years. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at Furnace Mountain, he regulary visits students and leads retreats in cities around the U.S. and in Europe. He has also led retreats in Australia, and in 1997-1998 he led the annual three month retreat (Kyol Che) at Shin Won Sah in Korea. His most senior student is the Buddhist nun Kwang Myong Sunim, who was the Abbess of Furnace Mountain for seven years and has served as the Guiding Teacher for the Queensland Zen Center, in Brisbane, Australia, since 1996. For many years Zen Master Dae Gak also led the annual Christian Zen retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemane, where Thomas Merton lived. He holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and has practiced psychotherapy for thirty years. His book, Going Beyond Buddha, The Awakening Practice of Listening is available from the publisher Charles Tuttle and can also be purchased directly from Furnace Mountain.

The Lexington Zen Center was founded in 1980 by Zen Master Dae Gak and Mara Allen Genthner - but the Center soon outgrew its home in the basement of their house. They began to look for some land on which to start a retreat and practice center in a rural setting, and after years of searching they found the site that is now Furnace Mountain. In 1990 construction was completed on a large Meditation Hall, modeled after a traditional Korean Buddhist Temple, on a site selected especially for its geomantic relationship with the surrounding mountains. Other construction and improvement projects have included living quarters for residents and guests, single occupancy cabins, a secluded hermitage, a pottery, a pond, a barn, an organic garden, trail maintenance work, etc.

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