Description: In whatever situation we face, we can choose our response. When facing overwhelming challenges, we might feel that our actions don’t count for much. Yet, the kind of responses we make, and the degree to which we believe they count, are shaped by the way we think and feel about hope. This echoes our zen practice; while we practise diligently in the hope of a moment of enlightenment or deep insight, it might still elude us despite years of practice. Nevertheless we try, try, try, and press on with our meditation practice, insofar as we can keep our hope and faith alive. This introduction to active hope is about finding, and offering, our best response when facing concerns about our world situation, thus helping us to bolster our practice when things seem to be in a mess.

About the Teacher: Myong An Sunim is a second generation Chinese Malaysian and received his secondary and tertiary education in the UK. He worked for a number of years in finance, met Zen Master Seung Sahn in 1992, and ordained as a monk in 1997 in Korea. After spending the next 16 years practising Zen, he returned to Malaysia in 2013 to found Zen Space Penang and received inka in 2015. Sunim’s interests include blending the spiritual wisdom of the ancients with present day science to arrive at a practical contemporary approach to Zen practice.