“Don’t know – A Tribute to Zen Master Wu Bong” – Materials

Zen Master Wu Bong

Jacob Perl was born in 1950 in Wroclaw, Poland, into a Jewish family. He has been the head teacher of the Kwan Um School of Zen of Europe.

In 1963 Jacob Perl migrated from Poland to the US with his family, where he attended school and university, getting a degree in mathematics at Brown University.

Before meeting Zen Master Seung Sahn, the founder of the Kwan Um School of Zen, and becoming his first American student in 1972, Jacob Perl practiced with some other important spiritual leaders: with the Japanese Suzuki Roshi at the the San Francisco Zen Center, and later with Tarthang Tulku at the Tibetan Nyingmapa Meditation Center in Berkeley, California.

In 1978 Zen Master Wu Bong helped Zen Master Seung Sahn to establish the first Kwan Um School of Zen center in Poland. In 1984 he was given teaching authority (inka) and started teaching regularly in the USA, Europe, and Africa. In 1993 he was given Dharma Transmission and soon thereafter, together with his wife and children, moved to Paris, France, where they founded the Paris Zen Center. In 2008 he moved to Korea to prepare himself to become a monk. In order to keep a place in Europe he moved into the Berlin Zen Center, which from that time onward became his home in Europe. In 2009 he was ordained as a Buddhist monk in Korea. Wu Bong Sunim Seon Sa left his body after a cardiac arrest on Wednesday April 17th 2013 at 1 pm while leading a Zen Retreat at Paris Zen Center. He is greatly missed by his family and all his students and disciples in the Kwan Um School in Europe and worldwide.

From Wikpedia:

Wu Bong, born Jacob Perl, was a Zen master in the Kwan Um School of Zen. Perl was the head teacher of the European Kwan Um School of Zen. The first student of Seungsahn in the United States, he had previously practiced Zen in the Sōtō tradition at the San Francisco Zen Center under Shunryū Suzuki. He also spent one year studying the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism at the Tibetan Nyingmapa Meditation Center in Berkeley, California under Tarthang Tulku. Born in Poland, he and Seungsahn established the first Zen center ever to exist in his home country in 1978. In 1983 Perl was made a Ji Do Poep Sa Nim in the Kwan Um School—granting him some teaching responsibilities—and in 1993 he received dharma transmission from Seungsahn, making him an independent Zen master. Perl’s wife, Grazyna Perl (Bonyo), is also a Zen master in the Kwan Um School of Zen. The pair moved to Paris in 1995 and established the Paris Zen Center. In 2009, Wubong became a bhikṣu. He died while leading a zen retreat in Paris on April 17, 2013.

Posts by Zen Master Wu Bong (from www.kwanumzen.org)