Upon reading The Tao of Life: An Investigation of SunDo Taoism's Personal Growth Model as a Process of Spiritual Development, I was happy to discover distilled information about the ancient and modern thought behind Sun Do practice. Master Kim attempts to track something difficult to define (spiritual development) using measurements that don't exist - an ambitious undertaking!

The project tracks spiritual growth in over 200 Sun Do practitioners. Master Kim discusses several possible models for spiritual growth; perhaps analogous to someone discussing the many models of psychological development. He developed and elucidated one model, which he called "Kim's Five Archetypes of Personal Growth." After completing the process of subjective content analysis, Master Kim's findings reveal increased spiritual growth throughout long-term Sun Do practice; supporting the idea that our practice does do what we hope it will!

It is especially significant for the future of this science that these models and instruments are useful for measuring spiritual growth. I think that one of the main contributions to the body of knowledge in this difficult-to-study area will be the methodology. It would be as if someone in the "hard" sciences invented a new way to see something extremely small or extremely large: that method could then be used to find out new things and the science could take a step forward. Master Kim asserts that spiritual growth is different than other modes of inquiry "but not in research methodology."
Along the way there are some wonderful things for us to read about. Although ours is not an intellectual or dogmatic practice it is founded on Taoism. Well, what is that? One source in the paper is quoted as calling Taoism "the most incompletely known and most poorly understood philosophy" there is. Master Kim even questions it being a philosophy at all. There is a very informed and thoughtful discussion about the nature of Taoism including its pre-history, its early written forms in the Tao Te Ching and Chang-Tzu, and then its manifestation in several forms later on. Master Kim clarifies the confusion by dividing "Taoism" into "religious", "public" and "mountain" Taoism. There is a central theme, however, which Master Kim states is "to live naturally with the flow of life." Sun Do, as you may have guessed, is a form of Mountain Taoism.

One of the themes in the discussion is on the concept of "wholeness". Wholeness vs. fragmentation figures in several areas of the paper, including the motivation for spiritual growth, the definition of enlightenment, the process of spiritual growth, the comparison of East and West, and the author's personal history.

Eastern and Western models of wholeness are mentioned and compared. This gives conceptual clarity to an otherwise vague concept. "This study elucidates the nature of the SunDo perspective of wholeness and its link to the Western model of wholeness…a more comprehensive understanding is much needed to clarify and describe their practices in light of the fact that each characterizes wholeness differently." Master Kim is repeatedly forced to define concepts like this during his discussions, because he does not have established parameters to work with. He is, as it were, on the frontier. He consistently seeks the ideas of great writers on these topics, reflects critically about them, and usually adds something new of his own.

The quest for meaning also figures strongly in elucidating spiritual striving. In fact, the study starts with the striking sentence "Spiritual inquiry can be thought of as essentially an explicit quest for the meaning of existence." This is a description a Westerner like existentialist psychotherapist Victor Frankl might have used.

Careful attention is paid to the question of whether Westerners can make use of, or even make sense of Eastern practices like Sun Do. This must have been very significant in Master Kim's mind years ago when he decided to teach us in the first place! Some very great thinkers, such as Jung, have seriously doubted that Westerners could use Eastern practice, feeling the minds are too different. Master Kim was aware that simply discoursing intelligently about this topic would not be good enough, so he made it a primary research question: "Do practitioners in Korea report the same experiences as those in North America?" Differences were found, but Westerners are, according to the study, able to benefit significantly from Sun Do practice.

To say something about the key Five Elements Theory, I'll rely on some quotes from the paper. "The Five Element/Phases Theory was an attempt to classify phenomena in the perspectives of five fundamental processes, represented by the symbols of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water…Wood (spring) represented lively functions that were in a budding or growing phase. Fire (Summer) represented functions that have reached an extreme state of activity and are about to begin a decline or a resting period. Metal (fall) represented functions that were in a waning state and beginning to hibernate. Water (Winter) represented functions that had reached a farthest state of rest and are about to alter the course of their activity…Earth (All season) designated a balance or a neutral stance? In the winter retreat, Master Kim explained the correspondence to symbolic organs/functions of the body; suddenly the organization of our "Internal Organ Exercises" in their yin and yang forms became clear.

Internal Alchemy is the process by which the energy we build in the ha-tancheon breathing meditation becomes refined in the long-term process of spiritual growth. There is a discussion about the three energy centers: the earth center at which we focus our breathing, the heart center, and the upper or third eye center. A correspondence is made between these three centers and the body, mind, and spirit (chung, qi, and shin). It is the ultimate transformation and unification of these "Three Treasures" which expands the consciousness and ultimately brings unity with the Tao. (A beautiful analogy is made with a burning candle; the candle and wick are the physical essence or body, the flame is the energy or qi(chi), and the light is the spirit or shin (shen).

There is another theme in the dissertation, which I think is taught to us non-verbally in our practice. That is about pain. Discussions about pain come up in both the theoretical and personal aspects of the work. There is a strong implication that we (Westerners at least) view pain as something to be avoided, skirted around, defeated, and repressed. The belief is that when there is pain, something has gone wrong; there is a failure somewhere. I think Boup Sa Nim intends us to turn these assumptions upside-down. Some of us may have been exposed to teachings that pain is to be seen as an opportunity, as a teacher, and that attempts to avoid it will only cause continued suffering. In Master Kim's personal history, pain appears at several of the turning points of his life. The teaching, it seems to me, is to turn arrows into flowers, as the Buddha did, or to turn poison into medicine as Pema Chodron teaches. Master Kim states, "In SunDo, pain is treated as nutrition and as a fertilizer for achieving harmony. In daily life the goal to be rid of pain creates attachment and repression."

Lastly, I would like to react to reading about Master Kim's personal journey. It is not part of tradition for such self-disclosure from teachers, but it added significantly to the dissertation. I'm not sure what I expected-maybe that he was divinely chosen, identified at birth, and trained from infancy to be Boup Sa Nim, like the Dalai Lama! Instead we find that his path to enlightenment started in the same place as the rest of us. He has had numerous opportunities to turn poison into medicine! He was confronted with several problems, which wouldn't go away until he had faced them and accepted their teachings. I think this may have been one reason why he put his personal story in the paper, besides informing the scientific aspect of the work.

So, there you have one student's description of several of the items in this buffet. And that's only the first six or seven dozen pages. Master Kim has published the work and has copies in the Main Center in Connecticut. I think he may be considering writing a non-academic version as one of his next projects.