[00:00:00] Cheryl: I just want to ask if you have anything, anything else that you want to share?

[00:00:04] Haemin Sunim: Don’t take yourself too seriously.

[00:00:11] Cheryl: Welcome to the Handful of Leaves podcast.

[00:00:12] Cheryl: My name is Cheryl, and today my guest is none other than amazing Haemin Sunim. Haemin Sunim is a prominent mega monk and author renowned for his bestselling books and large social media following that reach a global audience. He has studied at UC Berkeley, Harvard, and Princeton, and received monastic training in Korea.

[00:00:33] Cheryl: So very nice to meet you today, Haemin.

[00:00:36] Haemin Sunim: Oh, very nice to meet you, Cheryl.

[00:00:39] Haemin Sunim: So the journey of, you know, our human being, we think that in the beginning, what we are looking for is outside of us. So as a young person, we are compelled to go out and seek that which will give us the peace or love or happiness, security, or approval.

[00:01:03] Haemin Sunim: Yeah. But as you become older and wiser and you realize that whatever that you are looking for, it’s not outside of us. It is something that we already have within. Yeah. So discovering this truth can shift a lot of things. Rather than seeking validation from outside, you realize that you don’t need outside validations. We mistakenly believe that I need to earn worthiness.

[00:01:42] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:42] Haemin Sunim: Whatever that you’re looking for, you already have it. Like, for example, you know, love. People often say when my boyfriend or girlfriend says, “I cannot be with you anymore,” then my partner took my love away, so to speak. Mm. Yeah. I don’t have love anymore. Yeah. That person is gone, therefore I don’t have any love.

[00:02:07] Haemin Sunim: But is that true? Yeah. Is it true that you didn’t have love and that person brought love to you, and that person left, and thereby the love that I felt disappeared?

[00:02:25] Cheryl: No, love exists within, hence you are able to feel it when someone comes into your life.

[00:02:32] Haemin Sunim: Yes. Yes, yes. Absolutely. And if that was the case, then you wouldn’t be able to feel love again later. Or if you come back home and you see a very cute cat or dog waiting for you, do you stop loving them because your partner disappeared? It’s more love you feel for your family member, your mother or your brothers or whatever.

[00:03:00] Haemin Sunim: So, you know, that innate love that you had, it became amplified through that person. But just because that person disappeared, it doesn’t mean that the love disappeared. Hmm. And the same thing with, let’s say, security. Yeah.

[00:03:18] Haemin Sunim: We feel that if bad things happen to us, then we will be in great danger and something bad can happen to us.

[00:03:29] Haemin Sunim: Yeah. But the thing is, if you really look at ourselves, our lives, a lot of bad things, they do happen. Challenging moments, difficult moments. However, another interesting thing is we survive.

[00:03:47] Cheryl: We survive every bad moment in our lives. Yes.

[00:03:51] Haemin Sunim: We manage. We manage. So rather than thinking, “I always feel insecure,” whatever happens, somehow we manage and we go through with it. We learn, we grow, you know. So rather than trying to hide or run away, we say:

[00:04:11] Haemin Sunim: I don’t know. Even if the worst thing happened to me, I know that I have the ability to go through with it and learn something very important from that experience.

[00:04:25] Haemin Sunim: So having trust in my ability to deal with, you know, even if it’s very difficult things, and then you realize, oh my goodness, you know, I don’t have to be so afraid. Yeah. So there’s inner security already within you. Maybe it’s from your experience knowing that, oh, I thought that when my first love broke up with me, the world would collapse.

[00:04:54] Haemin Sunim: But it didn’t happen. Right. You went on.

[00:04:58] Cheryl: And, or if it happened, you were able to still manage after that. Yeah.

[00:05:02] Haemin Sunim: Exactly. Exactly. So same thing with a lot of things, you know. Even if you didn’t get into the university that you wanted, you manage. Yeah. You find other things. Even if your business fails, you find other opportunities. So it’s not going to perish you. We learn, we grow. The whole point of challenging moments, it is for us to grow.

[00:05:30] Cheryl: Hmm. And that is way more helpful than staying within the victim mindset that terrorizes and traps us.

[00:05:40] Cheryl: I wanted to bring us to, you know, the thorny parts of relationships, right? How do we forgive others, especially if they’re the closest to us and they’ve hurt us the deepest?

[00:05:55] Haemin Sunim: Yeah. They know which button to push. They know you so well. Yeah. They can really hurt you. Unhappy people hurt, like a previous hurt you’ve received, and then you may unintentionally hurt other people because of your previous hurt. In other words, hurt people hurt others.

[00:06:20] Cheryl: Yeah.

[00:06:21] Haemin Sunim: Yeah. Unhappy people want to make other people unhappy too.

[00:06:26] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:06:26] Haemin Sunim: So when whoever made that comment and you are really hurt, or betrayal or anger or whatever that is, try to see where that anger or betrayal or where that comment is coming from.

[00:06:46] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:47] Haemin Sunim: You pause and say, “Hmm, he made a comment. I wonder why, where that comment is coming from.” Mm. Oftentimes it relates to a deeper wound. It can be wounds from childhood or wounds from this current situation, a very suffocating and uncontrollable situation this person is in.

[00:07:12] Haemin Sunim: So we do not know where that person, what that person is, what kind of feeling, kind of—

[00:07:18] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:20] Haemin Sunim: Situation this person is in. So rather than thinking, rather than paying attention only to myself and only to my hurt, my depression, my anger, stop that and then try to turn that mirror of your awareness to that person and see, huh, where is this comment coming from?

[00:07:46] Haemin Sunim: Yeah. Sometimes I did. Whenever I see negative comments that I have from people that I never met, I click their names and I could also see the other comments that this person was leaving.

[00:08:03] Cheryl: Right.

[00:08:04] Haemin Sunim: To other articles or something. And usually it shows how unhappy this person is. Mm. And the way he talks, he didn’t talk only to me in that harsh and not-so-kind way. He was doing it to everybody, you know?

[00:08:24] Cheryl: Mm. And that’s very interesting. So even if you take yourself out of the picture, the person would still behave the same way to other people.

[00:08:32] Haemin Sunim: Yes.

[00:08:33] Cheryl: So it’s about them more than it’s about you.

[00:08:36] Haemin Sunim: Absolutely. Yes.

[00:08:39] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:08:39] Haemin Sunim: If the person was happy, he would not have made a comment. This person is very unhappy right now. Whatever the situation is, or what you said actually touched on some of his earlier trauma, for example. And that’s something that may be unintended. However, this is something that person needs to work on because if you just blame other people, then you cannot actually change it.

[00:09:13] Haemin Sunim: And thereby you get stuck, you know? So I would suggest that rather than taking it so personally, pause and try to understand that person.

[00:09:23] Cheryl: Mm-hmm. And it sometimes might take a lot already because people who are angry obviously have suffered a lot of hurt, a lot of wounds that they have to work with.

[00:09:34] Cheryl: And this is opening up their perspective to what the other person is going through, but being careful not to take on the burden as well.

[00:09:46] Haemin Sunim: Oh yeah. You need to draw a boundary. Draw a boundary. It’s hard, especially in Asian families. I find it very hard. Yeah. Like their mentality is your thing is my thing and my thing is your thing.

[00:10:00] Cheryl: Everything is mashed up together.

[00:10:03] Haemin Sunim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then sometimes you grew up in a very tiny place together with your siblings in a small area. Hmm. That’s how I did. Like I grew up in one small studio apartment with my parents, me, and my younger brother, and we shared a bathroom with three other families. So it was very hard to have any kind of privacy or boundary or anything like that.

[00:10:29] Haemin Sunim: But I think it’s important, especially as an adult. Yeah. If your family members, somebody very close to you, even your best friends, they are hurting you again and again, again and again. Yeah. Then it’s better for you to draw a boundary.

[00:10:59] Haemin Sunim: Tell them. It is not saying that they should change. A boundary is not to instruct the other party to do something else. It’s basically informing them that if you do this, I am going to take these actions.

[00:11:18] Haemin Sunim: That is, I will not respond. If you’re just going to call me at night and then talk very negatively, then I will not pick up your phone.

[00:11:30] Haemin Sunim: Yeah. Like if you are asking for money without taking into consideration what’s happening in my situation, then I will not respond. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you have to draw boundaries if you’re getting hurt again and again and again and again.

[00:11:47] Haemin Sunim: And of course, as soon as you draw a boundary, the person who’s used to crossing the boundary all the time, they’re going to be very unhappy, right?

[00:11:57] Haemin Sunim: Yeah. They’re going to let you know that this is not right. And they try to make you feel guilty, you know?

[00:12:00] Haemin Sunim: Mm-hmm. All the things that I’ve done for you, and how come you are like blah, blah, blah, you know? Yeah. All those things will come up, but you have to hold the boundary and stay firm.

[00:12:04] Haemin Sunim: Okay. Stay firm. Alright? So that you can maintain some peace in your life.

[00:12:14] Haemin Sunim: A lot of adults, although they’re adults, they’re still very much immature. Mm-hmm. Many of us are immature. Right? And so, especially all these unprocessed wounds, psychological wounds, they have not healed yet, and thereby they’re constantly controlling other people.

[00:12:32] Haemin Sunim: So that they feel better. Yeah. Mm-hmm. For them to feel better, they try to control their children, how they behave, you know? Mm-hmm. Because there’s a deep-rooted insecurity within them, and so they try to control the world around them.

[00:12:57] Haemin Sunim: But obviously it’s impossible to control every single thing around them, and therefore they become very anxious and angry sometimes.

[00:13:00] Haemin Sunim: But that’s their issue. They need to grow up. They need to gather themselves and then say, “Hey, the deep wound that you feel, that’s something that you need to work on. I cannot do it for you.”

[00:13:12] Cheryl: Mm-hmm. Drawing boundaries also is a way of establishing your own freedom.

[00:13:18] Haemin Sunim: Mm-hmm. And peace. Yeah, peace of your mind. And keep in mind that as we evolve, spiritually evolve, the type of people we meet will change. Yeah. Right? And as you become wiser and more free, then you’ll be able to meet those types of people, right?

[00:13:41] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:41] Haemin Sunim: And so I think it’s important that maybe we should work on our own inner wounds and work on inner happiness first before projecting out to the world and trying to control other people.

[00:13:58] Cheryl: Amazing. And that brings us to the end of this conversation. And I really want to thank you so much for this conversation because even though this is the first time we are meeting, I really feel that you’re really good at listening, and it feels that I’m speaking to a good friend.

[00:14:14] Cheryl: So thank you for all the advice. Yeah.

[00:14:17] Haemin Sunim: Thank you. Yes. Thank you so much.