About Us Teachers Events Programme Contacts Links LV | RU	The Human Route Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human. When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? Life is like a floating cloud which appears. Death is like a floating cloud which disappears. The floating cloud itself originally does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, are also like that. But there is one thing which always remains clear. It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death. Then what is the one pure and clear thing? The Kwan Um School of Zen is an international organization of more than a hundred centers and groups founded by Zen Master Seung Sahn, the first Korean Zen Master to live and teach in the West.  The School's purpose is to make this practice of Zen Buddhism available to a growing number of students throughout the world. The heart of the Kwan Um School of Zen is the daily practice which goes on in its Zen centers and groups. Students and visitors eat together, work together, and meditate together — gradually attaining a clear compassionate mind which moment to moment is able to help all beings.