Himalaya, Where the Wind Dwells (2009)

Beautifully shot film, a little low on plot however.

Himalaya, Where the Wind Dwells (2009)
Kim is on the way home after divorce procedure. He feels obsessive, watching TV news about suicide in the subway of an illegally staying labor of Nepal, Sham. He sleeps, returning home. As he dreams a small mountain village of the Himalayas, he wakes up. He goes to Sham’s funeral home. He asks people of a human rights organization in charge of the funeral arrangements to take Sham’s ashes to his family in Nepal. As Kim arrives in Zomsom, mountain region in Nepal, asks around about Sham’s home. He leaves for Jharkot with a map and a bag. Kim walks long, dry and winding roads. Climbing highlands, he suffers from nasal haemorrhage and headache because of mountain sickness. It’s in two days that he arrives in Sham’s hometown, which is located on the top of a mountain in the Himalayas with snow. There are Sham’s ill mother and his three sisters living in a ragged house. As Kim gives Sham’s ashes to the first sister of Sham’s, Sunita, she gulps down tears, but runs to a hill outside, and cries out loud in sorrow. Sunita asks Kim not to tell her families about Sham’s death. While Kim stays a night in Sham’s, he suffers from serious illness from fatigue and stomach-ache. He stays more under Sunita’s careful nursing.

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Cloud Path, Journey of a Wandering Monk (2006)

Gassho to Nickxon for the link.

Cloud Path, Journey of a Wandering Monk (2006)
Cloud Path, Journey of a Wandering Monk is a documentary about a distinguished Buddhist monk. This was originally a locally produced TV program that had been aired in Korea and was selected by the Korea Foundation as an outstanding work for introducing Korean culture abroad. The original content has been dubbed into English, French, and Spanish. The documentary records the activities of Paul Muenzen (Buddhist name: Hyongak 玄覺), a Harvard University graduate who became a monk, as he learns the Manhaeng (萬行), experiences of the secular world. Along with its highly acclaimed cinematography, various aspects of Korea's rich traditional culture, such as samulnori (四物놀이) and onggi (crockery 옹기), are seen through the eyes of this American monk.

Asian DVD Club

Come Come Come Upwards (1989)

Gassho to Ossi for the link.

Come Come Come Upwards (1989)
About two women as they search in divergent ways for the Buddhist path. One woman, Soonyeo (Kang Soo-yeon), leaves her broken home to become a nun at a rural convent, where her troubled past life both consumes her inner life (as we see in flashbacks) and informs her reading of religious scripture. She meets Jinsung, an ascetic nun who excels at meditation but is inexperienced in the ways of the world. When Jinsung secludes herself in a cave to meditate, she is raped by a wily old monk, and is forced to reckon with her faith, and place in the world. Meanwhile, the monastery’s Abbess expels Soonyeo after an alcoholic criminal, whom Soonyeo saved from suicide, creates havoc at the convent. Soonyeo leaves the monastic life, but is torn between countryside and city, the sequestered spiritual life and the wearying world of dust.

Asian DVD Club

Sun Rising East

Sun Rising East: Zen Master Seung Sahn Gives Transmission
Record of the 1992 Dharma Transmission and 20th anniversary celebrations, plus interviews with four zen masters.

Seung Sahn Haeng Won Dae Soen-sa (Korean: 숭산행원대선사, Hanja: 崇山行願大禪師) (c. 1927—November 30, 2004), born Dok-In Lee, was a Korean Jogye Seon master and founder of the international Kwan Um School of Zen—the largest school of Zen present in the Western world. He was the seventy-eighth teacher in his lineage. As one of the first Korean Zen masters to settle in the United States, he opened many temples and practice groups across the globe. He was known for his charismatic style and direct presentation of Zen, which was well tailored for the Western audience. Known by students for his many correspondences with them through letters, his utilization of Dharma combat, and expressions such as "only don't know" or "only go straight" in teachings, he was conferred the honorific title of Dae Soen Sa Nim in June 2004 by the Jogye order for a lifetime of achievements. Considered the highest honor to have bestowed upon one in the order, the title translates to mean Great honored Zen master. He died in November that year at Hwa Gae Sah in Seoul, South Korea, at age 77.

Gassho to Martin for the link.

Google Video

Zen Buddhism: In Search of Self

Zen Buddhism: In Search of Self
Filmed at Baek Hung Temple in Daegu, South Korea. Following a tradition dating back over a thousand years, two dozen Buddhist nuns gather for a ninety day period of meditation, fasting and contemplation deep in the mountains of South Korea. With the singular goal of attaining enlightenment, the nuns undertake a rigorous schedule of meditation, at one point sitting for seven days without sleep.

In this first ever documentary on the practice of Dong Ahn Geo, or Winter Zen retreat, you will witness not only the nuns' strict meditation practice, but their daily lives in which we see not only a deep spiritual discipline, but an almost childlike joy and simplicity.

Since the great monk and master Hyecheol built Baek Hung temple in the tenth century during the Silla dynasty (AD 57-935), the temple has been known for the most rigorous Cham Sun (Zen) practice. Forbidden until now, the camera captures the austere beauty of the Korea.

Torrentzap

ISOHunt

http://www.fileserve.com/file/KF7Jw2k/Zen Buddhism In Search of Self.part1.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/ytKpFBr/Zen Buddhism In Search of Self.part2.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/XgZtEw3/Zen Buddhism In Search of Self.part3.rar

Oseam (2003)

Hi Kids! Time for a cartoon! This one has french dubbing but there are English subs.

Oseam (2003)
Based on a fairy tale by by Korean writer Jeong Chae-bong, this is a tale about orphan boy Gilson and his blind sister Gami, who are taken care of by Buddhist monks at a temple. The drama unfolds as Gilson follows a monk up to a mountainside temple to learn more about the soul's eye, so he can teach it to his sister so that she can see the world again with her own eyes.

BTJunkie
Subtitles

A Little Monk (2002)

Thanks to my Dharma helper Ossi for this find.

A Little Monk (2002)
A nine-year old monk, Do-nyum, has lived most of his lonely life in a quiet mountain monastery under his elderly master. Though put under a strict regimen of Buddhist teachings, meditation and chores, the child cannot help but to think of his mother, whom he cannot remember but misses dearly and hopes to be reunited with one day. He also wishes that he could be like the other children who live nearby and play games and attend school. Do-nyum's other companion is an older monk named Jung-sim, who is also struggling with staying on the path of enlightenment. The temples groundskeeper keeps reassuring Do-Nyum that his mother will come back someday. But Do-nyum, sick of waiting for a mother who may never return, agrees to be adopted by the monastery's benefactor, a wealthy widow who visits the temple every year to mourn her late son.

Avistaz

The Diamond Sutras - Zen Master Hyon Gak Sunim

The Diamond Sutras - Zen Master Hyon Gak Sunim
Venerable Hyon Gak Sunim was born Paul Muenzen in 1964 to a family of devout Catholics in New Jersey, U.S.A. His mother is a PhD in biochemistry, and his father was an executive at a prominent American computer company, and later founded his own company. He has eight brothers and sisters. He is currently the Head Teacher of the Zen hall at 500 year-old Hwa Gye Sah Temple in the Sam Gak Sahn Mountain range, outside Seoul, South Korea. In August 2001, he received inka, certifying his enlightenment, by Zen Master Seung Sahn the 78th Patriarch in a lineage stretching back to Shakyamuni Buddha.

Educated in philosophy and literature at Yale University (Class of 1987) and comparative religions at Harvard Divinity School ('92), Ven. Hyon Gak Sunim was ordained in 1992 in the temple of the Sixth Patriarch, Nam Hwa Sah Temple on Chogye Mountain in Guangzhou , People's Republic of China: he was the first Westerner to be ordained in China since the Communist Revolution. (The name he received from Zen Master Seung Sahn, "Hyon Gak," means "endlessly profound enlightenment.") He received Bikkhu precepts at the Diamond Altar of Tong Do Sah Temple in Korea, one of the most sacred sites in the nation, and has been doing training in various remote mountain places, including 3 intensive 100-day solo retreats and some 15 group 3-month intensive meditation retreats .

Presently, as the Head Teacher of the Seoul International Zen Center at Hwa Gye Sah Temple , he is Zen Master Seung Sahn's official representative at the Head Temple. He leads three-month intensive retreats twice annually, and is much in demand as a public speaker throughout Korea, Asia, and many parts of the West.

http://www.fulldls.com/torrent-ebooks-346467.html

Also Google Video has a enlightening Interview with Hyon Gak Sunim.

Passage to Buddha 'Hwaomkyung' (1993)

Passage to Buddha 'Hwaomkyung' (1993)
Director Jang Sun Woo might be best known for provocative, controversial films, such as “Lies, A Petal, and To You From Me”, but he has a quiet side as well. Winner of the Alfred-Bauer Prize at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival, “HwaOmKyung” (a.k.a. “Passage to Buddha”, one of Jang’s best works, is a quiet and evocatively beautiful meditation on life. Based on former monk and political activist Go Eun’s novel, “HwaOmKyung” is one of the best Buddhist-themed films Korea has produced. Oh Tae Kyung (Old Boy) gives a stunning performance as Seon Jae, a young boy who spends his life on the road in search of his mother. A modern unfolding of the Avatamsaka sutra, his spiritual odyssey leads him to telling encounters with strange people and, eventually, the essence of Buddhism.

Avistaz
Demonoid

Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?

Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?
Three people live in a remote Buddhist monastery near Mount Chonan: Hyegok, the old master; Yong Nan, a young man who has left his extended family in the city to seek enlightenment - Hyegok calls him Kibong!; and, an orphan lad Haejin, whom Hyegok has brought to the monastery to raise as a monk. The story is mostly Yong Nan's, told in flashbacks: how he came to the monastery, his brief return to the city, his vacillation between the turbulence of the world and his hope to overcome passions and escape the idea of self. We also see Hyegok as a teacher, a protector, and a father figure, and we watch Haejin make his way as a curious and nearly self-sufficient child.

TPB

Youtube