Jeung San Do: A Truth That Transcends Religions

Dao Talk with His Holiness the Jongdosanim of Jeung San Do
by Gim Yeong Hyeon

Jeung San Do Is a Vast Vessel

The siru is the very symbol of Jeung San Do’s truth.

Ahn Gyeong-jeon Jongdosanim started his dao talk with this pronouncement. The venue was a reception hall on the 9th floor of the Jeung San Do Education and Cultural Center in Jungni-dong, Taejeon City on the morning of April 21, 2008. The above-mentioned sentence was his first remark when this interviewer brought up the subject of the character jeung (which signifies the ‘siru’ or ‘steamer’).

Sangjenim’s honorific dao name is Jeung-san, jeung and san signifying ‘steamer’ and ‘mountain’ respectively. Sangjenim, Ruler of the Universe, incarnated into this land and personally adopted this dao name.

The term siru contains a great many meanings. First, the highest peak of a mountain is called a sirubong. There are numerous peaks known as sirubongs around the nation, and each are typically major mountains in their regions. Baekdusan Mountain, the highest in Korea, is furthermore a sirusan.

According to Sangjenim, there is no vessel as large as a siru in terms of size and capacity. It is a vessel large enough to hold the universe’s three realms—heaven, earth, and humanity—and more. Therefore, I say that the siru symbolizes a culture possessing the greatest of capacities—the capacity to embrace not only all of humanity’s history throughout the East and the West, but also all the diverse cultures of the world. Sangjenim’s honorific dao name, siru, speaks of the spirit of Jeung San Do’s truth.

As people little by little come to understand Jeung San Do, they gain the ability to relish its true nature and realize, ‘Aha, this is indeed a genuine truth.’

During Jeung San Do’s development, which spanned the past hundred years or so, there have been ten million Jeung San Do practitioners. Ahn Gyeong-jeon Jongdosanim is the Jeung San Do leader who paved the way for Jeung San Do’s third stage of development, assisting his father Ahn Un-san Taesang Jongdosanim since the 1970s. He is also the man who systematized Jeung San Do’s tenets and oversaw the compilation of Jeung San Do’s scripture, the Dojeon.

Now, he has begun to speak out about Jeung San Do to all the world. This particular dao talk, one of several held under the title ‘A Lively Conversation with the World,’ proceeded in a format in which a person unfamiliar with Jeung San Do asked the Jongdosanim questions about Jeung San Do. With his initial remarks about the nature of the siru, the Jongdosanim flung wide the gate of Jeung San Do’s teachings for a dao talk that continued for two hours.