Daehaeng Kun Sunim (대행, 大行; 1927–2012) was a Korean Buddhist nun and Seon (禪) master.

She taught monks as well as nuns, and helped to increase the participation of young people in Korean Buddhism.

Her family was originally quite wealthy, and owned large pieces of land stretching from what is now Itaewon down to the Han River.

Her father was from an old Korean military family, and had continued to secretly support resistance to the Japanese Occupation of Korea.

Unable to safely contact friends or family, they lived in poverty, having to glean fields for leftover grains of rice or vegetables.

Daehaeng Kun Sunim often slept outdoors in order to avoid her increasingly angry father.

She spent many of the years that followed wandering the mountains of Korea, wearing ragged clothes and eating only what was at hand.

Later, she explained that she hadn't been pursuing some type of asceticism; rather, she was just completely absorbed in entrusting everything to her fundamental Buddha essence and observing how that affected her life.

Around 1959, she settled in a hermitage below Sangwon Temple in the Chiak Mountains, and in the mid 1960s moved to the Wonju area.

The center she founded has a lay membership of over one hundred fifty thousand people, and has grown to twenty five branches around the world.

To this end, she taught people to rely upon the great wisdom and energy inherent within each of us, often called "Buddha-nature," through which she said each one of us is connected to every other being and thing.

[11] She was determined to teach such that spiritual practice was something everyone could participate in, and which wasn't limited to certain groups such as monks or nuns.

It was important to her that people develop the strengths and tools to be able to practice and overcome whatever might confront them, without becoming dependent upon some outer teacher or guru.

[21][note 1]Daehaeng didn't emphasize fixed periods of sitting meditation, nor did she encourage the systematic study of hwadus (kong-an).

[23][24] She wanted people to get used to listening inwardly and discovering what they needed to do at any particular time to brighten their own hearts, as opposed to getting caught up in others' fixed forms and traditions.

Trying to solve another person's hwadu is like turning empty millstones or spinning a car's wheels without moving forward.

[25]Daehaeng also taught that we should be careful to interpret events positively and warned about getting caught up in blaming others for the things one experiences.

[26] In the late 1970s, Daehaeng Kun Sunim began translating the traditional ceremonies used in Korean Buddhist temples.

[8] These were used at the temples she founded, Hanmaum Seon Centers, beginning in the early 1980s, with the first collection of these ceremonies being widely published in 1987,[27] but it would not be until late 2011 when Korea's largest Buddhist order, the Jogye Order, would begin to introduce modern Korean translations of the traditional Chinese-character (hanmun) ceremonies.

[28] Daehaeng Kun Sunim had been concerned that laypeople were missing the benefits and help that understanding the ceremonies could provide, so she began translating them from the traditional Sino-Korean characters into modern, phonetic Korean (Hangul).

The youth group is the driving force behind many award-winning lanterns and floats that take part in the Buddha's Birthday parades.