'Do Your Inner Work'
Now serving as a Buddhist chaplain at Yale University, Sumi Kim, MTS ‘01, encourages current HDS students to focus on their own healing within community.
Sumi Kim, MTS '01
Buddhist Chaplain, Yale University (New Haven, CT)
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Describe the work you do today:
As the Buddhist chaplain in a university setting, I primarily serve undergraduate students as well as graduate and professional students. I generate a weekly program that includes meditation, Buddhist teachings, spiritual formation, and community-building, as well as provide pastoral counseling, guidance for the student board, classroom teaching, and public speaking. I also work with Yale faculty and staff, local residents, and a wide range of organizations and programs within and outside of Yale. To support all this, I'm continuously reading, doing my own practice, continuing with healing, and constantly learning new things. I love my job—it's not a job.
How has your HDS degree influenced your career journey?
Without question, the HDS degree broadened my thinking so that I can now work relatively competently with a wide range of Buddhist lineages and cultural backgrounds, as well as with the majority of non-Buddhist spiritual seekers and those from other faith traditions who turn to Buddhism for answers. I know enough to know what I don't know, and that's important. HDS exposed me to tremendous diversity across all characteristics, which cultivated respect and curiosity.
What career advice would you offer to current HDS students?
Even though we arrive at HDS thinking we're there for education and career, in reality we are there for our own healing and spiritual development, no matter how intellectually inspired we think we are. So, do your inner work, get therapy, know yourself well, come to see your blind spots, figure out the roles of shame, insecurity, trauma, low self-worth, and powerlessness in your inner world. Use the friction of being in community with similar seekers to shine a light on it all. Develop a lot of relationships: don't be a hermit—what a waste of an opportunity; you can do that later in your life for a lot less money. You're with amazing people (and you're amazing, too): be super social and use every minute of your time at HDS and Harvard to explore, learn, converse, commune.