Even the remote mountain monasteries have broadened their access to lay visitors. Nowadays monastic and lay Buddhists have more occasions to meet than before and the current intensification of their relationships brings important redefinitions of their respective identities.

I focus on a one-week retreat for laity in a Buddhist monastery dedicated to meditation. This case study examines the ambiguous goal of this retreat programme that combined two aims: initiating lay practitioners to the monastic lifestyle and the practice of kanhwa son meditation; and establishing a group of lay supporters affiliated to the temple. This temporary monastic experience was directed towards an intense socialisation of the participants to the norms and values of an ascetic lifestyle, blurring some aspects of the border between lay and monastic practices of Buddhism. However, this paper suggests that this transitory rapprochement contributed to both challenge and strengthen the distinction between the renouncers (ch’ulga) and the householders (chaega).

This article examines the education and ordination that a laywoman undergoes in order to join the Buddhist monastic life in Korea.

It is three in the morning and another day has begun at the Korean Buddhist monastery of Songwang-sa…

Based on years of engagement with Korean Buddhist history as well as observation of this particular monastery, this monograph describes, in intimate and honest detail, what it is like to be a monk in Korea.

Scholars have observed that Korean Buddhist nuns have a relatively high social status compared to nuns of other Asian countries, much like their sisters in Taiwan. It is a source of great pride for many Korean bhikṣuṇīs that their community operates with a high degree of autonomy, bringing them to an almost equal standing with their male counterparts. However, this claim of equal status is challenged once the nuns step outside their own communities and into the hierarchical system of the Order, an institution dominated by male monastics.

This paper aims to report on the gender disparity between male monastics and Buddhist women, both nuns and laywomen alike. I will first explore Korean Buddhist nuns’ experiences of gender discrimination imposed by the current institutional and cultural practices of the Buddhist Order, and their battles to challenge the legitimacy of this power structure. Next, I will introduce various episodes, including the Buddhist administration’s conflict with progressive women’s groups, to showcase the gender dynamics and current status of women in Korean Buddhism.

Where Japanese Zen is given to aesthetic considerations in multitudinous forms, Korean Zen is earthy, natural and unpretentious.

This book presents the history of Korean Zen from the “insider” perspective of an American ordained in the tradition.

Wonhyo examined the broad range of Mahāyāna doctrines in a systematic, rational, thoroughgoing, and insightful manner. In addition to the breadth of his scholarly mastery of the Mahāyāna system, he possessed excellent skills in literary Chinese, and the combination of these talents allowed his writings to bring a profound influence on the development of Buddhism in East Asia.

This volume brings together key writings and prefaces of Wonhyo that present his integrative approach to Mahāyāna Buddhism—systematising multiple doctrinal strands into a unified framework and emphasising the harmonisation of apparent conflicts.

The significance of this book within the history of research lies in its comparatively rigorous and objective interpretation of the entire history of Korean Buddhism, from the Three Kingdoms period to modern times.

The English translation of Joseon Bulgyosa-go, a book on Korean Buddhist history by Gim Yeongsu. This work delves into the development, struggles, and societal impact of Buddhism in Korea, exploring its relationship with politics, culture, and the broader historical context.

During the Chosŏn period (1392–1910), the discussion of precepts all but disappeared from the religious discourse in Korean Buddhism. Not only were the precepts left unstudied, but even the performance of official ordination ceremonies for new monks based on the precepts ceased.

This article examines the challenges the modern Chogye Order of Korea faces in applying traditional monastic discipline. It shows how modernization has led the Order to modify or abandon key Vinaya principles, increasingly turning to secular rules and norms instead.

Unaffiliated with any particular school or doctrinal tradition, Wonhyo applied himself to the explication of all the major Mahāyāna source texts that were available at the time, and in doing so had a major impact on East Asian Buddhism.

This paper explores Wonhyo’s role in harmonizing Mahāyāna doctrines and his extensive commentarial work, while also discussing his hagiography—which likely reflects the folk hero he became rather than the historical thinker himself.

Rest the mind (of discrimination) and walk the path, so that the ancient style does not collapse, and then your own matter (of original endowment) will be clear and bright. The flowering mountains and spring begins invariably. I laughed once.

This book provides historical background on Kanhua Chan (hwadu practice) in Korea, explains key terms, and contains an annotated translation of the “Seon Dialogues” text, which outlines the practices of various Seon masters.

Therefore, in Wŏnhyo’s One Mind philosophy, enlightenment is the act of returning to the One Mind. This can be achieved through the practice of the six paramitas—generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom—or by chanting to Amitābha with faith in the One Mind and the three Buddhist treasures.

This encyclopedic introduction to Korean Buddhism shows how Buddhism entered the Korean peninsula from China in the 3rd to 6th centuries and then developed uniquely through doctrines like Hwaŏm and Sŏn, becoming deeply embedded in Korean cultural, political, and philosophical life.

The stand-alone practice of memorization of dhāraṇīs appears to have increased in recent years, as evidenced by the mass production of small inexpensive books and series of books for copying and chanting dhāraṇīs and mantras.

This essay explores the contemporary use of dhāraṇīs and mantras in South Korean Buddhism, particularly among lay practitioners, through literature and ritual materials. Since the early 2000s, interest in dhāraṇīs has grown alongside the revival of apotropaic practices, with laypeople employing them in devotionals, merit-making, rituals for worldly benefits.

Together with the Silla dynasty scholiast Wonhyo (617-686), Chinul is one of the two most important figures produced by Korean Buddhism. Chinul was the inheritor of a mature tradition already rich after seven hundred years of symbiotic development with its Chinese counterpart.

This pivotal work in Korean Buddhist Studies provides an extensive introduction to Chinul’s life and thought alongside the complete translations of all his surviving writings.

Templestay has become popular among Koreans struggling to cope with an ever more competitive and precarious social and economic environment.

Drawing on ethnographic research and an examination of the history, statistics, marketing, and program content of Templestay, this article challenges the polarized view that posits socially engaged Buddhism as the opposite of traditional monastic Buddhism and suggests that Templestay facilitates Buddhism’s engagement with the prevailing psychological predicament of society.

Kings and ministers thus boasted among themselves over their exclusive fidelity to orthodox Confucian values, even as they worked to assure that the Buddhist institution was aligned with the practical needs of the kingdom.

In this book chapter, Evon explores the enduring interplay between Buddhism and statecraft in Korea, tracing how Buddhist institutions and ideologies have been leveraged by rulers from ancient times through the modern era, emphasizing the adaptive nature of Korean Buddhism in legitimizing political authority.

The harmony between the master and the disciple was as fortunate as a mustard seed falling from the sky hitting the point of a needle.

This work offers English readers a threefold insight into Korean Buddhist hagiography by presenting three major compilations of biographies of eminent monks. The translations and annotations were based on an annotated Korean manuscript, with reference to the Hanmun originals held at the Archives of Buddhist Culture at Dongguk University.

Paralleling the reinvention of Christmas in the modern period, Buddhists reconfigured the Buddha’s birthday as a symbol of their religious identity and power. The Buddha’s Birthday festival should be understood in the context of increasing contact and exchange among Buddhists in the East and the West. The festival’s prominence was the result of complex negotiation and collaboration between Korean and Japanese Buddhists who both hoped the festival would advance their overlapping visions of Buddhism. The festival was not so much an imposition of the colonizer on a native culture as it was a dynamic, creative feature of modern Korean Buddhism in a colonial context.

The notion of chunghwa 中華, an ideology that points to China as the place of cultural origin, was commonly adopted by both the Confucian scholar-officials and Buddhist monks during Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910).

Paekgok’s composition [the Taegak Tŭnggye jip 대각등계집] is a further example of how no division between Korean and Chinese history was perceived.

It was after the Sino-Japanese war of 1894 that such conceptions of China were shattered, leading the Koreans to be more open to western influences.

Venerable P’ŏpt’a 法舵 (b. 1945), AKA ‘the Bodhisattva of Reunification,’ maintains that it is imperative to keep engaging North Korean Buddhists as they are, and to keep providing material help to Northerners—especially food—through Buddhist channels. Doing otherwise would not only be counter to the spirit of universal compassion which typifies Mahāyāna Buddhism, but also leave Southern Buddhists unprepared in the case of unexpected political changes in P’yŏngyang.

The famous cultural hero, King Sejo (1455–1468), at first he put in place, on the advice of his officials, very punitive and strict regulations around Buddhism. But as time went on, he got sick of the [Confucian State Council] he was dealing with. He started to think that his officials were nuts, I mean actually crazy. You can see in his documents, he himself was being driven crazy having to deal with these people. And the whole issue was Buddhism. They want the recurring thing: to convince a King to go the whole way and kill off Buddhism once and for all.

[By the 16th century], they kind of succeed in [stripping Buddhism of legal recognition] but there’s an unhappy conclusion: it didn’t atrophy and die. In fact, something worse happened: because they removed the government oversight of Buddhism, it started to flourish!

Notwithstanding the long history of Buddhism in the peninsula, it was far from certain at the dawn of the twentieth century that the tradition would be able to secure a viable and legitimate place in modern Korean society. This book argues that a key factor in the effort to revitalize the religion was the concerted and sustained attempt by a wide variety of Buddhist organizations and individuals to systematically propagate (p’ogyo 布敎) Buddhism.

Despite its successful Buddhist polemics, Sōtō’s Buddhist teachings in Korea were basically political propaganda viable only within the framework of Japanese colonial imperialism.

This article first examines three interrelated aspects of Korean monastics: (1) the stigmatization imposed on monastics during the Neo-Confucian Joseon dynasty, (2) the persistence of these stigmas in the minds of Koreans, and (3) their internalization among Korean monastics themselves. The article then draws out the impact of these three aspects on the late and limited emergence of lay leadership.

The following discourses were attempts to deal with the problems faced by the Buddhist community during modernization: the discourse on secularity and social participation, the discourse on modernity centering on the issue of modifying precepts, and the discourse on identity contemplating the originality of Korean Buddhism.

Han wrestled with the task of bridging the gap between institutional Buddhism and lay Buddhism, which had resulted in the deterioration of the Buddhist ideal. In an attempt to find a middle ground that could connect these two extremes, Han’s strategy was to focus on both the Buddhist notion of expediency and the caring spirit of bodhisattva. He was not particularly successful.

According to the Jogye Order’s 2018 periodic report, the average age of monks is increasing and the number of monks is decreasing. In order to offer solutions to these problems, the report presents and analyzes by dividing those themes into six sub-topics, namely: decrease of births; decrease of postulants; aging of postulants; rapidly changing educational environment; teaching aptitude of educators; education budget.

This article critically scrutinizes the Jogye Order’s latest report to identify and correct some data misinterpretations and offer new insights that the authors believe would help our leaders come up with better solutions.

This article will survey the issues and events surrounding three protests: the 2003 samboilbae, or ‘three-steps-one-bow’, march led by Venerable Sukyong against the Saemangeum Reclamation Project, Venerable Jiyul’s Anti-Mt. Chonsong tunnel hunger-strike campaign between 2002 and 2006, and lastly Venerable Munsu’s self-immolation protesting the Four Rivers Project in 2010.

Behind this marriage of the court and Buddhism, however, were the outstanding Buddhist monks who offered the ideology for it.

From 1982 through 2016, Korean media outlets have reported over 120 instances of vandalism, arson and harassment targeting Buddhist temples and facilities in South Korea. An extension of on-going tensions between South Korea’s Buddhist and Evangelical Protestant communities, this one-sided wave of violence and harassment has caused the destruction of numerous temple buildings and priceless historical artifacts, millions of USD in damages, and one death.

[This article] examines the responses from South Korea’s Buddhist and Evangelical communities and various government agencies, as well as the effects of these responses, before investigating the relationship between these incidents and the mainstream Evangelical doctrines of religious exclusivism, dominionism and spiritual warfare.

The first way to explain this unlikely fusion of merciful religion and a quite merciless modern creed is to remember to what degree the impact of Social Darwinism on early modern Korean intelligentsia was strong and lasting.

For many young intellectuals aspiring to understand the basic principles of the new, “enlightened and modern” world, Social Darwinism was to very high degree synonymous with “foreign thought” and “modernity” as such – the more so, as this creed was on the one hand totally unconnected to the ideologies of traditional time, having no analogues, not even very crude ones, among them, and on the other hand structurally close to orthodox Neo-Confucianism as a philosophy explaining both natural and social phenomena.

Buddhist denominations sought to inspire Koreans to become reacquainted with cultural heritage and internationals to learn about Buddhism. Temple stays were and continue to be promoted as a way to find one’s “true self” […] This burgeoning tourism niche attracted 70,910 internationals in 2017

Buddhism focuses less on the issue of why evil and its incumbent suffering are present in the world and more on the question of how to respond to that evil.

This emphasis on soteriology over metaphysics is seen in the characteristic invocation of pragmatic criteria for the evaluation of doctrines and practices; the recurrent motif of the Buddha as therapist rather than theorist; and the pervasive influence of the meta-theory of upāya (expedients or stratagems). This article will examine the soteriological dimension of the broader Buddhist response to evil and explore some of the explicit examinations of the problem of a Buddhist “theodicy” in later Mahāyāna monistic ontologies, which are explored in Korean Buddhist materials: viz., if the mind is innately enlightened or inherently pure, whence do ignorance or defilements arise?

One thought arising, it is hell;
One thought reversed, it is heaven.

Inside the 2001–2002, 90-day, winter meditation retreat at Baek Hung Temple, Palgong, Korea.

This is the second painting that Seol Min has donated to the people of San Francisco.

… valuable material for the contemplation of the transit of ideas between South Asia and Korea

A Chinese monk visits medieval Sri Lanka and perhaps influences Korean sculpture, challenging our notions of nationalized Buddhisms.