The Zen Monastic Experience

Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea

Robert E. Buswell Jr., Robert E. Buswell, Jr.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691216102
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Bouddhisme

Robert Buswell, a Buddhist scholar who spent five years as a Zen monk in Korea, draws on personal experience in this insightful account of day-to-day Zen monastic practice. In discussing the activities of the postulants, the meditation monks, the teachers and administrators, and the support monks of the monastery of Songgwang-sa, Buswell reveals a religious tradition that differs radically from the stereotype prevalent in the West. The author's treatment lucidly relates contemporary Zen practice to the historical development of the tradition and to Korean history more generally, and his portrayal of the life of modern Zen monks in Korea provides an innovative and provocative look at Zen from the inside.

CHAPTER ONE

Buddhism in Contemporary Korea

IN ORDER to make my point about the discrepancy between the depictions of Zen in Western works on the school and the living system of Zen practice, I have described the religion in the introduction as if it were a single, monolithic tradition. This description, of course, oversimplifies what is actually a much more complex historical situation. Zen is not coextensive with any one school, whether that be Korean Sŏn or Japanese Rinzai Zen. There have actually been many independent strands of what has come to be called Zen, the sorting out of which has occupied scholars of Buddhism for the last few decades. These sectarian divisions are further complicated by the fact that there are Zen traditions in all four East Asian countries—China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam—each of which has its own independent history, doctrine, and mode of practice. While each of these traditions has developed independently, all have been heavily influenced by the Chinese schools of Ch’an (Kor. Sŏn; Jpn. Zen; Viet. Thiên). We are therefore left with an intricate picture of several independent national traditions of Zen, but traditions that do have considerable synergy between them. To ignore these national differences would be to oversimplify the complicated sectarian scene that is East Asian Zen; but to overemphasize them would be to ignore the multiple layers of symbiosis between Zen’s various national branches.¹ These continuities and transformations² between the different strands must both be kept in mind in order to understand the character of the “Zen tradition.”

This book will focus on the monastic practice of Zen in one of these national traditions, one that has many levels of symbiosis with both China and Japan. This is the Zen tradition of Korea, where it is known as Son. While Korean Buddhism did not begin as an exclusively Sŏn tradition, Sŏn was introduced into Korea perhaps as early as the late seventh century during Ch’an’s incipiency on the Chinese mainland. By the thirteenth century, Sŏn came to dominate Buddhist doctrine and praxis, virtually eclipsing all other branches of Korean Buddhism after the fifteenth century. It was able to assert this dominance by absorbing many of the distinctive insights of its rival Korean schools, eventually subsuming those other branches into what came to be known as the indigenous Chogye school of Korean Buddhism. (“Chogye” is the Korean pronunciation of “Ts’ao-ch’i,” the name of the mountain of residence of the sixth patriarch of Chinese Ch’an, Hui-neng, adumbrating the fundamental Zen stance of Korean Buddhism.) Because of its assimilative character, Sŏn Buddhism in Korea may be rather more tolerant and accommodating of the approaches of other schools of Buddhism than might other East Asian traditions of Zen. Despite this caveat, there are enough continuities between the various Zen schools that much of Korean Sŏn practice has its analogues in the other national traditions of East Asian Zen as well. So I believe a close examination of the monastic practices of Korean Sŏn will provide insights relevant to the Zen tradition throughout the region.

Let me begin this look at contemporary Sŏn practice by providing some general background on the development of Buddhism in Korea; material on the history of the Korean Sŏn tradition will be found in Chapter Seven.

EARLY BUDDHISM IN KOREA

Buddhism first came to Korea during the fourth century a.d. Virtually from its inception on the peninsula, the religion was a principal force behind social and technological change in Korea. Along with their religion, Buddhist missionaries introduced to Korea a wide cross-section of Sinitic culture and thought, including the Chinese writing system, calendrics, and architecture. Buddhist spiritual technologies were also considered to offer powers far superior to those of the indigenous religion of Shamanism.³ For all these reasons, Buddhism became an integral part of the religio-political nexus of Korea during the Unified Silla (668-935) and Koryŏ (937-1392) dynasties. Buddhism therefore provided the foundation for Korean national ideology for over a millennium.

During those two periods, Buddhism functioned as a virtual state religion. Buddhism received munificent material and political support from the royal court and in exchange interceded with the buddhas and bodhisattvas on behalf of the nation’s welfare. The Buddhist presence was ubiquitous throughout the country, exerting its hold over the nation with an extensive network of both mountain monasteries and city temples. During the Koryŏ dynasty, for example, the head monasteries of both of the two major branches of the tradition—Kyo, or doctrinal study, and Son, or Zen meditation training—were based in the capital of Kaesong, and thousands of monks pursued their vocations in urban enclaves. Monasteries were awarded vast tracts of paddy and forest lands, which were worked by armies of serfs awarded to the temples by the secular authorities. Monasteries also pursued such commercial enterprises as noodle making, tea production, and distillation of spirits. The financial power of the monasteries was so immense that it severely strained the fabric of the Koryŏ economy, contributing to the demise of that kingdom and the rise of the Chosŏn dynasty.⁴

The foundation of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910), with its pronounced Neo-Confucian sympathies, brought an end to Buddhism’s hegemony in Korean religion and upset this ideological status quo. Buddhism’s close affiliation with the vanquished Koryŏ rulers led to centuries of persecution during this Confucian dynasty. While controls over monastic vocations and conduct had already been instituted during the Koryŏ period, these pale next to the severe restrictions promulgated during the Chosŏn dynasty. The number of monks was severely restricted— and at times a complete ban on ordination instituted—and monks were prohibited from entering the metropolitan areas. Hundreds of monasteries were disestablished (the number of temples dropping to 242 during the reign of T’aejong [r. 1401-1418]), and new construction was forbidden in the cities and villages of Korea. Monastic land holdings and temple slaves were confiscated by the government in 1406, undermining the economic viability of many monasteries. The vast power that Buddhists had wielded during the Silla and Koryŏ dynasties was now exerted by Confucians. Buddhism was kept virtually quarantined in the countryside, isolated from the intellectual debates of the times. Its lay adherents were more commonly the illiterate peasants of the countryside and women, rather than the educated male elite of the cities, as had been the case in ages past. Buddhism had become insular, and ineffective in generating creative responses to this Confucian challenge.⁵

Foreign pressures on the late Chosŏn court brought the first real break in this state of affairs. Japanese suzerainty over Korea began in 1905 with the appointment of a Japanese adviser to the Chosŏn dynasty throne and was formalized in 1910 with the official annexation of Korea. Ironically, perhaps, the Japanese colonial presence was initially of some advantage to Buddhism. Japan was itself a Buddhist country and its envoys empathized with the pitiable plight of Korean monks under the Chosŏn administration. It was Japanese lobbying at the turn of the century, for example, that forced the Kojong (r. 1864-1907) government to remove restrictions on Buddhist activities in the capital and allowed Buddhist monks to enter the cities for the first time in some three hundred years.

But Japanese support for Buddhism was hardly benign. Missionaries from such Japanese Buddhist sects as the Nichiren Shōshū and Jōdo Shinshu lobbied to be allowed to proselytize in Korea. While such missionary activities began in the Japanese expatriate enclaves, the Japanese colonial administration subsequently encouraged missionaries to extend their activities into Korean communities as well, as a means of exerting ideological control over the native populace.

Periodic attempts were even made to force Korean Buddhism to merge with one or another Japanese sect, moves that would have obliterated the independent identity of the indigenous church. To the Koreans, the most notorious of these attempts was an agreement reached in October 1910 by Yi Hoegwang (1840-after 1925) of the new Wŏnjong (Consummate school) to merge Korean Buddhism into the Japanese Soto school, the Zen school whose “gradualist” ideology, the Koreans protested, had the least affinities with the putative “subitism” of traditional Korean Buddhism. While this merger was soon scuttled, it nevertheless attests to the seriousness of these new political pressures the Japanese exerted on Korean Buddhism.* ⁶

SCHISM BETWEEN CELIBATE AND MARRIED CLERGY

But perhaps the most severe threat to traditional Korean Buddhism was the Japanese support for a married clergy. Since Korean Buddhists had traditionally observed celibacy, this step threatened the ethical basis of the religion and led to serious upheavals within the church. As had happened earlier in Meiji Japan, the Japanese imperial government eventually required that monks marry in order to hold important ecclesiastical or monastic positions.⁷

Throughout most of the Chosŏn dynasty, celibacy remained institutionalized within the Buddhist church. But during the declining years of the dynasty, adherence to the precepts had become increasingly lax among the ecclesia, a problem exacerbated by decreased governmental supervision of internal monastic conduct. As contact with incoming Japanese missionary monks brought the news that even that most prosperous of Asian Buddhist nations permitted monks to take wives, some of the first documented instances of marriage among Korean monks are noted. By the turn of the century, it had become common knowledge among Koreans that many monks were secretly marrying, regardless of the restrictions still in place. The Chosŏn Pulgyo wŏlbo (Korean Buddhism Monthly) of November 1912, for example, reported that many monks neither wore monk’s clothing nor kept the precepts—both discreet codes for marriage.⁸

But what Korean scholarship sometimes ignores is that calls for a married clergy did not come initially from Japanese colonial forces, but instead from Korean Buddhist intellectuals. Perhaps the most influential of these native reformers was Han Yongun (1879-1944; sobriquet Manhae). Monk, social and religious reformer, renowned poet (he authored Nim ŭi chimmuk, “Silence of the Beloved,” one of the first modern poems in vernacular Korean), influential magazine editor, and translator, Yongun is perhaps best remembered in Korea as one of the thirty-three leaders of the March First Movement (Samil Undong), the independence movement from Japanese rule that was initiated in 1919.⁹

While still in his teens, Yongun had participated in the Tonghak (Eastern Learning) Rebellion during the last decade of the nineteenth century, which sought to purge Western influences from Korean society and restore native Korean values. Looking back into his country’s own traditions led Yongun to Buddhism, and in 1905, at the age of twentyseven, he ordained as a monk at Paektam-sa on Sŏrak Mountain. Profoundly influenced by the important Chinese reformer Liang Ch’i-ch’ao’s (d. 1929) writings on the West, he went to Vladivostok in 1905-1906 in an unsuccessful attempt to travel to the United States via Siberia and Europe. In 1908, Yongun was, however, able to travel to Japan, where he was amazed by the conciliation he found there between traditional forms of Buddhism and modern technological culture. Profoundly affected by his overseas experiences and distressed at what he considered the degenerate state of his own traditio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Preface
• Conventions Used
• Introduction: Zen Monasticism and the Context of Belief
• Chapter One: Buddhism in Contemporary Korea
• Chapter Two: Daily and Annual Schedules
• Chapter Three: Songgwang-Sa and Master Kusan
• Chapter Four: A Monk’s Early Career
• Chapter Five: The Support Division of the Monastery
• Chapter Six: Relations with the Laity
• Chapter Seven: The Practice of Zen Meditation in Korea
• Chapter Eight: Training in the Meditation Hall
• Chapter Nine: The Officers of the Meditation Compound
• Conclusion: Toward a Reappraisal of Zen Religious Experience
• Epilogue: Songgwang-sa after Kusan
• Appendix: Principal Chants Used in Korean Monasteries
• Glossary of Sinitic Logographs
• Works Cited
• Index