Korean Buddhist Philosophy
Jin Y. Park
The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy
Edited by William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield
Print Publication Date: May 2011 Subject: Philosophy, Non-Western Philosophy Online Publication Date: Sep 2011 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.003.0032
Abstract and Keywords
This article provides an introduction to Korean Buddhist philosophy. Korean Buddhism is a part of the East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. During its fifteen-hundred-year history, which began in the fourth century and continues to today, Korean Buddhism has developed in a close relationship with Chinese Buddhism and at the same time generated its own unique views. Buddhism, together with Confucianism, constitutes one of the two veins of philosophical traditions in Korea. This article discusses five Buddhist thinkers: Ŭisang (625–702), WOnhyo (617–686), Pojo Chinul (1158–1210), T'oe'ong SOngchOl (1912–1993), and POpsOng (1913–), with respect to the three themes of HwaOm (Ch. Huayan) Buddhism, SOn (Ch. Chan; Jap. Zen) Buddhism, and Buddhist ethics.
Keywords: Ŭisang, WOnhyo, Pojo Chinul, T'oe'ong SOngchOl, POpsOng, Buddhist ethics, Buddhism, HwaOm
KOREAN Buddhism is a part of the East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. During its fifteen-hundred-year history, which began in the fourth century and continues to today, Korean Buddhism has developed in a close relationship with Chinese Buddhism and at the same time generated its own unique views. Buddhism, together with Confucianism, constitutes one of the two veins of philosophical traditions in Korea. Five Buddhist thinkers are discussed in this essay: Ŭisang (625–702), WOnhyo (617–686), Pojo Chinul (1158–1210), T'oe'ong SOngch'Ol (1912–1993), and Pópsóng (1913–), with respect to the three themes of HwaOm (Ch. Huayan) Buddhism, SOn (Ch. Chan; Jap. Zen) Buddhism, and Buddhist ethics.
Ŭisang is credited as the founder of the HwaOm school. From 661 to 668, Ŭisang studied in Tang China with Zhiyan (602–668), the designated second patriarch of Chinese Huayan Buddhism. During this time, Ŭisang also became a colleague of Fazang (643–712), who later became the third patriarch of the tradition. Ŭisang's thought on HwaOm Buddhism is well articulated in a short piece titled The Diagram of the Reality Realm of the One Vehicle of Hwaöm Buddhism (HwaOm ilsüng pOpkye to), which has had a significant impact on Korean HwaOm thought up to today.
WOnhyo, Ŭisang's contemporary, is one of the most influential Buddhist thinkers in Korean Buddhism. WOnhyo joined a monastery during his teens. Without specific teachers to guide him, he read widely and wrote
commentaries on major Mahāyāna texts, making a significant contribution to the commentarial tradition in East Asian Buddhism. WOnhyo made two attempts to travel to China, neither of which was completed. A life-changing experience during his second unsuccessful journey to China is cited frequently as the moment of his awakening to the truth that the mind is the source of one's understanding of the external world. (p. 374) Wónhyo left behind him a voluminous corpus, the themes of which include HwaOm Buddhist thought, Mind-Only (Cittamātra/Yogācāra) philosophy, the Lotus Teaching, and bodhisattva precepts, among others.
Pojo Chinul was a major figure in establishing the SOn Buddhist tradition in twelfth-century Korea and is considered one of the most important figures in Korean SOn Buddhism. Chinul joined a monastery at the age of eight (1165). Like Wónhyo, Chinul mainly trained himself without specific mentors until the age of twenty-five (1182), when he passed the governmental examination for monks. Instead of taking a governmental post, Chinul continued his own practice, traveling to different monasteries, and finally settled down at the Songgwang monastery in 1200, where he trained disciples, gave dharma talks, and wrote on Buddhism until his death. Chinul's Buddhism developed around the core SOn doctrine that the mind is the Buddha. In later days, Chinul adopted Kanhwa SOn and promoted it as the most effective way to attain awakening. The Kanhwa SOn tradition has remained the most prominent SOn tradition in Korea since Chinul's time, demonstrating his lasting impact on Korean Buddhism.
T'oe'ong SOngh'Ol is one of the most important figures in the second half of the twentieth century in Korean Buddhism; he represents a SOn absolutist and subitist position. POpsOng might not be as well recognized as the other three thinkers introduced here; however, POpsOng's Buddhist thought represents engaged Buddhism in contemporary Korea, one of the important and emerging fields in Buddhist philosophy today. We will discuss POpsOng's engaged Buddhism together with WOnhyo's discussion of bodhisattva precepts. This will offer a response to the question of Buddhism's position in social philosophy and ethical theories, as has been raised in recent years among western Buddhist thinkers.
The Universal and the Particular in the Hwaöm Thought of Ŭisang
Ŭisang discusses the ultimate vision of HwaOm Buddhism in his “Verse on the Dharma Nature” (POpsOng ke), which is included in the Diagram of the Reality Realm of the One Vehicle of Hwaöm Buddhism (HwaOm ilsuing pópkye to). The verse consists of 210 Chinese characters deployed in a diagram that demonstrates the interpenetration of all beings in the phenomenal world, the core theme of HwaOm Buddhism. In the HwaOm Buddhist tradition, the original nature of a being, frequently referred to as “the dharma nature,” is characterized by its nonsubstantiality. The basic Buddhist doctrine postulates the identity of a being as conditional. A being in Buddhism is not an owner of independent and permanent substance but exists in the milieu of conditioned causality. Buddhism identifies its causal theory as dependent-arising. The traditional definition of the concept appears in early (p. 375) Buddhist texts as follows: “Because this happens, that happens; because this ceases, that ceases.” A being's identity is possible only as a differential notion in Buddhism, which challenges the identity principle in substantialist philosophy.
As one of the major East Asian Buddhist schools, HwaOm Buddhism emphasizes the reality of the conditioned
causality at the entire level of the phenomenal world and discusses it especially through the relationship between
the noumenal and the phenomenal. The ultimate teaching of the school is expressed frequently through the symbol of the jewel net of Indra. Imagine the universe as a net that stretches infinitely. Further envision that a glittering jewel sits in each knot of the net. The jewel itself is transparent and has no identity of its own. The identity of each jewel is constantly constructed through what it reflects. In the world of Hwaöm Buddhism, each entity in the cosmos is like a jewel in the net. All beings exist within the net of dependent-arising. In this interrelated world, the identity of the subject is not defined by the independent and permanent essence of the subject but already includes its other. Ŭisang defines a being's identity in this nature as interfusion and nondual. The nature of what is reflected in each jewel cannot be analyzed systematically because of its quantitative immensity and its fluctuating quality. In the “Verse,” Ŭisang describes the logic of Indra's net as follows: “Within the one is encompassed the
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all, and within the many is the one. / The one is the all and the many are the one.” The idea of mutual penetration reaches culmination in the signature Hwaöm statement, as Ŭisang states: “In one particle of dust is contained the ten directions [the entire world]. / All other particles of dust are the same” (HPC 2.1a). In the logic of Hwaöm Buddhism, any being, however infinitesimal it might be, is identified with the entirety of the world. Since all beings already exist within the net of conditioned causality, the one and the many are not separate. Ŭisang explains this relationship between the one and the many by using the example of the number “one” and the number “ten”:
In the teaching of the great dependent-arising, if there is no “one,” the “many” cannot be established. [Practitioners] should be well aware of this nature. What is called the “one” is not the “one” by its self-nature. [By the same token], what is known as the “ten” is not the “ten” by its self-nature; the “ten” comes to be known as the “ten” by its relation to others [or by dependent-arising]. All of the beings produced out of dependent-arising do not have definite marks or a definite nature. Since there is no self-nature, beings do not exist independently, which suggests that birth actually means no-birth. No-birth means no need to abide, and no abiding means the middle path. (HPC 2.6b)
There exists no eternal, unchanging one-ness or ten-ness that grounds the nature of either the one or the ten. Both the “one” and the “ten” (and in that sense, any being (p. 376) in the world) earn their identities through the ever-changing causal transformation.2 The logic of conditioned causality, however, does not negate the existence of individual beings on the phenomenal level: that is, the one and the ten are different. Despite the individuality that is recognized on the phenomenal level, Hwaöm thought also consistently emphasizes the noumenal aspect of the phenomenally separated existence: hence, the one is the ten. Two issues deserve our attention here: first, the paradigm of one particle-qua-the world does not indicate that a specific one is the entire world all the time on every occasion. The one is the ten when we focus on the “one” at a given moment in a given situation, and the same can be said about any other entity in the world, which is represented in Ŭisang's “Verse” as “a particle of dust.” When the notion of the one in “the one is the all” is interpreted as referring to exclusively a specific one— such as the emperor (the one) as opposed to the people (the all)—the Hwaöm vision risks supporting a totalitarian vision. Second, the phenomenal (the one) and the noumenal (the all) are nondual, and so is the particular and the universal. The phenomenal and the noumenal are hermeneutically constructed concepts, not ontologically separated realities. These two issues should be the ground to respond to the criticism that Hwaöm Buddhism is a form of a philosophy of idealism.
Ŭisang further elaborates the identity of the “one” and the “all” by using the concept of the six marks. The six marks consist of three pairs: universality/particularity (K. ch'ongsang/pyólsang), sameness/difference (K. tongsang/yisang), and integrity/fragmentation (K. sóngsang/koesang). As in the case of the one and the ten, these seeming binary opposites coexist in the identity of an entity. The first in the pairs—universality, the sameness, and
integrity—characterize the totality of the world as understood from the noumenal level. The second sets of each pair—particularity, difference, and fragmentation—characterize the individual entities at the phenomenal level like each jewel in Indra's net. The six marks making up the three pairs demonstrate the contradictory identity through which Hwaöm Buddhism understands an entity. An individual entity is characterized by the marks of particularity, difference, and fragmentation, whereas the nature of its individual identity is constructed through its relationship with others, and its identity is inseparable from the marks of universality, sameness, and integrity.
In Chinese Huayan Buddhism, the mutual interpenetration of the noumenal and the phenomenal is explained through a theory known as the fourfold worldview. The fourfold worldview consists of (1) the world of the phenomenon (C. shifajie; (p. 377) K. sabópkye), (2) the world of the noumenon (C. lifajie; K. yibópkye), (3) the world of the unobstructed interpenetration of the noumenon and the phenomenon (C. lishi wuai fajie: K. yisa muae pópkye), and (4) the world of the unobstructed interpenetration among phenomena (C. shishi wuai fajie; K. sasa muae pópkye). The first of the Huayan fourfold worldview represents the world that consists of individual existences; it is the world of the many, where diversity exists seemingly without a coherent system. The second stage of the fourfold worldview postulates a world that is understood from the perspective of the principle. However diverse existence in the phenomenal world might be, no being exists outside of conditioned causality, which is the structure of the world from the Buddhist perspective. Hence, the third layer of the fourfold worldview declares that there is no conflict between the world of diversity and the world of one principle. Considering the phenomenal diversity in light of the first three stages, Huayan envisions at its fourth level that all entities in the world are mutually influential and interconnected without conflicts.
Ŭisang explains the relationship between the noumenon (the universal) and the phenomenon (the particular) as follows: there is a mutual identity of the noumena (the universal) and the phenomena (the particular); there is a mutual identity of the noumenon and the noumenon, and there is a mutual identity of the phenomenon and the
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phenomenon (HPC 2.6a). This is the world in which the universal and the particular, and the particular and the particular, are mutually interpenetrating due to their dependently arising nature. Ŭisang identifies the nature of things arising in the law of the dependent-arising as the “middle path.” The Buddhist middle path does not indicate the meridian point of the two participating elements. Instead, it indicates that “all polarities are interfused” (HPC 2.5b). The one and the many, the noumenon and the phenomenon, the universal and the particular are interfused in the sense that neither has self-nature and that both exist in the midst of conditioned causal movements.
Language and Subjectivity in Chinul's Sŏn Buddhism
Zen Buddhism shares with Hwaöm Buddhism the idea of the mutual interfusion of beings but develops its own paradigm that addresses the main concerns of the school. The basic premise of the Zen school claims that the sentient being is the Buddha. The premise is an oxymoron: if the sentient being is the Buddha, why are (p. 378) sentient beings still not enlightened? If the sentient being is the Buddha, what is the meaning of enlightenment? Zen Buddhism challenges the traditional logic of philosophy by answering these questions with the following statement: the sentient being is the Buddha, and yet the sentient being is the sentient being.
In approaching the paradoxical nature of the existential reality of a being, Pojo Chinul underlines the importance of understanding the nature of one's mind. In his Encouragement to Practice: The Compact of the Samādhi and
Prajñā Community (Kwönsu chönghye kyölsa mun 1190), Chinul states, “When one is deluded about the mind and gives rise to endless defilements, such a person is a sentient being. When one is awakened to the mind and gives rise to endless marvelous functions, such a person is the Buddha. Delusion and awakening are two different states, but both are caused by the mind. If one tries to find the Buddha away from this mind, one will never find him” (HPC 4.698a). In this passage, one notices that the commonly held binary opposites, for example delusion and awakening, or the sentient being and the Buddha, are acknowledged but at the same time negated by attributing the ground of the existence of such dualism to the mind of a being. For Chinul, delusion arises not through a certain quality of an entity external or internal to the subject but through the subject's failure to see the nonsubstantial nature of one's ontological reality. Here one notes the fundamental difference of the focus between HwaOm and SOn Buddhism. Whereas Ŭisang's HwaOm Buddhism primarily concerns itself with the phenomenal world and understands each being within that structure, Chinul's SOn Buddhism gives priority to an individual's awakening to his own existential and ontological reality.
One way to interpret Chinul's SOn Buddhism is to understand it as an attempt to address the problem of subjectivity in the process of the individual's awareness of ontological reality, and the problem of subjectivity is closely linked to the subject's relation to language. As is well known, SOn Buddhism has been keen to the function of language in the subject's mode of thinking. However, Chinul points out that the emphasis on the limits of language and thought is not a SOn-specific feature but is found in most Buddhist schools. In explaining the meaning of SOn Buddhism, Chinul is especially aware of Fazang's fivefold taxonomy, in which Fazang placed Chan Buddhism (which he calls the Sudden school) at the fourth level, one step below the Huayan school. Fazang also characterized the teaching of the Sudden school as simply focusing on forgetting language and thoughts in an effort to create the undisturbed state of the mind. Responding to such characterizations of Chan Buddhism by Fazang, Chinul explains in his Treatise on Resolving Doubts about Huatou Meditation (Kanhwa kyOrüi ron) that all five stages of Buddhism in Fazang's fivefold doctrinal classification in their own way deal with the problem of language and of the thinking process. Chinul repeatedly emphasizes that the idea of cutting off language does not belong exclusively to the SOn school, nor is the nature of the achieved goal through SOn practice different from that described by other Buddhist schools, especially by HwaOm Buddhism. If we follow Chinul's logic here, we come to a rather interesting point. That is, the SOn school does not offer any doctrinal renovation of Buddhism; Chinul might even seem to say that the main concern of (p. 379) SOn Buddhism is not Buddhist doctrine itself, since Buddhist doctrines are all already spelled out by existing Buddhist schools. At the same time, the Buddhist teaching SOn represents is not and cannot be different from the teachings expounded by other schools. Chinul's ready admission of the identity between SOn Buddhism and other Buddhist schools at the ultimate level leads one to ask the question: if there is no difference between the two, what is the identity of SOn Buddhism? For Chinul, SOn teachings, especially SOn hwadu meditation, facilitate a state through which the subject makes a radical change in his or her mode of thinking; the doctrinal schools offer a description of the Buddhist worldview and the SOn school teaches how to activate in the mind of the practitioner what has been stated in the doctrinal schools.
Chinul does not consider the linguistic rendering as found in Buddhist scriptures deficient as it is. However, Chinul points out that the linguistically rendered reality of the objective world is not always reflected in the existential reality of the subject. What, then, are the causes of the gap between the linguistically rendered reality and the reality of the subject? In this context, Chinul cites Chinese Chan Master Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) to point out the structural problem in one's thinking process as a major cause that is responsible for such a gap: “The influence of established thought being so strong, the mind in search of enlightenment itself becomes a barrier and thus the correct knowledge of one's mind has rarely obtained a chance to manifest itself. However, this barrier
does not come from outside nor is it something that should be regarded as an exception” (HPC 4.732c). The problems of the situation at this point become internalized and subjectivized.
At the beginning of the Treatise, Chinul juxtaposes SOn with HwaOm, equating them in terms of their vision of the ultimate reality and at the same time distinguishing them in terms of how to approach this reality. For Chinul, the investigation of one's mind is critical in this sense. The mind is allegedly the locus in which the gap between the existential reality of the subject and the hermeneutical reality represented in linguistic rendering of Buddhist teaching takes place. Hence, Chinul repeatedly emphasizes that “the mind is the Buddha,” and SOn practice toward enlightenment, for Chinul, is to be awakened to the very nature of one's mind. In the later stage of his life, Chinul was firm in proposing that hwadu meditation can facilitate the environment in which the practitioner can attain this goal, and the capacity of hwadu in achieving this goal is closely related to the way in which language functions in hwadu meditation.
Chinul argues that language in Buddhist teachings other than SOn hwadu meditation functions simply as a tool to impart meaning. The hwadu meditation employs language not to communicate meaning but to facilitate an environment in which the subject makes a transition from being a mere receptor of the described meaning to an active participator in the reality described in language—that is, hwadu as it is does not present truth, nor does it offer a way to correct the problem that individuals might have. Chinul writes, “The moment one tends toward the slightest idea that the hwadu must be the presentation of the ultimate truth or that it enables one to treat one's defects, one is already under the power of the limitations (p. 380) set by linguistic expression” (HPC 4.733b). The hwadu is like a catalyst: as it is, it is not pertinent to what is happening to the subject; it simply facilitates a transformation in the subject without itself being involved or changed by the transformation. The transforming function of the hwadu is for Chinul what distinguishes SOn Buddhism from all other Buddhist schools.
In explaining the functioning of hwadu language, Chinul employs the distinction between the “live word” (K. hwalgu) and the “dead word” (K. sagu) and “the involvement with the word” (K. ch'amgu) and “involvement with meaning” (K. ch'amüi), borrowing the concepts from Dahui. These distinctions are characterized by the language's relation to the subject rather than the specific nature of linguistic expressions themselves. Chinul criticizes passages like “In this endless world, between me and others, there is no gap even as infinitesimal as the thinness of a hair” (HPC 4.733a) as examples of dead words because “they create in the practitioner's mind barriers derived from understanding” (HPC 4.733a). As opposed to dead words, live words generate “no taste”; they create a dead-end situation to the practitioner in which the practitioner loses all of the resources to exercise his or her thinking process.
When SOn Buddhists criticize language and theorizing, it is because they are the very tools for the subject to carry out the process of domesticating the external world and tailoring it according to the mode of thinking most familiar to the subject. The hwadu meditation, especially the “live word” and the “direct involvement with word,” are tools that put a break in the familiar world created by the subject. Dead words subjugate themselves to a sign-system and habituated mode of thinking. As opposed to dead words, live words become the mediator among the practitioner, language, and the world by disrupting the preexisting order and meaning structure of these three elements established in the subject's mind. The promise of hwadu meditation, for Chinul, is that this experience by the subject of the unfamiliar territory will lead the subject to the realization of her ontological reality, which from the Buddhist perspective is existence in the milieu of the conditionally arising process.
Nondualism and Mahāyāna Buddhist Ethics
Despite the differences in their emphasis, both Ŭisang's HwaOm Buddhism and Chinul's SOn Buddhism find their basis in the fundamental Buddhist vision of nondualism. In Ŭisang's HwaOm Buddhist thought, the particular and the universal, the phenomena and the noumena, are understood as being in a state of interpenetration; in Chinul's SOn Buddhism, the mind of the subject is the source of all delusions, and delusion in this context signifies understanding a phenomenon—be it an individual being, an event, or any abstract concept—as an independent occurrence instead of the result of a multilayered, causal process. If things are by nature void of independent essence and polar opposites are to be understood according to their mutual penetration, how does one construct an ethical system from such a nondual (p. 381) philosophy? In Ŭisang's HwaOm vision of the mutual interpenetration of entities, both good and bad, right and wrong, purity and impurity are understood as being empty. In this nondual world, as Ŭisang states, “saiisāra and nirvāṇa are always harmonized together” (HPC 2.1a). The same applies to Chinul's SOn Buddhist world, as he says, “there being no purity or impurity, there is no right or wrong” (HPC 4.710c). Where do ethics stand in this antinomian world of HwaOm and SOn Buddhism? Given that Buddhism involves not only philosophical but also religious tradition, and that one of the fundamental functions of the latter is to provide practitioners with guidelines to follow in the process of Buddhist practice, the issue of Buddhism's position in ethical and moral systems makes us pause and wonder what kind of ethical paradigm it might offer.
The Mahāyāna Buddhist approach to ethics is well grounded in the fundamental Mahāyāna Buddhist position on the reality of existence. A being does not have an unchanging essence, nor do moral and ethical categories. The fact that a being exists only in the milieu of conditionally arising causal processes does not negate the individual's existence on the phenomenal level, and the same applies to moral and ethical categories. In other words, Mahāyāna Buddhism does not negate the necessity of moral values or ethical categories; however, it also underlines that precepts, moral rules, and ethical definitions exist and are acknowledged always in the context of their provisional nature. WOnhyo makes clear the double-edgedness of the Mahāyāna Buddhist position toward ethics in his discussion of bodhisattva precepts. The precepts by definition indicate rules that Buddhist practitioners are obliged to observe. When one observes a rule, what is the ground for this observation? Are moral rules and ethical categories given by the absolute power and thus to be respected in all circumstances, or are they abided by because of the beneficial consequences they promise to produce?
WOnhyo discusses bodhisattva precepts focusing on the provisional nature of the value category. Precepts are rules that Buddhist practitioners are required to abide by. However, even precepts cannot escape the dependently arising nature of the world, which means that no precepts, and in that sense, no moral or ethical categories, are to be accepted as having absolute independent values of their own. In Essentials of Observation and Violation of Bodhisattva Precepts (Posal kyebon chibOm yogi), Wónhyo discusses the three categories of observing and transgressing the foundations of bodhisattva precepts. First, he discusses major and minor offenses; second, he shows the profound and shallow understandings of observing and transgressing precepts; and third, he presents the ultimate way of observing and transgressing precepts. In the first two sections, WOnhyo offers basic concepts of precepts and how the same precepts can be interpreted differently based on the subject's intention involved in a certain action. In these two sections, as in the case of most moral teachings, Wónhyo promotes the importance of respecting the existing rules. In the third section, titled “Ultimate Observation and Violation of Precepts,” Wónhyo changes the direction of his discussion and revisits the very concepts of precepts and of observing and
violating them. The result is to underline the fundamentally provisional nature of moral rules and ethical categories. Wónhyo writes:
(p. 382) That precepts exist only based on multilevel conditional causes [and thus are empty] does not negate their existence in reality. Violating precepts is also like this; so is personal identity. In dealing with precepts, if one sees only their nonexistent aspect and says that they do not exist, such a person might not violate precepts but will forever lose them, because s/he denies their existence. Also, if someone relies on the idea that precepts do exist and thinks only on the existent side of precepts, even though s/he might be able to observe the precepts, observation in this case is the same as violation, because such a person negates the ultimate reality of precepts [which is emptiness]. (HPC 1.585a, emphasis mine)
When existence is understood through a differential notion instead of being anchored on substantial essence and the particular and the universal are intersubsuming, any attempt to create a closed value system faces a problem of appropriation. Appropriation requires an appropriator, and this logic cannot but question the validity of the created system. As Wónhyo states, the ambiguity of categorized values does not completely negate the necessity of a value system itself. Instead, the awareness of the multilayered contexts out of which a value system is constructed demands a constant readjustment of the existing system. Wónhyo's thought on bodhisattva precepts in its outlook proposes an ethical theory that challenges normative forms of ethics. It was, however, not until recent years that Korean Buddhist traditions began to seriously consider the position of Buddhism as an ethical theory. In contemporary Korean Buddhism, the issue of individual practice and awakening on the one hand and the social engagement and ethical dimension of Buddhism on the other has generated a polemic that makes the issue of Buddhist ethics more visible. Two Buddhist monk-thinkers took opposite positions: T'oe'ong Söngch'öl defined Buddhism as fundamentally based on the perfection of individual cultivation, whereas Pöpsöng claimed that individual cultivation cannot be achieved without being accompanied by social engagement. Söngch'ol's Buddhism kindled a debate known as the Sudden-Gradual debate, and Pöpsöng's Buddhism offers a philosophical paradigm for a form of engaged Buddhism known as Minjung Buddhism (Buddhism for the masses).
The idea of Buddhism for the masses first appeared in Korean Buddhism at the beginning of the twentieth century, when reform-minded Buddhist intellectuals proposed changing Buddhism to be more relevant to the life of the general public, especially those marginalized in society. As a movement, however, Minjung Buddhism began together with prodemocratic and antigovernmental movements in Korean society during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical of the subjectivist and solipsistic attitudes that appear in some forms of Buddhist practice, Minjung Buddhists emphasize the social dimension of Buddhist philosophy and contend that Buddhist liberation includes liberation from all forms of suppression. In doing so, Minjung Buddhists make appeals to the bodhisattva ideal and to compassion.
The Sudden-Gradual debate was ignited by Söngch'öl along with the publication of his book, The Correct Path of the Sŏn School (Sönmun chöngno 1981), in which he criticizes the “sudden enlightenment with gradual cultivation” as a (p. 383) heretical teaching in the Sön school and defines “sudden enlightenment with sudden cultivation” as the authentic form of the Sön practice. The idea of sudden enlightenment is based on the fundamental Sön claim that sentient beings are already Buddha the way they are. On the surface, Minjung Buddhism and the Sudden-Gradual debate fall into two exclusively different categories of Buddhist thought: the former focuses on the social aspects of Buddhist philosophy, whereas the latter centers on the nature of individual cultivation. At a deep level, they cannot but reflect each other because, without a clear understanding of the nature
of individual cultivation and awakening as explored in the Sudden-Gradual debate, Buddhist philosophy cannot maintain itself. However, if the subjective world of an individual cannot be linked to the public and objective domain of the social ethical realm, as Minjung Buddhism emphasizes, such a cultivation or awakening contradicts the basic Buddhist doctrines of dependent-arising and no-self. The Sudden-Gradual debate and Minjung Buddhism, then, represent the perennial core issues of Buddhism: that is, how to relate wisdom (realization of one's ontological reality) and compassion (sharing life with others).
Questions have been raised about whether attainment of wisdom (enlightenment) will naturally facilitate compassionate actions for others. Pópsóng's discussion of sudden and gradual aptly applies to this issue. Instead of understanding sudden and gradual as a process from the former to the latter within the subject, Pópsóng relates them to the subject's realization and the social and historical manifestation of that realization, that is, noumenal wisdom and its exercise through compassion in the phenomenal world. In doing so, he incorporates HwaOm Buddhist thought into his emphasis on the social and ethical dimensions of Buddhist enlightenment. Pópsóng was not the first Korean Buddhist to resort to HwaOm Buddhism to underscore the relevance of SOn Buddhism to the social and ethical realities of the practitioner's life. From Chinul in the twelfth century to S'Ongch'Ol in the twentieth century, Korean SOn masters have frequently resorted to HwaOm Buddhist philosophy in an effort to clarify the relationship between the subject and the object in the SOn Buddhist worldview and between an individual's ontological awakening (wisdom) and its social dimension (compassion) in SOn practice.
Reminiscent of the HwaOm vision of the interpenetration of the phenomena and the noumena, Pópsóng claims that the diversities characterizing the phenomenal world require endless engagement in bodhisattva activities in daily life, which Pópsóng identifies as “history.” History of Buddhism, as expressed through his term “historicization,” is contrasted with a metaphysical or transcendental understanding of Buddhism. SOn Buddhist enlightenment, from POpsOng's perspective, cannot be related solely to individual spiritual awakening, nor can it be an asocial event, as has been argued previously. Pópsóng contends that the hwadu of SOn Buddhism are not “dead words intuiting the inner spiritual mysticism. Hwadu meditation is epistemological activity that constantly negates the reification of ideas and self-absolutization of any entity; it is historical movement that actively accepts and
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refreshes the (p. 384) nature of dependent co-arising in one's existence.” Chinul prioritized hwadu meditation in SOn practice, emphasizing the capacity of hwadu to facilitate a fundamental change in one's mode of thinking. POpsOng took this possibility of SOn Buddhism further toward the social dimension and linked the change in an individual as a path toward a social change. POpsOng thus states, “Buddhist enlightenment is not a return to absolute reality; instead, it is a sudden liberation of all the essentialist views regarding one's consciousness and existence, self and the world.” 5 This awakening or liberation of self-closure of an individual needs to take place constantly and continuously as life unfolds. This is a vision of the world in which human desire for a teleological completion needs to give way to the awakening to the openness of the world and of beings.
WOnhyo's bodhisattva precepts suggest an ethical theory that acknowledges rules but only to the degree that the moral rules and ethical categories are understood as provisional and do not have an essence of their own; POpsOng's engaged Buddhism explains the social dimension of SOn and HwaOm Buddhism, emphasizing the indissoluble nature of individual and society, or self and others in the Buddhist world. In both cases, the conventional rule-bounded moral theories are accepted only as a preliminary stage of social theory; in its place, the Mahāyāna Buddhism of Wónhyo and POpsOng proposes a context-bound ethical theory that requires a constant reawakening to one's existential and social reality as one lives in the milieu of the ever-changing causal processes of the Buddhist world.
Bibliography and Suggested Reading
BUSWELL, ROBERT E., JR. (trans.). (1983) The Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press.
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——— (trans.). (2007) Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wónhyo's Exposition of the Vajrasamadhi-Sūtra (Kümgang Sammaegyóng Non). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
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JORGENSEN, JOHN. (2010) “Minjung Buddhism: A Buddhist Critique of the Status Quo-its History, Philosophy, and Critique.” In Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism, edited by Jin Y. Park. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 275–313.
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ODIN, STEVEN. (1982) Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
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(p. 385) PARK, JIN Y. (2005) “Zen Language in Our Time: The Case of Pojo Chinul's Huatou Meditation.” Philosophy East and West 55/1, 80–98.
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——— . (2008) Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist-Postmodern Ethics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
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YUN, WONCHEOL. (2010) “Zen Master T'oe'ong Söngch'öl's Doctrine of Zen Enlightenment and Practice.” In Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism, edited by Jin Y. Park. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 199–226. (p. 386)
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Notes:
(1) Hwaöm ilsüng pöpkye to (Diagram of the Reality Realm of the One Vehicle of Hwaöm Buddhism), Han'guk Pulgyo chönsö (Collected Works of Korean Buddhism, hereafter HPC), vol. 2, pp. 1–8, p. 2.1a. For a complete English translation of this work, see Odin 1982. Throughout this essay, English translations from Classical Chinese and Korean are mine.
(2) Fazang, the alleged Third Patriarch of Chinese Huayan Buddhism, explains the relationship of the one and the ten by employing the concepts of “the same body” (C. tongti; K. tongch'e) and “the different body” (C. yiti; K. yich'e). The one and the ten in the numerals one through ten are different entities (bodies) because the one is not the ten and the ten is not the one. However, they are the same body in the sense that the one cannot obtain its meaning without the rest of the number in the series of one through ten; the same is the case with the number ten. That the one is the same body and at the same time a different body with the number ten can be further explained through the Buddhist concept of identity known as the two levels of truth.
(3) The terms “nounema” and “phenomena” are translations of the Chinese character li (K. yi) and shi (K. sa), respectively. These terms are also translated here as the principle and the particular. Noumena and phenomena in this case are not related to Kantian philosophy or phenomenology in Continental philosophy, even though Huayan Buddhism can be understood as Buddhist phenomenology as I have discussed elsewhere. See Park 2008, especially ch. 8 and 9.
(4) Pópsóng, “Minjung Pulgyo undong ǔi silch'önjök ipchang” (The Practical Standpoint of the Minjung Buddhist Movement), in Chonggyo yön'gu (Religious Studies) 6 (1990): 223–228, p. 223.
(5) Pöpsöng, “Kkadarüm üi ilsangsöng kwa hyöngmyöngsöng” (Commonality and Revolutionality of Enlightenment.” Ch'angjak kwa pip'yöng 82 (Winter 1993): 329–340.
Jin Y. Park
Jin Y. Park is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at American University. Park's research focuses on Zen and Huayan Buddhism, Buddhist-postmodern comparative philosophy, Buddhist encounters with modernity in Korea, and Buddhist ethics. Her publications include Buddhisms and Deconstructions (2006), Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist-Postmodern Ethics (2008), and Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism (2010).
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