Contemporary Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018. xii, 193 pp. (Graph.) US$62.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7261-8.
What keyword can explain the formation of modern Korean Buddhism? From the Mountains to the Cities answers this question with the term “propagation” (p’ogyo), and depicts modern Korean history through the roles of propagation and law. The term appeared in Korean Buddhism in modern times alongside rising competition of Western Christian missionaries. For more than a thousand years, propagation, or mission, was not an important concept in Korean Buddhism since Buddhism was already a major religion in Korean people’s lives, and there were no more places for Buddhism to expand after its transmission to Japan. This book catches this point well, as author Mark Nathan explains clearly how propagation supported the transformation of Korean Buddhism to be identified as a legitimate religion on its own. In modern times, Korean Buddhism has changed its image from hermit Buddhism to city Buddhism, and from a minor, elite monks’ Buddhism to a more popularized Buddhism.
The book is arranged chronologically, divided into four periods, using major events in the history of Korean Buddhism and Korea. These are the late Chosŏn dynasty, the colonial era, the period from liberation in 1945 to the end of the 1970s, and from 1980 to the present.
During the Chosŏn dynasty, when Korea was a neo-Confucian country, Buddhism suffered harsh suppression. In late Chosŏn, the ban that prohibited monks and nuns from entering the capital and other major cities except on special occasions, was lifted. The lifting of the ban provided an opportunity for a revival on the Korean Peninsula, so monks were eager to transform and spread Buddhism. During the colonial period, Korean Buddhism started undergoing many changes involving propagation. The first temple inside a city was built; the leading Buddhist monks submitted to treaties that included free propagation to the Japanese government; many places of propagation (p’ogyoso) were built; and the Japanese government promulgated the Temple Ordinance (sacha’llyŏng), which indirectly approved propagation as one of the roles of the temple. In general, the Temple Ordinance is studied as a way to see the Japanese government’s control over Korean Buddhism, so Korean scholars pay attention to article 4 of the ordinance and to the Korean monks’ repeal movement against the ordinance. However, this book finds new meaning related to propagation in article 2. A new method of propagation at that time was print and other media. Buddhist canons written in classical Chinese and translated to vernacular Korean, and journals on Buddhist teaching, were published for the laypeople. Radio broadcasts for Buddhist propagation aired several times. Buddhist monks reached out more to laypeople for education, simulating Christian missionaries’ activities. Pak Hanyŏng, a prominent Buddhist monk, posed a question about how to use p’ogyo to benefit ordinary people. According to this book, “Education and propagation, the two main elements of the Korean Buddhist reform movement, were intimately connected and almost inseparable from the beginning” (58).
After Korean liberation, the pro-Protestant governments of the US military and later of Syngman Rhee, made uneven competition for propagation. For example, Christmas became a national holiday in 1945, but Buddha’s birthday only became one in 1975, thirty years later, after appeals to legal authorities (84–85). An even worse event was caused by President Syngman Rhee in 1954. He issued a critical message that married Buddhist monks were a symbol of the Japanese corruption of traditional Korean Buddhism. This message led to a long and bloody dispute between celibate monks and married monks. This incident, later called the purification movement (chŏnghwa undong), ended in 1962. The Chogye (Jogye) Order, a sect of celibate monks, became the largest major order in Korea and made propagation one of its big three works.
Although there was a persecution in 1982, Buddhist propagation continued to move forward. Large temples in the mountains reached out to the cities and to many independent Sŏn centers (Sŏnwŏn), and propagation centers were established. Young Buddhists started a socially engaged Buddhist movement called Minjung Buddhism (minjung pulgyo). Moreover, print and multimedia propagation flourished; weekly Buddhist journals and many Buddhist books were published, and the Buddhist Broadcasting System went on the air in 1990. Through those movements and efforts, ordinary people gained more opportunities to encounter Buddhist teachings and practices.
The Chogye Order also actively engaged in propagation. It offered Kanhwa Sŏn practice, the Korea Buddhist meditation practice, to ordinary laypeople and foreigners. Later, in 2002, the order started a Temple Stay Program in which ordinary people, including foreigners, could stay at Buddhist temples in the mountains and experience Buddhist culture. This program appealed to the Korean people, who mostly lived in urban areas, and Temple Stay became an effective tool of propagation. As a result, in the 2000s, the mountain monasteries and temples, “once derided as perpetuating the monastic community’s isolation and backwardness … could now be seen as repositories of traditional Korean culture and history and play an active role in p’ogyo” (129). Through this process, Korean Buddhism came to accept laypeople’s participation in propagation.
This book’s new approach, looking at the history of Korean Buddhism from the point of view of propagation relating to the law, is fresh. Moreover, it has another, unexpected merit in introducing the new trends of contemporary Korean Buddhism. For a long time, Korean Buddhism’s task was seen as reconciling the parallel tracks of elite monastic Buddhism and benefit-seeking (kibok) laities. This gap has been narrowing, though academia has not remained up to date on this fact. But this book explicitly reveals this change. Monks and nuns engage in social activities, and laypeople are more involved in meditation practice and Buddhist studies. The laity and monastic communities have worked together for propagation. Thus, the author says, “This crossing over of lay and monastic Buddhist traits has already produced new forms of Buddhist practice, and much of it has occurred within the matrix of Buddhist propagation” (141). Korean Buddhism has been transformed in modern times and is heading toward a new form of Buddhism. As the author well indicates, propagation is a good keyword to explain all those processes.
Lucy Jee
Yonsei University, Seoul