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From the Mountains to the Cities

Contemporary Buddhism MARK M. ROWE, SERIES EDITOR

Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks Justin Thomas McDaniel

Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s Southwest Border Thomas A. Borchert

From the Mountains to the Cities: A History of Buddhist Propagation in Modern Korea Mark A. Nathan

From the Mountains to the Cities

A History of Buddhist Propagation in Modern Korea

Mark A. Nathan

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS HONOLULU

© 2018 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

23 22 21 20 19 18 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nathan, Mark A., author. Title: From the mountains to the cities : a history of Buddhist propagation

in modern Korea / Mark A. Nathan. Other titles: Contemporary Buddhism. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2018] | Series:

Contemporary Buddhism | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018004208 | ISBN 9780824872618 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Buddhism—Korea—History—20th century. Classification: LCC BQ665 .N38 2018 | DDC 294.3/7209519dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004208

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Cover art: The recently remodeled Buddhist propagation temple Pulgwangsa, Seoul, 2017. Photo courtesy of Henry William Link and Hyunhee Lee.

https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004208

To my father

Peter E. Nathan (1935–2016)

Contents

ix Series Editor’s Preface

xi Acknowledgments

1 CHAPTER ONE

BUDDHIST MISSIONS AND DHARMA TRANSMISSIONS

29 CHAPTER TWO

SECURING THE FREEDOM TO PROPAGATE BUDDHISM

in the Cities in Late Chosŏn

54 CHAPTER THREE

MONASTIC REFORMS AND BUDDHIST PROPAGATION

UNDER JAPANESE COLONIAL RULE

81 CHAPTER FOUR

THE INFLUENCE OF POST-LIBERATION POLITICS AND

POWER STRUGGLES ON PROPAGATION

102 CHAPTER FIVE

BACK TO THE MOUNTAINS: Contemporary Korean Buddhist Propagation

130 CHAPTER SIX

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF P’OGYO: Law, Religious Pluralism, and Lay-Monastic Recombination

143 Notes

171 Bibliography

187 Index

Series Editor’s Preface

IN THE FIRST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOK TO SPAN the entirety of modern and contemporary Korean Buddhism, Mark Nathan has provided us with a groundbreaking account of Buddhist propagation. The question here is not, as some might have it, whether or not Buddhism has a tradition of missioniz-ing, but rather what a systematic and sustained effort to propagate Buddhism reveals about the transformation of the Korean Buddhist tradition since the start of the twentieth century. Nathan considers the legal, symbolic, and socio-spatial dimensions of propagation as well as its doctrinal and historical aspects. As he so clearly demonstrates, p’ogyo was not “an ancillary enter-prise,” but “one of the organizing principles for the creation of modern Korean Buddhist organizations.” By placing Buddhist propagation in the broader context of law, Japanese occupation, modern religious pluralism, post-war economic growth, and competition from other institutionalized religions, this book offers a magisterial and intimate account of twentieth-century Korean Buddhism.

ix

Acknowledgments

I HAVE MANY PEOPLE TO THANK FOR the completion of this book, more than I can hope to mention in this short space. Because this project began years ago when I was still a graduate student, countless people have helped me along the way. My advisor, Robert Buswell, who witnessed the genesis of the book, deserves special mention for helping me turn my ideas into a dissertation. He has remained a supporter and a friend ever since that time, and I am grate-ful for his continued mentorship. John Duncan and William Bodiford also provided valuable feedback in those early stages of the project, and Gregory Schopen shared both his knowledge of Buddhism and his skills on the basket-ball court. Paul Nam heard more about p’ogyo than he ever bargained for, but our long-distance, late-night discussions kept me sane at the end. Sujung Kim was kind enough to obtain some materials I needed from Korea at a couple of critical moments.

The project entered the next phase of becoming a book after I took a position at the University at Buffalo. I’d like to thank my colleagues in the Department of History and also the Asian Studies Program for their support throughout this process. I feel privileged to have worked alongside such a tal-ented group of researchers and teachers. Kristin Stapleton, as the director of the Asian Studies Program when I first started and then as my faculty mentor in the department, has been a steady and guiding presence in my young aca-demic life. I’m grateful to my two department chairs, Jim Bono and Victoria Wolcott, for their dedication, hard work, and protective instincts on behalf of junior faculty members like myself. A Humanities Institute Faculty Research fellowship, along with a College of Arts and Sciences junior research leave, generously provided me with the time that I needed to finish a complete draft of the monograph.

I thank the editors and staff at the University of Hawai‘i Press for their help in bringing this project to fruition. Stephanie Chun and Grace Wen have both been a pleasure to work with and reliable partners in this process. Lys Ann Weiss carefully and skillfully edited the text. A special thanks goes to Mark Rowe, the series editor of Contemporary Buddhism, for championing

xi

xii Acknowledgments

this project from the moment he first heard about it and for using his editorial talents to improve the revised manuscript in the final stages. I will be forever grateful to him for believing in this project and for helping to make this pub-lication a reality.

In addition to institutional support, I also benefited from more informal conversations and exchanges with numerous colleagues and friends over the years. Ramya Sreenivasan and Rebecca French were two of my earli-est writing group partners in Buffalo. Rebecca and I worked closely together, with help from Rob Vanwey and Josh Coene, on a co-edited volume, and our countless conversations (and sometimes disagreements) about Buddhism and law helped me sharpen my understanding of the important role that law played in modern Korean Buddhist propagation. Walter Hakala and Jang Wook Huh kindly read and commented on drafts of the chapters, and their insights and suggestions for improvement were an enormous help. I also want to thank Hwansoo Kim for giving me several opportunities to discuss my work through events he arranged at Duke University with experts in the field, none more important for my work than he himself. I always learn something from Hwansoo, about Korean Buddhism or about life, and I owe him a deep debt of gratitude.

Finally, the biggest thanks go to my family, for without them none of this would ever have been possible. My mother, Florence, who will surely cry when she reads this (and not just the first time), has always been there when I needed her, and her love has sustained me throughout all these years. I have dedicated this book to my late father, Peter, who passed away before he could see the actual book. No one in the world could be more excited or more proud than he would have been when holding this book in his hands for the first time. My brother and sisters have been another source of support and comfort, particularly since our father’s unexpected death. Spero Michailidis merits appreciation for listening and offering advice about all matters great and small. To my wife, EunHee, and my two children, Dylan and Sarah, I offer heartfelt thanks for filling my life with so much joy and love.

1

Buddhist Missions and Dharma Transmissions

GIVEN THE GEOGRAPHICALLY AND SOCIALLY MARGINALIZED

PLACE of the monastic community after centuries of official suppression and popular ridicule during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910), the resurgence of Buddhism over the last century of Korean history seems every bit as remark-able as the meteoric rise of Protestant Christianity in Korea. The stunning growth of Korean Christianity over the last one hundred years has garnered considerable attention from scholars seeking to identify the decisive factors for its success. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the largely suc-cessful efforts on the part of the Korean Buddhist community to keep pace with Christianity’s growing influence in society. The fact that Buddhism has also managed to become an enduring part of the religiously plural environment of contemporary South Korea is equally deserving of analysis. 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 Bud-dhist organizations and individuals to systematically propagate Buddhism in Korean society. Buddhist propagation, commonly known as p’ogyo (布敎) in Korean terminology, has played an extremely significant role in the develop-ment of modern Korean Buddhism. The focus on spreading Buddhism widely in society has helped transform the religion from a socially marginalized com-munity of monastics, who were legally barred from entering the cities and were relegated to the mountains before 1895, into a more socially engaged

1

2 Chapter 1

and institutionally diverse network of religious organizations. By participat-ing more actively in society, Buddhist organizations succeeded in attracting millions of urban lay followers by the early twenty-first century. The central claim of this book is that the discourse and practice of p’ogyo generated a capacity for coordinated action in the face of perceived threats to the survival or social viability of the religion. Facing an uncertain future and seeking a firm footing amid the shifting social and political conditions of the early twen-tieth century, monastic leaders and lay Buddhist intellectuals came to regard the active propagation and dissemination of the religion as a way to reform and revitalize the tradition, thereby ensuring the survival of Buddhism in the peninsula.

Those who sounded the call to pursue Buddhist propagation or took up the practice during the early part of the twentieth century viewed p’ogyo as a means of making known the Buddha’s teachings among the people; spread-ing Buddhist values, ethics, and ideals in Korean society; and popularizing Buddhist practices. They also saw it as integral to the goal of reforming and modernizing the tradition by altering the prevailing patterns of the monastic community’s interaction with and participation in society, competing more effectively with other organized religions, and gaining a more secure foothold in the rapidly changing environment of modern Korea. Propagation provided both a motive and a method for extending Buddhism beyond the confines of the monasteries and temples located mainly in the mountains, which had come to represent the socio-spatial marginalization of the monastic com-munity. Propagation thus became an important vehicle for the movement of Buddhist monks and institutions out of the mountains and into the cities, a move that was deemed necessary for Buddhism to gain legitimacy, to compete with rival religions, and to participate more actively in the public sphere.

A central question to consider is what this systematic and sustained effort to propagate Buddhism reveals about the transformation of the Korean Buddhist tradition since the start of the twentieth century. To answer the question, however, we must first endeavor to grasp the way in which Korean Buddhist propagation was conceptualized and the concrete steps taken to carry it out. This requires an examination of the calls to implement p’ogyo— that is, the reasons cited for undertaking it, the logic behind it, the doctrinal arguments used to support it, and the perceived spiritual and social ben-efits arising from it—that were first articulated just over a century ago and have continued up to the present. It also necessitates a consideration of the material practices associated with Buddhist propagation—that is, the meth-ods and media used to carry it out, the individuals and groups involved in it, the practices and routines characterized by it, and the socio-spatial structures and organizational forms that were created as a result. The adoption, rapid diffusion, and continued reproduction of the organizational elements asso-

Buddhist Missions and Dharma Transmissions 3

ciated with p’ogyo acted as the institutional building blocks of a modernized Buddhist tradition, which is precisely what many twentieth-century Korean reformers were hoping to create.

This book argues that the ideas, practices, and institutions associ-ated with the goal of propagating Buddhism were uniquely well suited as an organizational response to some of the most significant socio-cultural, polit-ical, legal, and technological changes that have occurred in the last one hun-dred years. There are several reasons why p’ogyo was particularly useful as an adaptive strategy, as outlined in this study. To begin with, adopting propaga-tion as an organizational goal conferred legitimacy and legal recognition on Buddhist temples and organizations. It did so by conforming to the new par-adigm of religion as defined by the West, instituted by Japanese colonial-era laws, and retained in postcolonial South Korean legal systems. As a normative category of legally sanctioned religious activity, propagation became inextri-cably intertwined with the legal structures used to regulate religion in early twentieth-century Korea. The law legitimated p’ogyo in Korea by treating it as an intrinsic component of recognized religious organizations, and this fact helps explain why Buddhist propagation became such a prominent character-istic of Buddhist modernizing and institutional reforms. Engaging in religious propagation became by definition a condition for securing legal recognition as a modern religious organization.

Second, propagation as a strategy for reform also allowed the Korean monastic community to compete with other religious groups, especially Christian churches, in the religiously plural environment of twentieth-century Korea. This became particularly important in the last decades of the century when South Korea experienced an explosive growth of Christian churches, organizations, and followers. One thing to notice about the new definition

of religion underlying the legal systems instituted in modern Korea is that it rests on an important assumption—namely, that religions are volun-tary associations of people sharing similar beliefs and views who choose to become members of a particular church or temple. Religions, in this view, are organizations composed of both religious professionals, who (ideally)

get trained and certified, and congregants or lay members, who attend ser-vices or rituals, participate in the work of the church or temple, and (again, ideally) donate money. This view obviously conforms most closely to a

post-Reformation, Western understanding of religion, but it became firmly

planted in modern Korea. The third reason that p’ogyo was particularly useful as an adaptive

strategy concerns the socio-spatial practices and increased mobility that are central to the effort to propagate Buddhism. The kinetic aspects of propa-gation provided the Korean monastic community not only with a perceived vehicle to overcome the geographic isolation that had been imposed through

4 Chapter 1

Chosŏn-dynasty policies toward Buddhism, but also with a way to respond to certain demographic and social changes in the twentieth century. Although commonly understood to mean the dissemination or diffusion of ideas, beliefs, or practices, the definition of propagation at one time included the notion of “an increase in amount or extent; enlargement; extension in space or time.”1 This definition captures nicely the way in which p’ogyo was thought to be capable of extending Buddhism in both space and time by transporting the religion out of the mountains and into the cities, where greater numbers of people lived, thereby ensuring its continued viability into the future. This was a practical necessity, especially given the absence of Korean Buddhist spaces in the cities at the turn of the twentieth century, as previously mentioned, but South Korea’s rapid urbanization from the 1960s through the end of the twen-tieth century ensured that it would remain an urgent priority.

As a concept and a practice, the roots of p’ogyo can be found extend-ing in many directions, including several that stretch back into history and tap into older practices associated with the transmission and dissemination of Buddhism across Asia. The assertion that p’ogyo originated with the his-torical Buddha was commonplace in twentieth-century Korean Buddhist discourses on propagating the religion. Not only did the Buddha, according to this view, engage in propagation himself when he decided to teach the Dharma to sentient beings following his awakening, thereby becoming the paradigmatic p’ogyosa (布敎師, propagator) for others to emulate. He also sent his first group of disciples out into the world to spread the teachings far and wide for the benefit of those who had not heard them, at least according to the popular reading of a passage in the Pāli canon dubbed the “Great Com-mission.” This view of Buddhist propagation as foundational and intrinsic to the religion was part of a shared discourse among various Buddhist commu-nities in Asia around the turn of the twentieth century, and it was frequently used as a rationale for undertaking modern Buddhist missions.

At the same time, however, p’ogyo in Korea was unquestionably influenced by the presence of transnational religious representatives—both Buddhist missionaries from Japan and Christian missionaries from the West—in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Normative ideas about the meaning and function of a “religion” as defined by the West, which included propagation as a characteristic trait of so-called world religions, found their way into the laws and legal structures that were instituted to regu-late religion, further exerting pressure on the Korean Buddhist community to adapt to this religiously plural environment. These Japanese colonial-era laws continued to influence the Korean monastic community and its propagation activities in South Korea long after liberation finally arrived in 1945, as this book demonstrates. And while the direct influence of Japanese Buddhism on p’ogyo was mostly confined to the colonial period, the rapid growth of Chris-


tianity in the second half of the twentieth century stimulated the Korean Bud-dhist community to pour energy and resources into propagating their own religion. The important point, though, is that foreign missionaries and rival religions acted as both competitors to counter and models to emulate. This phenomenon has been observed in a variety of countries where modern Bud-dhist propagation was pursued as part of an effort to reform and modernize the religion.

Various Buddhist communities in Asia, faced with extraordinary

changes in the socio-cultural, political, and economic environments, together

with perceived threats to their continued vitality, responded by calling upon

repertoires of real and imagined historical practices related to the spread of Buddhism. The fact that these were mixed with a selective copying and appro-priation of the practices thought to confer advantages on competing religious communities at the time is unsurprising. These types of processes are char-acteristic of open systems, and they have been ubiquitous among religions

throughout history; in fact, they allow for religious change and adaptation to

occur. The remainder of this introductory chapter examines these twin aspects

of Buddhist propagation more closely to see how they came to influence the eventual adoption and implementation of p’ogyo in Korea, followed by a dis-cussion of terminology and relevant typologies of Buddhist propagation.

Discourses and Debates on Buddhist Missions and Propagation

In late 1877 the faculty members who were engaged in the study of religion at the four state-run universities in the Netherlands were formally separated from the Dutch Reformed Church as a consequence of the newly passed Dutch Higher Education Act (1876).2 This event marks an important first step in the genesis of the modern study of religion as an academic discipline.3

Also in 1877, the newly appointed chair of the religion department at Leiden, Cornelis Petrus Tiele (1830–1902), published a monograph in English trans-lation under the title Outlines of the History of Religion to the Spread of Universal Religions.4 Although Tiele has received far less recognition than his more famous contemporary, F. Max Müller, he was equally instrumen-tal in establishing what these late nineteenth-century scholars called the “sci-ence of religion” (Religionwissenschaft).5 The scientific study of religion as a branch of knowledge separate from theology was brought about not only through certain political and legal arrangements, but also through the post-Enlightenment creation of the social sciences in Europe. Nevertheless, it was only possible through a particular understanding of religion that had been taking shape in the West since the Reformation, and this understanding was widespread by the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the notion that religion is a genus composed of many species.

6 Chapter 1

Imperial conquest leading to overseas contact with foreign cultures had produced an abundance of information about the beliefs and practices that were categorized as religious in other parts of the world.6 Tiele’s book, which J. Z. Smith hails as “the first classic in the science of religion,” sought to give taxonomic order to this welter of data about religions.7 Tiele devised what he called a “morphological” classification of religions, grouping them into two broad categories: nature religions and ethical religions. The latter category is further subdivided into “national nomistic (nomothetic) religious communities” and “universalistic religious communities.” The key distinction rests partly on the transnationality of a religion—that is, the degree to which it has spread across national borders—but also more precisely on the extent to which its members intentionally and actively attempt to propagate the reli-gion in order to transcend their own geographic or racial/ethnic boundaries. According to this logic, only Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam were counted among the “universalistic religious communities,” or what Tiele would later call “world religions” in his entry on “Religions” for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the mid-1880s.8 If we consider that the inclu-sion of Islam in this exclusive category was a hotly contested issue at that time, then the list of unquestionably universalistic or world religions, at least in the minds of these Euro-American scholars of religion in the late nine-teenth century, could be narrowed to just two—Christianity and Buddhism.

At almost precisely the same historical moment, in late 1877, a Jap-anese Buddhist cleric named Okumura Enshin 奧村円心 (1843–1913) arrived in the port city of Pusan in the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula to conduct missionary work. He had been sent by one of the most powerful Buddhist sects in Japan at the request of the Meiji government, which just one year earlier had used gunboat diplomacy to force the rulers of Chosŏn (1392–1910) to sign Korea’s first modern, international treaty. This treaty effectively ended the isolation policy that Chosŏn had tried to pursue since at least the seventeenth century, and it paved the way for additional treaties in the 1880s with Western nations, which in turn opened the door to Chris-tian missionaries. Okumura’s arrival and subsequent establishment of a Japa-nese branch temple in Korea mark the start of Japanese Buddhist missions to Korea. Increasing numbers of Japanese Buddhist missionaries, representing nearly all of Japan’s major Buddhist sects, followed in his wake, especially in the two decades leading up to Korea’s eventual annexation at the hands of the Japanese in 1910. The presence of both Buddhist and Christian missionaries greatly influenced the trajectory of modern Korean Buddhist reforms, which began shortly after the turn of the twentieth century.

Sending out Buddhist missionaries to spread the Dharma or to prop-agate the religion at home and abroad in the late nineteenth century appears to confirm the conclusions that Tiele and his colleagues had reached. That is


to say, Buddhism should rightly be classified as a missionary religion that, like Christianity, had historically and intentionally transcended the initial limits of its geographic, ethnic, or national boundaries to become a “world religion” within Tiele’s classificatory scheme. From this perspective, Okumura’s arrival would represent a continuation or, perhaps more accurately, a resumption of the missionary spirit that had first propelled Buddhism out of northern India and transformed it into a world religion. However, the members of this first generation of European “Buddhologists” were mostly armchair schol-ars who did not base their conclusions on any developments that were hap-pening at the time, “on the ground,” so to speak. In true Orientalist fashion, they dismissed the supposedly degenerative forms of Buddhism that existed in Asia at the time and instead privileged an original or “pure” form that they believed could be recovered through their reading of the ancient sacred texts in their possession.9 Nevertheless, apart from any exegesis of Buddhist canonical texts, the historical fact that Buddhism was transmitted far from its birthplace in India to the distant corners of Asia—to places like Korea and Japan—certainly seemed like compelling evidence in support of the idea that Buddhism was indeed a missionary religion.

This conclusion, however, is misleading at best, and some schol-ars have argued that it is completely false. In a two-volume dissertation that appeared more than two decades ago, Jonathan Walters asserted that no evi-dence could be found in either the Pāli Buddhist canon or the postcanoni-cal Buddhist literature produced in Sri Lanka to support the contention that Buddhist monks or nuns were ever sent out to intentionally win new converts by spreading Buddhism throughout the world.10 His study traces the source of this misconception to erroneous readings of a famous scriptural passage from the biography of the Buddha that describes the moment when the first sixty disciples were sent off to wander on their own, an event that is often described as “the Great Commission,” although Walters prefers to call it sim-ply “the great dismissal.”11 He performs a similar exercise—that is, decon-structing, contextualizing, and rereading from an emic perspective—on the later histories composed in Sri Lanka, such as the Mahāvaṃsa, which have also been frequently used to support the assertion that Buddhism possessed a “missionary spirit” from the beginning. These chronicles include descriptions of the supposed Buddhist missions dispatched by the famous Indian ruler Aśoka, which the authors or compilers of the text credited with introducing Buddhism to Sri Lanka. Walters’s conclusion that “it was the practice of dis-course, rather than the practice of Buddhism, which first gave ‘Buddhist mis-sions’ life” is painstakingly and convincingly argued. Nevertheless, even if we were to accept his triumphant claim that “the ‘Buddhist mission’ rug has been pulled out from under Buddhology,” important questions would still remain.12

For instance, assuming Buddhism lacked these traditions in its his-

8 Chapter 1

tory and doctrines, why and how did foreign and domestic religious missions

become integral to modern Buddhist reform and revival movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not only in Sri Lanka, but in

other parts of Asia as well, including Japan and Korea? What was the rela-tionship between, on the one hand, a missionary zeal as one of the crucial criteria for admittance alongside Christianity as a true “world religion” at this time and, on the other hand, the adoption of Buddhist propagation as

an organizational goal and a religiously valid practice by a wide variety of Asian Buddhist communities? What role did these scholarly discourses and

the activities of Christian missionaries in Asia actually play in the advent of modern Buddhist propagation, especially in light of the fact that transna-tional Buddhist missions and local Dharma transmissions were thought to be necessary and effective strategies for countering and competing with Chris-tian missionaries? Walters demonstrated the problematic connections that many of the first-generation Western scholars of Buddhism and religion had with the Christian missionary enterprise, and he showed how this influenced

their presuppositions about Buddhism. But he also noted that this particular view of Buddhism, which had previously been “exclusively a Buddhological construct,” was appropriated by many within the contemporary Sri Lankan

Buddhist community, where it became “the opinion, the platform and the

activity of the most learned and powerful Sinhala Buddhist scholars and monks of the day.”13

In his study of the missionary activities of the famous Sri Lankan Buddhist reformer Anagārika Dharmapāla (1864–1933), Steven Kemper directly engaged with this argument. If the missionary impulse is understood as a religious duty in the way that Christianity has approached it, which is how Walters seems to define it, then he concedes that it was almost certainly absent in premodern Sri Lankan Buddhism before Dharmapāla.14 However, Kemper quickly notes that there were other ways in which monks tradition-ally acted as transmitters of the Buddha’s teachings—ways that, while differ-ent from Christian missionaries seeking converts, were at least transferable to proselytizing among non-Buddhists.15 Linda Learman adopts a similar but slightly more critical position in her introductory chapter to the excellent volume on Buddhist missionaries in which Kemper’s study was published. Unconvinced by the central argument Walters makes, which she says “only holds by using a very restricted definition of ‘missionary religion,’ ” Learman unambiguously states that “conversion to a new viewpoint and propagation of the dispensation have been extremely important parts of Theravada Bud-dhism.”16 We should note here that Walters, Kemper, and Learman are dis-cussing only one branch of Buddhism and its historical dissemination to Sri Lanka. The view from East Asia, as we might expect, can look quite different.17

Moreover, while evidence for the importance of propagation can be readily


found in the spread of Mahāyāna Buddhism to East Asia, the same cannot be said as unequivocally for conversion, at least in the case of lay people.

Keeping this distinction between the northern and southern branches of Buddhism in mind, we can turn next to an examination of the historical precedents for modern Buddhist propagation in Korea. Rather than test the veracity of claims made within the religious community, which trace Buddhist propagation and missions all the way back to the time of the Bud-dha, it seems best to follow Learman’s advice and “look at how Buddhists have approached this aspect of their practice.”18 Are there any characteristic patterns and themes from the spread of Buddhism in history that might help us make sense of the way in which modern Buddhist propagation has func-tioned? How much do scholars really know about this process, and how have their views changed over time? Moreover, what types of models and meta-phors are used to describe the spread of Buddhism in Asian history?

Buddhist Propagation in Historical Perspective

If the expansion of Buddhism both within and beyond India was not directed by any centralized religious or political authority through an intentional pro-cess aimed at persuading others to adopt Buddhist beliefs and practices, as Walters maintains, then how exactly did the religion spread so widely throughout Asia? An increasing number of scholarly publications devoted to explaining different aspects of these historical processes have appeared in the last couple of decades. There is now a substantial body of scholarship that reexamines the propagation of Buddhism in history from a variety of perspec-tives by relying on new evidence, either critiquing earlier assumptions and models or expanding upon them. Rather than trying to narrate the entire his-tory of Buddhism’s transmission to East Asia, I will instead highlight several aspects of the complex dynamics underlying this process as revealed through these studies, which may have some relevance for understanding modern Buddhist propagation in Korea since the late nineteenth century.

The first observation about the history of Buddhist propagation is that the spread of Buddhism involved much more than the transmission of religious ideas, beliefs, and spiritual practices. The material, economic, insti-tutional, political, legal, and spatial components of this process are equally important to consider. Research has shown, for example, that the spread of Buddhism into new areas was accompanied by urbanization and the growth of a market economy. Julia Shaw has extensively investigated the propaga-tion of Buddhism in India from the third century BCE onward; her study was based largely on the findings from a multi-year archaeological project in and around Sanchi, a famous Buddhist site in India.19 Her work challenges some widely held assumptions about the way in which early Buddhism spread to

10 Chapter 1

different parts of India. She questions the “theological” or “ritual” models that have been dominant in the study of early Buddhism, arguing that they often overlook more “practical” models and socioeconomic conditions because of their overreliance on canonical texts and scriptural proclamations.20

According to this view, instead of simply offering lay people the promise of spiritual merit (Sanskrit, puṇya) in exchange for material support, the monastic community showed concern for the practical needs of the inhab-itants of a given area, which made the establishment of monasteries in that geographic location possible. The practical skills monks needed, like water management for rice farming and other basic needs, “evidently played a sig-nificant role in Buddhist propagation . . . [and] appear to have formed part of a practical form of evangelism that tackled suffering (dukkha) on an every-day subsistence level, but which also provided incentives for locals to extend their economic support to the monastery.”21 Shaw calls this a “functional” model of religious propagation, and her ideas are supported by findings from other parts of India, as well as from Southeast Asia.

Scholars have long recognized the close connection between the spread of Buddhism and the development of trading networks, particu-larly through Central Asia. The full implications of this fact, however, were

clouded by the conviction that monastic Buddhism was unconcerned with practical, this-worldly matters and was even prohibited from taking part in

economic affairs. This assumption has been proven false, and the picture

that has emerged in its place is summed up nicely by Jason Neelis in his

recent study of the spread of Buddhism and the growth of trade networks through Central Asia:

As the sangha consolidated its position within and outside of ancient India, Buddhist monks and nuns frequently participated in social and economic dynamics, despite ascetic ideals of with-drawal. Considerable literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evi-dence demonstrates that Buddhist institutions played key roles in political legitimation, management of hydraulic systems, and development of interregional road networks for long-distance trade.22

As he makes clear, the active participation of the monastic community in these trade networks across regional and cultural boundaries fostered an increase in Buddhist mobility whenever economic and political conditions allowed.

Neelis’s study expands upon a key insight that Erik Zürcher made late in his career on the difference between “contact expansion” and “long-distance transmission.” This represented a noteworthy departure from Zürch-er’s earlier views as contained in his classic work The Buddhist Conquest of


China (1959), which had long served as the accepted model of Buddhism’s transmission to China. Zürcher had to somehow account for the curious but indisputable fact that Buddhism had become established in China long before it actually took root in the transit zones of Central Asia through which it passed, so in his later work he introduced this crucial distinction. Neverthe-less, as Neelis points out, Zürcher remained convinced “that from the earliest times Buddhism has been a missionary religion par excellence.”23 Learman, however, notes that while Zürcher acknowledged the presence of a missionary ideal as expressed in famous scriptural passages, he doubted that it signaled the existence of a “large-scale planned missionary movement,” opting instead to see the transmission of Buddhism to China as the outcome of “individual efforts of itinerant monks and preachers.”24 If this is the case, then the evi-dence strongly suggests that the actual mechanisms of Buddhist propagation have differed significantly from our preconceived notions of typical mission-ary enterprises.

A second point worth noting about the historical spread of Buddhism to East Asia is the central role that written texts played in this process. Bud-dhist propagation was facilitated by, and in many ways constituted through, different types of media, especially written texts. Buddhist scriptures were transmitted orally for hundreds of years after the time of the Buddha. Accord-ing to the Mahāvaṃsa, a work written in Pāli that chronicled the history of Buddhism in India and its subsequent transmission to Sri Lanka, Buddhist scriptures were first written down during the reign of King Vattagāmaṇī in the first century BCE for the purpose of preventing their disappearance in future generations. However, the Mahāvaṃsa is a fifth-century CE work that was composed long after the purported event, and the earliest Pāli manuscripts of Buddhist scriptures that have so far been discovered all date from a much later period, leading some scholars to speculate that the date was pushed back further into history by the chroniclers.25

Regardless of the precise dating of this event, several things are noteworthy about this account. First, as Paul Griffiths points out, though we may be able to surmise only that the authors of these chronicles “thought it reasonable to have and to present such a view of the uses of writing,” this can nonetheless be cited as “evidence in support of the view that writing was not a significant tool of composition and storage in India” before roughly the start of the Common Era.26 Second, the rationale provided in this account for record-ing the sacred scriptures in writing invokes the Buddhist notion of the decline of the Dharma, which foretold the disappearance of all knowledge of the Bud-dha’s teachings in a future age, as the main source of concern. This implic-itly ties the motivation for writing to preservation of the Dharma for future generations and by extension to propagation, a concern that other Buddhist communities widely shared. Third, the appearance of rival Buddhist groups

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and the questions of authority that accompanied their competing claims are further cited as factors that may have influenced the decision to record the scriptures in writing. Finally, this event is said to have occurred outside India proper, although still well within the Indian cultural sphere. These character-istics are shared with the earliest extant Buddhist manuscripts and fragments that have ever been found, this time along the other major route that Bud-dhism followed out of India, to the north.

The oldest Buddhist manuscripts so far discovered, which were orig-inally written on birch bark or palm leaf, have mostly come from locations in present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia (in an area now part of the Xinjiang region of China). The evidence for the advent of writing as a medium for preserving and transmitting Buddhist teachings in the form of Buddhist manuscripts has grown considerably in the last couple of decades.27

Within a relatively short period, perhaps a century or two after their presumed initial appearance and proliferation in the Gandhāran region, Buddhist writ-ten texts began to appear in China. At around the same time, new sūtras pur-porting to be the word of the Buddha (buddhavacana), but absent from the canons of many existing sects of Indian Buddhism, began to circulate. These Mahāyāna sūtras, as scholars refer to them collectively, were prominent in the transmission of Buddhism to East Asia, and this form of Buddhism quickly became ascendant and remains predominant in the Buddhist traditions of the region to this day. The fact that China already possessed an advanced literary culture, together with certain strategies the texts employed to ensure their own reproduction, also contributed to their proliferation. Moreover, the phys-ical book itself was a potent symbol and embodiment of the Buddha’s ongoing dispensation. The important point is that the medium of books and writing, together with other types of media that conveyed the teachings of the Buddha, were transportable and reproducible, and this facilitated the spread of Bud-dhism to and within China due to its mature literary traditions.

Buddhist texts and literary culture in China and East Asia were therefore integral to the transmission and propagation of Buddhism. In the case of scriptures, mechanisms for the continued production and reproduc-tion of written texts were sometimes contained within the texts themselves in the form of promises of incalculable benefits for those who promoted and reproduced them. Mahāyāna sūtras, in particular, which became especially popular in East Asia, often end with assurances that immeasurable spiritual benefits and incalculable merit will accrue to the person who recites, copies, or teaches even one line of the sūtra. The texts themselves thus provide a reli-gious or spiritual motivation for copying and disseminating the teachings in written form, and with the development of printing techniques, the number of texts and copies in circulation grew exponentially. By extolling the tremen-dous benefits that result from propagating the particular sūtra in which this


proclamation is found, these texts appear to contain self-replicating schemes for their transmission, or what we might call a kind of textual DNA. That is, they employ strategies to make the text more attractive to potential targets of propagation, such as political rulers, through promises of both material and spiritual benefits to those who promote, reproduce, or transmit the text.

We have, then, a corollary to the idea that written texts can func-tion to assert claims of authority and orthodoxy, which is that they also facil-itate the spread of ideas and communication among different groups. In both cases, the fact that writing served as an important medium for the propaga-tion of religious teachings and ideas is crucially important for the spread of Buddhism. In the case of Buddhist scriptures, the physical books themselves also served as embodiments of the living Dharma as records of the Buddha’s pure teachings, and as such they were treated as sacred objects. José Cabezón describes some of these practices “wherein the physicality of the text (its sound and its material quality) are the principal focus,” and he points out that members of the monastic community were engaged in these practices along with the laity.28 While the idea of “textual propagation” (munsŏ p’ogyo) in twentieth-century Korea no longer included practices expressing the numi-nous qualities or supernatural abilities of Buddhist scriptures, the use of print media, such as journals and newspapers, in the propagation of Buddhism was recognized as vitally important. Along with a variety of new types of print media, electronic and digital media have opened new frontiers for the dis-semination of Buddhist teachings, and the Korean Buddhist community has sought to exploit these.

The final observation is that conversion does not appear to have been the primary or even secondary objective of Buddhist propagation. Sim-ply put, the goal of propagation was to preserve the Dharma by ensuring that the Buddhist teachings would be widely known in the world. Kemper sees a similar objective at work in Dharmapāla’s missionary project, describing the practice as designed “to make Buddhism present in the world, ‘bringing knowledge’ of the Dhamma.”29 Learman points out, however, that Buddhist canonical sources identify two types of conversion processes, which she says “resonate” with Western and Christian concepts of conversion: “a transfor-mation of character and viewpoint and a change of affiliation.”30 She equates the latter with the “taking of the Three Refuges,” meaning refuge in the Bud-dha, the Dharma, and Sangha, and she also mentions other initial steps along the path to liberation that are metaphorically viewed as becoming disciples of the Buddha. Nevertheless, these examples are mitigated by the fact that such changes of “affiliation” do not require any exclusive commitment to Bud-dhist teachings and practices. Religious identities in premodern Asian soci-eties were considerably more fluid than that and conformed more closely to what Johan Elverskog has called a “fuzzy pluralism.”31 Given the origin of the

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concept of religious pluralism in modern Christian Europe, Elverskog ques-tions whether it can really be applied to the situation in premodern Asia.32

If religious identities were indeed less rigid and multiple affiliations among the laity were possible, then the second type of conversion cited by Learman, despite having a canonical basis, could not have been very common.

Many of the Buddhist texts that describe the spread of Buddhism into new areas include a rather curious topos that challenges our conventional understanding of Buddhist propagation and especially conversion. In this well-known literary and artistic motif, the Buddha or a monk “converts” local deities and spirits to Buddhism. Robert DeCaroli connects this to archaeologi-cal and epigraphic evidence showing that Buddhist monasteries in India were often built over pre-Buddhist burial sites. He views this as “part of a larger Buddhist preoccupation with the spirit-deities and the dead” and asserts that it “involved both taming the problematic or dangerous spirits and transferring merit for the betterment and well-being of all the dead.”33 He also suggests, however, that this can tell us something about the processes through which Buddhism actually spread to different parts of India. It may have provided a practical means for Buddhist expansion and growth by allowing a commu-nity of ascetics to carve out a social niche or to take on a social role within the lay community, while at the same time remaining separate from those they counted on for support.34

Striking similarities to the processes DeCaroli describes can be found in other parts of Asia, suggesting that certain themes in the spread of Buddhism were iterative. The literary and historical record in East Asia, for instance, contains remarkably similar stories and motifs about the conver-sion of local deities and other supernatural beings. Buddhist monks in China, Korea, and Japan are not depicted as hostile to the worship of local gods and spirits by advocating the exclusive adherence to Buddhist beliefs and practices and the simultaneous rejection of traditional beliefs. Rather, Buddhist monks are portrayed as using their power to pacify or convert the spirit-deities that were tied to the local topography. In these cases, monks often administer the precepts to the local gods and spirits in a new region. In his analysis of the biographies of famous monks contained in several collections that were written in China, Koichi Shinohara found this literary motif used repeatedly concerning conversion. The act of converting beings as depicted in these biog-raphies and hagiographies refers not to the inhabitants of a particular area, but rather to the local deities who also reside there.

Often a monk, frequently one specializing in meditation, is said to have traveled far into a mountain range, where he came across a spot where he decided to spend the rest of his life. A mountain deity then appeared and requested the monk to confer Buddhist


precepts on him. In this peaceful fashion the accommodation between the local cult and the new religion was affected, and a group of monks then gathered at the spot to practice meditation. This appears to be a fairly well-recognized topos in medieval Chi-nese Buddhist biographies and stories.35

Administering the precepts and giving ordinations to local gods and spirits also appeared as a motif in Japanese stories of monks who spread the Dharma. This method was sometimes used when establishing a new temple, or taking over an older one, as William Bodiford has detailed in the case of new Sōtō Zen temples founded in rural areas during the medieval period, when the sect was just beginning in Japan. This tactic made people more receptive to the temple of a new sect: “The ordination of local spirits provided religious justification for villagers to support new Zen temples without rejecting past village customs.”36 Notice that here, as stated earlier, the goal is to earn and cultivate the support of the people upon whom the monastic community must rely in order to be established and maintained.

Tales of subduing dragons and malevolent spirits are also ubiqui-tous in Buddhist literature from Korea. The Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms) contains stories of monks who performed miracles and magic, curing diseases and protecting the kingdom.37 One example of this characteristic type of “conversion” comes from the biography (or hagiogra-phy) of Hyet’ong, who pacified a dragon in the mountains by administering the precept against killing.38 Most mountain monasteries in Korea maintain a shrine to the spirit of the mountain, and sometimes the Dragon King, as well, in what is seen as an accommodation to folk beliefs and practices. Whether or not this is truly an example of syncretism, the discourses on converting local deities were frequently used to portray the “domestication” of Buddhism in new areas by the time the religion reached the Korean peninsula. It expresses, perhaps, an attitude about the transmission of Buddhism that acknowledges an intention to earn the support of local populations, without necessarily try-ing to “convert” them to Buddhism. As Neelis explains:

it is not necessary to assume that Buddhist monks and nuns had similar ideological justifications, used the same methods, or sought identical results as modern missionaries. Mandates to “wander the path” in order to “teach the dharma” (Mahāvagga 1.11.1) com-pelled Buddhist monks and nuns to propagate the Buddha’s teach-ings by reciting and interpreting texts, to establish the presence of the Buddha in stupas, and to expand opportunities for followers to accumulate merit, but they were not exclusively intent on religious conversion.39

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In a study on the transmission of Chan (Zen in Japan and Sŏn in Korea) Buddhism, Griffith Foulk notes that the models and metaphors we use to talk about the spread of Buddhism have consequences for our under-standing of this process, and in doing so he raises an interesting point about what counts as the establishment of Buddhism in a particular area.40 Foulk points to the presence of Buddhist manuscripts and artifacts in the British Museum and questions whether this can be taken as evidence of the spread of Buddhism to England. He later indicates that from the standpoint of “skillful means” (upāya), as taught in Mahāyāna Buddhism, this “display of beautiful Buddhist artifacts at the British Museum, for example, could be construed as a device . . . to attract beings in a remote barbarian land, who would otherwise have no contact with the dharma. A few of the barbarians may even have been moved to travel east in search of Buddhist teachers, and eventually become monks or nuns.”41 This captures nicely what I take to be one of the key dis-tinguishing features of Buddhist propagation in comparison with Christian missionizing and proselytization, as well as the reason that conversion cannot be considered the immediate or even the intended goal of Buddhist propaga-tion. Simply exposing people to Buddhism may plant a seed that grows into recognition of the truth contained within the teachings, but this seed may not grow in this lifetime, and thus “conversion” would not come about until some long-distant future.

Christian Missionary Influence on Buddhist Propagation Reconsidered

Whether Dharmapāla’s activities “represented a renewal of tradition or an innovation on it” is less important in Kemper’s eyes than the issue of “how thoroughly Dharmapala borrowed from Christian practice, innovated, and adapted those ideas to his circumstances.”42 This is an important point, espe-cially since these same kinds of imitative or mimetic processes appear to be widespread in the adoption of modern Buddhist propagation in a variety of other countries and Buddhist communities at around the same time. Any attempt to explain Christian missionary influence on the adoption and imple-mentation of Buddhist propagation must account for the modeling or mim-icry that has been repeatedly noted by historians who study Buddhist reform and revival movements during this period. The act of imitating or copying Christian missionaries and their organizational activities, however, seems to elicit a degree of discomfort for Buddhist studies scholars and reform-minded Buddhists alike. Imitation is seen as problematic, perhaps because it suggests that this strategy for reforming Buddhism was somehow less creative or gen-uinely Buddhist than other possible alternatives. Such an attitude may be partly responsible for the lack of attention that modern Buddhist propagation has generally received from contemporary Buddhologists. Be that as it may,


downplaying, negatively evaluating, or ignoring altogether the significance and centrality of these imitative processes simply because they do not fit our preconceived notions of what counts as authentically Buddhist responses hin-ders our understanding of modern Buddhist propagation as an adaptive strat-egy. The apparent mimicry at the heart of this phenomenon is among the key factors in need of explication and analysis.

Christian missionary methods undoubtedly served as models to be selectively copied or rejected, as Buddhist reformers saw fit. In late nineteenth-century Japan, for instance, advocates of so-called New Buddhism (shin Bukkyō) attempted to reconstruct Buddhism along the lines of a puta-tively modern and socially responsible religion that, “under the guise of ‘true’ or ‘pure’ Buddhism, was conceived of as a ‘world religion’ ready to take its rightful place alongside other universal creeds.”43 For these reformers Chris-tianity represented both a challenge and a model, and Meiji-era Buddhists increasingly imitated the organizational activities of Christian missionaries, especially their propagation methods, but also their charitable and educa-tional endeavors.44 The early twentieth-century Chinese Buddhist reformer Taixu (1890–1947) was similarly stimulated by the activities of Christian missionaries. As an advocate for transnational Buddhist cooperation, Taixu urged Chinese and Japanese Buddhists to “learn each other’s good points and work together for the propagation of the Buddhist religion,” in much the same way Christians working across denominational lines and even national boundaries cooperated in the mission field.45 Buddhist reforms in Korea have followed a similar pattern, as this book shows and as others have noted in the past.46 However, these mimetic mechanisms and their influence on mod-ern Buddhist propagation, though frequently acknowledged, remain poorly understood.

An organizational approach to this problem can address issues related to the widespread imitation of Christian missionary methods in mod-ern Buddhist propagation. The sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell proposed a theory to explain the isomorphic processes that result in greater homogenization between organizations within a particular “organizational field.” Succinctly stated, the theory is deceptively simple: “Once disparate organizations in the same line of business are structured into an actual field (as we shall argue, by competition, the state, or the professions), powerful forces emerge that lead them to become more similar to one another.”47 The three forces that drive this tendency toward institutional isomorphism are identified as mimetic, coercive, and normative. DiMaggio and Powell point out that these three may be differentiated analytically on the basis of the varying conditions that give rise to the isomorphic effects, but they are not necessarily distinct from one another empirically.48 Mimetic processes occur through “modeling” and selective borrowing of organizational structures and

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behavior, especially when organizations are faced with considerable uncer-tainty or potential threats to their survival. Coercive isomorphism, in con-trast, is conditioned by pressures arising mainly from politically and legally constructed environments, usually in connection with the state, which compel organizations to conform to rationalized or institutionalized standards. The normative pressures referred to in their theory are primarily attributed to the influence of professionalization, which imposes normative standards on orga-nizations.

The effect that legal systems have had on Buddhist organizations and their activities in modern Korea is an important area requiring investiga-tion, not only in terms of the impact that colonial-period laws and regulations had on the structuring of Buddhist organizations, but also with regard to the legal and regulatory environment created in the Republic of Korea after liber-ation. Assessing the effect of modern legal structures on Buddhism requires an organizational level of analysis because the state—or at least any state in which the freedom of religion is nominally guaranteed—exercises power over religious communities by controlling the access of religious organizations to legal entity status through registration procedures and other methods, rather than by legislating individual belief. Laws are also instrumental in giving force to the institutional separation of religion from other societal sectors by establishing a legal separation between church (or temple) and state. The homogenizing effects of coercive legal pressures among religious organiza-tions in Korea may have been mitigated by the fact that Buddhism was subject to specific laws aimed solely at Buddhist temples and monasteries rather than general laws regulating all religious groups and associations, as in Japan and the United States. Nonetheless, the research into the legally defined status of Buddhist temples, monasteries, and organizations presented in this study suggests that the legal and regulatory environment has indeed played a role in the increasing similarity we witness between Buddhist and Christian orga-nizations. Moreover, a close reading of the relevant laws, regulations, and judicial decisions reveals a persistent emphasis on p’ogyo as a necessary com-ponent of a legitimate Buddhist religious organization under the law.

The mimetic processes at the heart of this isomorphism, as previ-ously mentioned, are widely acknowledged by scholars in the field, but the mechanisms involved have not been properly analyzed or explained. Insti-tutional theories of organizations present a promising avenue for making sense of this phenomenon. As DiMaggio and Powell explain, “Organizations tend to model themselves after similar organizations in their field that they perceive to be more legitimate or successful.”49 Numerous organizational theorists have also noted this imitative or mimetic aspect of organizational behavior and design. Zucker counts it as one of the two defining processes in the approaches to institutionalization in organizations.50 Scott notes that


the processes through which organizational actors choose certain kinds of structural models have been extensively studied, and “organizational decision makers have been shown to adopt institutional designs and attempt to model their own structures on patterns thought to be, variously, more modern, appropriate, or professional.”51 Institutional theory directs attention, there-fore, to the mechanisms of organizational change and to the institutionalized patterns of organizational structures, practices, and roles that reveal certain shared assumptions and taken-for-granted aspects of organizations. I sug-gest that these approaches may offer clues about the processes taking place in the adoption of p’ogyo as an organizational element of Buddhist institutional change in the twentieth century.

Scholars of religion and others will no doubt recognize the selec-tive borrowing of artistic forms, symbolic imagery, religious practices, and structural arrangements among competing religious groups as an age-old and fairly common practice, which is often labeled syncretism. Some might even argue on this basis that there is really nothing new going on here. Be that as it may, an explanation of the institutional nature of these processes is crucial to an investigation of the adoption, diffusion, and maintenance of p’ogyo by Korean Buddhist groups, which entailed a considerable amount of organizational change. Korean Buddhists adopted new organizational forms, patterns of activity, goals, and structural arrangements, many of which are identifiably associated with p’ogyo. That these organizational innovations and institutional elements were modeled on salient features of Christian and Japanese Buddhist organizational structures and behavior does not indicate a lack of creativity. Rather, it signals conformity to the norms and expectations of the institutional environment, which tends to lead to increased legitimacy, enhanced survival prospects, and potentially greater access to resources. In explaining their predictive hypothesis that the greater the ambiguity sur-rounding organizational goals, the more an organization will model itself on others in the same field that are thought to be more successful, DiMaggio and Powell point out:

In contrast to our view, ecologists would argue that organizations that copy other organizations usually have no competitive advan-tage. We contend that, in most situations, reliance on established, legitimated procedures enhances organizational legitimacy and survival characteristics.52

Although institutional theorists have focused almost exclusively on secular organizations, the processes and dynamics involved are theoretically applicable to religious organizations as well. To apply them, however, certain preconceptions about the incompatibility of these areas of inquiry have to be

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set aside. Religious organizations and religious phenomena are too often seen as a breed apart by scholars who normally deal with nonreligious subjects, while scholars of religion have a tendency to regard the subject of institution-alization as antithetical to religious experience and spiritual concerns, equat-ing it “with spirit-sapping mechanization and lifeless ossification.”53 The key lies in finding a way to capture both the cultural and structural aspects of religious organizations and the historical changes that affect them.54 An insti-tutional approach does not automatically exclude a consideration of culture, ideas, values, and symbols, nor should it, since these represent “the springs on which institutions rest.”55

Although institutional theories of organizations can help explain the way in which the organizational elements associated with p’ogyo were adopted, maintained, and institutionalized, the effort to invest the practice of propagation with symbolic and religious meaning—that is, to make p’ogyo an authentically Buddhist form of practice from the standpoint of Buddhist doc-trines, soteriology, and ethical values—is equally important to consider. The values, symbols, and ideals that inform the concept of p’ogyo and endow it with potency as a religiously valid and socially beneficial form of practice were drawn from a mix of Buddhist doctrines and teachings; traditional Korean and East Asian ideas about religion and society; and new values, belief sys-tems, and definitions of religion introduced from the West. However, these cultural and religious values or ideals are embedded in the socio-spatial and structural forms that constitute the organizational and institutional manifes-tations of Buddhist propagation. They are responsible for the enhanced legit-imacy of the structural elements and innovations, as well as the organizations that adopted them. In short, neither the cultural dimensions nor the struc-tural aspects of this phenomenon are adequate by themselves to fully explain the complex processes that have produced such an increase in the number, diversity, and legitimacy of modern Korean Buddhist organizations, or the fact that so many were explicitly designed to carry out p’ogyo.

On the Terminology, Translations, and Typologies of Buddhist Propagation

To answer the question of whether Buddhism is a missionary religion, we would first need to define what is meant by the term “missionary,” not to mention the additional terms contained in the question: “religion” and “Bud-dhism.” This need for definitional clarity is one reason that Walters devoted considerable space in his study to establishing the meaning of the word “mis-sion” and explaining its usage in the West, which led him to conclude that Buddhism cannot be described, at least prior to the modern period, as a mis-sionary religion. Learman, by contrast, argues that the problem is precisely


his narrow definition of “missionary,” which she finds far too constraining, restrictive, and frankly Christian-centric. Simply avoiding the word “mission-ary,” however, by choosing a different word does not necessarily eliminate the issue of comparison that lies at the heart of this question. An alternative way to pose the question, which brings this comparative element to the forefront, is: Can Buddhist propagation can be considered analogous to Christian mis-sionizing, proselytizing, or evangelizing, and, if so, in what ways?

The short answer is that Buddhist propagation and Christian mis-sionizing appear to be homologous rather than analogous. In other words, they have very different forms but fulfill similar (adaptive) functions. Bud-dhist propagation has been historically concerned first and foremost with the preservation and extension of the so-called Three Jewels in time and space. Additionally, earning the support of lay people through the alleviation of their suffering in both practical and spiritual ways, rather than explicitly seeking their “conversion” to Buddhism, best characterizes the attitude adopted by the monks and nuns. For these reasons, there is legitimate cause to be skepti-cal about terms for which conversion is inextricably tied to the meaning of the word, making them less suitable as translations of p’ogyo. We will look briefly at each of the possible translations.

Translating p’ogyo as “Buddhist proselytizing” is complicated by the fact that the word “proselyte” refers explicitly to a convert. According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, in the Hebrew Bible a proselyte “literally means a ‘stranger’ or ‘foreign sojourner,’ and by an extension, a con-vert to Judaism.”56 In the wider sense in which it is used today, of course, “proselyte” can refer to a convert of any religion, faith, or sect. Because the act of proselytizing by definition aims to bring about a conversion, therefore, it seems the least appropriate of all possible translations. Even definitions of “proselytism” that try to generalize the meaning to make it more broadly applicable run into this problem. Tad Stahnke, for instance, has offered a use-ful definition of “proselytism” that Rosalind Hackett cites in her introduction to the edited volume Proselytization Revisited: “expressive conduct under-taken with the purpose of trying to change the religious beliefs, affiliation, or identity of another.”57 While it may be the case that p’ogyo in Korea since the early twentieth century has been seen at times as a way to bring about a change of religious belief, affiliation, or identity on the part of those being tar-geted by this practice, this understanding is much less common than the goal of simply trying to increase people’s awareness or deepen their knowledge of Buddhism, whether or not the person self-identifies as Buddhist.

The word “evangelist” is used three times in the New Testament in the sense of a traveling missionary.58 This term shifts the focus from the potential convert to the actions of the person who is proclaiming, preaching, or spreading the Gospels or the Christian teachings in general. An evangelist

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is literally a “proclaimer of the Gospel,” and thus evangelism does show some affinity with p’ogyo in the sense of disseminating the Dharma. However, to translate p’ogyosa as “evangelist” is problematic since “evangel” originally refers to any of the four Gospels, a meaning acquired from the Greek word euangelos, “bringing good news.”59 In the early Christian church, “evangelist” may have designated “a certain class of teachers . . . presumably having the function of preaching the gospel to the unconverted.”60 In its present usage among various Protestant denominations, “evangelist” signifies “chiefly a lay-man commissioned to perform home missionary work,”61 and in this sense, too, it appears to have some affinity with Buddhist propagators in Korea. For most of the twentieth century, however, a Korean p’ogyosa was typically a member of the monastic community. In recent decades greater numbers of lay people have joined the effort to spread Buddhism in Korean society, and lay Buddhist teachers in Korea can now receive training and certification to become a recognized p’ogyosa, with separate courses and examinations for international and domestic propagation. One possible parallel from Indian Buddhist history might be a bhānaka, meaning “reciter” (sometimes trans-lated as “preacher”), which was a title given to certain monks who were able to recite the scriptures (dharma-bhānaka). However, there is no sense in which their actions were necessarily directed at the “unconverted” or toward lay people alone.

Kemper also found the issue of conversion problematic when con-sidering how to translate the term dharmaduta, a neologism meaning “mes-senger of Dhamma” that Dharmapāla used to describe the kind of work he did.62 Obviously, p’ogyo has much in common with this term. Although not technically a neologism, since it can be found in the Chinese-language canon, the word was clearly invested with new meaning in late nineteenth-century Japan, as discussed in chapter 2. Kemper emphatically notes, however, that in the case of Sri Lanka, “one thing ‘Buddhist missionizing’ did not borrow from Protestantism was its emphasis on conversion proper.” The evidence from Korea suggests the same conclusion. Greater emphasis was placed on the idea of spreading the Dharma or simply making Buddhist teachings known to ordinary people in society through a variety of methods. Buddhist propa-gation manuals produced in Korea do not evince much concern with bring-ing about an act of conversion or the possible Buddhist equivalents of this event, such as “taking refuge” in the Three Jewels or receiving the bodhisattva precepts. Nevertheless, the logic of p’ogyo does suggest that, even if the ulti-mate goal was to reposition the monastic community in relation to society by overcoming socio-spatial boundaries and to increase support for the monastic community, in the modern setting it became necessary to attract lay people through the spread of beliefs and practices that would cause them to volun-tarily associate or affiliate with the religion. This understanding of religion as


a voluntary association of like-minded individuals who regularly attend ser-vices or ceremonies at a temple and identify themselves as lay followers of that religion was quite new to Korea, and it required the creation of meth-ods, institutions, and networks to deal with that reality. This has proved to be a difficult task, and the absence of historical precedents for this type of lay affiliation in congregational form may be one reason. Nonetheless, Buddhist propagation—that is, p’ogyo—was unquestionably at the center of the monas-tic community’s response to this situation.

Ultimately, whatever term one chooses for this practice, some under-standing of the different types of Buddhist propagation is required. Learman offers a general typology of missionary work based on Jan Nattier’s three-part typology of Buddhist propagation in North America.63 Learman observes that, removed from its geographical confines of North America and not limited to Buddhism, a division based on target audience or population is “particularly relevant to the character of missionary efforts and to the role of conversion in the propagation of any religion.” She identifies three separate target popula-tions: “a culturally foreign group being introduced to the religion for the first time, a diaspora community drawing on its religious heritage to make its way in a culturally foreign environment, or a domestic audience deemed to be in need of religious revitalization.”64 Note that the first two of her three types of missionary work are carried out transnationally on foreign soil, while only the last, sometimes called “internal conversion,” is conducted domestically. The present study on p’ogyo in the Korean Buddhist context primarily exam-ines this third type of missionary work—that is, domestic missions—but also considers these other types of religious propagation, both inside and outside Korea, at various points.

Although the typology may not apply in all cases, it nonetheless has heuristic value. The use of typologies based on the targets of propagation can also be found in p’ogyo manuals that were produced throughout the twenti-eth century in Korea. The earliest attempt to offer a clear and concise guide to Buddhist propagation in Korea was produced in 1920, appearing as two sepa-rate articles in a colonial-era Buddhist journal, Chosŏn Pulgyo ch’ongbo. The first manual on Buddhist propagation to be published as a book, which offers a more comprehensive treatment of the subject, was Kang Yumun’s P’ogyo-bŏp kaesŏl (An outline of propagation methods, 1938). Although it took just over thirty years for the next manual to appear, the thirty-year span from 1970 to 2000 saw the publication of four separate book-length propagation man-uals. These materials provide some of the best and most complete pictures of how p’ogyo was conceived and what it entailed, thanks to their in-depth treat-ment of the subject and the fact that they do not take for granted any prior knowledge about p’ogyo.

One of the most recent manuals on propagation methods was pro-

24 Chapter 1

duced as a three-volume series by the Chogye Order (Chogyejong) of Korean Buddhism, the largest and most influential monastic order in Korea. It was published under the auspices of the Chogye Order’s P’ogyowŏn (Propagation Division), the organizational body within the order tasked with developing and implementing propagation activities. In his introductory chapter, Ven. Hongsŏn offers the following definition of p’ogyo: “A concept that includes all of the media and activities that transmit the Buddha’s teachings; bring about understanding of them and convince people [of their validity]; and cause [people] to accept them and put them into practice [silch’ŏn] together.”65 He asserts that p’ogyo has both a broad meaning and a narrow meaning, and he suggests that, in the broadest sense, it encompasses the entire system of Buddhist cultivation and training, all Buddhist activities both inside and out-side the monasteries, and all of the concrete actions that cause people to be exposed to Buddhism. The construal of p’ogyo in such sweeping terms, while fascinating and worth exploring, is analytically unwieldy as a working defini-tion of the term. Aside from the obvious inability of this definition to exclude virtually any activities involving Buddhist teachings and practices, it also masks the bounded historical and contextual usage of the term in twentieth-century Korean Buddhism. As Hongsŏn himself notes, the vocabulary of p’ogyo appears to have come into widespread use at a time when the sup-posedly insular monastic community had started to look upon participation in social activities in a more positive light, which can be traced to the early twentieth century.66

Even if this definition is interpreted less expansively and properly contextualized within twentieth-century Korean history, a good deal of ambi-guity remains. Delimiting the range of activities and practices designated as p’ogyo is complicated by their connection, as Hongsŏn implies, to a wider set of activities loosely characterized as benefiting society in some way. This view may be implicit, as well, in the last item of Hongsŏn’s definition, where the term he employs is silch’ŏn (實踐), “to put into practice.” Although this word denotes simply the practical application of the Buddhist teachings (praxis), as opposed to theories and speculation on them, its usage typically indicates practices that aid others rather than benefiting oneself. By extension, then, it gets more broadly applied to socially conscious behavior. The term is doc-trinally linked to the bodhisattva ideal of rescuing all beings from suffering in these contexts. Thus, the use of the word silch’ŏn here as a defining element of p’ogyo may signal, in Hongsŏn’s view, a broader range of socially beneficial practices. Elsewhere he makes the social function of p’ogyo explicit when he says, “P’ogyo is the first step in the encounter between Buddhism and society, and it begins from there playing a role in society’s purification and culturation [munhwahwa].”67

In a separate chapter, the scholar Yu Sŭngmu, a member of the


Department of Buddhist Propagation and Society (P’ogyo sahoe hakkwa) at the Central Sangha College operated by the Chogye Order, proposes a dis-tinction between “direct propagation” (chikchŏp p’ogyo) and “indirect prop-agation” (kanjŏp p’ogyo), a division that also appears in some of the earliest propagation manuals written in the colonial period.68 Direct propagation represents the prevailing understanding of p’ogyo, according to Yu, and it is defined as the collection of “activities on the part of monastics and dharma teachers [ pŏpsa] that are designed to transmit the Buddha’s teachings to ordinary people through direct contact.”69 What Yu means by “direct contact” here is not necessarily limited to face-to-face contact, but appears to include the use of print and electronic media to reach people. Indirect propagation, in contrast, is carried out by means of Buddhist social and political activities in the public sphere that are directed at common social problems facing all members of society.70

The primary goal of indirect propagation, then, is to bring collective benefits to the entire society rather than to one’s own particular temple, orga-nization, or even religion. Rather than striving to communicate or convey the content of Buddhist teachings, this method of p’ogyo seeks to put Buddhist teachings and doctrines into practice (silch’ŏn). Yu is a strong advocate for redressing the imbalance that had generally existed up to that point between indirect and direct propagation. He asserts that Buddhists have mostly neglected indirect propagation, a charge he backs up by comparing the con-crete efforts of Buddhist groups to ameliorate various social problems from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s with those of Protestant and Catholic organi-zations.71 Elsewhere Yu has argued for a new paradigm that would transfer the logic of p’ogyo out of the realm of individualized, private belief and into the public sphere to address collective problems, particularly in the case of social groups left behind in the race to economic prosperity through modernization, industrialization, and urbanization.72

Kim Ŭngch’ŏl, one of Yu’s colleagues in the Department of Buddhist Propagation and Society, also distinguishes between direct and indirect prop-agation as part of his typology of p’ogyo, although he breaks it down along various functional lines, based mainly on the target populations.73 He pro-poses that we analyze p’ogyo according to the different target levels of propa-gation (individual, group, or local society), the method by which propagators come into contact with people (direct or indirect), the various types of pro-grams through which p’ogyo is carried out (religious, educational, recre-ational, cultural, medical), whether the target of propagation currently has a religion or is nonreligious, the place where p’ogyo is being conducted (domes-tically or internationally), and, finally, the social characteristics of those being targeted.74 In his evaluation of indirect propagation, Kim sees the potential for significant results by encouraging people’s participation in various kinds

26 Chapter 1

of social activities and social education programs. However, he also notes the difficulty of assessing just how well people have understood or internalized the Buddha’s teachings through this type of indirect propagation.

These types of sociological analyses of p’ogyo, which have become increasingly sophisticated in the last couple of decades, are especially useful for those tasked with actually designing and implementing propagation pro-grams within the monastic order. The results of these studies enable them to evaluate the effectiveness of different activities and decide where to commit resources. The very fact that the Central Sangha College created a Department of Buddhist Propagation and Society (P’ogyo sahoe hakkwa) in the first place speaks volumes about the importance of p’ogyo in the eyes of those charged with the education of novice monks. Although the ideas, practices, roles, and organizational structures connected with p’ogyo have been subject to a fair amount of elaboration, modification, and rationalization over time, in terms of both theory and practice Buddhist propagation in Korea has remained remarkably consistent since it began just after the turn of the twentieth cen-tury. Only very recently have new approaches and paradigms been proposed and implemented.

Organization of the Book

A central premise of this book is that p’ogyo has a history, and that in order to fully understand the important role that this concept and practice has played in the development of modern Korean Buddhism, we must examine the entire history of Korean Buddhist propagation since the late nineteenth century. Therefore, the chapters are arranged chronologically and divided almost equally into four main periods, each lasting roughly three and a half decades. Beginning with the origins of p’ogyo in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, this study tracks the evolution of this concept and practice down to the first decade and a half of the early twenty-first century. Chapter 2 looks closely at an important event in the sub-sequent history of Buddhist propagation: the lifting of the legal prohibitions on Korean monks and nuns from entering the capital and other major cit-ies except under special circumstances. This event had tremendous symbolic meaning for the Buddhist community, but its practical consequences were not really felt for another decade and a half. The chapter examines the legal rea-soning behind the lifting of the ban and its connection to p’ogyo, which must be understood against the background of international treaties and foreign missionaries operating in the peninsula, both Buddhist and Christian mis-sionaries. The remainder of the chapter details the first tentative steps in the direction of Korean Buddhist reform.

Chapter 3 begins with the construction of the first Buddhist tem-


ple to be built within the walls of the capital in centuries. The project began just on the eve of the Japanese annexation of the peninsula and was com-pleted only after Korea had formally become a Japanese colony. At the same time, leading Buddhist monks began to write treatises on Buddhist reform, and p’ogyo figured prominently in their proposals for how to revitalize the tradition. This chapter looks closely at these proposals to understand the place of propagation in Buddhist reform and modernizing efforts. These ideas reveal the socio-spatial conceptions of Buddhist propagation, and this chap-ter explains the production of a new type of Buddhist religious space in the colonial period: urban propagation temples ( p’ogyodang). In addition, the chapter considers the role of colonial-era laws that used p’ogyo as a legal cate-gory of recognized and legitimate Buddhist practice, suggesting that Buddhist propagation represents an area where dominant legal norms and Buddhist objectives intersected to produce an emphasis on spreading Buddhist teach-ings and practices. Finally, this chapter explains the use of new types of print media to propagate Buddhism.

Chapter 4 covers the period from liberation in 1945 to the end of the 1970s, a time when propagation efforts took a step backward due to the inter-nal disputes that erupted within the Korean Buddhist community. With the U.S. military in control of South Korea following liberation, Christianity was given preferential treatment over Buddhism, and this policy continued under the administration of the first president, Syngman Rhee. After the Korean War, which had further disrupted the efforts to propagate, Rhee played a leading role in sparking the so-called “purification movement” (chŏnghwa undong) to remove married monks, who represented the majority by this point, from positions of leadership within the monastic order. The turmoil caused by the ensuing conflicts was obviously detrimental to Buddhist prop-agation, but p’ogyo also came to define a possible solution to the conflict, as this chapter points out. When Park Chung Hee came to power in 1961 through a military coup, he quickly put an end to the internal schism in the monas-tic community, forcing the two sides to unify. He also finally struck down the colonial-era laws pertaining to Buddhism, but the new law he created to replace them retained p’ogyo as an important legal category. This chapter looks at the effects of this law on Buddhist propagation and organizational developments, as well as detailing the continuing efforts to move into the cit-ies through the creation of urban propagation temples.

Chapter 5 looks at the contemporary period of Korean Buddhism, from the 1980s to the present. Once again, political and social changes had an impact upon the Buddhist community and its efforts to propagate the reli-gion. The Minjung Buddhism movement that began at this time shared cer-tain ideals concerning Buddhist social engagement with p’ogyo. Reformers demanded that the monastic establishment redirect its energies and resources

28 Chapter 1

to addressing problems in society that cause suffering among the common people. This movement drew upon concepts and objectives shared by a reimagined Mahāyāna Buddhist movement, but also by the prevailing under-standing of p’ogyo. Minjung Buddhism thus reinforced p’ogyo efforts, but much of the activities designed to spread Buddhism among ordinary people in society came from outside the established order. With Christianity grow-ing rapidly in this period and urbanization expanding, the perceived need to establish a greater Buddhist presence in the cities took on renewed urgency. This chapter also explains a reverse movement, back to the mountains, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As mountain monasteries became more accessible, new programs for lay people to engage in Buddhist practices and learn more about the religion through practice retreats were implemented and became quite popular; these may have influenced the cre-ation of the Temple Stay program in 2002. This program and the most recent effort to spread Buddhism through the promotion of traditional Sŏn (Japa-nese, Zen) meditation practices are also discussed.

Index

abbots (chuji): arrested by Chun regime, 105; excessive power granted to, 72; laws relating to selection, duties, or qualifi-cations of, 69–70, 76–77, 87, 89, 91, 159n25; of Pŏmŏ-sa, 125; of the main monasteries, 62, 64, 75; presence of at the International Seon Center, 123, 125

akpŏp (pernicious law), 70, 155n58 An Chinho, 67–68 Anguk Sŏnwŏn, 125, 127

Baker, Donald, 131, 133, 166n53 Berger, Peter, 133 Bible, 21, 66 Bishop, Isabella Bird, 31, 46 bodhisattva: ideal, 24, 103; precepts,

22, 151n1; vow, 60 Bodiford, William, 15 Bond, George, 137–138 branch temples (malsa): Japanese, 6,

36, 41, 51, 155n54; Korean, 61–63, 69–70, 72, 75, 78, 95–97, 113, 125, 162n66

Buddha’s Birthday, as national holiday, 84–85, 90, 122

Buddhist Broadcasting Station (BBS), 112, 128. See also radio

Buddhist chaplains, 85, 90, 159n23 Buddhist journals, 23, 55, 57–58,

64–67, 98. See also munsŏ p’ogyo

Buddhist Property Management Law (BPML), 90–95, 100–102, 106, 109–111, 128, 130

Buswell, Robert E., Jr., 97, 117, 160n29

Cabezón, José, 13 Catholicism: census figures and other

numbers related to, 134, 166n53; introduction of in Korea, 39–40; persecution of in Chosŏn, 32, 146n4; and prison and military chap-lains, 85; and social welfare activities compared to Bud-dhism, 25; and South Korean presidents, 94; and treaties with Chosŏn, 32, 39–40, 169n9. See also Christianity; Christian missionaries

celibacy. See purification movement Central Asia, 10–12 Central Assembly (chung’ang chong-

hoe), 84, 98 Central propagation temple (Chung’ang

p’ogyodang), 54, 61–63, 66. See also Kakhwang-sa

Central Religious Affairs Office (chong-muwŏn), 36, 61–62, 65, 81

Chan, 16, 124. See also Sŏn; Zen China: acknowledgment of religious

freedom in, 131–132; biogra-phies of famous monks in, 14; Chan literature in, 124; Chris-tian writings brought from, 39, 154n41; and comparison with Buddhism in, 45–46; missionaries coming from, 40; and the Sino-Japanese War,31, 33; spread of Bud-dhism to, 11–12; and treaty negotiations with Western countries, 39–40

Ch’oe Cheu, 32. See also Tonghak Cho, Eunsu, 37, 47–48

187

188 Index

Chogye Order (Chogyejong): affilia-tions with urban propagation temples, 96, 114; institutional reforms and support for p’ogyo, 24–25, 95, 101–102, 106, 109–111, 128; opposition to the national park system within, 94, 117; and print propagation, 98–99; promul-gation of kanhwa Sŏn, 123– 127, 129, 139; struggle for control over, 81–83, 86–89, 94–95, 104; summer training retreats (suryŏnhoe) for lay people, 119, 129; and the Tem-ple Stay program, 121–122, 129; and the 10.27 persecu-tion by the Chun regime, 105, 127. See also chongdan

Choi Chongko, 40, 93, 148n35 chŏnbŏp (dharma transmission), 50, 74,

91–92 chŏndo (mission), 50, 58–59 ch’ongbonsan. See headquarters temple chongdan (monastic order), 31, 52, 95,

101, 168n1; kaehyŏk (Reform-ist Order) 106, 111; pisang (Emergency Order) 110–111; t’onghap (Unified Order) 83, 86, 89–90, 94, 99–101

chongmuwŏn. See Central Religious Affairs Office

Chŏng Pyŏngjo (Chung Byung-jo), 109, 136, 164n10

Chŏngt’o P’ogyowŏn. See JungTo Soci-ety

chŏnt’ong sach’al. See traditional tem-ples

Chosŏn dynasty: commitment to Con-fucianism, 37, 46–48; laws affecting Buddhism, 29–31, 35–36, 50, 147n14; perse-cution of Catholics, 39–40; socio-spatial marginalization of Buddhism in, 13, 29, 35, 37, 44, 46–48, 57

Chosŏn Pulgyo ch’ongbo, 23, 65 “Chosŏn Pulgyo kaehyŏngnon,” 58 Chosŏn Pulgyo wŏlbo, 58, 65 Chosŏn Pulgyo yusillon (On the resto-

ration of Korean Buddhism), 56–57, 59, 66, 74–75, 87, 113. See also Han Yong’un

Chosŏn wangjo sillok (Veritable records

of the Chosŏn dynasty), 36, 147n15

Christianity: and colonial-era laws, 77, 157n84; competition with Buddhism, 3, 18–19, 38, 55, 79, 90, 101, 103, 112–113, 128, 134–135; growth of in Korea, 1, 3, 28, 39, 103, 133, 161n42, 166n53; influence on Korean Buddhism, 135–136; and lib-eration (Minjung) theology, 107, 164n15; as missionary religion, 6–8, 16, 21–22, 56; preferential treatment in post-liberation South Korea, 27, 82, 84–85, 90, 100; religious pluralism in Korea and, 14, 133–134, treaties with Western countries and, 39–40, 42. See also Catholi-cism; Protestantism

Christian missionaries, 4, 6, 8, 26, 30, 32, 39–40, 66, 148n29

Christmas, as national holiday, 84 Chun Doo Hwan, 93, 104, 112, 117, 127 Clark, Donald, 84, 164n15 Confucianism, 32–39 passim, 46–48,

169n16 conversion, problematic place of in Bud-

dhism, 8–9, 13–16, 21–23 Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism

(Han’guk Pulgyo munhwa saŏpdan), 122

cyber-p’ogyo, 113

Decaroli, Robert, 14 Department of Propagation and Soci-

ety (P’ogyo sahoe hakkwa), 25–26

Detailed Regulations Currently in Force for Domestic Temples, 49–50, 151n73–76

dharma-bhanāka (reciters of Dharma), 22

Dharmapāla, Anagārika, 8, 13, 16, 22, 145n45

Dharma: protectors (hobŏpjung), 88; talks, 57, 96, 98, 114, 123– 124, 126, 157n88; teachers, 25, 38; transmission (chŏn-bŏp), 50, 74, 92

digital media, 13, 68, 98, 113, 154n50 Dongguk University, 99, 125–126,

159n23

Index 189

Dual Sŏn and Kyo Orders of Korean Buddhism, 63, 78

Durham, Cole, 132

Elverskog, John, 13–14 Emergency Order (pisang chongdan).

See chongdan evangelism, 10, 21–22, 128, 135

Foulk, T. Griffith, 16 four moral obligations (saŭn), 75,

157n78, 157n87 freedom of religion. See religious free-

dom fukyō, 50, 135, 150n55. See also

p’ogyo

Galmiche, Florence, 119–120 Ganhwa Seon. See kanhwa Sŏn Gombrich, Richard, 136–138 Goossaert, Vincent, 132 Great Commission, 4, 7 Griffis, William, 42 Griffiths, Paul, 11

Hackett, Roselind, 21 Haedong Pulbo, 58 Haein-sa, 62, 65, 75 Hanmaŭm Sŏnwŏn, 96, 112, 114,

162n66 Han Yong’un: and Buddhist journals,

65; Chosŏn Pulgyo yusillon, 56–57, 59, 66, 74–75, 87, 113; evoked by later critics of the pace of reforms, 113, 140; participation in the March First movement, 63, 67; pub-lication of Pulgyo taejŏn, 67; support for clerical marriage, 87, 141

headquarters temple, 61–62, 69, 84, 157n2

Higashi Honganji, 41, 150n56 Hong Sasŏng, 106, 108, 113 Hongsŏn, 24 Hur, Nam-lin, 140 hwadu (head of speech), 124 Hyŏndae Pulgyo, 112. See also newspa-

pers, Buddhist Hyŏnjo sŭnim, 123–124, 168n88

Imje Order (Imjejong), 62–63 indirect propagation (kanjŏp p’ogyo),

25–26, 59, 152n13

institutional isomorphism, 17–18 institutional theories of organizations,

17–20 instrumental view of law, 72–74, 131 International Seon Center (ISC),

123–127 Itō Hirobumi, 50, 61

Japan: activities of in late nineteenth-century Korea, 30–31, 33–34; Buddhist temples in, 45–46, 62, 69, 155n54; as co-hosts of 2002 World Cup, 121; Korean liberation from, 81; laws related to religion in, 18, 41, 75, 85, 132, 159n26; origins of modern religious terminology in, 22, 43, 67, 131, 148n27; treaties with, 29, 39–40, 149n42

Japanese Buddhism, 4, 8, 14–17, 31, 34, 37, 52–53, 82, 86–87, 134–135. See also individual sect names

Japanese Buddhist missionaries, 4, 6–8, 30, 40–42, 53, 61, 150n56

Japanese colonial authorities: government-general, 53, 70–71, 76–77, 87, 91; governor-general, 61, 69–70, 74–75, 154n51; residency-general, 50–51, 61, 76

Joo, Ryan Bongseok, 138–139 Jorgensen, John, 106–107, 164n16 Josephson, Jason Ānanda, 131, 148n27 JungTo Society (Chŏngt’ohoe), 115, 120,

167n68 juridical person (pŏbin), 41, 65, 85,

92–93

Kabo Reforms, 30–31, 33–34, 136–137 kaehyŏk chongdan. See chongdan kaikyō, 43, 150n55. See also fukyō Kakhwang-sa, 54, 60–62 Kangnam P’ogyowŏn, 96 Kang Sŏkchu, 99 Kang Wi Jo, 71 Kang Yumun, 23 kanhwa Sŏn, 120, 124–127, 129,

138–141 Kemper, Steven, 8, 13, 16, 22 Kim, Hwansoo Ilmee, 34, 147n13,

151n76

190 Index

Kim Kwangsik, 63, 71–72, 94, 159n16, 166n44

Kim Kyŏngjip, 49 Kim T’aehŭp, 66, 68, 153n39 Kim Ŭngch’ŏl, 25, 95, 162n66 Knott, Kim, 44 Ko Ikchin, 113 Koryŏ dynasty, 45, 126 kukhanmun (mixed-script), 66–67 Kŭmjŏng P’ogyowŏn. See Anguk

Sŏnwŏn Kuryong-sa, 96–97, 162n66 Kusan sŭnim, 119 Kwangju, 62, 104–105, 117, 163n4 Kwŏn Sangno, 56, 58–59, 65 kyohwa (edification), 91–92, 130 kyŏlsa (Buddhist practice communi-

ties/religious societies), 57, 106. See also lay societies

Lancaster, Lewis, 47 Law concerning the Preservation and

Support of Traditional Tem-ples (Chŏnt’ong sach’al ŭi pojon mit chiwŏn e kwanhan pŏmnyul), 110. See also tradi-tional temples

lay Buddhist community: in debates about Minjung and Mahāyāna Buddhism, 103, 107–108; engagement with through p’ogyo, 2, 28, 57, 60, 78, 94, 114, 118–120, 130, 133, 135; historical perspectives on tra-ditional role of, 9–10, 14, 21; inclusion of as a component of new definitions of religion, 3, 22–23, 56–57, 132–133; and meditation, 120, 125–129, 136–141; organizations and associations composed of or devoted to, 91, 95–97, 101, 109, 111, 121; producing trans-lations accessible to, 66–68, 99, 113; as propagators (p’ogyosa) and reformists, 22, 59, 75, 102, 105–106, 111; and the purification movement, 87–88, 100

lay-monastic recombination, 140–141 lay societies (kessha), 41. See also

kyŏlsa Lee Myung Bak, 122 legal ban on monastics entering the

capital and other cities, 26, 29–31, 33, 35–38, 46, 53, 147n14, 150n70. See also Chosŏn dynasty

legal entity status, 18, 85, 132, 161n50. See also juridical person

legal structures related to religion/ p’ogyo, 3–4, 18, 30, 55, 68–69, 72–73, 77, 130–131. See also names of individual laws

maech’e p’ogyo (mass media propaga-tion), 99, 154n50. See also digital media; mass media, dissemination of Buddhism through; munsŏ p’ogyo; radio

Mahāvaṃsa, 7, 11 Mahāyāna: and Buddhist propagation,

9, 12, 16, 60, 88, 143n17; and Minjung Buddhism, 28, 103, 107–108, 128

main monasteries (ponsan), 61–62, 64, 69, 75, 78, 83, 96–97

malsa. See branch temples Manhae. See Han Yong’un Mansanghoe, 68 March First movement (sam’il undong),

63, 67, 72, 157n83 married monks. See purification

movement mass media, dissemination of Buddhism

through, 55, 63, 82, 97–99, 101, 111, 128, 135, 154n50

McMahan, David, 138, 170n132 Meiji, 6, 17, 31, 41–43, 51, 131, 149n52,

155n54 mimetic processes, influence on Bud-

dhist propagation, 16–18, 38, 67

minjung (masses), 60, 102, 105–106, 113, 128

Minjung Buddhism (minjung Pulgyo), 27–28, 60, 102–103, 105–111, 115, 118–119, 127–128

missionaries. See Christian mission-aries; Japanese Buddhist missionaries

missionary religion, Buddhism as, 6–8, 11, 20–21. See also Christian-ity, as missionary religion

modernization: of Buddhism, 44, 72, 87; and industrialization, 25, 118; of Korea, 37

Index 191

modern Korean Buddhism, possible dates for the start of, 147n16

mountain Buddhism trope (sanjung Pulgyo), 30, 43–49, 53

Müller, F. Max, 5, 143n5 munsŏ p’ogyo (print or textual prop-

agation): 13, 55, 60, 63–68, 97–99, 112–113, 128

Myŏngjin school, 53, 68

National Assembly, 109, 123, 159n23 national parks (kungnip kongwŏn), 94,

116–118, 129, 161n56, 166n55 Neelis, Jason, 10–11, 15 new Buddhism (shin Bukkyō), 17, 43 newspapers, 59, 112–113, 119; Buddhist,

13, 57, 64, 66, 98, 112, 153n35, 158n3; Christian, 65, 112

Nichiren sect (Nichirenshū), 30, 36–37 Nokwŏn, 98 Nŭngin Sŏnwŏn, 96, 114, 162n70

Obeyesekere, Gananath, 136–137 Office of Temple and Shrine Adminis-

tration (sasa kwalli sŏ), 49 Okumura Enshin, 6–7, 41, 149n43 On the Restoration of Korean Bud-

dhism. See Chosŏn Pulgyo yusillon

Paek Yongsŏng, 63, 66–67, 154n44, 162n70

Pak Hanyŏng, 56, 58–59, 152n10 Pak Kyŏngjun, 108 Pak Yŏnghyo, 34, 36 parish system (kyoguje), 84, 119 Park Chung Hee, 27, 86, 89–90, 93–94,

100, 104–105, 117–118, 160n39

P’ogyobŏp kaesŏl (An outline of propa-gation methods), 23

p’ogyodang (urban propagation tem-ples): of the Imjejong, 62–63; Kakhwang-sa functioning as, 61, 66; in the late twentieth century, 95–96, 111, 114–115, 127, 130, 162n66; as a new kind of urban Buddhist reli-gious space in colonial Korea, 27, 54, 60, 63

p’ogyosa (propagators), 4, 22, 98, 102, 112, 159n23

p’ogyoso (propagation spaces), 55, 58, 60, 116

p’ogyowŏn (propagation centers), 95–96, 114–115, 130. See names of individual p’ogyowŏn

pokchi (social welfare), 96, 105, 114– 115, 127–128

Pŏmnyŏn-sa, 96 Pomnyun (Pŏmnyun sŭnim), 115 Pŏmŏ-sa, 62–63, 65, 81, 125 ponsan. See main monasteries Pŏpbowŏn, 99 Pŏpchŏng sŭnim, 119 pŏpdang (Dharma hall), 97, 116, 123, 136 precepts, 14–15, 22, 79, 82, 86–88, 100 print propagation. See munsŏ p’ogyo Propagation Division, Chogye Order

(Chogyejong P’ogyowŏn), 24, 102, 110, 122

Propagation Law (P’ogyo pŏp), 78 Propagation Regulations (P’ogyo

kyuch’ik), 76–77, 79, 84, 157n81–83

proselytizing: comparison of Christian to Buddhist propagation, 8, 16, 21, 135–136; defini-tions and translations of, 21; among Japanese Buddhist organizations, 38, 41–43; as a legal right, 39–40; seen as an intrinsic component of a modern religion, 38–39, 48, 57, 74; in the South Korean armed forces, 85

Protestantism: churches, 101, 116; evan-gelism, mission, and prosely-tizing in, 22, 50, 148n29; and military and prison chap-lains, 85; religious literature produced by, 66–67; and social welfare activities com-pared to Buddhism, 25; and South Korean presidents, 85, 94, 122; growth of in modern Korea, 1, 100–101, 103, 134

Pulgwang-sa, 96–97, 162n70 Pulgyo, 65, 98 Pulgyo sinmun, 98, 158n3 Pulgyo taejŏn (The great classics of

Buddhism), 67 purification movement (chŏnghwa

undong), 27, 82, 86–89, 99–100, 104, 140, 160n27

Puril Hoe (Buddha Sun Association), 96–97

192 Index

radio, 68, 83, 112, 128, 154n50 Reformist Order (kaehyŏk chongdan).

See chongdan Regulations concerning the Promulga-

tion of Religion (Shukyō no senpu ni kansuru kisoku), 50–52, 76–77

religion (chonggyo): competition among, 2, 56–57, 103, 126– 128, 133–134, 139; definitions of, 3, 20, 31, 39, 73, 130–132, 150n57; missionary, 7–8, 11, 20–21; translation problems related to, 148n27; as volun-tary association, 3, 22–23, 133; world, 4, 6–8, 17, 41, 134

Religious Corporation Law (Shukyō hōjinhō), 85

religious freedom, 18, 29–30, 38–41, 52, 79, 131–133

Religious Organizations Law (Shukyō dantai hō), 41

religious persecution. 32, 39–40, 42–43. See also 10.27 perse-cution

religious pluralism, 13–14, 133–134 Rhee, Syngman, 27, 83, 85–90, 100 Rinzai sect, 135 Russo-Japanese War, 42, 60

saenghwal Pulgyo (lifestyle Bud-dhism), 109

samdae saŏp. See three grand works Samguk yusa, 15 Samjang yŏkhoe (Tripitaka Translation

Society), 67 Samsŏn P’ogyowŏn, 120–121 sangha, 13, 69, 107, 111 sanjung Pulgyo. See mountain Bud-

dhism trope Sano Zenrei, 30, 36–38, 147n17–19 sawŏnhwa (monasticization), 107,

164n16 scriptural translation committee (yŏk-

kyŏng wiwŏnhoe), 99 Senécal, Bernard, 126–127, 168n82 Shaw, Julia, 9–10 Shinohara, Koichi, 14–15 Shintō, 51, 77, 91, 151n78 shrine, to the mountain god in Korean

temples, 15, 45 Shrine and Temple Regulations (Jinja

jiin kisoku), 77, 91 silch’ŏn (praxis), 24–25, 109

Sino-Japanese War, 33, 42 socio-spatial aspects of p’ogyo, 2–3, 9,

20, 22, 27–31 passim, 43–49, 53–54, 64

Sŏ Kyŏngsu, 70 Sŏn, 16, 28, 45, 57, 97, 117, 119. See also

Chan; kanhwa Sŏn; Zen Song Wŏlju, 105, 163 Sørensen, Henrik, 64, 90, 117, 153n33,

160n39 Sōtō sect (Sōtōshū), 15, 52, 151n84 South Korean Interim Legislative

Assembly (SKILA), 84, 159n15

Sri Lanka, 7–8, 11, 22, 136–138 Stahnke, Tad, 21 Subul sŭnim, 125–127, 168n79 Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers, 133 Supreme Court, 89, 91–93, 159n25 suryŏnhoe (training or meditation

retreats), 118–120, 129, 139, 167n64

syncretism, 15, 19, 140

T’aego Order of Korean Buddhism (Han’guk Pulgyo T’aegojong), 94–95, 104, 163n3

T’aego-sa, 81–82, 84, 86, 158n3 taejunghwa (popularization), 87, 124,

136, 164n17 Taewŏn Chŏngsa, 96 Taixu, 17 Tedesco, Frank, 115 Temple Laws (sabŏp), 66, 69–70,

75–76, 78, 83, 87; in Japan, 41, 75, 156n77

Temple Ordinance (sach’allyŏng): enforcement rules issued with, 70, 155n55; failure to repeal in post-liberation South Korea, 83–85, 99–100, 159n25; issued as a seirei, 154n51; p’ogyo as a legally recognized activity in, 50, 74–75, 77, 91–92; provisions contained in, 69, 74–75; reception of among Korean Buddhist community, 71–72; replaced by and similarities with the Buddhist Property Management Law, 90–91, 100; as a tool for regulating the Korean monastic com-munity, 61, 72, 74, 79, 110;

views of in contemporary scholarship, 69–72, 131–132, 154n52, 155n58

Temple Stay, 28, 121–122, 124, 129 10.27 persecution (pŏmnan), 105, 110,

163n5–7 textual propagation. See munsŏ

p’ogyo three grand works (samdae saŏp), 83,

95, 99, 101 Three Jewels, 21–22, 157n78 Three Refuges, taking of, 13 Tiele, Cornelis Petrus, 5–7 T’ongdo-sa, 62, 65, 96–97 Tonghak, 30–33 t’onghap chongdan. See chongdan tosim p’ogyodang. See p’ogyodang tourism, 116–117, 121–123, 129 Traditional Temple Preservation Law

(TTPL) (Chŏnt’ong sach’al pojon pŏp), 109–110, 114, 165n29

traditional temples (chŏnt’ong sach’al), 97, 110, 114, 116, 118, 120–121, 162n71

Tweed, Thomas, 44–45

Unified Order (t’onghap chongdan). See chongdan

Index 193

United States Army Military Govern-ment in Korea (USAMGIK), 83–84, 158n9, 159n15

urbanization, 4, 9, 25, 28, 103, 113, 116, 128, 135, 163n2

Vinaya, 87–88 vipassanā meditation, 137, 139

Walters, Jonathan, 7–9, 20–21 Wang Kŏn, 45 Wells, Kenneth, 39–40 Wŏnhŭng-sa, 49–50, 52–53, 61 Wŏn Order (Wŏnjong), 52, 61–63, 65 Wuxu reforms, 132

yangban (elites), 32, 35, 46 Yi Chaehŏn, 85 Yi Chong’uk, 81–83 Yi Hoegwang, 52, 61–63 Yi Nŭnghwa, 36, 147n13 Yi Pongch’un, 136 Yi Yŏngjae, 56, 59–60 Yoon Seung Yong, 111 Yu Sŭngmu, 24–25

Zen, 15–16, 28, 45, 52, 57, 114, 125, 135, 170n32. See also Chan, Sŏn

Zürcher, Erik, 10–11

About the Author

Mark A. Nathan is associate professor in the Department of History and the Asian Studies Program at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. He is the co-editor of Buddhism and Law: An Introduction and the author of several articles and book chapters on Buddhism in Korea.

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