Korean Zen (Son) Buddhism focuses on the enlightenment of a sudden awakening.
The Korean word for Ch'an or Zen is Son.Buddhism is highly significant in Korea. Figures from 1991 showed 26 Buddhist sects and 9,231 temples with more than 11 million followers in Korea.The largest Son sect today in Korea is the Chogye Order which includes about 90% of Korean Buddhists.The name 'Chogye' is significant in that it was named after the mountain in south China where the great Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, had his temple. Koreans say that their tradition is derived directly from Hui-neng.
History
Buddhism arrived in Korea in the 4th century CE. It spread widely and became the state religion when the three kingdoms that made up the country were united in 688 CE.Son was introduced there in approximately the 7th century CE by a Korean monk named Pomnang, said to have studied under the fourth Chinese patriarch, but little is known of him or of these early times.During the 9th century CE, Son Buddhism became the dominant form of Buddhism in Korea as a result of a steady stream of Korean masters going to China to study Ch'an Buddhism and returning to Korea to teach.
The 13th century monk Chinul
One of the most outstanding figures in the history of Son was a man by the name of Chinul.As a young monk he passed examinations necessary to bring him into the monastic hierarchy, but rejected such a lifestyle and instead retreated to the mountains. He devoted himself to study and contemplation, deeply penetrating the Buddhist texts.In 1190, at the age of 32, Chinul formed a community called the Concentration and Wisdom Community which remained together in retreat for 7 years. Gradually, other monks joined him attracted by the seriousness of the group.The community grew and moved to a place (later renamed Mount Chogye) in about 1200 CE, enlarging a small hermitage into a monastery complex. This temple, Songgwang Sa, exists to this day as an active and thriving Son community.
Buddhism retreats
Son remained significant in Korea until 1392 CE, when a revolt replaced the pro-Buddhist government with one that favoured Confucianism and regarded Buddhism as an un-Korean influence.Buddhists were still allowed to practise, but official oppression drove them from the centres of power into remote mountain monasteries, changing Buddhism in Korea from a people's religion into a largely monastic practice.This also changed the nature of Buddhism, and the Son tradition moved away from textual study to focusing on meditation practice with the aim of reaching the same state that the Buddha had reached.
The essence of Son
The following hints at the Buddha's truth to which they aspired:Heaven and earth cannot cover its body, mountains and rivers cannot hide its light. Nothing of it accumulates on the outside or the inside. Even the 80,000 texts cannot contain or make a record of it. No scholar can describe it, the intellectuals cannot know it, the literati and writers cannot recognise it. Even to talk about it is a mistake, to think about it is an error.Nevertheless, Son Buddhists see a basic unity between truth as described in Buddhist doctrine and truth as experienced through meditation. In other words, they find the true meaning of the texts through personal experience.Son Buddhism focuses on the enlightenment of a sudden awakening, but even if a person achieves the realisation that they are innately Buddha, that doesn't mean they cease to practise. On the contrary, the sentiment is "sudden enlightenment followed by gradual practice" - the practice of enlightenment, or of being Awakened.BUDDHISM HAS NEARLY A 1,700-YEAR HISTORY in Korea and the tradition continues to thrive still today on the peninsula. Buddhism arrived in Korea from India and China by at least the fourth century C.E. and the religion served as the major conduit for the transmission of Sinitic and Serindian culture as a whole to Korea. But Korean Buddhism is no mere derivative of those antecedent traditions. Buddhists on the Korean peninsula had access to the breadth and depth of the Buddhist tradition as it was being disseminated across Asia and they made seminal contributions themselves to Buddhist thought and meditative and ritual techniques. Indeed, because Korea, like the rest of East Asia, used literary Chinese as the lingua franca of learned communication (much as Latin was used in medieval Europe), Korean Buddhist writings were disseminated throughout the entire region with relative dispatch and served to influence the development of the neighboring Buddhist traditions of China and Japan. In fact, simultaneous with implanting Buddhism on the peninsula, Korean monks and exegetes were also joint collaborators in the creation and development of the indigenous Chinese and Japanese Buddhist traditions. The Collected Works of Korean Buddhism seeks to make available in accurate, idiomatic English translations the greatest works of the Korean Buddhist tradition, many of which are being rendered for the first time into any Western language. The thirteen volumes of this anthology collect the whole panoply of Korean Buddhist writing from the Three Kingdoms period (ca. 57 C.E.-668) through the Joseon dynasty (13921910). These writings include commentaries on scriptures as well as philosophical and disciplinary texts by the most influential scholiasts of the tradition; the writings of its most esteemed Seon adepts; indigenous collections of Seon gongan cases, discourses, and verse; travelogues and historical materials; and important epigraphical compositions. Where titles were of manageable length, we have sought to provide the complete text of those works. Where size was prohibitive, we have instead offered representative selections from a range of material, in order to provide as comprehensive a set of sources as possible for the study of Korean Buddhism. The translators and editors also include extensive annotation to each translation and substantial introductions that seek to contextualize for an English-speaking audience the insights and contributions of these works. Many of the scholars of Korean Buddhism active in Western academe were recruited to participate in the translation project. Since the number of scholars working in Korean Buddhism is still quite limited, we also recruited as collaborators Western specialists in literary Chinese who had extensive experience in English translation. We obviously benefitted enormously from the work of our Korean colleagues who toiled so assiduously to prepare the earlier Korean edition of these Collected Works. We regularly consulted their vernacular Korean renderings in preparing the English translations. At the same time, virtually all the Western scholars involved in the project are themselves specialists in the Buddhist argot of literary Chinese and most already had extensive experience in translating Korean and Chinese Buddhist texts into English. For this reason, the English translations are, in the majority of cases, made directly from the source texts in literary Chinese, not from the modern Korean renderings. Since translation always involves some level of interpretation, there are occasional differences in the understanding of a passage between the English and Korean translators, but each translator retained final authority to decide on the preferred rendering of hisor her text. For most of the English volumes, we also followed the collaborative approach that was so crucial in preparing the Korean translations of these Collected Works and held series of meetings where the English translators would sit together with our Korean counterparts and talk through issues of terminology, interpretation, and style. Our Korean collaborators offered valuable comments and suggestions on our initial drafts and certainly saved us from many egregious errors. Any errors of fact or interpretation that may remain are of course our responsibility. On behalf of the entire English translation team, I would like to express our thanks to all our collaborators, including our translators Juhn Young Ahn, Robert Buswell, Michael Finch, Jung-geun Kim, Charles Muller, John Jorgensen, Richard McBride, Jin Y. Park, Young-eui Park, Patrick Uhlmann, Sem Vermeersch, Matthew Wegehaupt, and Roderick Whitfield; as well as our philological consultants Jeongdeok Sunim, Go-ok Sunim, Haeju Sunim, Misan Sunim, Woncheol Sunim, Byoung-sam Jeong, and Young-uk Kim. We are also appreciative to Ven. Jaseung Sunim, the current president of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, for his continued support of this project. Our deepest gratitude goes to Ven. Gasan Jikwan Sunim (May 11, 1932January 2, 2012), one of the most eminent monks and prominent scholars of his generation, who first conceived of this project and spearheaded it during his term as president of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. Jikwan Sunim’s entire career was dedicated to making the works of Korean Buddhism more accessible to his compatriots and better known within the wider scholarly community. It is a matter of deep regret that he did not live to see the publication of this English version of the Collected Works. Finally, it is our hope that The Collected Works of Korean Buddhism will ensure that the writings of Korean Buddhist masters will assume their rightful place in the developing English canon of Buddhist materials and will enter the mainstream of academic discourse in Buddhist Studies in the West. Korea’s Buddhist authors are as deserving of careful attention and study as their counterparts in Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese Buddhism. This first comprehensive collection of Korean Buddhist writings should bring these authors the attention and sustained engagement they deserve among Western scholars, students, and practitioners of Buddhism. ROBERT E. BUSWELL, JR
