New Wine in an Old Bottle: The Korean Monk Sangwŏl (1911-1974) and the Rise of the Ch’ŏnt’ae school of Buddhism

New Wine in an Old Bottle: The Korean Monk Sangwŏl (1911-1974) and the Rise of the Ch’ŏnt’ae school of Buddhism

By Yohong Roh

B.A., The University of Findlay, 2014

Submitted to the graduate degree program in Department of Religious Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

Chair: Daniel Stevenson

Jacquelene Brinton

William R. Lindsey

Date Defended: 10 July 2017

The thesis committee for Yohong Roh certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis:

New Wine in an Old Bottle: The Korean Monk Sangwŏl (1911-1974) and the Rise of the Ch’ŏnt’ae school of Buddhism

Abstract

The thesis explores the diverse ways in which a new Korean Buddhist movement that calls itself the “Ch’ŏnt’ae Jong (Tiantai school)” has appropriated and deployed traditional patriarchal narratives of the Chinese Tiantai tradition to legitimize claims to succession of its modern founder, the Korean monk Sangwŏl (1922-1974). Sangwŏl began his community as early as 1945; however, at that time his community simply referred to itself as the “teaching of Sangwŏl” or “teaching of Kuinsa,” after the name of his monastery. It was not until the official change of the name to Ch’ŏnt’ae in 1967 that Korean Buddhists found a comprehensive and identifiable socio-historical space for Sangwŏl and his teaching. Key to that transition was not only his adapting the historically prominent name “Ch’ŏnt’ae,” but his retrospective creation of a lineage of Chinese and Korean patriarchs to whom he could trace his succession and the origin of his school. It is through this kind of historicist rhetorical maneuver that he achieved legitimation for himself and his teaching in the eyes of the Korean public. The aim of my thesis is to explore the multiple ways in which the figure of Sangwŏl has been presented as a “Tiantai patriarch” in the cultural construction of modern Tiantai Buddhist school in Korea. Those forms of presentation include crafting of hagiographies, lineage narratives that leap centuries and connect him to Chinese patriarchs, creation of rituals for celebration of patriarchal death anniversaries, construction of patriarch halls and images, sponsorship of modern scholarship and research, and even film and digital media. As “New Wine in an Old Bottle,” the symbolic manipulations of modern Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae order look to strategies of religious authorization that have been used by various Buddhist groups in China and East Asia from as early as 6th century China and as recently as the Buddhist sects of Meiji Japan and the Chogye order of post-colonial Korea.

Table of Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter One: Patriarchal Lineage and Narrative of Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai Tradition
The Importance of Patriarchal Lineage and its Literary and Symbolic Expression in
Chinese Buddhism .................................................................................................................. 8
Difference Between Dharma Transmission and Patriarchal Lineage in the Chan and Tiantai
Schools ................................................................................................................................. 12
The Construction of Patriarchal Lineage in the Korean Chogye and Ch’ŏnt’ae orders and
Historical Controversy Concerning Ŭich’ŏn’s Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism ................................. 18
Chapter Two: The Construction of Sangwŏl as a Ch’ŏnt’ae Patriarch and Successor to
the Historical Transmission of the Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai Dharma ......................................... 27
Foundation of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order and Sangwŏl as a Reincarnation of Guanyin ............... 36
Modern Ch’ŏnt’ae ritual: The Practice of Incantation of the Name of Guanyin .................. 43
Pure Land tradition in the Tiantai School ............................................................................. 47
Inheritance of Yose and his Practices ................................................................................... 51
Traces of Manipulation and Artificiality .............................................................................. 55
Chapter Three: The Ch’ŏnt’ae jong as a Modern Religion ............................................... 63
The Rise of Modernism in Korea and Japan, and the Image of Buddhism in the 19th
Century in Japan and Korea .................................................................................................. 66
Buddhist Reformation Movements in Pre and Post-Colonial Korea .................................... 70
Buddhist Universities and Research Institutes in Korea ...................................................... 78
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 82
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 86

Introduction

Introduced to the Korean peninsula from China in the 4th century of the Common Era, Buddhism has had a long and enduring presence in Korean culture, politics and economics. In addition to such distinctive traditions as Chan, Huayan, Vinaya, and Faxiang, Chinese Buddhist Tiantai teachings were also introduced to Korea, where they intermittently took the form of a “Tiantai school” (C, Tiantai zong; K, Ch’ŏnt’aejong). The Kŏryo-period monk Ŭich’ŏn 義天 (1055-1101) is credited by Korean Buddhists and modern historians as the individual who introduced and founded the Tiantai Order in 1097, although most of his attention while in China and after his return to Korea was personally directed to Huayan Buddhist teachings. The efforts that Ŭich’ŏn expended to found monasteries dedicated specifically to Tiantai teaching dwindled after his death in 1101. It was not until some centuries later that another Korean monk, Yose 了世 (1163-1245), attempted once again to institute a Tiantai school. However, he did so without any connection whatsoever to Ŭich’ŏn. The Buddhist order created by Yose again disappeared from history during the 15th century, with the rise of Neo-Confucian rule of the Chosŏn court (1392-1897). It was not until 1967 that initiatives were mounted once again to create a distinctive Korean Tiantai school, on this occasion, by the modern day monk Sangwŏl 上月 (1911-1974), who imagined himself to be a successor to the linages of ancient Chinese and earlier Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchs. Although the historical efforts and impact of Ŭich’ŏn, Yose, and Sangwŏl are completely unrelated to one another, these figures, nonetheless, became linked in the historical imagination of later—predominantly contemporary—Buddhists and modern scholars. The thesis at hand seeks to explore the diverse ways in which a new Korean Buddhist movement that calls itself the “Ch’ŏnt’ae jong (Tiantai School)” has appropriated and deployed traditional patriarchal narratives and symbolism of the Chinese Tiantai tradition

to legitimize claims to succession of its modern founder, the Korean monk Sangwŏl. Those forms of representation include crafting of patriarchal hagiographies, lineage narratives that leap centuries and connect Sangwŏl to Chinese patriarchs, creation of rituals for celebration of patriarchal death anniversaries, construction of patriarch halls and images, sponsorship of modern scholarship and research, and even film and digital media. Although the history of Tiantai teaching in premodern Korea has been pursued by scholars of many different academic perspectives and institutional affiliations, research on the contemporary figure of Sangwŏl and his Ch’ŏnt’ae jong has primarily fallen to scholars connected with Ch’ŏnt’ae affiliated Institute for Research on Ch’ŏnt’ae(Tiantai) Buddhist Culture 天台佛教文化研究院—a research institute created and funded by the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong itself. Much of the research on Songwŏl, his Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, and its historical predecessors undertaken by this institute has been directed to the legitimation of the contemporary Ch’ŏnt’ae jong and its claim of connection to early Chinese and Korean Tiantai Buddhism. Thus, traditional sectarian narratives of Tiantai lineage succession have been mobilized, through the lens of modern critical scholarship, to substantiate the historical claims of the newly invented Korean Buddhist Ch’ŏnt’ae jong.

The aim of this thesis is to examine critically how traditional Buddhist forms of historiography and lineage construction have been combined with the new authorizing strategies of modern objective historical scholarship in order to establish the legitimacy of Sangwŏl and his Ch’ŏnt’ae jong in the eyes of the contemporary Korean public and global community. In other words, although the traditional symbols, ritual forms, and narratives of Buddhist patriarchal origin and transmission remain familiar to Buddhists in Korea and East Asia and powerful in their affect, they alone are no longer sufficient to establish the authenticity and viability of a Buddhist order such as Ch’ŏnt’ae in the contemporary Korean and East Asian religious environment. To control the narrative of sectarian origin and counter

the potentially subversive impact of modern historical critical scholarship as institutionalized in the modern-day university and its research institutes, it was necessary to embrace and replicate those very institutional forms. Beginning with traditional Chinese and Korean Buddhist media of patriarchal narrative and symbolic representation, and ending with the scholarly constructions of the modern-day Institute for Research on Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist Culture, this thesis will explore the various ways in which the contemporary Ch’ŏnt’ae jong has employed these different forms of historical construction to promote the legitimacy of Sangwŏl and his Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching.

The concept of patriarchal succession is a crucial component in Chinese and Korean Buddhist constructions of tradition and community. Just as we find in other major schools of Buddhism in China, such as Chan, Huayan and Faxiang, the Tiantai school in China constructed religious legitimacy and authority as a “school,” “order,” or “tradition” (Zong 宗) around a core lineage of patriarchal succession that traced its transmission back to prominent founding Chinese patriarchs, and ultimately to the historical Buddha himself. Due to the perception of being so distant from the historical Buddha and his homeland of India, separated not only by vast distance and historical time, as well as by language and culture, the effort to draw secure and authoritative links to the Buddha and his original teaching was a common concern of early Chinese Buddhists. Such lines of contact were instrumental to establishing the any claim to possess the “authentic” teaching of the Buddha. The historical imagination of a generation-to-generation patriarchal transmission emerged as one such important strategy that ended up having a paradigmatic impact on all reaches of Chinese Buddhism. Narratives of Tiantai patriarchs and lineage of succession first begin to take a shape as early as the end of 6th century in China. Increasingly elaborated over succeeding centuries, they developed into formal narratives of transmission, which were joined by hagiography, ritual celebration of patriarchal death anniversaries, and even architectural structures bearing

name placards and portraits of Tiantai patriarchs- the so called “patriarch halls.”1 The religious authority of Tiantai masters and monastery abbots was accordingly denominated by ritual incorporation into this lineage of patriarchal succession, the ritual known as “dharma transmission” (chuanfa 傳法; sifa 嗣法). By the time of Ŭich’ŏn’s visit to China in the eleventh century, these institutional practices and repertories were well established in Tiantai public monasteries (shifang zhuchi yuan 十方住持院), that is to say, the monasteries that were officially recognized by the Song Dynasty court as institutions for “transmitting in perpetuity the Tiantai teaching” 永傳天台教.

During Ŭich’ŏn’s travels in China, Ŭich’ŏn officially met and received dharma transmission from the Tiantai master Cibian Congjian 慈辯從諫, who was an abbot of upper Tianzhu Monastery in Hangzhou and a Dharma-successor to Nanbing Fanzhen 南屛梵臻, a disciple of the eminent Tiantai reviver, Siming Zhili 四明知禮, 960-1028 CE.3 As in the Chinese Tiantai School of Ŭich’ŏn’s time, Dharma transmission and construction of patriarchal lineage were foundational to most every major school or order of Buddhism in Song Dynasty China and, by extension, Koryŏ-period Korea, including the Chan (Sŏn 禪), Huayan (Hwa’om 華嚴), and Vinaya (律) schools. The first chapter of this thesis will take up the importance of patriarchal lineage and its literary and symbolic expression in Chinese Buddhism and especially early Chinese and Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae lineage.

In Chapter Two we will examine the multiple ways in which the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist Order and their historical resources constructed and presented Sangwŏl as a 1 Daniel B. Stevenson, “The Status of Mo-ho chih-kuan in the T’ien-t’ai Tradtion,” In The great calming and contemplation: a study and annotated translation of the first chapter of Chih-i's Mo-ho chih-kuan, ed. by Neal Arvid Donner et al. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993). 54; Griffith Foulk, “Myth, Ritual and Monastic Practice in Song Chan Buddhism,” In Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China, ed. by Patricia Buckley Ebrey et al. (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1993). 172-173. 2 Morten Schlütter, How Zen became Zen: the dispute over enlightenment and the formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-dynasty China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), 60. 3 Yi Yŏng-ja, Ch'ŏnt'ae Pulgyohak [Ch'ŏnt'ae Buddhology] (Sŏul-si: Pulchisa, 2001), 245.

“Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch.” It will also explore how the modern Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae School’s claims to the successor to a singular historical tradition of Chinese Tiantai and Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching have played an important role for the historical legitimation and formation of religious identity of Sangwŏl’s community. According to the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae School, Sangwŏl achieved awakening--by his own efforts and without the instruction of a teacher--through the practice of traditional Tiantai (Ch’ŏnt’ae) calming and contemplation (zhiguan 止觀). After this experience, Sangwŏl visited places that held specific religious significance for persons familiar with Tiantai tradition and its history, such as Mount Tiantai in China, the Kukch'ŏng Monastery in Kaesŏng (the capital of Koryŏ Korea), which had once served as the head temple for Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism, and the Yŏngt'ong Monastery, where Ŭich’ŏn’s bodily relics were enshrined.4 Even though the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order has published several official accounts of Sangwŏl’s life, it is still unclear whom Sangwŏl actually met in China and what he did there, given the relative lack of documentation regarding this period of Sangwŏl’s career. There is some speculation that Sangwŏl, like Ŭich’ŏn before him, received transmission of the Tiantai Dharma from a Chinese Tiantai master during his travels in China. However, in the absence of evidence for any such face-toface personal transmission, Sangwŏl and his followers had other means at their disposal for establishing a connection to the Tiantai Dharma. As Chinese Tiantai followers had done for the founding patriarchs, Huisi and Zhiyi a millennium earlier, Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae followers could claim a divine transmission from the Buddha of Bodhisattva Guanyin based on Sangwŏl’s enlightenment experience.

Active historical presence and reference to a “Ch’ŏnt’ae School” all but disappeared in Korea in 1424, when all that remained of the school was integrated into the newly 4 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng” [Establishing Identity and the Korean Contemporary Chontae Order], Journal of the Korean Academy of New Religions 31, no. 31 (2014): 63. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

dominant Sŏn (Chan) school.5 Why, then, did Sangwŏl choose to identify his teaching with this forgotten Buddhist school? On January 24th of 1967, Sangwŏl officially proclaimed his newly created Buddhist movement to be the Korean “Ch’ŏnt’ae School.” Although he began teaching as early as 1945, Sangwŏl’s teaching prior to that event was identified loosely with his personal monastic name (i.e., the “teaching of Sangw ŏl), or the monastery where he taught, namely, Kuinsa 救仁寺. Insofar as Sangwŏl emphasized the chanting of various mantra and dhāraṇī incantations as his principle practice, this community came to be known mainly for reciting incantations jusong 呪誦.6 It was not until the change of the name to Ch’ŏnt’ae that other Korean Buddhists found a comprehensive and identifiable sociohistorical space for Sangwŏl’s teaching. Key to that transition was his adaptation of the historically prominent name, “Ch’ŏnt’ae,” and his retrospective creation of a lineage of Chinese and Korean patriarchs to whom he could trace his succession and the origins of his school. It is through this kind of historicist rhetorical maneuver that Sangwŏl achieved legitimation for himself and his teaching in the eyes of the Korean public. After that, his membership grew rapidly. Various primary sources used to seek Sangwŏl’s community has justified their group as the heir of the historical Ch’ŏnt’ae school. The primary sources include the Abridged Compendium of the Ch’ont’ae jong 天台宗略典, Chronicle of the Lineage of the Ch’ŏnt’ae School 天台宗統紀, the Holy Scripture of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order 天台宗聖典 and the Compendium on Spreading Buddhist Teachings 佛敎布敎集. These books are published during the 1970s to 1980s by the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae School. Sangwŏl and his followers drew on familiar and well-established forms of East Asian Buddhist patriarchal narrative, ritual, and symbolism to establish the legitimacy of his newly 5 Yi Yŏng-ja, Ch'ŏnt'ae Pulgyohak, 2001, 276.

6 Kim Se Un, “Sangwŏl chosaŭi saengaewa kyohwa pangp'yŏn” [A Study on the Great Master Sangwol Ascetic Practice Through the Utterance of Incantation], Journal of Korean Seon Studies 15 (2006): 681.

founded “Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae School.” However, in addition to those traditional forms, they also enlisted and promoted the modern critical historical study of Ch’ŏnt’ae history as a strategy of legitimation. Thus, as “New Wine in an Old Bottle,” the symbolic manipulations of the modern Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order looked not only to strategies of religious authorization that had been used by various Buddhist groups in China and East Asia from as early as the 6th century. They also adopted newly sanctioned institutions and forms of scholarship akin to those implemented by the Buddhist schools of Meiji Japan and the Korean Chogye Sŏn Order during the colonial and post-colonial era of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Particularly notable in this regard was the creation of sectarian-funded universities and research institutes on the model of the modern Western university. Funded and sponsored by the modern

Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, the Institute for Research on Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist Culture, for example, is dedicated to the study of Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai history and thought; members of the research institute hold Ph. D degrees from Korean and Western universities and engage in critical historical research on the history of Korean and Chinese Buddhism. Those same individuals hold faculty positions at Geumgang University, also founded by the Ch’ŏnt’ae order. Thus, the sort of traditional historiographical practice of constructing and ongoing Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchal lineage is today complemented by a modern academic institution that recasts the same project in the form and method of contemporary Buddhological scholarship, a new mode of historical authorization. Chapter Three will examine how the newly formed Ch’ŏnt’ae order, a largely grass-roots local religious group, drew on modernist institutions, such as the university and research institute, to secure its place as a legitimized religion in modern, post-colonial Korea. It will additionally explore the various ways in which Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai history, and Sangwŏl’s place as a patriarchal figure therein, have been represented in publications of the Research Institute and the curriculum of the sectarian Kŭmgang University.

Chapter One:

Patriarchal Lineage and Narrative of Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai Tradition The Importance of Patriarchal Lineage and its Literary and Symbolic Expression in Chinese Buddhism

From the time when Buddhist texts and teachings were first introduced to China by foreign monks, Chinese were keenly aware that the tradition they received originated from Śākyamuni Buddha, a figure who had lived centuries earlier in the distant land of India. From the outset the Chinese effort to acquire an authentic understanding of the teaching of the Buddha was conceived as an endeavor to restore a historical connection to that founding figure, the Buddha Śākyamuni. It was a task that required overcoming vast differences in historical time, geographical distance, culture, and language, all of which were clearly apparent to the Chinese who embraced the Buddha’s teaching. The translation, study, and systematic classification of the received sermons, or sūtra, of the Buddha represented one way in which that authentic connection might be forged (a process known by Chinese as panjiao 判教, or “comprehensive classification of the teachings”). Direct realization of the ultimate reality to which the Buddha himself awoke (the living “mind” or “wisdom” of the Buddha), or personal revelation from other buddhas and transcended bodhisattvas, such as the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (C, Guanyin 觀音) and the Buddha Amitābha, was another possible avenue. Finding connection to a continuous line of historical “patriarchal masters” (zushi 祖師) who faithfully transmitted the Buddha’s Dharma generation to generation, after the historical Buddha passed away, represented yet another possible means of connection.

All three of these strategies were developed and used to varying degrees by Chinese Buddhists as ways to both obtain a legitimate grasp of the Buddha’s Dharma and persuade

others that one possessed an authentic understanding of that Dharma. At the same time, however, the concept of an historical line of patriarchal origins and transmission, known as “dharma transmission” (fufa 付法; chuanfa 傳法; sifa 嗣法), tended to serve as the common ground by which to give such claims to authenticity a tangible human and historical basis. Regardless of whether one regards it as historical fact or fiction, patriarchal lineage became a strong medium to hold Buddhists together, for Buddhists were able to imagine and share a sense of common historicity with other Buddhists through patriarchal lineage. Thus, as the first distinctive Chinese syntheses of Buddhist teaching began to emerge in 7th and 8th century China, the construction of patriarchal origins and transmission became central to the formation of sectarian identity.

In ways that resemble Benedict Anderson’s notion that “nations” are constructed as collectively “imagined communities,”7 emerging medieval Buddhist schools such as Tiantai, Huayan, Chan, and even Pure Land, took shape as imagined communities, that is to say, communities constituted not simply by personal face to face contact, but by the circulation and consumption of shared literatures, rituals, symbolism, doctrinal formulas, and narratives, including historical narratives. Benedict Anderson’s thesis of “imagined communities” is developed mainly in relation to the emergence of the modern idea of the “nation” as it developed in Europe, a process that he ties closely to the expansion of printing (especially printing of vernacular sacred texts), which he singled out as a key medium. Critiquing Anderson and carrying his ideas a step further, Birgit Meyer draws attention to the question of how communities—especially extended religious communities--come to be collectively imagined and experienced in the day to day lives of members who have no direct interaction with one another. She does this be focusing on the concept of shared cultural 7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. (London: Verso, 1991), 6-36.

“mediation” and “aesthetic formation.” Meyer claims that imagined communities become real when the communities are materialized in terms not only of text, but more broadly in terms of material, visual, bodily, and aesthetic practice, which together actively shape the religious imagination.

As the concept of patriarchal lineage became increasingly central to the notion of religious community and authority in Buddhist China and East Asia, how did actual communities implement that idea as lived experience of its members? What did it mean to communities and their members? Through what concrete means did Buddhists in China come to feel, in reality, that they participated in and shared a common patriarchal lineage of Buddhism? Through what institutions, architectural and visual forms, ritual practices, and narrative media did the imagined presence of a “patriarchal transmission and lineage” come to shape people’s lives as an experienced reality?

The Song Dynasty (960-1279) is commonly regarded as the period in which distinctive Buddhist schools such as Chan and Tiantai reached their highest level of organization and integration. As an integral part of that process, the material, symbolic, ritual, and literary media of patriarchal lineage and transmission also saw its fullest institutional development. The Chan school of Buddhism presented itself as the direct recipient of what they called the “mind Dharma” or living wisdom of the Buddha, the transmission of which they claimed to extend back, generation to generation, through an unbroken line of Chinese and Indian patriarchs to the first Indian patriarch Mahākāśyapa and the historical Buddha Śākyamuni. Regarded to be a “separate transmission [of the Dharma] apart from the teachings [of the written sūtras]”(教外別傳), this formless Dharma of wisdom was characterized as a “mind to mind transmission” from one enlightened patriarchal master to another. Drawing on earlier 8 Birgit Meyer, Aesthetic formations: media, religion, and the senses. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 5.

Chan chronicles from the 9th and 10th centuries, the Song-dynasty Chan master Daoyuan 道源 gave definitive new expression to this historical lineage in his massive Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Flame (Jingde chuandeng lu 景德傳燈錄, a comprehensive chronicle that extended the Chan transmission down to his own day. Daoyuan completed the work in 1004, and it was officially given canonical status shortly thereafter. Numerous supplements and revised chronicles in the “transmission of the lamp” (denglu 燈錄) style continued to be produced, expanding the succession even further.9 Even though Chan lineage claims were challenged historiographically throughout the Song, the Chan patriarchal lineage and its “mind-to-mind” transmission became widely accepted along with the Chan school and its institutions.

As in the case of Chan, the concept of patriarchal lineage in the Tiantai school dates back to the earliest formation of the tradition in late 6th and early 7th centuries, where we find expressions of it in early Tiantai writings. As the Tiantai tradition became increasingly institutionalized in the Song—and came into increasing competition with Chan institutions— Tiantai monks also produced historical chronicles that extended the lineage down through time and firmed up its claims to patriarchal succession.11 The Orthodox Lineage of the Buddhist Tradition 釋門正統 was begun during the Zhenghe era (1111-1117) by theTiantai monk Yuanying 元穎, further expanded in the last decade of the 12th century, and brought to completion by the Tiantai monk Zongjian in 1237. Drawing in part on the work of Zongjian 9 Peter N. Gregory, “The Vitality of Buddhism in the Sung,” In Buddhism in the Sung, ed. by Peter N. Gregory et al. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999), 4-5; Griffith Foulk, “Myth, Ritual and Monastic Practice in Song Chan Buddhism,” In Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China, ed. by Patricia Buckley Ebrey et al. (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), 151; Griffith Foulk, “Sung Controversies Concerning the Separate Transmission of Ch’an,” In Buddhism in the Sung, ed. by Peter N. Gregory et al. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999), 283.

10 Morten Schlütter, How Zen became Zen: the dispute over enlightenment and the formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-dynasty China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), 9; Griffith Foulk, “Myth, Ritual and Monastic Practice in Song Chan Buddhism,” 1993, 150. 11 Schlütter, How Zen became Zen, 2008, 60.

and his predecessors, the Tiantai master Zhipan 志磐 completed the massive and highly influential Comprehensive Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs (Fozu tongji 佛祖統紀) several decades later in 1268.12 As Daniel Getz observes, “The aim of both the Orthodox Lineage of the Buddhist Tradition and Comprehensive Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs was to situate the Tiantai School within the history of Buddhism as the sole legitimate heir and orthodox transmitter of the Buddha’s teaching.”13 Just as the Chan lineage and it “mind to mind transmission” was institutionally implemented within monasteries that were given government legal sanction as monasteries dedicated to exclusive transmission of the Chan teaching, so the Tiantai lineage as outlined in early Tiantai sources and Zhipan’s Chronicle was given concrete institutional expression in government-sanctioned Teachings (jiao 教) monasteries dedicated to transmission of the Tiantai Dharma.

Difference between Dharma Transmission and Patriarchal Lineage in the Chan and Tiantai Schools

Although there are similarities between the Chan and Tiantai patriarchal lineages, the criteria by which the Tiantai Order traces their lineage is significantly different from that of the Chan lineage in several ways. As heir to a “mind to mind transmission” of the Dharma likened to the flame of one lamp lighting that of another, the Chan master (chanshi 禪師) or Dharma-heir (sifa 嗣法) draws his or her authority from the subjective claim to have achieved an awakening to ultimate reality identical in content to that of the Buddha and 12 Ibid., 10; also, Daniel Aaron Getz, Jr., “Siming Zhili and Tiantai Pure Land in the Song dynasty” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1994), 18.

13 Getz, “Siming Zhili and Tiantai Pure Land in the Song dynasty,” 1994, 19.

patriarchs, the realization of which is legitimized by face-to-face acknowledgement from an existing Chan master and member of the Chan lineage. As a tradition of living insight or wisdom outside of written texts, its authority does not depend, in theory, on conformity with the received holy sūtras. Thus Chan represents a “separate transmission” outside the received teachings (jiao 教) of the sūtras.

By contrast, the Tiantai school of Buddhism looks to the teachings (jiao) of the Buddha set forth in his received sūtras as the foundation for authoritative insight into and understanding of the Buddha’s Dharma. While this emphasis does not preclude meditative experience and insight, which also are emphasized as central in Tiantai treatises and lineage narratives, experiences of insight that are not tested and verified by conformity with the sūtras are considered dubious, at best, and possibly even false. Thus, Tiantai and other scripturally based schools like it were called jiao or Teachings traditions.

In ways that are directly parallel to Chan, the Tiantai lineage narrative starts with a continuous line of Indian patriarchs, 23 or 24 in number, that extend back to Buddha Śākyamuni and his disciple Mahākāśyapa. However, the Tiantai succession narrative departs from Chan by insisting that the continuous generation-to-generation transmission of the Dharma was interrupted with the untimely death of the 23rd (or 24th) patriarch Siṃha. From that time forward, the continuous transmission of the Buddha’s wisdom ceased, and the sūtras alone were transmitted, accompanied by various important treatises authored by the earlier patriarchs. With the transmission of those sūtras to China and the appearance of the founding Tiantai patriarchs, Huiwen (d.u.), Huisi (515-577), and Zhiyi (528-597) centuries later, the living eye of Dharma was recovered, and with the verifying confirmation of the sūtras, the transmission of the Dharma was restored.

14 Early Tiantai sources allege that Huiwen studied and based his teaching on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise (Dazhidu lun大智度論, T no. 1509), a work dubiously attributed by Chinese Buddhists to Nāgārjuna; Koichi Shinohara, “From Local History to Universal History: The Construction of the Sung T’ien14 Though the first Chinese Tiantai patriarch, Huiwen 慧文 (d.u.), awakened without ever personally having met the ancient thirteenth Indian patriarch Nāgārjuna (3rd century), Huiwen claimed to have “known Nāgārjuna’s mind” through his experience of enlightenment and his study of Nāgārjuna’s treatises.15 Huiwen’s successor, the Chinese patriarch Huisi 慧思 (515-577), and Huisi’s own student, the de facto founding Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi 智顗 (538-597), are also claimed traditionally in Tiantai lineage chronicles to have experienced deep personal awakening to ultimate reality and the essence of the Dharma (in some cases,

repeatedly), the insights of which they verified and extended on the basis of the Lotus (Saddharmapuṇḍarika) Sūtra. In addition to their having both experienced awakening akin to that of the Buddha himself, Tiantai chronicles, beginning with the earliest extant accounts from the late 6th and early 7th centuries, also present Zhiyi and Huisi as incarnated bodhisattvas who had actually achieved profound awakening in prior lives, having together been present in the assembly on Mount Gṛdhrakūta in India when the Buddha preached the Lotus Sūtra. Thus, early Tiantai narratives of patriarchal Dharma transmission were able to leap the geographical and historical distance between China and India through a combination of appeal to personal insight or enlightenment experience, the insinuation that Huisi and Zhiyi, as bodhisattvas, had met the Buddha and gained awakening in prior lives, and comprehensive study of the received sūtras. It is this combination of connection through both historical text and “transhistorical inspiration” that marks the biggest differences between Chan and Tiantai Buddhism.16 The contradictions between Chan’s unbroken mind-to-mind t’ai Lineage,” In Buddhism in the Sung, ed. by Peter N. Gregory et al. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999), 532.

15 Daniel B. Stevenson, “The Status of Mo-ho chih-kuan in the T’ien-t’ai Tradition,” In The great calming and contemplation: a study and annotated translation of the first chapter of Chih-i's Mo-ho chih-kuan, ed. by Neal Arvid Donner et al. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), 31. 16 Ibid., 34; Daniel B. Stevenson and Hiroshi Kanno, The Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra’s Course of Ease and Bliss: An Annotated Translation and Study of Nanyue Huisi’s (515-577) Fahuajing anlexing yi. Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica IX (Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, 2006).

transmission and Tiantai scripturally based Dharma transmission were a point of continuing controversial throughout Chinese Buddhist history, becoming particularly intense during the Song Period, when the two traditions saw increasing institutional consolidation. The first and most classic formulation of the Tiantai patriarchal lineage was produced by the early Tiantai master and patriarch Guanding 灌頂 (561-632). A disciple of Zhiyi himself, Guanding described the lineage in his prefatory chapter to the Great Calming and Contemplation (Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀), a massive treatise on Tiantai meditation that Guanding transcribed and edited from lectures delivered by Zhiyi.17 The rudiments of Tiantai lineage set forth in the Great Calming and Contemplation were further elaborated by the Tang Dynasty master and patriarch Zhanran 湛然 (711-782), who revitalized the Tiantai teaching by composing extensive sub-commentaries to Zhiyi’s Three Great Works

天台三大部, which included Zhiyi’s two treatises on the Lotus Sūtra and the Great Calming and Contemplation.18 In his commentary to the lineage narrative in Guanding’s preface to the Great Calming and Contemplation, Zhanran makes a point of insisting that Dharma transmission is obtained and validated by the combined factors of doctrinal study (jiao 教) and meditation (guan 觀), both of which must be based firmly on the scriptures. Zhanran further clarifies that the Great Calming and Contemplation is a repository for the Tiantai Dharma, such that those who practice on its basis can confidently apprehend and receive transmission of the authentic Dharma of the Buddha, regardless of time, place, or even the presence of a living Tiantai master.19 Thus, Zhanran’s argument added further justification for the broken face-to-face Dharma lineage of the Tiantai tradition and its reconstitution at 17 Linda L. Penkower, “T’ien-t'ai during the T'ang dynasty: Chan-jan and the sinification of Buddhism” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1993), 153.

18 Zhiyi’s two treatises on the Lotus are the Fahua xuanyi 法華玄義 (Deep Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra), T no. 1716, and Fahua wenju 法華文句 (Lotus Sūtra by Passage and Line), T no. 1718.. 19 Stevenson, “The Status of Mo-ho chih-kuan in the T’ien-t’ai Tradtion,” in The great calming and contemplation, 1993, 47-48. 1

the hand of the Chinese Tiantai patriarchs.20 Zhanran, for the first time, also launched arguments for the superiority of the Tiantai order over the Chan order by casting doubt on the role of the 28th Indian patriarch Bodhidharma and his transmission of the Dharma of the Indian patriarchs to the Chinese patriarch Huike.

The early Tiantai patriarchal narrative set forth by Guanding and expanded by Zhanran came to its most complete form during the revival and massive expansion of the Tiantai tradition in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). In the eleventh century, Tiantai institutions promoted a lineage of nine “Eastern” or “Chinese” patriarchs, extending from Nāgārjuna (the 13th Indian patriarch), through Huiwen, Huisi, Zhiyi, and Guanding to Zhanran. With the authorship and widespread acclaim of Zhipan’s Comprehensive Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs (Fozu tongji) in the 13th century, that lineage of nine patriarchs was extended down to the Song period Tiantai reviver, Siming Zhili (960-1028) as the 17th Tiantai patriarch. Like Zhanran before him, Zhili’s status as the 17th patriarch came with his authorship of numerous treatises and sub-commentaries on works of Zhiyi, and the ascent of Zhili’s works and doctrinal interpretations as Tiantai “orthodoxy.”

The title and status of “patriarch” (zu 祖, zushi 祖師), which in non-Buddhist vernacular Chinese literally means “ancestor,” was a title reserved for figures of the past— especially figures perceived in historical hindsight who, much like family ancestors, are perceived to have made a major contribution to the formation of a religious order, whether Chan or Tiantai. Zhiyi, Zhanran, and Zhili, for example, are the most important figures for the Chinese Tiantai school, since it was chiefly their treatises and commentaries that formed 20 Ibid., 49-50.

21 Penkower, “T’ien-t'ai during the T'ang dynasty: Chan-jan and the sinification of Buddhism,” 1993, 177; Foulk. “Sung Controversies Concerning the Separate Transmission of Ch’an,” In Buddhism in the Sung, 1999, 284.

22 Stevenson, “The Status of Mo-ho chih-kuan in the T’ien-t’ai Tradtion,” in Great calming and contemplation, 1993, 49-51; Daniel B. Stevenson, “The Nine Patriarchs of the East,” in Buddhist Scriptures, ed. by Donald S. Lopez et al. (London: Penguin, 2004), 297-305.

the basis of orthodox Tiantai teaching. Other figures in the numbered patriarchal succession were included largely to “connect the dots” and suggest historical continuity. No living Tiantai “Dharma master” (fashi 法師) or “Dharma heir” (fasi 法嗣), whether in the Song period or later China, ever referred to himself or herself as a “patriarch” or “patriarch of such-and-such a numbered generation (in the lineage of succession).” Nor was such a title actively transmitted to any living individual, generation to generation. The Chinese Tiantai tradition never at any point organized itself institutionally around the figure of a single presiding authority or patriarch. “Patriarchs” were historically imagined objects— ideal figures of history from whom living generations of later Tiantai masters constructed their spiritual descent and their authority as “heirs of the Tiantai Dharma.” In the Japanese Tendai School, however, the situation was a bit different. After the Tendaishū and its head monastery on Mount Hiei were established by Saichō 最澄 (767-822), who introduced the Tiantai teaching from China, the abbot (zasu) of Mount Hiei also the presiding authority over all Tendai regional temples and clergy, the position of which was handed down generationto- generation in numbered succession from Saichō.23

The patriarchs of the Chan and Tiantai traditions in China were collectively imagined figures, whose presence in communities was evoked mainly in rhetorical contexts, ritual settings, and various sacred sites and mementos. As the Chan and Tiantai public monastery system took shape and expanded in Song Dynasty China, resulting in the increasing institutionalization of the two schools, every Dharma-heir who was selected to serve as abbot of a Chan or Tiantai public monastery was appointed symbolically as a descendent of the core patriarchal trunkline. As abbot of a public monastery belonging to the Tiantai or Chan orders, the duty of the Dharma-heir as abbot was to instruct practitioners in the Dharma of the 23 Paul Groner, Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000). Paul Groner, Ryōgen and Mount Hiei: Japanese Tendai in the Tenth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002).

patriarchs and continue the family of the patriarchs by producing the next generation of Dharma-heirs. In keeping with this emphasis on sectarian lineage, Chan and Tiantai monasteries, large and small, housed Patriarchs Halls (zutang 祖堂), in which painted portraits, name placards, or statues of key (and in some cases, all) trunkline patriarchs down to Zhili. Individual altars were placed in front of them for purposes of regular ritual offering and veneration. On the occasion of death anniversary of a select patriarchs, the portrait was moved to a separate larger hall, such as the Dharma Hall, so that the entire community could join together to perform ritual offering and commemoration. In addition to the institution of the Patriarchs Hall and celebration of patriarch death anniversaries, the home monasteries and personal items that belonged to past patriarchs also were often the object of personal pilgrimage and worship.24

The Construction of Patriarchal Lineage in the Korean Chogye and Ch’ŏnt’ae orders and Historical Controversy Concerning Ŭich’ŏn’s Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism

As in China, narratives of patriarchal transmission, as well as patriarch halls and rituals centered on commemoration of Buddhist patriarchs, had a great influence on Korean monastic Buddhism. Korean Buddhism enjoyed a golden age for more than thousand years during the Silla and Koryŏ Dynasties, at which time it was heavily patronized by the royal court and aristocracy. However, the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392-1897) brought a period of challenges and hardship to Korean Buddhist monastics and lay believers, due to its policy of Buddhist oppression. Because the Chosŏn court chose to promote Confucianism as the ruling ideology, Confucianism came to dominate court procedures, education of elites, and social mobility in 24 Stevenson, “Status of Mo-ho chih-kuan in the T’ien-t’ai Tradtion,” in the Great calming and contemplation, 1993, 31-61; Daniel B. Stevenson, “The ‘Tiantai Four Books’: Protocols of Buddhist Learning in Late-Song and Yuan China,” manuscript of draft article in progress.

Korea. Buddhist monks became social outcasts, and were even prohibited from entering the four gates of the Chosŏn capital of Seoul. 25 Various established Koryŏ Buddhist sects disappeared or were absorbed into other schools, and only Sŏn (C, Chan) Buddhism remained as the predominant tradition of mountain monasteries (Mountain Buddhism). One of the traditions founded in the Koryŏ period that vanished in the Chosŏn was the Ch’ŏnt’ae (Tiantai) school that was introduced form Song China by the royal Koryŏ monk Uich’ŏn—an event about which we will have more to say shortly.

The decline of the Chosŏn Dynasty in the early part of the 19th century brought a collapse of the traditional Confucian and anti-Buddhist ideology, resulting in a period of political transition and an opportunity for Korean Buddhists to rebuild Buddhist traditions and institutions. The repeal of the policy of Buddhist oppression allowed monks once again to enter Seoul and engage in public religious activities.26 The resurgence of Buddhism in Korea continued through the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). However, a new factor entered the picture at that time. Colonial occupation by Japan brought numerous Japanese Buddhists and their schools to the Korean peninsula. Along with them came novel Japanese Buddhist notions of modernity and Buddhist reform, including such trends as acceptance of clerical marriage and eating of meat. Beginning in the 1920s, Buddhist intellectuals in Korea emphasized the reformation of Korean Buddhism and the need to spread the Dharma widely among the Korean people. This development sparked theological controversies between traditional Korean monastics who upheld the norms of celibacy and pro-Japanese monks who advocated abandoning monastic celibacy and dietary restrictions.27 After the independence of Korea in 1945, various Korean Buddhist monastics, motivated by growing nationalism and 25 Robert E. Buswell, The Zen monastic experience: Buddhist practice in contemporary Korea (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 23.

26 Ibid., 24.

27 Ko Byung-chul, “Chogyejongŭi Hyŏnjaewa Mirae” [the Present and Future of Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism], Chonggyomunhwabipyŏng 17, no. 0 (2010): 332.

concern for modern reform, set out to revive Korean Buddhist traditions of celibacy and monastic observance, which they promoted as a traditional form of indigenous Korean Buddhist practice that conformed with government policies of national identity and sovereignty. The Korean Chogye Order was established in 1962, the name for which Korean traditional celibate monks drew from traditional associations with Chan Buddhism in the Koryŏ and Chosŏn dynasties.28 The newly created Chogye order, or Korean Chan/Sŏn Buddhism, quickly became a dominant presence in contemporary Korea.

Korean Chogye Buddhist temples, the existing complexes of which for the most part date back to middle and early Chosŏn period, typically house Patriarch Halls 祖師殿 similar in kind to those found traditionally in Chinese Chan monasteries. As in China, the Korean Chogye Patriarchs Hall houses large portraits or statues of figures such as Bodhidharma, along with Korean Sŏn (Chan) masters such as Chinul. 29 Death anniversaries of key Chogye/Chan patriarchs are also celebrated. Chinul 知訥 (1158-1210), for example, is one of the most eminent masters of late Koryŏ Dynasty Korea—the figure responsible for founding Korean Chan or Sŏn Buddhism. The Songgwang monastery in Busan, originally founded by Chinul, is one of the biggest Chogye Buddhist temples in Korea. As founder of Songgwang Monastery and the Korean Chan/Sŏn tradition, Songgwang temple holds massive public celebrations of Chinul’s death anniversary every year. 30 It is the largest public ceremony held by the monastery, and it shows the importance of Chinul as a patriarchal figure of the Chogye order. Patriarchs Hall at Songgwang Monastery, officially called the National Master’s Hall 國師殿 in homage to Chinul’s stature as a royal or state preceptor (國師) of Koryŏ, also enshrined some fourteen putative Korean patriarchal successors to Chinul.

28 Ibid., 32.

29 Foulk, “Myth, Ritual and Monastic Practice in Song Chan Buddhism,” Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China, 1993, 173.

30 Buswell, The Zen monastic experience, 1992, 42. 31 Ibid., 61.

Just as we find in the post-colonial revival of Chan/Sŏn Buddhism in the guise of the Chogye Buddhist School, the construction of patriarchal lineage was an urgent task for the newly created Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae jong when its founder Sangwŏl sought to secure recognition and historical authority for Ch’ŏnt’ae School in the 1960s and 1970s. In ways that distinctly emulate the Patrarchs Halls of the Chogye Order and other traditional Korean monasteries, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order built Patriarch Halls and instituted annual celebrations of the death anniversaries of major Chinese and Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchs. The Ch’ŏnt’ae jong needed these architectural, visual, and ritual forms in order to meet the expectations of the Buddhist public at large, establish its public acceptance, and compete with the dominant Chogye Order. According to an official website of the modern Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order today commemorates thirty-six historical Indian, Chinese, and Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchs,

the list of which is based on the Comprehensive History of Buddhas and Patriarchs authored by the Southern Song Tiantai monk Zhipan. The thirty-six figures housed in the Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchs halls include one Indian patriarch (Nāgārjuna), seventeen Chinese patriarchs (through Zhili), and eighteen Korean patriarchs. The modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order has also published three official chronicles of the Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchal lineage: the Chronicle of the Lineage of the Ch’ŏnt’ae School 天台宗統紀, published in 1983; the catalogue for the Hall for the Successive Generations of Ch’ŏnt’ae jong Patriarchs: With Catalogue of Accompanying Hagiographies 32 天台宗歷代祖師殿 奉安祖師行狀目錄, which includes portraits of the patriarchs (2008), and most recently, a newer expanded version of the Hall for the Successive Generations of Ch’ŏnt’ae jong Patriarchs 天台宗歷代祖師殿 which actually contains nearly complete Korean translations of the hagiographies of trunkline Chinese patriarchal hagiographies translate taken from Zhipan’s Fozu tongji 佛祖統紀 (2013). This 32 Ch’ŏnt'aejongyŏktaejosajŏn Ponganjosahaengjangdorok/천태종역대사전 봉안조사행장목록/天台宗歷代祖師殿 奉安祖師行狀目錄 2

latter text is the first installment in a series of two volumes, with the first volume comprising only the Chinese patriarchs, and the second volume (not yet completed) dedicated to the Korean patriarchs.

In the effort to construct a Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchal narrative that sought to establish the historical authenticity of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order as a Korean Buddhist tradition, the Ch’ŏnt’ae School made a special effort to draw a connection between Sangwŏl and Ŭich’ŏn 義天 (1055-1101), the perceived founder of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism in the Koryŏ Period. However, even though modern Korean Buddhists and critical historians do credit Ŭich’ŏn as a saintly figure who contributed to Korean Buddhism, the evaluation of Ŭich’ŏn as an historical figure has varied according to the different perspectives of contemporary Buddhist scholars. Ch'oe Byong-hon, a modern critical historian and a former professor at Seoul National University, has argued persuasively that Ŭich’ŏn’s Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism was never established as a fully complete and autonomous Ch’ŏnt’ae School apart from the miscellany of

Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae texts and teachings that Ŭich’ŏn brought back to Korea from China. Ch'oe further points out that Ŭich’ŏn’s Ch’ŏnt’ae jong did not fully implement the Tiantai practice calming and contemplation (止觀) as traditionally formulated by the Tiantai founder Zhiyi, but instead retained the Chan/Sŏn style of meditation. 34 Ch'oe also argues that Ŭich’ŏn’s understanding of Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrine is closer in kind to the Huayan-laden “off mountain” (山外) interpretations of Chinese Tiantai doctrine that Zhili’s orthodox “home mountain” (山家) tradition rejected as heretical, rather than being a faithful representation of Zhili’s mainstream Tiantai thought. By contrast, Seun Kim, a contemporary scholar of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong and the scholar as well as an abbot of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong’s Samkwang 33 http://www.ggbn.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=24422 34 Ŭich’ŏn failed to apply Tiantai calming and contemplation to the Chan monks. As a result, he was able to convert some of Chan monks to the Tiantai order; Ch'oe Byong-hon, “Taegakkuksa Ŭich’ŏnŭi Ch'ŏnt'aejong Ch'angnipkwa Songŭi Ch‘ŏnt’aejong” [Ŭich’ŏn’s Foundation of the Ch‘ŏnt’ae Sect and its Relation to Song Dynasty’s Tiantai Buddhism], Inmunnonchong 47 (2002): 50.

Monastery, has loudly championed the institutional facticity and historical significance of Ŭich’ŏn’s founding of the Ch’ŏnt’ae School in Koryŏ Korea.35 Ŭich’ŏn was the fourth son of King Munjong of the Koryŏ Dynasty. In 1085, Ŭich’ŏn made a pilgrimage to Song China for the purpose of seeking transmission of the Buddhist Dharma. Ŭich’ŏn’s Buddhist interests were diverse, ranging from Tiantai (Ch’ŏnt’ae) and Huayan, to Chan (Sŏn) and study of the Buddhist vinaya or disciplinary codes. All of these diverse interests were pursued during his travels in China, along with his interest in Ch’ŏnt’ae. Huayan (Hwa’om) teaching was especially important to him. Looking back on Ŭich’ŏn’s endeavors, modern scholars tend to claim that Ŭich’ŏn sought to import the teachings of Ch’ŏnt’ae, Hwa’om (Huayan), and the Vinaya schools to Koryŏ in order to accomplish a holistic integration of Chan Buddhism with doctrinal Buddhism. Since the Chinese Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching traditionally emphasized the harmonious balance of doctrinal learning (jiao 教) and meditative practice (guan 觀), the Ch’ŏnt’ae tradition has been viewed by historians as having been especially suited to Ŭich’ŏn aims.36 Ŭich’ŏn accordingly is said to have deliberately set out to found a Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae order in 1097--an event that was given concrete expression with his creation of Kukch'ŏng Monastery 國淸寺 (C, Guoqingsi), a monastery dedicated to the teaching of Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism and possibly modeled on the public monasteries that Ŭich’ŏn frequented in Song China.

As a prince of the Koryŏ Dynasty and Buddhist monk educated in Huayan/Hwa’om and Ch’ŏnt’ae teachings, Ŭich’ŏn is said to have criticized Chan/Sŏn tradition for its sectarian exclusivity, rhetorical rejection of written scripture, and demeaning of doctrinal learning. In the wake of Ŭich’ŏn’s attempt to integrate Chan/Sŏn tradition and the doctrinal Buddhist traditions, Chan (Sŏn) Buddhism split into two orders: (1) Ŭich’ŏn’s syncretic Ch’ŏnt’ae jong 35 Ibid., 53; Stevenson, “The Status of Mo-ho chih-kuan in the T’ien-t’ai Tradtion,” in the Great calming and contemplation, 1993, 51. 36 Ibid., 32.

and (2) the competing Chogye jong comprised of Chan/Sŏn monks who did not belong to the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong and opposed Ŭich’ŏn’s ideas.37 Despite Ŭich’ŏn’s efforts, his newly founded Ch’ŏnt’ae order quickly dwindled after his death in 1101. After a military coup d’état of Koryŏ in 1170, the Chogye Chan/Sŏn tradition became the mainstream of Koryŏ Buddhism. As a counterforce to Ŭich’ŏn’s influence, the monks of the Chogye Chan/Sŏn and existing Faxiang 法相 (K, Pŏpsang or Dharmas and Marks) dominated the key positions of the Koryŏ King’s advisory board of official monastic prelates and national instructors.38 Koryŏ Buddhism was an aristocrat-centered religion, and Ŭich’ŏn himself was a representative figure of its royalty and aristocratic Buddhism. Fueled by the collapse of the Koryŏ Dynasty and the rise of the anti-Buddhist Chosŏn, as the royal patronage of monastic Buddhism declined and Buddhism spread among the local populace, it was inevitable that Ŭich’ŏn and his Ch’ŏnt’ae jong was quickly forgotten.

Approximately a century after Ŭich’ŏn, an eminent Koryŏ monk by the name of Yose 了世 (1163-1245) attempted once again to introduce a Ch’ŏnt’ae Order to Korea, albeit with no reference to or acknowledgment of Ŭich’ŏn or his prior efforts. What is more, Yose appears to have been drawn to Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching for reasons different from those of Ŭich’ŏn. While Ŭich’ŏn sought to promote an inclusive and ecumenical Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism that harmoniously accommodated Ch’ŏnt’ae Hwa’om/Huayan, Chan and Vinaya teachings, Yose focused on the establishment of a purely Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai teaching faithful to the Tiantai founder Zhiyi and the mainstream “orthodox” Home Mountain tradition of the Song-dynasty Tiantai reviver, Zhili. Thus, Yose’s community did not acknowledge Ŭich’ŏn’s special status as a founder of Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism and simply chose to promote Yose as the sole master responsible for establishing the Ch’ŏnt’ae Dharma in Korea.

37 Ibid., 48. 38 Ibid., 51-52. 39 惟師常宗教寢夷之日, 立大法幢. This is written in Yose’s inscription; Ibid., 53-55.

Like the actions of Ŭich’ŏn before him, the Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist order created by Yose—an endeavor, according to modern scholars, that was completely unrelated to Ŭich’ŏn- -disappeared from history with the rise of the the Chosŏn court and its anti-Buddhist Neo- Confucian ideology of rule during the fifteenth century. Thus, Ŭich’ŏn, Yose, and their respective Ch’ŏnt’ae Orders were all but lost to active public Buddhist memory by the end of the fifteenth century. Over the centuries that followed, there were no institutions, no commonly shared literary record, no patriarchs halls or death anniversary rituals that preserved their presence in the public imagination. It was not until the Japanese colonial period of Korea (1910-1945) that the figures of Ŭich’ŏn and Yose, and evidence for a Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae jong were brought back to light. However, this recovery came not from traditional Korean Buddhist monks and institutions, but through the modern research on Ŭich’ŏn and Yose begun by scholars of modern Japanese universities and Buddhist research institutes.40 Introduced to Korea during the period of the Japanese colonial occupation, Korean historians introduced to modern disciplines of critical historiography by Japanese scholars and institutions began to conduct research on Ŭich’ŏn around 1959. Though they have found historical significance in Ŭich’ŏn’s introduction of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism to Koryŏ Korea, the character and historical success of Ŭich’ŏn’s Ch’ŏnt’ae jong (including his attempt to unify Koryŏ Chan and Jiao/Teaching traditions) have remained controversial.

Be that as it may, when it comes to the generation of public interest in the figures of Ŭich’ŏn and Yose, it is the evangelical efforts of Sangwŏl and his modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong that has had the most impact on contemporary scholarship and the Korean Buddhist public at large. The modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong presents a very different picture of Ŭich’ŏn and Yose from that of the modern critical historians who are not officially affiliated with the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong. Unlike the latter, the monks and scholars affiliated with the Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae jong tend rhetorically 40 Pak Yong-jin, Ŭich'ŏn, kŭ ŭi saengae wa sasang [Ŭich'ŏn: His life and thoughts] (Sŏul-si: Hyean, 2011), 25.

to praise Ŭich’ŏn, making every effort to give substance and endurance to his historical founding of the Ch’ŏnt’ae tradition, and thereby setting the historical stage for Sangwŏl’s modern “revival.” Taking a distinctly different approach to Ŭich’ŏn from that of the critical scholars described above, the Compendium on Spreading Buddhist Teachings 佛敎布敎集, an official Ch’ŏnt’ae compilation published by the order in 1982, openly affirms that Ŭich’ŏn’s Ch’ŏnt’ae jong successfully unified the doctrinal and Chan/Sŏn (i.e., Chogye) schools, and that the Chan/Sŏn (Chogye) order was thereby integrated into the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong.41 Altogether, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong has struggled to restore Ŭich’ŏn’s reputation by singling out four primary contributions that Ŭich’ŏn made as a founding Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch: (1) Ŭich’ŏn’s comprehensive unification of an otherwise disparate Koryŏ Buddhism; (2) his introduction of a properly pure and orthodox Buddhism to Koryŏ; (3) his synthesis of doctrinal learning and the contemplative practice of Chan; and (4) his promotion of a “patriotic” or “nationalistic” Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism.42 As part of it larger cycle of commemorating Chinese and Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order has been celebrating anniversaries of Ŭich’ŏn’s death since 1996.43

41 Nam Daech'ung, Ch'ŏnt'aejongt'onggi [Chronicle of the Lineage of the Ch’ŏnt’ae School] (Ch'ungbuk: Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, 1983), 236.

42 Kim Se Un, “Sangwŏl wŏn'gagŭi yŏn'gu [The Study on Sangwol Wongak’s Buddhistic Thought],” (PhD. diss., Tongguk University, 2016), 50-51.

43 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng” [Establishing Identity and the Korean Contemporary Chontae Order], Journal of the Korean Academy of New Religions 31, no. 31 (2014): 60. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

Chapter Two:

The Construction of Sangwŏl as a Ch’ŏnt’ae Patriarch and Successor to the Historical Transmission of the Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai Dharma The Buddhist monk Sangwŏl, the founder of the modern Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, was born in 1911, the period when Korea was under Japanese rule (1910-1945). He left home, ordained as a Buddhist monk, and began his religious and ascetic practice in 1926, visiting Buddhist monasteries throughout Korea in his quest for understanding of the Buddhist Dharma. In 1930, Sangwŏl is said to visit Buddhist holy sites in China. Upon his return to Korea in 1936, he undertook nine years of intensive practice in the southern mountains of Korea, at the conclusion of which, in 1945, he established the Guinsa Monastery—the home monastery of Sangwŏl’s Ch’ŏnt’ae jong. Hagiographical records of Sangwŏl claim that he experienced profound enlightenment in 1962, and in 1967 he officially named his monastery and community the Cloister for Propagating the Buddhist Teaching of the Great Awakening of Ch’ŏnt’ae 天台大覺佛敎布敎院 in 1967. Three years later, in 1970, Sangwŏl officially changed the name of his community to Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order 大韓佛敎天台宗. He passed away on April 27th, 1974.

From the time that Sangwŏl’s movement first took shape, Sangwŏl and his followers sought to present the master and his teaching as the authentic heir to the Tiantai or Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist tradition—a venerable school of Buddhism with established prior history in Korea and China, not to mention Japan. To secure that claim to authoritative connection, Sangwŏl and the Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae community sought to posit not only an historical link to prior Koryŏ Korean figures such as Ŭich’ŏn and Yose but also to present Sangwŏl as a Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch and successor to Zhiyi himself, the original founder of the Tiantai tradition.

Various hagiographies of Sangwŏl and genealogical accounts of the origins of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order (jong) have been composed by Ch’ŏnt’ae members over the past decades, the majority of them written expressly for the construction of Sangwŏl’s patriarchal lineage. In addition, we have record of various personal accounts and testimonials from followers regarding events in Sangwŏls’ life, although these are scattered and fragmentary. Beyond these normative Ch’ŏnt’ae sources and accounts, we also have an increasing body of historical critical scholarship on Sangwŏl and the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong authored by modern scholars who have no affiliation with the order. As one might expect, conflicting representations abound between the scholarship produced by monastics and academics with Ch’ŏnt’ae affiliation and historians of Buddhism who do not belong to the order. To complicate the picture even further, normative Ch’ŏnt’ae jong publications regarding Sangwŏl and the order’s founding show considerable variation in emphasis and strategy depending on when they were composed, i.e., early or late.

Thus, it becomes apparent that strategies of legitimization in the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong have changed over time, along with the narrative content, all of which in turn has been challenged by critical non-sectarian historians at various points along the way. Let us now turn to those various sources and representations of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong and his claim to origins and historical authenticity.

There are four normative Ch’ŏnt’ae works that offer narratives of Ch’ŏnt’ae jong origins and Sangwŏl’s place therein. Although published in different years, they are all regarded as authoritative and regularly available to Ch’ŏnt’ae followers today. Issued in 1970, the Abridged Compendium of the Ch’ont’ae jong 天台宗略典 (hereafter the Abridged Compendium) is the first Ch’ŏnt’ae official publication. The text provides a brief summary of Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrine and instructions on how to put those teachings into practice through recition of the name of Amitābha Buddha, followed by an overview of Chinese and Korean

Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae history. For the summary of Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrine, the text claims to draw directly on the Tiantai Fourfold Teachings 天台四敎儀, the influential 10th century primer traditionally said to have been authored in China by the Koryŏ monk Chegwan (C, Diguan 諦觀). For its historical genealogy of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, the text claims to draw upon the Comprehensive Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs (Fozu tongji 佛祖統紀, the massive history of Chinese Tiantai completed by the Southern Song Tiantai monk Zhipan, ca. 1268. and the first version of the Abridged Compendium published in 1970 was later revised and reissued, and it seems that several new editions have been published in years since then. The Holy Scripture44 of Ch’ŏnt’ae jong 天台宗聖典 (hereafter the Holy Scripture),

first published by the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order in 1971, was considered one of the core texts of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order until 1994.45 This book includes a modern Korean translation of the Lotus Sūtra, accompanied by a brief commentary, and a series of chapters on the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order’s procedure for veneration and practice of the esoteric Chuṇḍi dhāraṇī incantation (K, Junje; C, Zhunti tuoluoni 準提陀羅尼). Like the Abridged Compendium, the Holy Scripture also contains a brief summation of Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrine based on Chegwan’s Tiantai Fourfold Teachings and, as well as a general history of Chinese Buddhism and the history of the Tiantai/Chŏnt’ae school in China and Korea. While the Tiantai/Cŏnt’ae history once again draws on Zhipan’s Comprehensive Chronicle, the summary of Chinese Buddhist history is divided and thematically organized according to the Shina Bukkyō no kenkyū 支那仏教の研究, the three-volume history of Chinese Buddhism authored (1938) by the eminent Japanese Buddhist historian Tokiwa Daijō (1870-1945).46 44 The title Holy Scripture 聖典 was never used for other Chinese Tiantai writings. The Holy Scripture generally refers the Bible in China and Korea.

45 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng” [The Religious Identities and Practices of the Cheontae Order in Korea], Chŏngshinmunhwayŏngu 37, no. 4 (2014): 143.

46 Tokiwa, Daijō. Shina Bukkyō no kenkyū 支那仏教の研. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1938.

The third in our list of four principal Ch’ŏnt’ae works is the Compendium on Spreading Buddhist Teachings (hereafter the Compendium on Spreading). Published in 1982, this book is concerned primarily with the subject of basic Buddhist ethics (including filial piety), Korean patriotism, testimonials of efficacious response (miracle tales) centered on the bodhisattva Guanyin, and the life and teachings of Sangwŏl. The fourth and final work on our list, Chronicle of the Lineage of the Ch’ŏnt’ae School 天台宗統紀 (hereafter the Chronicle of the Lineage), published in 1983, is a chronicle of the patriarchal lineage of the Chinese Tiantai school and Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae school, based specifically on Zhipan’s Comprehensive Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs (Fozu tongji). Thus, both the Abridged Compendium and the Lineage ground their accounts of the origins and transmission of the Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae on Zhipan’s writing.

A number of academic historical writings on Sangwŏl and the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order have also been produced by scholars personally and professionally affiliated with the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong. Dong-Soon Choi, is the former Director of Education of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order and current a Researcher at the Tongguk Buddhist Academy of Tongguk University, and Seun Kim, Abbot of the Ch’ŏnt’ae’s Samkwang Monastery in Pusan Korea, are both examples of Ch’ŏnt’ae scholars who have written on the life and historical contributions of Sangwŏl. Taking a rather contrarian position to that found in Ch’ŏnt’ae-sponsored scholarship, have also written critically on the figure of Sangwŏl and the question of how the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order has established its identity as a successor heir to the historical Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae school. Don-ku Kang and Byung-Chul Ko, who are both researchers of the Academy of Korean Studies, have critically analyzed the processes by which followers of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong have constructed Sangwŏl as a Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch and heir to the In the brief survey of Chinese Buddhist history that constitutes his first chapter of the book, Tokiwa divides Buddhist history in China into three periods: a period of translation, study and construction (傳譯期, 研究期, 建設期). The modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order has adopted this exact same periodization and set of titles.

earlier Chinese and Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai traditions. Sangwŏl’s secular name is Pak Chundong. He was born in 1911. Around the age of nine, Sangwŏl’s grandfather died, at which point he began to have doubts about life.47 He began religious practice when he was fifteen years old.48 According to the Holy Scripture, it was around that time that Sangwŏl met a Korean monk by the name of Sun'gwan 順寬, with whom he began to actively study Buddhist teachings.49 However, records on this point appear to conflict, for research on Sangwŏl’s early years by Dong-Soon Choi suggests that Sangwŏl met and initially received his Buddhist name, “Sangwŏl,” from a monk by the name of Pŏbŭn 法隱. There is not enough information about Pŏbŭn in Choi’s research. Choi argues that Sangwŏl proceeded to learn the Lotus Sūtra and the Sūtra’s Universal Gate Chapter of Guanyin 觀世音菩薩普門品 from Pŏbŭn.50 Master Pŏbŭn is also alleged to have instructed Sangwŏl in the practice the Ch’ŏnt’ae (Tiantai) meditative technique of calming and contemplation, which Sangwŏl pursued in the morning hours.

Contrary to that claim, however, the Holy Scripture, first published in 1971, makes no mention of the Lotus Sūtra or the Universal Gate Chapter of Guanyin that Sangwŏl is purported to have practiced at that time. Furthermore, a work published by the administrative headquarters of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order in 2013, makes no mention of Pŏbŭn, asserting that Sangwŏl sought and achieved spiritual awakening entirely through his own efforts, because he was unable to find a proper master who could lead him to the truth.52 Yet another official 47 Nam Daech'ung, Pulgyop'ogyojip [The Compendium on Spreading Buddhist Teachings] (Ch'ungbuk: Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, 1982), 247.

48 Choi Dong-Soon, “Sangwŏlchosaŭi saengaee nat'anan suhaenggwan” [View of Practice in the Life of Sangwŏl], The Korean Society for Seon Studies 5 (2003): 166. 49 The the Holy Scripture of the Ch’ŏnt’ae order Compiling Association, Ch'ŏnt'aejongsŏngjŏn [The Holy Scripture of the Ch’ŏnt’ae order] (Seoul: Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, 1971), 682. 50 Choi, “Sangwŏlchosaŭi saengaee nat'anan suhaenggwan,” 2003, 167.

51 Lee Hyo-Won, “Ch‘aanŭi Kuwŏllon’gwa chumun chungshimjuŭi” [[[Buddhist]] Soteriology of the Everyday World and Mantra-Centrism], Journal of the Korean Association for the History of Religions 33 (2003): 304.

52 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng” [Establishing Identity and the Korean Contemporary Chontae Order], Journal of the Korean Academy of New Religions 31, no. 31 (2014): 55. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

Ch’ŏnt’ae publication, issued some years earlier in 1982, also makes no mention of Sangwŏl’s training with Sunkwan or Pŏbŭn, but asserts instead that Sangwŏl, from the time he was fifteen years old (1926), visited famed Chan monasteries in Korea in order to seek realization of the Buddhist truth.

The historical ambiguities of Sangwŏl’s early years notwithstanding, during this period of study as a young Korean monk, Sangwŏl is said to have come to the firm conclusion that Korean traditional monastic Buddhism had been damaged by the promulgation of Japanese Buddhism during the period of colonial occupation by Japan.53 As part of its administrative policy, in 1911 the Japanese colonial government promulgated “Tight Control of the Laws of Temples 寺刹令” in order to put control of Korean Buddhist monks and temples directly in the hands of the Governor-General of Korea. The history of the colonial era of Buddhism was the history of the Japanophile. Emulating the unilateral abandonment of monastic celibacy that was adopted widely in Japan under the reformist Meiji Restoration (1868), the number of married Korean monks in Japanese occupied Korea increased dramatically over the first half of the twentieth century. This development marked a significant departure from traditional Korean Buddhist practice, for which celibacy was the norm.

In addition to these sentiments of decline in the Korean monastic tradition, Sangwŏl is said to have been deeply affected by the perception that monastic Buddhism and its teachings played almost no role in helping ordinary people who are in distress. This perception is said to have motivated him to search for ways by which the plights of ordinary people might be relieved, but also ways by which ordinary people might inclusively be brought to acceptance of Buddhist teachings as a whole. According to his hagiographers, this ultimately led 53 Kim Seun, “Sangwŏl chosaŭi saengaewa kyohwa pangp'yŏn” [A Study on the Great Master Sangwol Ascetic Practice through the Utterance of Incantation], Journal of Korean Seon Studies 15 (2006): 673. 54 Hee Seung Park, “Chogyesawa han'guk pulgyo hyŏndaesa” [Chogyesa and the Mondern History of Korean Buddhism], in Chogyesaŭi yŏksawa munhwa [The History and Culture of Chogyesa], ed. The Chogye Order et al. (Seoul, The Chogye Order, 2000). 71.

Sangwŏl to settle on the Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching as the most inclusive and approachable vehicle for people (or sentient beings) of all abilities to practice Buddhism.55 In 1930, Sangwŏl set out for China, his intention being (according to his chroniclers) to visit sites holy to the Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai Buddhist school, such as Mount Tiantai, the home mountain of the founding Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi, and Mount Putuo, the holy island off the southeast China coast believed to be the terrestrial home of Bodhisattva Guanyin. Thus his itinerary is suggestively linked by later Chŏnt’ae hagiographers to Sangwŏl’s decision to preach the Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrine in Korea. The modern Ch’ŏnt’ae scholarly monk Seun Kim explicitly compares Sangwŏl’s visiting China to Ŭich’ŏn’s journey to seek the Tiantai/Chŏnt’ae Dharma in Song Dynasty China a millennium earlier. Like Ŭich’ŏn did a millennium earlier, while on Mount Tiantai Sangwŏl is said to have visited Guoqing Monastery 國清寺, after which he proceeded to Zhiyi’s pagoda at Zhenjue Monastery, close to the Xiuchan Monastery 修禪寺 where Zhiyi first taught his disciples. Standing before the Zhiyi’s pagoda, Sangwŏl swore a solemn oath to establish the Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching in Korea “for the benefit of all living beings.”

It is routinely claimed that, while in China, Sangwŏl experienced deep realization of the teaching of the Lotus Sūutra, Three Great Works of Tiantai 天台三大部, and the three contemplations of Tiantai 三觀.56 Though specifics are vague, Sangwŏl is moreover personally to have said to have claimed, “I realized the profound meaning of the Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching at Guoqing Monastery, and the truth of the three views in a single thought while on Huading Peak 華頂峰.”57 Huading Peak is the spot where Zhiyi is said to have undertaken a period of radical austerities and achieved the second of his two recorded experiences of

55 Kim Seun, “Sangwŏl chosaŭi saengaewa kyohwa pangp'yŏn,” 2006, 674. 56 Ibid., 677.

57 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng,” 2014, 64. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

personal awakening.58 Thus, we sense a deliberate effort on the part of Sangwŏl and/or his hagiographers to frame Sangwŏl’s life in the lore of the Tiantai founding patriarch Zhiyi. However, once again sources that recount Sangwŏl’s travels in China provide conflicting itineraries and accounts. The Holy Scripture makes no mention of Sangwŏl’s visiting Mt. Tiantai and studying the Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrine in China. Rather, it briefly mentions that Sangwŏl visited various places holy to the great bodhisattvas and, even, Tibet.59 Details of itinerary notwithstanding, even the dates of Sangwŏl’s journey to China are uncertain. According to circulars composed and distributed for newcomers to the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, Sangwŏl went to China after he experienced a personal visitation from Bodhisattva Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara) in 1942, while other records say that the journey took place in 1930.60 Thus it is entirely possible that later Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists and scholars added reference to places foundational to Chinese Tiantai tradition and the founder Zhiyi in order to repackage Sangwŏl’s journey to China as an inspirational pilgrimage specifically to the legendary headwaters of the Tiantai tradition, thereby firming up Sangwŏl’s link to Zhiyi and the Tiantai spiritual homeland.

Thus, while early accounts of Sangwŏl’s journey to China, such as the Holy Scripture, speak of visiting places that bear no relation whatsoever to Chinese Tiantai tradition, later records seem to have progressively refashioned and expanded these earlier accounts with the specific intention to establish a spiritual connection between Sangwŏl, and Zhiyi himself. By implication, Sangwŏl assumes the guise of a Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch equivalent to that of Zhiyi, the founder of the Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae tradition. It was a common practice for compilers 58 These two episodes of awakening are described in considerable detail in Sui Tiantai Zhizhe dashi biezhuan 隋天台智者大師別傳, CBETA, T50, no. 2050, p. 191, a24-p. 197, c29, compiled by his disciple Guanding shortly after Zhiyi’s death in 597. The accounts are also repeated in later Tiantai chronicles, such as Zhipan’s Comprehensive Chronicle (Fozu tongji).

59 The the Holy Scripture of the Ch’ŏnt’ae order Compiling Association, Ch'ŏnt'aejongsŏngjŏn, 1971, 682.

60 Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, Ch'ŏnt'aesinhaengŭi ch'ŏtkŏrŭm [The Beginning of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Belief] (Ch'ungbuk: Administrative Headquarters of the Ch'ŏnt'ae order, 2011). 23.

of patriarchal lineage chronicles to embellish and direct their narratives to serve the interests of the compiler’s particular time, place, tradition, and target audience. Zhipan himself did this in his Comprehensive Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs, when he extended the traditional narratives of the nine Tiantai patriarchs to include the Song master, Siming Zhili, as the seventeenth patriarch. Sangwŏl and the tale of his spiritual journey to China seem to have been subject to similar process of continuous revision, by which Sangwŏl’s status as a Chŏnt’ae patriarch was progressively revised on behalf of followers of the emerging Chŏnt’ae order and Korean Buddhists at large.

Upon his return to Korea in 1936, Sangwŏl is said to have embarked on a period of individual Buddhist practice for some nine years, after which he established the Guinsa Monastery—the home monastery of Sangwŏl’s Ch’ŏnt’ae jong—in the southern mountains of Korea in 1945.61 As best we can tell, Sangwŏl’s instructions to his earliest followers seem to have featured various recitation and repentance practices rather than the expounding of complicated doctrinal formulas of traditional Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching. Even though Sangwŏl is acknowledged to have had a lucid and full understanding of Chinese Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrinal teachings at that time, he is said to consider these simpler devotional practices to be more appropriate for ordinary people.62 Thus, beginning in 1945, Sangwŏl began to recite and propagate the famous dhāraṇī incantation of the Thousand Hand and Thousand Eye Bodhisattva Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara) 千手眼陀羅尼, commonly known as the Incantation (dhāraṇī) of Great Compassion (大悲咒).63 According to the Compendium on Spreading the Teaching, Sangwŏl experienced personal awakening in 1951, claiming, “In the Heavens above and earth beneath, I alone am

61 Lee Hyo-Won, “Ch‘aanŭi Kuwŏllon’gwa chumun chungshimjuŭ,” 2003, 305.

62 Kim Seun, “Sangwŏl chosaŭi saengaewa kyohwa pangp'yŏn,” 2006, 677. 63 Ibid., 669.

the Honored One, I am now born spiritually!”64 The modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order describes that awakening of Sangwŏl is a watershed moment in Buddhist history, when Sangwŏl the person was transfigured into a great patriarch. After his awakening, Sangwŏl is said to preach and prophesied on the Buddhist sūtras. Ch’ŏnt’ae hagiographers praise this event, and Sangwŏl’s great ability, at length in the Compendium, likening his experience to Zhiyi’s entering samādhi at the time of his enlightenment.65 However, Hoon Kim, a professor of the research institute of religion and culture at Beijing University in China, argues that the year 1951 is in error, and that 1962 must be the actual date of Sangwŏl’s spiritual awakening. As a scholar with no official connection to the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, Kim simply says that Sangwŏl is held to have achieved a profound spiritual awakening in 1962 through the practice of the Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai meditation technique of calming (止) and contemplation (觀), making no mention of equating Sangwŏl’s awakening to that of Zhiyi.

Foundation of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order and Sangwŏl as a Reincarnation of Guanyin After his spiritual awakening in 1962, Sangwŏl in 1967 chose officially to name his monastery and community—and to register it with the Korean government--as the Cloister for Propagating the Buddhist Teaching of the Great Awakening of Ch’ŏnt’ae 天台大覺佛敎布敎院. The justification for Sangwŏl’s founding of this new Buddhist school is said to lay in Sangwŏl’s disenchantment with the profound conflict between Korean traditional celibate monks and married Korean monks who were influenced by Japanese Buddhism. In addition, given Sangwŏl’s claim to personal realization of the Ch’ŏnt’ae 64 Daech'ung, Pulgyop'ogyojip, 1982, 251.

65 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng,” 2014, 56. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49; CBETA, T50, no. 2050, p. 191, c26-p. 192, a5 66 Kim Seun, “Han'guk Ch'ŏnt‘aejongŭi yŏmbulsuhaeng Chŏnt’onggwa kŭ kyesŭng” [The Tradition of Chanting Buddhism of the Cheontae Order of Korea and Its Succession], Journal of Korean Seon Studies 30 (2011): 310. doi:10.22253/JKSS.2011.12.30.63.

teaching through practice of calming and contemplation, it seems clear that he—or his followers—also saw a spiritual inspired connection to the Tiantai teaching to be a major impetus behind his founding of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, a new Korean Buddhist order. Despite these efforts, it was not easy to obtain government sanction and public acceptance for Sangwŏl’s new Ch’ŏnt’ae jong as a Korean Buddhist group. The government was initially reluctant to recognize the newly invented Ch’ŏnt’ae jong of Sangwŏl as an established Buddhist group like the Chogye Order or Taego order, but regarded Sangwŏl Ch’ŏn-tae jong instead as one of the “new” religious movements. With the growth of Korean nationalism in the post-colonial period, pressures also mounted in the 1960s for Buddhist groups in Korea, old and new, to distance themselves from Japan by adding the words, “Korean Buddhist,” to their official titles, a practice that the massive Korean Chogye order adopted when it was officially founded and sanctioned in 1962.67 In 1970, Sangwŏl accordingly changed the name of his movement and community to the simpler “Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order” (大韓佛敎天台宗).68 After Sangwŏl’s official declaration, Sangwŏl’s Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order was rarely listed by government authorities as a “new religious movement,” since it categorically satisfied the nationalistic norms that the Korean the government imposed on officially recognized religions.

In their pursuit of public acceptance and official sanction for the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, Sangwŏl’s group had emphasized that the Ch’ŏnt’ae school was a rightful historical successor to Ŭich’ŏn’s prior establishment of a Ch’ŏnt’ae jong under the Korean Kingdom of Koryŏ a thousand years earlier. This link to a venerable historical figure and prior Buddhist presence in Korea was actively promoted through Ch’ŏnt’ae publications, the Abridged Compendium 67 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng” [The Religious Identities and Practices of the Cheontae Order in Korea], Chŏngshinmunhwayŏngu 37, no. 4 (2014): 140-141.

68 Ibid., 140; Kim Seun, “Sangwŏl wŏn'gagŭi yŏn'gu [The Study on Sangwol Wongak’s Buddhistic Thought],” (PhD. diss., Tongguk University, 2016),48.

and the Holy Scripture being conspicuous examples. The effort to forge a connection to Ŭich’ŏn is additionally evident in the official name adopted by Sangwŏl’s group between 1967 and 1970. As indicated above, Sangwŏl added Ŭich’ŏn’s posthumous epithet, Great Awakening (Taegak 大覺) to the first official name that was adopted by his group, Ch’ŏnt’ae Great Awakening Buddhism 天台宗大覺佛敎.69 Ch’ŏnt’ae chronicles authored during this period of the late 1960s and 1970s also often note that Sangwŏl personally visited historical places connected with Ŭich’ŏn’s legacy, such as Gukcheong Monastery where Ŭich’ŏn first founded his Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, and the Youngtong Monastery, where the stele-inscription of Ŭich’ŏn’s famous epitaph (as Master Great Awakening) was erected.70 This emphasis on Sangwŏl’s patriarchal connection to Ŭich’ŏn was thus further utilized to justify the legitimacy of Sangwŏl’s Ch’ŏnt’ae Order and Sangwŏl’s status as a Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch akin to that of Ŭich’ŏn.

Steps to secure historical grounding for Sangwŏl’s Ch’ŏnt’ae jong akin to that of other, established Buddhist orders in Korea and East Asia did not stop with the figure of Ŭich’ŏn, however. As we witness in the differing representations of Sangwŏl’s journey to China, modern scholarship and normative publications of the new Ch’ŏnt’ae Order also sought authorizing connections to Tiantai Zhiyi, the de facto founding patriarch of Chinese Tiantai and Japanese Tendai tradition. This was approached in several ways. To begin with, Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae scholarship routinely makes a point of noting parallels between the background, life experience, and motives of Sangwŏl and Zhiyi, thereby conspicuously recasting Sangwŏl’s story in the tropes and imagery of Zhiyi’s traditional hagiography.71 69 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng,” 2014, 139. 70 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng,” 2014, 63. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

71 Choi Dong-Soon, “Sangwŏlchosa haengjŏge taehan pŏp'wasasangŭi chŏkyong” [Application of Buddhist Ideologies to the Personal History of Priest Sangwol], Journal of Korean Seon Studies 20 (2008): 241. doi:10.22253/jkss.2008.08.20.225.

Zhiyi lived and taught during the chaotic Northern and Southern Dynasties period, while Sangwol experienced the devastation of the Korean War. Exposed directly to the massive suffering and dislocation that comes with war, Sangwŏl, like Zhiyi before him, is said to have developed a deep vow of compassion and commitment to save all suffering beings.72 Sangwŏl, moreover, is often described in Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist literatures and articles as a master of Zhiyi’s Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrinal system, as well as Zhiyi’s core practice of meditative calming and contemplation.73 Ch’ŏnt’ae hagiographers present Sangwŏl’s mastery of core Tiantai teachings in language that directly recalls passages in the celebrated hagiography of Zhiyi contained in classic Chinese Tiantai works such as Zhipan’s influential Comprehensive Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs (Fozu tongji, completed ca. 1268). For example, echoing Zhiyi’s effort to seek the original unity of the Buddha’s message and reconcile competing interpretations of the Buddha’s teaching that circulated in China doing the divisive North-South Dynasties, Sangwŏl is said to have turned to Tiantai teachings as the means to unify Buddhist teachings in contemporary Korea and reach people of all abilities.74 Furthermore, just as Chinese Tiantai chronicles leap historical time and geographical distance by enlisting experiences of revelatory spiritual awakening as a direct link to the Buddha and the ancient Indian patriarchs, so Sangwŏl’s Korean hagiographers use these same tropes to link Sangwŏl to Zhiyi and other venerable Buddhist predecessors. By the time of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) in China, Tiantai patriarchal hagiography had developed at least three clear avenues of transmission that linked the Chinese patriarch Zhiyi (538-597) to the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and his original Dharma. One was by comprehensive study and critical classification (panjiao 判教) of the Buddha’s received word or sermons—the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna sūtras. The second was through direct awakening to the

72 Choi Dong-Soon, “Sangwŏlchosaŭi saengaee nat'anan suhaenggwan,” 2003, 173.

73 Choi Dong-Soon, “Sangwŏlchosa haengjŏge taehan pŏp'wasasangŭi chŏkyong,” 2008, 263. doi:10.22253/jkss.2008.08.20.225.

74 Zhipan 志磐, Fozu tongji 佛祖統級, CBETA, T49, no. 2035, p. 177, c17-p. 178, a28

transcendent Buddhist truth—the living enlightenment of the Buddha (佛意) and the Indian patriarchs—fostered by practice of meditation and related spiritual disciplines. The third was by means of contact with the Buddha, personally, in a prior lifetime, that is to say, the notion (well accepted even in early Tiantai) that both Zhiyi and his teacher, Huisi, had been personally present in the Buddha’s assembly when Śākyamuni Buddha preached the Lotus Sūtra on Mount Gṛdhrakuta centuries ago.75 Medieval Japanese Tendai chronicles, in some instances, even represent Zhiyi as having been an incarnation of Bodhisattva Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara), a notion that may have been familiar to Sangwŏl and modern-day Ch’ŏnt’ae hagiographers, given the Japanese colonial presence.

Suggestively drawing on these precedents, Dong-Soon Choi (a scholar affiliated with the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong) claims that Sangwŏl’s Ch’ŏnt’ae Dharma transmission from Zhiyi can be explained through Sangwŏl’s realization of the Lotus Sūtra’s “coalescing of the three vehicles and returning them to the one vehicle” (會三歸一) and “the Tiantai ultimate truth of the perfect interfusion of the three truths” (三諦圓融), enabled by Sangwŏl’s enlightenment through practice of calming and contemplation.76 Again, in ways that recall the established hagiographies of Zhiyi, Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists routinely profess that Sangwŏl himself was an incarnation of the celestial bodhisattva Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara), thereby linking the historical event of Sangwŏl’s revelation/inspiration and creation of the Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order to the transcendent realm of the eternally dwelling buddhas, bodhsattvas, and Dharma.77 Finally, of course, we have the previously mentioned effort to link Sangwŏl’s patriarchal lineage to historical figures such as the Koryŏ master Ŭich’ŏn, the Korean master Yose, and the Chinese Tiantai founder Zhiyi. Even though Zhiyi, Ŭich’ŏn, and Sangwŏl are 75 Guanding 觀頂, Sui Tiantai Zhizhe dashi biezhuan 隋天台智者大師別傳, CBETA, T50, no. 2050, p. 191, c21-p. 192, a5

76 Fozu tongji, CBETA, T49, no. 2035, p. 177, c17-p. 178, a28; Choi Dong-Soon, “Hyŏndae han'guk Ch“ŏnt”aejongŭi Suhaenggujowa wŏnyungsamjeŭi chŏkyong,” 2004, 171.

77 Daoxuan 道宣, Xu Gaoseng zhuan 續高僧傳, CBETA, T50, no. 2060, p. 564, b15-21

separated distantly from one another by time and space, as figures of renown they became linked in the hagiographical imagination of later Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists and modern Ch’ŏnt’ae scholars through the transmission of Zhiyi’s “Three Great Works of Tiantai” (天台三大部): the Profound or Deep Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra (Fahua xuanyi 法華玄義), [Commentary to] the Lotus Sūtra by Passage and Line (Fahua wenju法華文句), and the Great Calming and Contemplation (Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀).

From the first founding of the modern Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists have shown deep devotion to Sangwŏl and sought ritually to commemorate his presence in ways that, once again, recall traditional forms in which Buddhist patriarchs have figured into the daily institutional routines and personal lives of Buddhist devotees. Since many followers of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong acknowledge Sangwŏl as a reincarnation of Guanyin, often they chant “Homage to Sangwŏl the great patriarch 南無上月圓覺大祖師” as a form of personal daily practice and devotion, much as one might traditionally intone the name of Bodhisattva Guanyin.78 Sangwŏl himself is recorded as having once announced: “Ultimate reality is without mark; the marvelous Dharma of the Buddha is [originally] unarisen; a lotus [blossom] without defilement.” In 1971, the Ch’ŏnt’ae order declared these words of Sangwol to be equivalent in stature to a sūtra of the Buddha.79 Every Ch’ŏnt’ae follower must recite this verse by Sangwŏl before they commence Buddhist devotions in the home, services at Ch’ŏnt’ae temples, and official events. Whenever special convocations are held, an appointed monk recites these words of Sangwŏl out loud. Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists bow to a portrait of Sangwŏl three times before morning and evening Buddhist services, and whenever they enter the worship hall in Ch’ŏnt’ae monasteries.80 April 27th is the day that Sangwŏl 78 Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, Ch'ŏnt'aesinhaengŭi ch'ŏtkŏrŭm, 2011, 181-185; Kang Don-ku,

“Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng,” 2014, 69.

doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

79 Kim Seun, “Sangwŏl wŏn'gagŭi yŏn'gu,” 2016, 57.

80 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng,” 2014, 20-21.

died, and every year Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists commemorate the patriarchal death anniversary of Sangwŏl on that day, much as Zhiyi’s death anniversary of 11/26 has been ritually celebrated by Tiantai and Tendai Buddhists elsewhere in East Asia.

In this way, Sangwŏl’s presence as a patriarch enters the lives of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists through an array of different media beyond that of mere written hagiography and literary account. Architectural space and visual symbol are one such prominent medium, and with them comes ritual performance and the sensory encounters of body, speech, and mind. Veneration of pictorial scrolls of Sangwŏl have already been mentioned above. However, one of the most imposing structures in the Ch’ŏnt’ae repertoire is the Patriarch Hall, a conspicuous feature of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist monastery complexes that, once again, harks in form and concept to patriarchs halls long used for centuries in monasteries of Buddhist orders throughout East Asia, such as Chan/Zen/Sŏn and Tiantai/Tendai. Like the patriarchs that preceded him, Sangwŏl’s initial elevation as a Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch was accomplished as much through architecture, ritual, and visual form as it was through spoken or written narrative. In 2000, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong constructed “the Great Patriarchal Hall” in the

Guinsa Monastery. The Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists fashioned a four meter tall golden seated statue of Sangwŏl, which they enshrined in the hall, and the Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists bow to the statue of Sangwŏl and pray to him. The Great Patriarch Hall is located at the highest point of the Guinsa monastery complex. The location and the splendor of the Great Patriarchal Hall visually and symbolically impress on the minds of visitors and devotees the fact that Sangwŏl was the founding patriarch of the Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae jong and an incarnation of Guanyin. In addition to the presence of patriarchs halls and statues of Sangwŏl in Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae monasteries, in 1993 the Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae order sponsored the construction of a“ Chinese-Korean Patriarchal Hall” in the Guoqing Monastery 國淸寺 on Mount Tiantai in

China, the traditional home of the Chinese Tiantai school.81 In the Chinese-Korean Patriarchal Hall, the seated statues of Zhiyi, Ŭich’ŏn, and Sangwŏl were enshrined in 1995, located according to historical sequence in the middle, right, and left respectively82. The interaction with the Chinese Tiantai order and building Sangwŏl’s statue in the Guoqing monastery gives a strong religious message that is reminiscent of Sangwŏl’s historical validity as a Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarch.

In 2008, the Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae order completed construction of yet another structure in Guinsa Monastery, the “Ch’ŏnt’ae Patriarchal Lineage Hall,” in which it enshrined seated statues of thirty six historical Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchs ranging from Nāgārjuna to the Chosŏn Buddhist monk Hangho 行乎.84 Once again, the structure is designed visually to impress visitors and devotees with the idea of a direct and continuous lineage connection between Sangwŏl’s Ch’ŏnt’ae jong and the fifteen hundred year old Chinese Tiantai tradition. Modern Ch’ŏnt’ae ritual: the Practice of Incantation of the Name of Guanyin

In the foregoing section we have shown how traditional Korean and Chinese Buddhist symbolism and narratives of patriarchal lineage were utilized to bolster the claim that Sangwŏl was the heir to a line of Ch’ŏnt’ae (C, Tiantai) patriarchs that extended back through the founding Chinese patriarch Zhiyi and the Indian patriarch Nāgārjuna to Śākyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha himself. The question that naturally follows, then, is why Sangwŏl and his followers chose the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong (Tiantai zong) as the tradition with which to stake his historical roots. As we have noted, previous efforts to establish a Ch’ŏnt’ae

81 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt’aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng,” 2014, 66. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

82 “Korean-Chinese Three Ch'ŏnt’ae Patriarhs,” Pŏpposinmun, last modified May 17, 2011, http://www.beopbo.com/news/quickViewArticleView.html?idxno=65810 83 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng,” 2014, 22 84 Ibid., 22.

jong in Koryŏ Korea were sporadic, ultimately disappearing altogether by 1424, when their remnants were absorbed into the growing Chan or Sŏn school Buddhism.85 It was not until a half a millennium later, on January 24th of 1967, that Sangwŏl officially proclaimed his Buddhist movement to be called “the Ch’ŏnt’ae school.” Upon adopting the name “Ch’ŏnt’ae” in 1967, the number of Sangwŏl’s followers rapidly increased. In 1967, the number of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist temples was about twenty in Korea. Their congregations were by and large very small. By 1972, some eighty monks lived in the head Guinsa Monastery alone, and the number of practitioners who came daily to worship at Guinsa numbered around one hundred.86 In 2012, the number of Ch’ŏnt’ae temples had increased to 350, with a total of 400 active monks in the order, and as many as two and a half million lay Ch’ŏnt’ae followers.87 Since its inception in 1967, the Ch’ŏnt’ae school has clearly experienced a massive increase in presence, and today the Ch’ŏnt’ae order stands as the third largest Buddhist school in Korea, after the Jogye and the Taego orders. Key to that expansion was the adoption of the historically prominent name, “Ch’ŏnt’ae.”88 How did that choice come about?

It does not seem that Sangwŏl suddenly chose the historical name Ch’ŏnt’ae without any reason. During the Japanese colonial period, the name Ch’ŏnt’ae (Japanese, Tendai) became increasingly prominent in Korean society due to Japanese Buddhist influence. Multiple Japanese Ch’ŏnt’ae (Tendai) temples were founded across Korea, including several in Seoul, the traditional capital of Chŏson Korea and the administrative center of the Japanese occupation. The Korean popular press also began to mention the fame of Ŭich’ŏn.89 85 Yi Yŏng-ja, Ch'ŏnt'ae Pulgyohak [Ch'ŏnt'ae Buddhology] (Sŏul-si: Pulchisa, 2001), 276; Ko Byungchul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng” [The Religious Identities and Practices of the Cheontae Order in Korea], Chŏngshinmunhwayŏngu 37, no. 4 (2014):138. 86 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyoch‘ŏnt’aejongŭi Ŭiryewa shinang - Kuinsawa Taegwangsarŭl chungshimŭro” [The Rituals and Faith of the Cheonate Order in Korea - focused on Guinsa 救仁寺 and Daegwangsa 大廣寺], The Journal of the Korean Association for the History of Religions 73 (2013): 2. 87 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng,” 2014, 139.

88 Ibid., 93. 89 Ibid., 140.

Published by the Ch’ŏnt’ae order in 1982, the Compendium on Spreading Buddhist Teachings, provided the first official explanation as to why Sangwŏl picked the name “Ch’ŏnt’ae.” The Compendium states, “Sangwŏl realized the importance of Buddhism given the desperate situation of Korea. In order to fulfill his historical mission to restore Buddhism and save all beings, Sangwŏl chose Ch’ŏnt’ae jong as the supreme teaching of Buddhism.”90 Thus, Sangwŏl is said to have believed that the Ch’ŏnt’ae School was the epitome of the Buddha’s teaching and the Buddhist tradition best suited to reforming a corrupted and divisive Korean Buddhism and restoring the stability of Korea as a country in turmoil.91 To put it another way, it was in the desperate social environment of post-colonial and post Pacific War Korea that people began to acknowledge the historical importance of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism and figures such as Ŭich’ŏn, and it was in that same desperate situation that Sangwŏl in turn found the inspiration to promote Ch’ŏnt’ae teachings and select Ch’ŏnt’ae jong for the name of his movement.

There is a clear tension between the view of Ch’ŏnt’ae practitioners and scholars who claim their tradition is the direct successor to the Tiantai tradition of doctrine and practice, on the one hand, and observations by certain critical non-sectarian scholars, on that other, who see that claim as recent and artificial, and who characterize Sangwŏl’s teaching as a “new Buddhist movements” rooted in Korean “folk religion.” Dong-Soon Choi, the former Director of Education of the Ch’ŏnt’ae order and a researcher of Tongguk Buddhist Academy at Tongguk University, struggled to authenticate the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae claims to historical succession by tracing the origin of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae ritual practices and doctrine to the historical Chinese Tiantai and Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae traditions. Seun Kim, another modern Ch’ŏnt’ae scholar and abbot of Samkwang Monastery, also tried to historically prove that the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae rituals and practices drew upon traditional Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist

90 Nam Daech'ung, Pulgyop'ogyojip, 1982, 245. 91 Ibid., 246.

forms of cultivation. Suspicious of any such historical connection, Don-ku Kang and Byung- Chul Ko, modern critical scholars of the Academy of Korean Studies, have pointed out the many contradictions and traces of manipulation in this process of creating the historicity of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order. Sun-euy Min, a scholar of the Korea Institute for Religion and Culture, has in turn characterized Sangwŏl and his modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order is one of various “new Buddhist movements” that arose strictly in the colonial and post-colonial era, tracing its roots to the influence of Korean “religion” rather than any vestige of an historical “Tiantai/Ch’ ŏnt’ae” tradition.

The efforts of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order to align itself as successor to an historical Tiantai/ Ch’ŏnt’ae tradition can be approached in two ways: (1) through study of its practices, including its ritual programs and symbolism, and (2) through study of its doctrinal teachings. The central practice espoused to followers of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong is the practice of ritually intoning the name of Bodhisattva Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara).92 In order to become a recognized member of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, a would-be Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist is today required to make a pilgrimage to the home Guinsa Monastery, where for three continuous days he or she invoke the name of Guanyin in the Prayer Hall of Guinsa.93 The Ch’ŏnt’ae school also affirms to believers that their deceased family members and ancestors will be reborn in the Pure Land of Amitābha Buddha if followers chant the name of Guanyin one million times.94 Although ritual practices centered on the recitation of esoteric Buddhist incantations such as the Cuṇḍi and Great Compassion dhāraṇīs were originally emphasized as the principal form of practice among Sangwŏl’s early followers, they were gradually replaced by invocation of Guanyin’s name, as expounded in the Guanyin Universal Gate Chapter of the Lotus Sūtra. By 1982, it appears that the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order had fully systematized and

92 Ibid., 122.

93 Lee Hyo-Won, “Ch‘aanŭi kuwŏllon’gwa chumun chungshimjuŭi,” 2003, 309. 94 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng,” 2014, 61. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

provided a doctrinal basis for the invocation of Guanyin as their core religious practice. The Compendium on Spreading the Teaching explains the merits of intoning the name of Guanyin, while the Abridged Compendium explicitly connects the practice with the rubric of the Four Forms or Approaches to Samādhi (四種三昧), the traditional scheme by which Zhiyi and the Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae tradition organized its core repertoire of ritual penance and devotional programs. Singling out the example of the so-called Lotus Samadhi/repentance, the 21 day penance practice that focuses on the ritual chanting of the Lotus Sūtra, the Abridged Compendium draws a connection between this practice and the core Ch’ŏnt’ae practice of ritually intoning Guanyin’s name.95 Taking a slightly different approach, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong scholar, Dong-Soon Choi, insists that the practice of invocation of Guanyin is a simplified version of the Fandeng or Vaipulya samādhi/repentance, yet another practice in the traditional repertoire of the Tiantai Four Forms of Samādhi that featured ritual recitation.96 The Compendium on Spreading the Teaching concludes, moreover, that practice of invocation of Guanyin is the means through which all sentient beings discover the original nature of universal buddhahood within themselves and become a fully awakened being like Guanyin.

Pure Land tradition in the Tiantai School

Contemporary Ch’ŏnt’ae publications and scholarship routinely insist that adoption of the practice of invoking Guanyin’s name is proof that Sangwŏl and his Ch’ŏnt’ae jong were rightful successors to the Chinese Tiantai tradition and to the earlier, Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae 95 The Abridged Ch’ŏnt’ae Compendium Compiling Association, Ch'ŏnt'aejongyakchŏn [The Abridged Ch’ŏnt’ae Compendium of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong] (Seoul: Administrative Headquarters of the Ch'ŏnt'ae order, 1970), 41.

96 Choi Dong-Soon, “Hyŏndae han'guk Ch“ŏnt”aejongŭi Suhaenggujowa wŏnyungsamjeŭi chŏkyong,” 2004, 169-170.

97 Nam Daech'ung, Pulgyop'ogyojip, 1982, 248.

tradition. To substantiate this claim, they also make a deliberate effort to trace the origin of their recitation of Guanyin’s name to former Chinese and Korean Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchs. In addition to the patriarchal lineage that unites Zhiyi, Ŭich’ŏn, and Sangwŏl, modern Ch’ŏnt’ae scholars have introduced the early Chosŏn figure of Yose and his ritual practices as an historical intermediary between the Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae school established by Uich’ŏn and the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong of Sangwŏl.

A Korean monk of the late Koryŏ period, Yose 了世 (1163-1245) initiated a revival of Tiantai thought and practice on Mount Mandok in mountains of southern Korea, where he founded a community that emphasized ritual repentance and incantation practices reminiscent of the Tiantai Four Forms of Samāchi, lectured on the Lotus Sūtra and various Tiantai treatises, and founded a White Lotus devotional society that espoused rebirth in the western Pure Land through devotion to Amitābha Buddha. Thus, he practiced Pure Land ritual devotions together Tiantai meditative calming and contemplation, and actively promoted the unity of Ch’ŏnt’ae and Pure Land practice to his followers. That synthesis he in turn based on the writings of the influential Song Dynasty Chinese Tiantai master and reviver, Siming Zhili 四明知禮 (960-1028), especially Zhili’s Guan Wulianshou Fo jing shu miaozong chao 觀無 量壽佛經疏妙宗鈔 (hearafter Miaozong chao), Notes on the Marvelous Meaning/Principle of the Commentary to the Sūtra on the Contemplation/Visualization of the Buddha of Measureless Life (T no. 1751). Thus, to properly understand Yose’s teachings, and their importance for the modern-day Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, it is necessary to review briefly Zhili’s thought on the unity of Tiantai and Pure Land practice, and their place in later Chinese Tiantai tradition.

First articulated as a distinctive path of practice in early sixth century China, Pure Land teaching and practice has traditionally promoted the goal of rebirth in the western Pure Land of Amitābha Buddha through personal devotions to the Buddha Amitābha and, especially, the

intoning of his name (nianfo 念佛), contemplation of his image, and chanting of core sūtras dedicated to him. As the popularity of this practice grew, cult devotion to Amitābha and his Pure Land were embraced and accommodated by most Chinese Buddhist schools and orders, including the developing Chan and Tiantai schools.98 As we have noted, devotions to Amitābha were featured in the Constantly Walking (or Pratyutpanna) Samādhi, one of the practices incorporated under Zhiyi’s early Tiantai rubric of the Four Forms of Samādhi. Thus, according to Zhiyi, practitioners who undertake the Constantly Walking or Pratyupanna Samādhi practice—during which one ritually circulates an altar to Amitābha and ritually intones his name for a fixed period of ninety days--can achieve realization of the Tiantai truth of “ the harmonious interfusion of the three views or truths within a single moment of consciousness.”99 Promoted by various Tiantai masters over subsequent centuries, Pure Land practices gained increasing prominence in Tiantai circles, reaching an apex under Zhili and his contemporaries in Song Dynasty China (960-1279).100

Zhili made a special point of theoretically integrating Pure Land practice and soteriology with the traditional Tiantai doctrine of the interfusion of the absolute and phenomenal realms, or “three truths replete within a single instant of consciousness.”101 Zhili looked to the Sūtra on the Contemplation/Visualization of the Buddha of Measureless Life (Guan wuliangshou fo jing 觀無量壽佛經, T no. 365), one of the three main sūtras of Pure Land teaching, as the scriptural basis for his integration.102 In the Miaozong chao (Notes to the Marvelous Principle/Meaning) Zhili sets forth his interpretation of the Guan wuliangshou 98 Yi Yŏng-ja, Ch'ŏnt'ae Pulgyohak, 2001, 253; Robert H Sharf, On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch'an / Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China (T’oung Pao. - Leiden. - 88, 2002): 320.

99 Daniel Aaron Getz, Jr., “Siming Zhili and Tiantai Pure Land in the Song dynasty,” 1994, 194. 100 Ibid., 195-197.

101 Ibid., 204.

102 Ibid., 205.

fo jing shu 觀無量壽佛經疏, T no. 1750, an influential commentary to the Contemplation Sūtra attributed (mistakenly) to Tiantai Zhiyi.103

Though controversial during his day, Zhili’s Miaozong chao became the definitive Tiantai statement regarding the place of Amitābha and his Pure Land in later Tiantai thought and practice.104 Competing conceptions of the Pure Land as an external reality (a place to be reborn) and the Pure Land as a product of “mind only” (i.e. a symbolic expression of the intrinsically enlightened nature of the mind) were widespread during the early Song Period. Zhili sought to reconcile and integrate these conflicting perspectives on the basis of the traditional Tiantai teaching of the interfusing three truths, according to which both the phenomenal and absolute perspectives encompass one another and are contained within each and every moment of thought.105 According to Zhili, the Pure Land of Amitābha Buddha, as a place, does not exist separate from the mind, and hence, both the Pure Land and Amitābha’s enlightened presence as a Buddha can be accessed through the moment of thought at hand. Many practitioners in Song China held that rebirth in an external Pure Land was to be achieved by relying on the “other-power” of Amitābha Buddha.106 Yet, Zhili taught that practitioners’ self-effort and “other power” operated integrally within the devotee’s mind, precisely because Amitābha Buddha and his Pure Land were inseparable from the universal buddha-nature resident in the mind.107 Therefore, invocation of the Amitābha Buddha was not a just simple practice by which uneducated devotees call out to an external Amitābha Buddha for assistance, but a practice that arouses the full power of universal Buddhahood

103 Ibid., 5, 192.

104 Ibid., 193.

105 Ibid., 206.

106 Getz, “Siming Zhili and Tiantai Pure Land in the Song dynasty,” 1994, 407; Nevertheless, some Tiantai figures, such as Yuanzhou 元照 (1048-1116), criticized Zhili in that Zhili’s Miaozong chao overlooked a popular practice of Pure Land. Zhili taught that “mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is the mind, so that meditation upon mind and the Buddha is to the same.” Yet, Yuanzhou thought that meditation on the mind is only for those who have a high-capacity while meditation on the Buddha is for most of the lay people who have a low-capacity for spiritual awakening.

107 Ibid., 207-208.

resident in the practitioner and Amitābha himself. Thus, for Zhili, contemplation of and devotion to Amitābha provided the most effective practice for realization of samādhi and spiritual awakening, as well as the Pure Land.

Even though Zhili did not focus on the invocation practice in writings such as his Notes on the Marvelous Meaning (Miaozong chao), the historical evidence is quite clear that he widely taught—and did not reject--verbal invocation of Amitābha’s name and related ritual practices, as well as the goal of rebirth in the western Pure Land. They were core practices of the devotional association, known as the “Pure [Land] Society for Recollection or Recitation of the Buddha” 念佛淨社 that he established for his lay Pure Land devotees at Yanqing Monastery 延慶寺 in Mingzhou 明州 in 1013,108 and they were employed personally by Zhili at the very end of his life.. They also were embraced widely by his disciples and many of his Tiantai contemporaries, including his Dharma-brother Ciyun Zunshi (964-1032), who authored several very popular ritual manuals for Pure Land practice that are known to have subsequently been used widely by Pure Land practitioners and devotees throughout the Song and later periods. What is more, that same theological reasoning that was applied to rituals centered on Amitābha was extended to other ritual recitations and practices such as the intoning of the Great Compassion dhāraṇī of Guanyin and even recitation of Guanyin’s name.109

Inheritance of Yose and his Practices

108 Zhili’s original charter (announcement) for the society, Jie nianfo hui shu 結念佛會疏, is preserved in his collected writings, Siming zunzhe jiaoxing lu 四明尊者教行錄, compiled by Zongxiao 宗曉, T no. 1937, 46.862a-c. The charter was composed in 1012, and the society first gathered in 1013. Zhili’s society, and its charter, also served as a model for similar Pure Land devotional lay societies formed at Tiantai monasteries throughout the Song and Yuan; Getz, “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies,” in Buddhism in the Sung, 1999, 494. 109 Daniel B. Stevenson, “Tz’u-yun Tsun-shih and Lay Tiantai Buddhist Practice in Song China.”

Zhili’s thought on Pure Land and his model devotional society are known to have had a strong influence on the Pure Land devotional society that Yose 了世 (1163-1245) himself founded at Mandoksan in 1236.110 Prior to his turn to Tiantai and Pure Land teachings, Yose stayed with the Korean Buddhist master Chinul, known as the founder of the Korean Jogye or Sŏn (Chan) order of Buddhism. Chinul and his followers emphasized “self-effort” and the demanding practices of Sŏn/Chan meditation, by which practitioners sought to realize the awakening to their intrinsic Buddha nature.111 However, troubled by the thought that it would be almost impossible for all but the most exceptionally gifted person to be enlightened by such self-effort, Yose left Chinul’s group and set out to build a Buddhist movement in which everyone could participate.

Though such an explanation of Yose’s motives seems rather simplistic and not altogether convincing, it is precisely this interpretation that is apologetically offered in the normative Chronicle of the Lineage 天台宗統紀, one of the four principal works of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong. Pursuing this line of argument, in an effort to establish the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong scholar Dong-soon Choi draws an explicit parallel between this compassion and social largesse of Yose and Sangwŏl’s compassion for contemporary common Korean people, thereby seeking to further build a credible link between Yose and Sangwŏl.113 According to his epitaph, the Pagoda Epitaph of State Preceptor Wonmyo of White Lotus Monastery 白蓮寺圓妙國師中眞塔碑, Yose was awakened while he was giving a lecture on Zhili’s Miaozong chao, when he encountered the line, “One becomes a Buddha by means of this mind/heart, and this very mind/heart in the mind/heart of the Buddha.”114 We

110 Yi Yŏng-ja, Ch'ŏnt'ae Pulgyohak, 2001, 252.

111 Nam Daech'ung, Ch'ŏnt'aejongt'onggi [Chronicle of the Lineage of the Ch’ŏnt’ae School] (Ch'ungbuk: Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, 1983), 93-94.

112 Ibid., 95.

113 Choi Dong-Soon, “Sangwŏlchosa haengjŏge taehan pŏp'wasasangŭi chŏkyong,” 2008, 267. doi:10.22253/jkss.2008.08.20.225.

114 The original passage in the inscription of Yose is 講妙宗, 至是心作佛 是心是佛, 不覺破顔. 自後 妙宗. 辯慧無㝵; Choi Dong-Soon, “Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi Kwanŭm Ch'ingmyŏng Suhaeng Wŏlli - Yose

also know from Yose’s epitaph and various writings connected with his Pure Land devotional society, that Yose and the members of his devotional society actively practiced invocation of the Amitābha Buddha based on Zhili’s Notes on the Marvelous Meaning (Miaozong chao) and his conception of Pure Land practice. Yose himself, according to the epitaph, every day chanted the Lotus Sūtra in its entirety, the Cuṇḍi dhāraṇī 1,000 times, and the name of Amitābha Buddha 10,000 times.115 In addition to these daily devotions that entailed oral chanting of Buddhist sūtra, incantations, and the name of the Buddha, Yose also emphasized the practice of penance ritual based on Tiantai Zhiyi’s influential manual, the Fahua sanmei chanyi 法華三昧懺儀 (Rite for the Lotus Samādhi Repentance).116 On the basis of Zhiyi’s lotus repentance, Yose incorporated the traditional Tiantai practice of meditative calming and contemplation into his community’s regimen of practice.

Modern Ch’ŏnt’ae scholars, Seun Kim and Dong-soon Choi, claim, in their articles about Yose and Sangwŏl that the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order’s practice of invocation of Guanyin is the form of practice that succeeded to the invocation practice that Yose originally implemented in his Mandoksan community some five centuries earlier.118 In order to validate this claim, they and various other Ch’ŏnt’ae apologists argue that, over the course of the Chosŏn Dynasty, Yose’s sophisticated Tiantai conception of Zhili’s interfusing mind-only Pure Land underwent radical change, as prevailing views of Pure Land teaching and practice in Korea became progressively more externalized and concrete.119 As belief in the Pure Land Pimyŏngŭi Tangch'uhyŏnjŏn‘Gwa Kŭ Paegyŏng T’Amgu” [The Principle of Avalokitesvara bodhisattva Name Calling discipline by the Cheontae order - ‘Dangchu Hyunjun當處現前’ in the Yose memorial stone and An investigation of its Background], Journal of Korean Seon Studies 34 (2013): 291.

doi:10.22253/jkss.2013.04.34.273.

115 禪觀誦授之餘, 誦法華一部 准提神呪一千遍 彌陀佛號一萬聲, 以爲日課; Ibid., 273.

116 Han Bo Kwang, “Wŏnmyoyoseŭi Chŏngt'ogwan” [The View of Master Wonmyo Yose's Pure Land], Pulgyohakpo 36 (1999): 43.

117 Yi Yŏng-ja, Ch'ŏnt'ae Pulgyohak, 2001, 253.

118 Kim, Seun, “Han'guk Ch'ŏnt‘aejongŭi yŏmbulsuhaeng Chŏnt’onggwa kŭ kyesŭng,” 2011, 745; Choi Dong-Soon, “Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi Kwanŭm Ch'ingmyŏng Suhaeng Wŏlli - Yose Pimyŏngŭi Tangch'uhyŏnjŏn‘Gwa Kŭ Paegyŏng T’Amgu,” 2013, 276.

119 Kim, Seun, “Han'guk Ch'ŏnt‘aejongŭi yŏmbulsuhaeng Chŏnt’onggwa kŭ kyesŭng,” 2011, 755.

as a concrete place of rebirth became increasingly the norm, the simple practice of calling the name of Amitābha or Guanyin likewise not only grew in popularity, but became the predominant mode of vernacular Buddhist practice. Citing this development, Ch’ŏnt’ae jong scholars and apologists observe that the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong adapted skillfully to the circumstances at hand when Sangwŏl chose to adopt and promote Yose’s practice of intoning the Cuṇḍi (Junje) Dhāraṇī incantation and the names of Amitābha Buddha and Bodhisattva Guanyin as a technique suited to the common populace of post-colonial Korea.

Much as we find in the Koryŏ records of Yose’s devotional society, between 1945 and 1965, Sangwŏl’s early community also regularly recited various dhāraṇīs in their daily practice, until they switched to the recitation of the name of Guanyin in 1972. According to Seun Kim, the Ch’ŏnt’ae scholar and abbot of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Samkwang monastery in Busan, the practice of intoning dhāraṇī incantations and the name of Guanyin was implemented in Sangwŏl’s early community as an expedient means for reaching out to and bringing people of all abilities beings to salvation. So, claiming, Seun Kim argues that Sangwŏl was characterized by the same compassionate concern for common populace that Yose felt centuries earlier.121 On these grounds Kim goes on to submit that Yose deserves to be acknowledged as a saintly figure who reestablished Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae identity pursuant to Ŭich’ŏn’s effort to found a Ch’ŏnt’ae school in Korea a century earlier.

Pursuant to this line of thinking, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order traces the Korean roots of their sectarian identity to Ŭich’ŏn, but when it comes to the specifics of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist practice, they trace transmission of their devotional and ritual program from the early Chinese founder Zhiyi to the Song Dynasty Tiantai reviver Zhili, and from Zhili to the late Koryŏ Korean monk Yose. Thus, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong’s claim of succeeding to Yose’s ritual

120 Ibid., 766.

121 Ibid., 762; Nam Daech'ung, Ch'ŏnt'aejongt'onggi, 1983, 96.

122 Ibid., 749.

tradition can be seen as a persuasive strategy for justifying their implementation of the practice of invoking Guanyin’s name, while at the same time presenting that innovation as a return to a very traditional Korean form of Ch’ŏnt’ae practice. It is clear that the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong has looked strongly to Yose’s Buddhist populism, rather than to Ŭich’ŏn’s “aristocratic” Buddhism when it comes to consideration of the school’s ritual practices. Yet, in the main they have emphasized Ŭich’ŏn over Yose because of Ŭich’ŏn’s eminent historical stature and symbolic role as a founder of Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism.

Traces of Manipulation and Artificiality

Even though the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Order has publicly presented itself—and been largely accepted--as the successor to the Chinese Tiantai and Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae traditions, their continuous repackaging and reinscription of that claim to historical succession, as we have shown, betrays many traces of manipulation in this process of creating historicity. The modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order claims that invocation of Guanyin’s name is a direct descendent of the earlier Koryŏ-period Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist tradition. Yet, it was not until 1972--nearly three decades after Sangwŏl first began to teach--that the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong adopted and promoted the invocation of Guanyin’s name as their core practice, having emphasized the Cuṇḍi (Junje)

Dhāraṇī as the main meditative practice prior to 1972.123 The earliest official reference to the practice of calling the name of Guanyin appears in the 1975 revised edition of the Abridged Compendium. The previous versions of the Abridged Compendium made no mention of the practice of chanting the name of Guanyin. And in fact, the edition of the Abridged Compendium published in 1970 (and later abrogated by the 1975 revised edition) encouraged 123 In fact, neither the Junje Dhāraṇī nor the recitation of Guanyin’s name has a clear and explicit precedent, as a core practice, in earlier Chinese Tiantai writings; Kim Seun, “Sangwŏl wŏn'gagŭi yŏn'gu,” 2016, 135; Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyoch‘ŏnt’aejongŭi Ŭiryewa shinang,” 2013, 152.

followers to recite the name of the Amitābha Buddha while practicing what they called “constantly walking samādhi”—a ritual procedure that, in theory, would enable followers to both realize the cardinal Ch’ŏnt’ae principle of three truths inherent in a single instant of consciousness 一心三觀 in this lifetime, and be reborn in Pure Land of the Amitābha Buddha when their earthly lives come to an end.124 As we have noted above, this practice of recitation of the name of the Amitābha Buddha while practicing constantly walking samādhi is one of the original practices of Zhiyi’s four forms of Samadhi.

Furthermore, the Holy Scriptures of Ch’ŏnt’ae, published in 1971, introduces recitation of the Cuṇḍi dhāraṇī (K, Junje; C, Zhunti Dhāraṇī 準提陀羅尼, a phonetically transcribed Sanskrit incantation associated with Guanyin) as the school’s principal method of practice.125 The text provides a detailed account of the procedure for reciting and meditating on the Cuṇḍi (Junje) incantation, including instructions on how to physically comport oneself and how properly to chant the dhāraṇī. The power of the dhāraṇī to magically affect events and evoke awakening is attributed purely to the sound of its phonetically transcribed Sanskrit syllables rather than to their meaning as words. As a phonetic recitation, its practice is also characterized as easy to learn and accessible to persons of all background and ability. In addition to the Cuṇḍi (Junje) dhāraṇī, Sangwŏl’s early repertoire, in fact, even included the six syllable mantra 六字眞言 of Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara),126 various folk remedies for treating diseases, and the adoption of a form of folk chanting known as “kunggungganggang” 弓弓降降.127 Byung Chul Ko, a modern scholar of Korean religion at the Academy of Korean Studies, points out that the later replacement of the Cuṇḍi (Junje) dhāraṇī and other 124 The Abridged Ch’ŏnt’ae Compendium Compiling Association, Ch'ŏnt'aejongyakchŏn, 1970, 37, 48. 125 The Holy Scripture of the Ch’ŏnt’ae order Compiling Association, Ch'ŏnt'aejongsŏngjŏn, 1971, 422. 126 Om ma ni pad me hum; Kim Seun, “Sangwŏl chosaŭi saengaewa kyohwa pangp'yŏn,” 2006, 680. 127 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng,” 2014, 150; The aim of chanting gunggungganganag was to proselytize a folk religious group known as Poch'ŏn'gyo 普天敎.

similar mantra with the practice of invoking the name of Guanyin (as taught in the 25th or “Universal Gateway” Chapter of the Lotus Sūtra) served as a way to distance Sangwŏl’s teaching from Korean folk religion and strengthen the identification of Sangwŏl’s teaching with Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism and the Lotus Sūtra.128 This change, he suggests, came as an effort to purge Sangwŏl’s community of practices—especially esoteric Buddhist practices—that carried the flavor/taint of “folk religion” or “folk Buddhism.” In this thesis, the definition of “folk religion” is religious groups that gained popularity at the end of Chosŏn Dynasty. Since a folk new religious group named “Eastern Learning 東學” was established against “Western learning 西學,” such as Catholicism in 1860, various new religious groups absorbed doctrines of Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Shamanism, and Catholicism, and they aimed the unity of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. Especially, folk new religious groups borrowed popular folk belief in Maitreya, the messianic Buddha who will come to save all sentient beings. One of the folk religious groups Chŭngsan 甑山 that still exists in Korea and the leader, Kang Ilssun (1871-1909), called himself the Buddha Maitreya, and he is known to read several Buddhist Sūtras, such as the Thousand Eyes and Hands Sūtra.

In addition, Ko Byung-chul observes that it is hard to claim that the early Ch’ŏnt’ae jong at the outset had such strong Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrinal basis and orientation. Accounts of early Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching and practice by Sangwŏl and his followers simply explain their core doctrinal teaching on the basis of the Lotus Sūtra, without any explicit reference to early 128 Ibid., 153.

129 Many Chŭngsan-related groups borrowed the name of Maitreya Buddhism because Japanese colonial government defined them as superstition. For example, one of Kang’s disciples, Kim Hyŏngnyŏl is said to meet the Buddha Maitreya in 1909. Kim named his group Maitreya Buddhism in 1922 (Youn, p. 187). In addition, Kang’s other disciple Ch'a Gyŏngsŏk built Poch'ŏn'gyo 普天敎 and there were millions of people in 1921(Youn, p. 185); Youn Jae Keun, “Chŭngsansasangŭi Pulgyo Suyonggwa Haesŏk” [An Analysis and Acceptance of Buddhism in Jeungsan’s Ideology], Sinjonggyoyŏngu 23, no. 0 (2010): 174; Kim Pangnyong, “Haebang Chŏnŭi Sinjonggyowa Pulgyoŭi Kwan'gye” [the Relation Between Korean New Religions and Korean Buddhism Before the Korean Liberation], Wŏnbulgyosasanggwajonggyomunhwa 66 (December 1, 2015): 202-214.

Chinese or Korean Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrinal formulations. For example, the Charter of the Ch’ŏnt’ae order, composed in 1971, makes little to no mention of technical Tiantai/Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrinal formulas of the sort found in works of Zhiyi and Chinese Tiantai masters. Later versions of the Charter composed in 1994 and 2009 progressively reveal a much clearer presence of formal Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai doctrine.130 Ko also claims that the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order strengthened the basis as a primary mission of the school in the course of its effort to be recognized as the legitimate heir to the Koryŏ Ch’ŏnt’ae order. The Ch’ŏnt’ae order made a constant effort to enhance the sect’s doctrinal legitimation by adding historical Ch’ŏnt’ae writings into their main scripture.

When Sangwŏl first founded the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, the Lotus Sūtra alone was hailed as the main scripture of the Ch’ŏnt’ae School.131 According to the Holy Scripture published in 1971, Zhiyi’s Three Great Works 天台三大部 and Five Brief Works 天台五小部 were not considered the main scriptures of the school,132 even though the Three Great Works and the Five Brief Works of Zhiyi had been core texts of the Chinese Tiantai school throughout its history. As time passed, the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong has increasingly filled their main scriptures with a multitude of historical Ch’ŏnt’ae treatises and writings. In 1994, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong chose the Tiantai Fourfold Teachings 天台四敎儀, attributed to the Koryŏ monk Chegwan (C, Diguan 諦觀), and Zhiyi’s Three Great Works 天台三大部 as their principal texts. In 2009, the school added Zhiyi’s so-called “Five Small Works

130 Ibid., 45.

131 Ibid., 143.

132 The Holy Scripture of the Ch’ŏnt’ae order Compiling Association, Ch'ŏnt'aejongsŏngjŏn, 1971, 575.

天台五小部133 and the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom 大智度論134 into the their core scriptures as well.

As a vocal critic of modern Ch’ŏnt’ae apologetic scholarship, Yang Ŭnyong, a Buddhist scholar at Wŏn'gwang University in Korea categorizes the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong one of the new Buddhist movements that occurred since the 1960s.136 Min Sun-euy, a researcher of the Korea Institute for Religion and Culture, also insists that the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong constitutes one of several “new Buddhist movements” that appeared on the scene, for the first time, in post-colonial Korea, distinguishing the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong categorically from the Chogye and Taego orders that succeeded to the established Korean “Mountain Buddhist” tradition of the Chosŏn Dynasty.137 According to Min’s research, the practice of reciting the Great Compassion dhāraṇī (大悲咒) of the Thousand Arm and Eye Guanyin was the principal

practice connected with worship of Guanyin that was prevalent at the end of Chosŏn Dynasty.138 So stating, Min claims that practice of invocation of the name of Guanyin in the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong is just a residual trace of popular folk belief in Guanyin that was prevalent at the end of the Chosŏn period. Min considers belief in Guanyin, chanting, dhāraṇī, and an ability to cure as common elements of various folk cultic Buddhist movements that arose in Korea since the 1940s.139 In addition, Min and Don-gu Kang, a 133 These five are commentaries (attributed to Zhiyi) on several shorter sūtras other than the Lotus. These five works began to be grouped and studied together in the Song and includes Guanyin xuanyi 觀音玄義, Guanyin yishu 觀音義疏, Jin guangming xuanyi 金光明玄義, Jin guangming wenju 金光明文句, Guan wuliangshou jing shu 觀無量壽經疏.

134 In China and East Asia the treatise is traditionally ascribed to Nāgārjuna (13th Tiantai Indian patriarch), although scholars do not accept this claim. 135 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng,” 2014, 143. 136 Pangnyong Kim, “Haebanghu Han'gukpulgyoŭi Punyŏlgwa Sinsaengjongdan Sŏngnipkwajŏng” [The Split of Korean Buddhism and the Foundational Process of its New Religious Order After Liberation], Chonggyomunhwayŏngu, no. 3 (September 1, 2001): 301-308.

137 Min Sun-euy, “Kŭndae chŏnhwan'gi Min'gan Pulgyogyŏnghŏmŭi Yangt'aewa Yusan: Taehanbulgyo Jin'gakchonggwa taehanbulgyo Ch‘ŏnt’Aejongŭl Chungshimŭro” [The Aspects and Heritages of the Folk Buddhist Experiences in the Transitional Period of Modern Korea: A Case Study on the Jingak-jong and the Cheontae-jong], Chonggyomunhwabipyŏng 30 (2016): 50.

138 Ibid., 74. 139 Ibid., 76.

scholar of Academy of Korean Studies, both similarly point out that Sangwŏl was influenced by the Korean folk religious practices140 and prophetic writing141 that was popular at the end of the Chosŏn period.

The Ch'ont'ae jong scholars, such as Choi Dong-Soon also talk specifically about folk religion. Choi acknowledges that Sangwŏl used mystical abilities, such as treating diseases or super strength. Yet, Choi considers Sangwŏl’s use of mystical power “expedient means/devices” (fangbian 方便), to accommodate and deliver ordinary people of differing spiritual capacity.143 Thus, the Ch'ont'ae jong scholars actively seek to distance Ch'ont'ae jong from the trace of folk religion, and justified Sangwŏl’s early repertoire as an expedient means for helping suffering beings and, ultimately, bringing them to the Buddha’s Dharma.

In addition, Byung-chul Ko, a scholar of the Academy of Korean Studies, points out that, contrary to the claim of Ch’ŏnt’ae jong apologists, ritual penance practices connected traditionally with the Tiantai Four Forms of Samādhi, such as Zhiyi’s Lotus Repentance, were not practiced in the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong.144 This also holds true for the ritual program of the Great Compassion Repentance (大悲懺), which was possibly the most popular rite of penance among Chinese Tiantai Buddhists (and Buddhists at large in China) from the Song Dynasty down to present day. During the early eleventh century, Zhili composed a ritual 140 Kang Don-gu argues that the Korean folk religion by which Sangwŏl was influenced is a line of Chŭngsan 甑山. Chŭngsan refers one of the Daoist groups that was popular at the end of Chosŏn Dynasty. The followers of Chŭngsan believe in Kang Ilssun (1871-1909) as the Great Jade Emperor of Daoism. After Kang Ilssun died in 1909, his disciples founded several religious groups, and one of them is Poch'ŏn'gyo 普天敎 that Sangwŏl tried to proselytize.

141 Min Sun-euy mentions that the prophetic writing is Chŏnggamnok 鄭鑑錄. Chŏnggamnok is prophetic writing that claims a new king will reign Korea.

142 Min Sun-euy, “Kŭndae chŏnhwan'gi Min'gan Pulgyogyŏnghŏmŭi Yangt'aewa Yusan: Taehanbulgyo Jin'gakchonggwa taehanbulgyo Ch‘ŏnt’Aejongŭl Chungshimŭro,” 2016, 74; Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng,” 2014, 63.

143 Choi claims that his argument is based on the text in the Lotus Sūtra and the Sūtra’s Parable Chapter of Guanyin 觀世音菩薩譬喩品, saying “Did I tell that what the Buddha preached an expedient means by all of former relationships and parables was for unexcelled complete Enlightenment? What I preach is to edify Bodhisattva (我先佛言 諸佛世尊 以種種因緣 譬喩言辭 方便說法 皆爲阿耨多羅三藐三菩 提耶 是諸所說 皆爲化菩薩故); Choi Dong-Soon, “Sangwŏlchosa haengjŏge taehan pŏp'wasasangŭi chŏkyong,”

2008, 260. 144 Ko Byung-chul, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt'aejongŭi chonggyo chŏngch'esŏnggwa suhaeng,” 2014, 158.

manual for this practice, the Qian shouyan dabei xin zhou xingfa 千手眼大悲心呪行法 (Ritual Procedure for Performing the Great Compassionate Heart Dharani of the Thousand Hands and Eyes), which subsequently became the authoritative text for this penance ritual. Though the ritual features recitation of the Great Compassion dhāraṇī, as in other traditional Tiantai penance rituals modeled on Zhiyi, the act of recitation is set within an elaborate ritual choreography and framing consistent with Zhiyi’s manual for the Lotus Samādhi Repentance rather than performed as an isolated ct.145 The cult of Guanyin developed in conjunction with these penitential rituals over the course of the Tang and Song periods, and Tiantai figures such as Zhili progressively domesticated new practices and forms of cult devotion (such as the intoning of the Great Compassion dhāraṇī) by composing programs and manuals for ritual penance modeled on Zhiyi’s 6th century Rite for the Lotus Samadhi Repentance.146 The later Vinaya monks Tuti (1600-1679) and Ji Xian streamlined and simplified Zhili’s procedure, and their simplified manual (called the Great Compassion Repentance 大悲懺法) has been in continuous use in Chinese communities (including Hongkong and Taiwan) down to today.

In present day Korea, the entrances to nearly all the monasteries of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong have placards that are inscribed with the cardinal Ch’ŏnt’ae /Tiantai phrase, “integral realization of the three truths of emptiness, provisional existence, and the middle in a single instant of thought (一心三觀).”148 Likewise, through the practice of intoning the name of Guanyin and promoting core Tiantai Sūtras and Zhiyi’s writings as the foundational scriptures of the school, the Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order has actively sought to promote its 145 Chün-fang Yü, Kuan-yin: the Chinese transformation of Avalokiteśvara (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 264.

146 Ibid., 268.

147 Ibid., 264, 532.

148 Choi Dong-Soon, “Hyŏndae han'guk Ch“ŏnt”aejongŭi Suhaenggujowa wŏnyungsamjeŭi chŏkyong,” 2004, 166; Daniel Aaron Getz, Jr., “Siming Zhili and Tiantai Pure Land in the Song dynasty,” 1994, 205.

identity as an heir to Zhiyi, Zhili, Ŭich’ŏn and Yose. We can conclude from such evidence that the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae school has strategically drawn on core rhetorical tropes and arcs of Tiantai patriarchal lineage narrative, along with related forms of symbolic and ritual expression, as a means to strengthen public perception of their authenticity and viability as the Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist order in contemporary Korea. As a result, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae order has managed to survive and grow as a modern Buddhist sect that effectively/credibly lays claim to the rich heritage of the historical Chinese and Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae jong.

Chapter Three:

The Ch’ŏnt’ae jong as a Modern Religion

So far, we have explored how the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong drew on various traditional forms and media to build their historical authenticity in the eyes of other Korean monastics and the public at large, including such media as lineage chronicles and narratives of patriarchal transmission, architecture and visual symbolism, and ritual performance. As described above, these were traditional forms and media by which Buddhist of China, Korea, and Japan had constructed and manipulated sectarian religious identity and authority from as early as the 6th century. What is more, with the entry into the “modern era,” as professed actively in Meiji period Japan (1868-1912) and throughout the subsequent Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, Meiji Buddhist sects such as the Tendaishū, the Pure Land Jōdō shinshū and Jōdōshū, and even the Zenshū founded Buddhist sectarian universities and research institutes on the model of Western universities. Within those institutions, traditional patriarchal genealogies and narratives of origin were merged with the new legitimizing discourses of “modernist” academic historiography. Both the traditional and new forms of historical construction were, in turn, given a highly nationalistic turn, due in part to the imperial pressures from and competition with Western powers.

In Japan, this Buddhist turn to modern modes of academic historiography became especially pronounced in response to the national persecution of Buddhism during the early Meiji era (1868-1912).149 Thus, for example, Japanese Buddhist sects, as a whole, came to champion an evolutionary and highly nationalistic view of pan-Asian Buddhist history that advanced Japanese Buddhism as the historical culmination of Buddhism as a “world 149 James Edward Ketelaar, Of heretics and martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and its persecution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1990), 194.

religion.” After the death of the historical Buddha, the Indian patriarchal figure Nāgārjuna (ca. 3rd century CE) developed the teachings of the Mahāyāna (Great Vehicle), which were subsequently introduced to East Asia, followed in due course by the lofty teachings of the esoteric Vajrayāna or Diamond Vehicle. From China, these teachings all quickly found their way to Japan. There, according to Buddhist scholars of Meiji Era Japan, the received teachings of India and China not only survived perfectly intact and in all their totality (unlike traditions that found their way piecemeal to other regions of the Buddhist world), but they also continued to develop to their highest “modern” expression.150 Through the publication of revised and updated editions of works such as the Essentials of the Eight Sects (Hasshū

kōyō 八宗綱要), an overview of the history and teachings of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese Buddhism authored by the medieval Japanese Buddhist monk Gyōnen, this modernist Meiji vision of Buddhist schools and their histories was introduced widely to Japanese Buddhist clergy, laity, and public. Although they were presented in the guise of modern critical historical, traditional sectarian Buddhist claims remained central to Meiji historical surveys of Buddhist history composed on the model of the Essentials of the Eight Sects. As James Ketelaar observes, “Certain patterns, such as the almost obligatory story of the precocious nature of the sect’s founder as a child, are repeated in unabashedly similar terms.”151 As we have noted in the previous chapter, Sangwŏl and proponents of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong also adopted this new model of historical scholarship in their effort to increase their appeal to contemporary Korean Buddhists and the Korean public. Sangwŏl and his followers, as we have seen, were clearly familiar with Tokiwa Daijō’s influential 3- volume history of Buddhism (published in 1934), and possibly even Gyōnen’s Essentials of

the Eight Sects itself.

150 Ibid., 201.

151 Ibid., 202-203.

Educated Korean monastics and lay believers were well aware of the modern Japanese Buddhist universities and their scholarship, given the close encounters with Japanese Buddhists during the colonial era. With the creation of modern private and state universities in Korea, where disciplines dedicated to objective scholarship were promoted, new Buddhist movements such as the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong felt even greater pressure to align their claims to patriarchal succession with demonstrated objective historiographical facts. As we have noted, many modern scholars outside of Ch’ŏnt’ae jong have, from the outset, openly criticized Ch’ŏnt’ae claims to a historical connection between Ŭich’ŏn and Sangwŏl, thereby

highlighting the tension between traditional sectarian claims of traditional lineage succession and modern objective scholarship.152 In order to bolster their claims to historical antiquity and legitimacy, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong has built modern-day universities and research institutes in the likeness of those sectarian Buddhist sectarian and institutes established in Meiji Era Japan, as well as by Korean Buddhist orders in post-occupation Korea.

In this chapter we turn more broadly to the status of Buddhism in the nineteenth century Japan and Korea, the era when the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong took shape. We will begin by examining the representative ways in which Buddhist reformers, in response to the pressures of colonial expansion, nationalism, and modernity, endeavored to transform traditional Buddhism in ways that conformed to changing expectations. Drawing on this background, we will then explore how the newly formed Ch’ŏnt’ae order has adopted strategies akin to those of the other Japanese and Korean Buddhist schools in order to present the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong as both a religion suited to the modern nation state and a legitimate heir to the historical Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism.

152 Robert E. Buswell and Donald S. Lopez, The Princeton dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014).

The Rise of Modernism in Korea and Japan, and the Image of Buddhism in the 19th Century in Japan and Korea

From the beginning of the Meiji era (1868-1912), a prime concern of the Meiji government was the “modernization” (現代化) of Japan, that is to say, the transformation of traditional Japan into a technologically advanced nation akin to those of Germany, England, and the imperial West. The Meiji regime declared Japan to be a secular society and constitutional monarchy within which “religion” (J, shūkyō 宗教; C, zongjiao) would be accorded accepted legal place, as long as religions conformedto the norms of the modern secular nation state. Repackaged as “Shintō,” traditions and institutions associated with the indigenous Japanese worship of kami were separated from any perceived connection with Buddhism and given special status as Japanese civil religion and culture. Traditions such as “Buddhism” and “Christianity,” being alien traditions of foreign origin, were classified and legally reorganized as “religion.” Perceptions of Buddhism as a corrupted and backward tradition unsuited to a modern Japan also led to severe anti-Buddhist persecutions, the effects of which spread all over the nation.

These massive social and political changes of the Meiji Era put Buddhists in Japan on the defensive. The widespread perception that Japanese Buddhism was corrupt and backward resulted in an equally strong internal call for Buddhist reform. The source of the degradation of Buddhism was understood to be a general lack of education in Buddhist doctrine and philosophy, together with a “superstitious” over-emphasis on ritual-based activities. The noted Japanese lay Buddhist reformer Inoue Enryō (1858-1919) claimed that the traditional Buddhism inherited from the feudal Tokugawa regime was filled with superstitious elements, exemplified by such things as “the performance of exorcisms, funerals, distributing healing

charms, and spells for rain.”153 The Meiji government in turn charged that Buddhist monks at large were morally corrupt—incapable of keeping their precepts of celibacy and, on the whole, useless as exemplars for a modern society.154 Buddhist uselessness, incompatibility with the state-identity of pro-Shintoism, and irrational superstition were the common criticisms that fueled persecution.

In response, the Japanese Ministry of Rite and Rule and the Ministry of Doctrine (Kyōbusō) sought to subordinate Buddhism to the interests of state-Shintō, and to create a comprehensive state doctrine that incorporated the teachings of all religions that promoted a proper universal religious vision.156 Buddhist clergy were forced to join this national project of civil and religious reeducation by assuming the role of instructors of the national doctrine, not that of a Buddhist theologian.157 The government established the Great Teaching Academy to support this state-religious relationship.

Around this same period, which corresponds to the Victorian era (1837-1901) in England, critical historical research on Buddhism as a “world religion” developed and became deeply institutionalized in British and European universities. As more and more Buddhist texts were collected, translated, and studied by Western scholars, an historical vision of Buddhism as a religious tradition took shape that was conspicuously different from those that circulated in normative East Asian Buddhist traditions.

153 Josephson, Jason Ānanda. “When Buddhism Became a ‘Religion’: Religion and Superstition in the Writings of Inoue Enryō.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 33 (2006): 152, doi:10.18874/jjrs.33.1.2006.143-168.

154 Richard M. Jaffe, Neither monk nor layman: clerical marriage in modern Japanese Buddhism. Princeton (N.J.: Princeton University Press. 2001), 115. 155 Ketelaar, Of heretics and martyrs in Meiji Japan, 1990, 132, 214; Josephson, “When Buddhism Became a ‘Religion’,” 2006, 148.

156 Ketelaar, Of heretics and martyrs in Meiji Japan, 1990, 91, 121. 157 Ibid., 122.

158 Jaffe, Neither monk nor layman, 2001, 145.

159 Almond, Philip C. The British discovery of Buddhism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 26.

In addition to the critical challenges that this new scholarship posed to indigenous narratives of Buddhist origins, the new master-narrative of Buddhist history developed by Western scholars was deeply colored by European views of modernity, social progress, and theories regarding the evolution of religion. According to that vision, a truly advanced and modern “world religion” was deemed to be rational, moral, individualistic, and universal. As reconstructed by modern scholars, Śākyamuni Buddha and his original teaching were declared to have all of those ideal characteristics. It was through subsequent historical developments that the Buddha’s pure and original teaching was gradually corrupted, resulting in the present day state of decline.160 “Infantility and indolence” was singled out as an indicator of the decay of Buddhism and its monasticism in the perception of Westerners.

Ernest Eitel, a German Protestant missionary to China, at one point describes Mahāyāna Buddhism as having replaced “plain practical morality with listless quietism, abstract nihilism, and fanciful degrees of contemplation and ecstatic meditation.”162 Even though Western scholars had a positive opinion of the Buddhist moral code, Buddhism was unable to beat “the final superiority of Christianity” in most people’s view.

In the changing social context of Meiji Japan, the newly embraced discourses of Western modernity deeply affected Japanese Buddhists’ reformation movement. Buddhist reaction to the national persecution of Buddhism was “to counter this definition of religion through the reconstitution of its own sociality, politicality, and history.” Buddhists endeavored to refute critiques by promoting a “modern Buddhism”—a revised vision of their own sectarian teachings that refuted the charges of “otherworldliness” and “superstition” mounted by critical historians and opponents of Buddhism.

160 Ibid., 36.

161 Ibid., 48-49.

162 Ibid., 96.

163 Ibid., 116.

164 Ketelaar, Of heretics and martyrs in Meiji Japan, 1990, 132-133.

Pursuant to the larger Meiji persecutions and reform, the status of the Japanese Buddhist clergy also changed radically during the Meiji period, as traditional regulations concerning clerical celibacy and meat eating were abolished.165 Though clerical marriage was decriminalized and actively promoted by the Meiji as part of the modernization project, its promotion evoked tensions between Buddhist clerical reformers and traditionalists. Proponents and adversaries of clerical marriage took very different views on celibacy.166 Convinced that strict adherence to the monastic precepts was the only way to revive Buddhism, traditional leaders of sectarian orders such as Tendai, Jōdoshū (Pure Land), and Zen joined together out of “pan-Sectarian” interest and made every effort to eliminate the policy of clerical marriage.167 Buddhist reformers who advocated clerical marriage, on the other hand, insisted that marriage was not a cause of Buddhist decay. Advocating an attitude of flexibility with regard to the monastic precepts,168 they argued that sexual desire was a natural and insurmountable human desire, and that the failed effort to suppress this innate desire was itself one of the causes of corruption among Buddhist monks. In addition, as Japan confronted various social issues in its competition with Western powers, the clerical marriage issue came to be grouped together with such issues as the status of women and the inequality of husband, wife, and the sexes in Japan. Although Buddhist denominational leaders reluctantly accepted clerical marriage as the social norm, celibacy remained non-negotiable for hardline traditionalists.169 Thus, throughout the late 1800s, persons who kept the precepts of celibacy were still considered “pure” monks in the Shingon and the Tendai denominations, while married monks were regarded as “second-class”

165 Jaffe, Neither monk nor layman, 2001, 4.

166 Ibid., 96-119.

167 Ibid., 141. 168 Ibid., 144. 169 Ibid., 155. 170 Ibid., 191, 201-202.

Buddhist Reformation Movements in Pre and Post-Colonial Korea

The Buddhist debate over clerical marriage merged with a range of concerns that bore on the larger question of what an authentic, modern Buddhism should look like. Japanese Buddhist reformers such as Inoue Enryo and Tanaka Chigaku actively pondered how Buddhism could be made relevant for a modern Japan.171 For Inoue, anything that entertained or manifested traits of the supernatural did not properly belong to the physical world and, hence, should be regarded as “superstition.”172 He understood religion in its proper modern form to be something that was philosophical in character and given to pursuit of absolute truth. As a Buddhist, he dismissed emphasis on ritual as inconsistent with the core Buddhist message, sought to clarify the absolute truth of Buddhist teachings with reference to Western philosophies, and promoted a belief/faith-based form of Buddhist practice.173 A leader of lay Buddhist movements and the founder of the Nichirenist movement in 1914, Tanaka Chigaku (1861–1939), criticized institutionalized Buddhism and the otherworldliness of its clergy.174 As a lay preacher, Tanaka built a lay Buddhist organization called “Kokuchûkai” in 1880, and actively criticized the clergy as socially and spiritually useless to a modern Buddhist society.175 He also built a Nichiren Laywomen’s Academy for the education of temple wives,176 and he promoted the superiority of Buddhism over Christianity as the religion most suitable for modern Japan.177 Other activist lay Buddhist reformers like Tanaka, as a whole, argued that Buddhist reform must be based on and led by lay Buddhists 171 Josephson “When Buddhism Became a ‘Religion’,” 2006, 149.

172 Ibid., 157. 173 Ibid., 159-160. 174 Jaffe, Neither monk nor layman, 2001, 165-177. 175 Ibid., 167, 187. 176 Ibid., 188. 177 Ibid., 180.

rather than clergy,178 thereby contributing to the rising role of the laity as a widespread trend in modern Japanese Buddhism.

The situation of Korean Buddhism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was even worse. With the founding of the Chosŏn Dynasty in the fifteenth century, Confucianism came to be adopted as the ruling ideology, while Confucian scholars and educated elites in general charged Buddhism with being the main cause of the financial and moral corruption of the preceding Koryŏ Dynasty. The materially parasitic and unproductive character of Buddhist institutions and their monastic clergy remained a subject of criticism throughout the history of the Chosŏn Period. Public activities of the Buddhist clergy were officially curtailed; imperial funding dried up; educated elites were encouraged to embrace Confucian values; and Buddhist institutions were increasingly forced to seek support from local populace. After Korea was colonized by Meiji Japan in 1910, Korean Buddhism in turn came under the control of the Japanese colonial government and its modernist imperial project. Based on the theories of social evolution that was popular in the 1900s, religious competition was a serious threat to traditional Buddhism in Korea. Japanese monks were sent to missionize and build temples in Korea.180 In addition, Kyŏngsŏng Imperial University, the predecessor to Seoul National University, was founded in 1926 by the Japanese colonial government in Kyŏngsŏng, the former name of Seoul.181 The university’s Department of

178 Ibid., 165-166.

179 Ibid., 231.

180 Ibid., 3; After Sano Chenlei, a Buddhist monk of Nichiren-shū 日蓮宗, a lot of Japanese Buddhist began to enter Korea, and preached Japanese Buddhism; Ko Young Seop, “Manhae Han Yongunŭi Ilboninsik- Pulgyogye Aegukkyemongundongŭi Sasangjŏk Tanch'o” [Manhae Han Yongwoon’s Cognition on Japan - Ideological Base of Patriotism and Enlightenment Movements of Buddhism], Sŏnmunhwayŏngu 18 (2015): 232. 181 Kawase Takaya, “Kŭnhyŏndae Ilbonŭi ‘Han“Gukchonggyoyŏn”gu’ Tonghyang” [[[Wikipedia:Meiji|Meiji]] and Modern Japan’s Research on Korean religions], Studies in Religion(the Journal of the Korean Association for the History of Religions) null, no. 71 (June 2013): 32. doi:10.21457/kars..71.201306.31.

Law and Letters 法文學院 for the first time offered religious studies classes in Korea. Various Japanese scholars who were interested in Korean religions taught at the college.182 In response to recent Japanese trends, Buddhist intellectuals in Korea of the 1920s increasingly emphasized the need to reform Korean Buddhism, thereby initiating discussions between traditional celibate Korean monks and monks who favored the new Japanese clerical model regarding such questions as clerical marriage and eating meat.183 The modern Korean Buddhist reformer monk Han Yongun (1879–1944), for example, saw Japanese Buddhist clerical marriage to be a hallmark of the modernization of Buddhism, and the clerical marriage was accepted by Korean clergy in 1926.184 While Han Yongun was visiting Japan for six months in 1908, he took Buddhism and Western philosophy classes at the Sōtō Zen School’s Komazawa University. Han is said to have been influenced by the Japanese Buddhist modernity and Inoue Enryō’s thought. He adamantly promoted the features of modern Japanese Buddhism, such as the consolidation of Buddhist education and clerical marriage, in his 1913 book, The Restoration of Korean Buddhism 朝鮮佛敎維新論.

The Japanese colonial regime in Korea ended in 1945. After independence, Korean Buddhists sought to strengthen their identity as a religion of the Korean new nation state. 182 Takahashi Tohoru (1878-1967) taught thoughts and belief of Korean. He was interested in Chosŏn Buddhism. Akamassu Chijyo (1886-1960) was the first professor of religious studies at Kyŏngsŏng Imperial University. He studied at Kyoto Imperial University and later his interest was extended to the study of Korean Shamanism. Akiba Takashi (1888-1954) studied Sociology at Tokyo Imperial University and taught at Kyŏngsŏng as a professor of Sociology. He was also interested in Korean Shamanism. Murayama Chijun (1891-?) was specialized in Korean folk religion. These religious scholars taught at Kyŏngsŏng Imperial University and their activity was first critical and historical study of Buddhism and religion in Korea. The first Department of Religion in East Asia was founded at Japan Imperial University in Tokyo (predecessor to Tokyo University) in 1912; Ibid., 33-37.

183 According to Ko Young Seop, a professor of Department of Buddhist Studies at Tongguk University, there were only fourteen study aboard students who went to Japan to study Buddhism in the 1910s, yet it increased up to 117 and more by the 1930s. Biggest monasteries in Korea sent students to Japanese Buddhist sectarian universities. These Buddhist intellectuals returned to Korea and claimed to reform Korean Buddhism; Ko Young Seop, “Iljegangjŏmgi chaeil pulgyoyuhaksaengdŭrŭi kwiguk ihu tongyang” [A Study on the Trend after Return Home of Buddhist Students Studying in Japan in the Japanese Colonial Period - Focusing on the Scholars for Buddhist Studies], Han'gukpulgyohak 73 (2005): 300-330.

184 Jaffe, Neither monk nor layman, 2001, 3.

185 Ko Young Seop, “Manhae Han Yongunŭi Ilboninsik-Pulgyogye Aegukkyemongundongŭi Sasangjŏk Tanch'o,” 2015, 244-258.

They saw part of their mission to entail erasing the memory of pro-Japanese Korean clergy. In their eyes, the history of Korean Buddhism in the colonial era was, in many respects, the history of the Japanophile, insofar as the creation and rapid increase in the number of married monks during that period was the direct result of Japanese Buddhist influence. Traditionally, Korean monks had practiced celibacy, but by the time of independence, in a national total of 7,000 Buddhist monks, only 300 to 600 were actively celibate.186 Though small in number, this minority of celibate monks declared that married monks were incompatible with indigenous Korean Buddhist tradition and, hence, would be unable to serve as a norm for revival and reform of Korean Buddhism. President Lee, himself a faithful Methodist, ordered married monks to leave the temples in 1954. This marked the beginning of the “Purification of Buddhism Movement” designed to eliminate the taint of Japanese Buddhism on traditional Korean Buddhism.

Being married, of course, did not necessarily mean that a monk was pro-Japanese. The eminent monk and independence fighter, Han Yongun, was also married. However, regardless of pro-Japanese or anti-Japanese activities, marriage of monks became the criterion to decide whether a monk was “tainted” or not. The government sought to expel all married monks from Buddhist temples in order to remove the memory of Japanese Buddhism. Most abbots of the local temples were married at that time, and celibate monks fought against large numbers of married monks. Although celibate monks were few, the determined attitude of celibate monks won national justification and support. As a result, a pro-celibate public sentiment was created. In 1962, the Chogye Order, a new denomination that looked to older, traditional Buddhist sectarian models, especially Sŏn (Zen) Buddhism, 186 Ko Young Seop mentions that many study aboard students who studied at Japanese sectarian universities accepted the ethos of clerical marriage from the modern Japanese Buddhism. The Japanese colonial government amended a law so that married Buddhists were able to become an abbot of monastery. As a result, the number of married monks reached ninety percent of the total number of monks in Korea; Ko Young Seop, “Iljegangjŏmgi chaeil pulgyoyuhaksaengdŭrŭi kwiguk ihu tongyang,” 2005, 313.

was founded by celibate monks, with celibate monks as its leaders. The conflict continued, and the married monks left the Chogye order to found their own Taego Order in 1970. With the 1970s, President Pak Chŏnghŭi further set out to unify the Korean people under the spirit of nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment. After President Pak carried out his military coup in 1961, Pak established the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction 國家再建最高會議 (1961-1963). The Supreme Council forced all religious groups to receive goverment –sanction and be placed under state supervision. In addition, the Supreme Council set out the Buddhist Property Control Law 佛敎財産管理法,187 which placed all Buddhist properties, including temples, under state scrutiny. In this social and political atmosphere, new and unsanctioned Buddhist groups, such as Sangwŏl’s early community,

had to register with the government. Demonstration of an enthusiastic patriotism came to be a crucial component to the acceptance and survival of various newly created Buddhist groups.188 While clerical marriage was an important issue for Buddhist modernization in Japan, it was not considered a form proper to the modernization of Buddhism in Korea, given the common perception that celibacy had been the traditional norm among the Korean people. The modern Chogye and Ch’ŏnt’ae schools naturally retained the precept of celibacy, while Sangwŏl’s Buddhist group in addition strongly pursued the value of patriotic Buddhism in response to the popular anti-Japanese Buddhist sentiment in Korea.

However, patriotism alone was insufficient for a new Buddhist group to gain popular acceptance and survive in post-colonial Korea. During the colonial and the post-colonial period, an increasingly strong Christian presence developed in Korea precisely because Christianity was widely perceived as a modern religion and handmaiden to the success of 187 Yoon Yong Bok, “Han‘Gugŭi Chonggyojŏngch’aekkwa Chonggyogyeŭi Taeŭng” [The Religious Policy of Korea and the Reactions of Korean Religions], Chonggyowa Munhwa 28 (2015): 6. 188 Pangnyong Kim, “Haebanghu Han'gukpulgyoŭi Punyŏlgwa Sinsaengjongdan Sŏngnipkwajŏng” [The Split of Korean Buddhism and the Foundational Process of its New Religious Order After Liberation], Chonggyomunhwayŏngu, no. 3 (September 1, 2001): 299.

Western nation states. By the end of 1929, the number of Christians had reached 306,862 while Buddhists numbered only 169,012. During the Japanese colonial period, Christians considered Buddhist doctrine to be mere philosophy, and the widespread practice of Buddhist rituals to be nothing more than superstition. This view of Buddhism as “superstition” was an active analytic category for Korean Christians and other Korean modernizers in colonial and liberation Korea, especially given the deep syntheses that had developed ritually between Buddhism, Chinese Daoism, and indigenous Korean shamanism throughout the Chosŏn period. In response to this critique of Christians, Buddhist intellectuals defined Buddhism as a “philosophical religion.” Liang Qichao 梁啓超 (K, Yang Gyech’o, 1873-1929), the famed Chinese Buddhist reformer and statesman and the Korean Buddhist reformer Han Yongun,

who was deeply influenced by Liang, claimed that Buddhism was not a superstition, but a civilized religion that is able to convey the nature of ultimate reality perfectly.189 After independence, modernization was the singular concern of the Korean government, much as it had been for the Meiji regime in nineteenth–century Japan. Like the Japanese modern Buddhist reformers who deliberated upon the transformation and survival of Buddhism in modern Japan, Sangwŏl and his followers also seem to have been very sensitive to the question of what a modern Buddhism should look like in the eyes of the contemporary Korean public. Faced with the need to register his community with the Korean government, this question became even more urgent. In adopting the Tiantai doctrinal system, Sangwŏl and his early followers identified his movement with one of the most comprehensive, philosophically sophisticated, and historically distinguished syntheses of the Buddha’s teaching. By intentionally embracing the Tiantai system, a system renowned for its claim to reveal both the highest teaching of the Buddha and contain the full range of 189 Song Hyun-ju, “Kŭndae Han‘Gukpulgyoŭi Chonggyojŏngch’Esŏng Insik” [a Study on the Recognition of Religious Identity of Modern Korean Buddhism], Pulgyohagyŏngu 7 (December 1, 2003): 337- 345.

expedient methods that the Buddha used to convey that truth to other beings, Sangwŏl’s strategy to present his teaching as a “modern” Buddhism bears similarity to the thought of the Japanese Buddhist reformer Inoue Enryō and Chinese Buddhist intellectuals such as Liang Qichao.

Inoue, for example, emphasized the centrality of doctrinal understanding and belief as not only the foundation for entry to the Buddhist path, but also for understanding the inclusiveness of the Buddha’s teaching: how all the seemingly different representations of his Dharma lead to a single shared goal. Both perspectives, for Inoue, were key for understanding the Buddha’s original message, as well as for demonstrating the viability of Buddhism as a religion suited to the modern world. On this point Sangwŏl seems to be similar. However, because Inoue rejected popular ritual practices, such as rites for blessing and salvation of the dead, as largely incompatible with the Buddha’s true teaching, Inoue was unable to gain popularity among the Japanese populace, for whom the “superstitious” elements of Buddhist practice carried great importance.

Sangwŏl’s modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, one will recall, began as a local, grass roots following comprised of common populace and a handful of monastic disciples, most of whom were steeped in the lore, customs, and practices of local “folk” religion—a culture that was practical in its concerns and characterized by heavy use of ritual and esoteric Buddhist incantations. Those concerns are thought to be evident in the earliest teachings and publications of Songwŏl’s, where incantations such as the Cuṇḍi (Junje) dhāraṇī are seen to play such a significant role in daily practice. Yet, with the rapid drive toward modernization and national unity pushed by the Korean government and Korean intellectuals in the 1960s, Sangwŏl’s community faced the pressure to reinvent itself as a patriotic and modern Buddhism. Even though the “superstitious” ritual incantations and practices of the common 190 Josephson “When Buddhism Became a ‘Religion’,” 2006, 164.

populace proved more appealing to the Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae school redefined itself in terms of the elite discourses of traditional Tiantai/Ch’ŏn-t’ae doctrine and practice, including its classic ritual system of the Lotus Repentance and the Four Forms of Samādhi. However, in addition to enhancing this doctrinal aspect of the school, the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae school also enlisted the modern critical historical study of Ch’ŏnt’ae history. Thus, establishing accredited colleges and Buddhist research institutes also became a key strategy for defending the authenticity of the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist Order against the potential critiques of modern secularists and historical critical scholars outside of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong. Establishing colleges was one of the main strategies used by Japanese Buddhist

reformers in order to adapt existing Japanese Buddhist traditions to the new policies of secularism and modernization promoted in Meiji Japan. All the major established schools of Japanese Buddhism founded Buddhist universities in the early 1860s. Privately funded, their design and curricula were modeled on those of modern European universities.191 The goal of the sectarian and trans-sectarian reformers, alike, was to promote a universal Buddhist teaching that was compatible with modern society.192 According to James Ketelaar, “In 1882, the Higashihongan-ji (the head monastery of the Jōdo shinshū [[[True Pure Land School]]]) established its university academy, the Daigaku-ryō, which later (1896) became Shinshū University; in the same year the Sōtō sect established their university, the Sōtōshū Daigakurin Semmon Honkō.”193 Organized initially as four year colleges, these institutions taught a range of subjects, including Japanese history and the genealogy of Japanese emperors, as well as sociology, politics, and various modern subjects. The more advanced curriculum included such things as the histories and languages of Japan, Europe, and 191 Ketelaar, Of heretics and martyrs in Meiji Japan, 133.

192 Ibid., 175. 193 Ibid., 179.

America, and the study of other religions such as Christianity and Islam. All were designed also to build sectarian history and research.

In effect, the entire tradition of modern critical Buddhist historiography in Japan—and in East Asia at large--was started by Japanese Buddhist scholars and sectarian universities. Their studies included the broad range of Buddhist history, literature, and thought, from India and Southeast Asia, to Tibet, China, and Japan. However, given the strong sectarian roots of the Japanese universities, for many decades Japanese scholars of particular religious orders tended to emphasize research on their own patriarchs and sectarian teachings. For instance, the various Jōdo, or “Pure Land” schools in Japan all traced their patriarchal lineages and core teachings back to the Chinese figure of Shandao (J, Zendō; 613-681), the influential Tang Dynasty Pure Land master.195 They drew connections, through Shandao’s writings, directly between Shandao, who was active in the 7th and 8th centuries, and Japanese figures such as Hōnen and Shinran who lived as many as five centuries later. Meanwhile, Japanese Pure Land scholars who pursued research on Pure Land teaching and history in China strongly tended to view and write that history through the lens of later Jōdo and Jōdo shinshū theologies.

Buddhist Universities and Research Institutes in Korea

Like the Meiji Buddhist schools, Korean Buddhist intellectuals felt the need to establish a modern Buddhist educational institution. The Korean Chogye Order, the largest Buddhist school in Korea, has sponsored the national Buddhist University known as Tongguk 194 Ibid.,

195 There are several “Jōdo” or “Pure Land” schools in Japan. Ketalaar mentions that The Pure Land fatih sects (Jōdo, Shin, Yūzū Nembutsu, Ji) emphasized Shandao’s works to prove the existence of the Pure Land. Among the sects, the Jōdo Shinshū or “True Pure Land School” founded by Shinran—the most socially progressive of the Japanese Buddhist schools, and the teaching that aligned itself most closely with Protestant Christianity.

University.196 One of the key Korean Buddhist intellectual leaders who was responsible for founding Tongguk was Hŏ Yŏng Ho (1900-1952). Hŏ studied at Taishō University (大正大学) in Japan, a sectarian university founded by the Tendai (Tiantai) School of Japanese Buddhism.197 After Hŏ returned to Korea in 1932, he became a dean of the Central Buddhist school 中央佛敎專門學校 (predecessor to Tongguk University).198 Central Buddhist School changed its name to the Hyehwa School, and between 1940 and 1944, Japanese presidents presided over the school. After independence in 1945, the school changed its name to Tongguk University, and Hŏ was appointed the first dean of the school. Like the Japanese reformers, whom he surely encountered as a student in Japan, Hŏ emphasized education as the key to Buddhist reform in Korea.

Likewise, beginning in the 1980s, the principal concern of the Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae jong was the so-called “education project,” which centered on the development of Kŭmgang University, the four year college officially opened by the Ch’ŏnt’ae order in 2003.200 According to the official Ch’ŏnt’ae jong website, Kŭmgang University offers a Buddhist Studies 佛教學 major, which comprises various courses in Indian, Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist history, Sanskrit and Chinese languages, Buddhist philosophy, and the concentrated study of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist thought and history.201 It also offers an Applied Buddhist Studies major, which covers such specialized subjects as Buddhism and its relevance for philosophy, science, sociology, psychology, Buddhist ethics, comparative religious studies, 196 Buswell, The Zen monastic experience, 1992, 35.

197 He was strongly interested in translation of Sanskrit. He compared Xuanzang’s 玄奘 Tang Dynasty translation of the Heart Sūtra in Chinese to the original text of the Heart Sūtra in Sanskrit, and annotated in Korea; Cho Myung-Je, “1920-30nyŏndae Hŏyŏnghoŭi Hyŏnsirinsikkwa Kŭndaebulgyohak” [Heo, Yeong-Ho‘s Perception of Reality and Modern Buddhism in the 1920s-30s], Taegaksasang 14 (2010): 154-155. 198 Ko Young Seop, “Iljegangjŏmgi chaeil pulgyoyuhaksaengdŭrŭi kwiguk ihu tongyang,” 2005, 468. 199 Ibid., 474-476.

200 Hwang Sang-jun, “Avalokiteśvara Cult in Korean Buddhism” (PhD diss., University of the West, 2012), 217.

201 “Buddhist Studies,” Kŭmgang University, accessed June 24, 2017, http://www.ggu.ac.kr/kor/colleges/2017_info/2_buddhist.php

and Buddhism and business. The objectives of the applied Buddhism course is to train modern Buddhists in how to respond effectively and positively to the rapid social changes of the modern era.

In addition, it became the common adopted strategy of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong to promote research on Sangwŏl and the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae movement as a core mission of the Ch’ŏnt’ae affiliated Institute for Research on Ch’ŏnt’ae(Tiantai) Buddhist Culture (天台佛教文化研究院). This Ch’ŏnt’ae-sponsored institute was founded in 1996 by the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong. According to an official website of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, the express motive for creation was “to research Buddhology and apply the Ch’ŏnt’ae doctrine to the modern era.”202 Since 2007, scholars of the Institute have focused their research efforts on the life and thought of Sangwŏl. In 2011, they also hosted an international Buddhist conference in commemoration of the one hundred year anniversary of Sangwŏl’s birth.

Other Buddhist orders in Korea have founded similar sectarian-centered research institutes. The biggest research institute for Buddhism in Korea is the Institute for Research Buddhist Culture (佛教文化研究院) founded in 1962 by the Chogye Order. In addition, the Chin'gak order, a Korean Esoteric Buddhist group, created the Institute for Research on Esoteric Buddhist culture (密敎教文化研究院) in 2000.204 It seems quite clear that both the Institute for Research on Esoteric Buddhist culture of the Chin'gak order and the Ch’ŏnt’ae 202 “Ch’ŏnt’ae affiliated Institute for Research on Ch’ŏnt’ae(Tiantai) Buddhist Culture,” Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order, accessed June 27, 2017, http://www.cheontae.org/education/studybudculture 203 Various Western Buddhist scholars attended this international conference, such as Leonard Swidler at Temple University, Robert Buswell at UCLA, and Bernard Faure at Columbia University; “International Buddhist conference in commemoration of the one hundred year anniversary of Sangwŏl’s birth,”

Pulgyodatk'ŏm, last modified October 18, 2011, http://m.bulkyo21.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=16383 204 Institute for Research on Esoteric Buddhist culture (密敎教文化研究院) does research on Korean Esoteric Buddhism and the Chin'gak order. Institute for Research Buddhist Culture of the Chogye jong and Institute for Research on Esoteric Buddhist culture of the Chin'gak jong do not seem to do any critical research on Sangwŏl and the Ch’ŏnt’ae order. In addition to research institutes, Korean Chin'gak order is also sponsoring Widŏk University, founded in 1996. Another example is the college of the Taego order. The second largest Buddhist order, the Taego jong, founded Dongbang Buddhist College in 1982 and Institute for Buddhist Studies in California, USA in 2004; Institute for Research on Esoteric Buddhist culture, accessed May 29, 2017, http://omvajra.uu.ac.kr/cult/cult.htm

affiliated Institute for Research on Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist Culture of the Ch’ŏnt’ae order were inspired by and in part modeled on the earlier Institute for Research Buddhist Culture of the Chogye Order.

The sectarian embrace and sponsorship academic scholarship does not just reproduce traditional normative Chinese Buddhist strategies for writing sectarian history and claims to patriarchal succession. It also the new element, through creation of sectarian research institutes, modern historiographical disciplines that putatively seek to complement traditional sectarian historiographical strategy. Most members of these modern Buddhist institutes have received their specialized training and degrees in modern Buddhological methodology from Western universities. Yet, while their research looks modern and critical in form, faculty of the Ch’ŏnt’ae School’s Institute for Research on Tiantai (Ch’ŏnt’ae) Buddhist Culture are under pressure to promote the authenticity of Sangwŏl and his modern Ch’ŏnt’ae teaching by substantiating its historical and theological grounding in Chinese Tiantai and Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae precedents.205 What is more, the Ch’ŏnt’ae sectarian-funded universities and research institutes were themselves were established with the intention to foster and promote the study of Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai history and thought.

205 Kang Don-ku, “Taehanbulgyo Ch'ŏnt“aejongŭi chŏngch”esŏng hyŏngsŏng kwajŏng” [Establishing Identity and the Korean Contemporary Chontae Order], Journal of the Korean Academy of New Religions 31, no. 31 (2014): 65. doi:10.22245/jkanr.2014.31.31.49.

Conclusion

In the effort to establish and legitimize itself in the eyes of modern Koreans, Sangwŏl’s the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae school of Buddhism has drawn heavily on narrative claims of antiquity and recursive historical revelation in order to link the school firmly to the Korean Buddhist past. That strategy of cultural construction has entailed a central effort t to present Sangwŏl as a “Tiantai patriarch” in the image of past Chinese Tiantai patriarchs and eminent Korean figures, such as Zhiyi and Uich’ŏn. Those forms of presentation include crafting of hagiographies; lineage narratives that leap centuries and link Sangwŏl, by family resemblance, to Chinese patriarchs whom he never met; creation of rituals for celebration of patriarchal death anniversaries; construction of patriarch halls and images; sponsorship of modern scholarship and research; and even film and digital media. As “New Wine in an Old Bottle,” the symbolic manipulations of an utterly new and modern Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Order looked to strategies of religious authorization that have been used by various Buddhist groups in China and East Asia for centuries.

The component most crucial to constructing the historical authenticity of the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong is the concept of patriarchal succession. Just as the entire notion of patriarchal lineage and transmission was itself developed in fifth and sixth-century China as a means for legitimately bridging the gap between Chinese Buddhists and the distant land and time of the Buddha in India, so the construction of the patriarchal lineage was an urgent task necessary for establishing the authenticity of the newly created Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae jong in the eyes of modern Koreans and East Asian Buddhists. The school accordingly strove to make a connection not only between Sangwŏl and Ŭich’ŏn, the perceived founder of the Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism in the Koryŏ Korea, but also, more distantly, between Sangwŏl and the founding Chinese Tiantai patriarch, Zhiyi. In the absence of evidence for a concrete person-to-person

connection, modern Ch’ŏnt’ae scholars and clergy have turned to Sangwŏl’s leaping of historical time and geographical distance through his purported enlightenment to the Lotus Sūtra and inspired encounter with the historical Ch’ŏnt’ae texts. Thus, in a manner that recalls Zhiyi’s realization of the ultimate vision of the Buddha through enlightened insight into the Lotus Sūtra and a personal connection to the Buddha in a prior lifetime, Sangwŏl is linked to Zhiyi through his personal awakening to the Lotus Sūtra and the suggestion that Sangwŏl himself was an incarnation of Bodhisattva Kwan’om (Guanyin). Thus, even though Ŭich’ŏn, Sangwŏl and other Ch’ŏnt’ae patriarchs are separated distantly from one another by time and space, they became linked in the hagiographical imagination of later Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhists and modern Ch’ŏnt’ae scholars.

The image of Sangwŏl as a Ch’ŏnt’ae/Tiantai patriarch has come to suffuse the day-today lives and imagination of Ch’ŏnt’ae communities through a variety of media. In addition to traditional Buddhist literary forms, such as patriarchal hagiography and lineage histories that draw heavily on the model of the Comprehensive Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs (Fozu tongji) authored by the 13th century Chinese monk Zhipan, one of the most imposing structures in the Ch’ŏnt’ae repertoire is the Patriarch Hall. Again drawing on a well-established Chinese and Korean Buddhist form of collective historical memory, the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong constructed a conjoined Chinese-Korean Patriarch Hall at Guoqing Monastery on Mount Tiantai in China in 1995, the Great Patriarch Hall at the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong’s home Guinsa Monastery in Korea in 2000, and the comprehensive Ch’ŏnt’ae Patriarchal Lineage Hall at Guinsa in 2008. This visual architecture, with its centrally placed golden seated statues of Sangwŏl, were intended visually and symbolically to impress on the minds of visitors that Sangwŏl was the founding patriarch of the Ch’ŏnt’ae tradition. Celebration of patriarchal death anniversaries, and daily ritual venerations to Sangwŏl, further underscore this image.

With the turn to modernity in the late-nineteenth century, and the subsequent occupation of Korea by Japan shortly thereafter, traditional East Asian Buddhist social relevance and historical authority came increasingly under challenge, both by Buddhist reformers and modern, objective historical scholarship. Confronted with charges that Sangwŏl and his Ch’ŏnt’ae jong nothing more than a “new Buddhist movement” that rose out of the superstitions of a backward Korean “folk religion,” modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong apologists have been forced, from the outset, to adopt new strategies to meet the challenges of nonsectarian cultural critics and Buddhist historians.

Thus, in addition to the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong’s adoption of traditional Buddhist forms of patriarchal authority and historical legitimation, this thesis has explored how Sangwŏl and his Ch’ŏnt’ae jong have responded to the changing face of Buddhism as a modern religion: how the Ch’ŏnt’ae jong, as a modern Buddhist order, grounds itself in authorizing literatures and narratives of patriarchal succession, while at the same time, it responds dramatically to the rapid social change of Korean modernity. Like all Buddhists in colonial and post-colonial Korea, Sangwŏl’s Ch’ŏnt’ae jong faced the larger question of what an authentic, modern Buddhism should look like. This discourse concerning Buddhist modernity was already

sufficiently debated among Japanese Buddhists since the Meiji period. Buddhist uselessness, incompatibility with the national ethic and civil religion of state Shintō, and charges of irrational superstition were the common criticisms that Japanese Buddhists needed to overcome in order to resist outright persecution by Japanese authorities. As a key element in their response to that challenge, virtually all the major schools of Japanese Buddhism founded Buddhist sectarian universities and research institutes on the model of Western universities--their mission being to commend Buddhism as a world religion suited for a modern society, and to educate students accordingly. In keeping with the example of the Japanese Buddhist schools and the newly formed Korean Chogye Order, the Korean

Ch’ŏnt’ae Order established Kŭmgang University in 2003 and the Ch’ŏnt’ae affiliated Institute for Research on Ch’ŏnt’ae(Tiantai) Buddhist Culture in 1996. Both institutions actively promote the authenticity of Sangwŏl and the modern Ch’ŏnt’ae jong through the implementation of a modern university curriculum on Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhist history and thought, the publication of scholarly journals and monographs, and the sponsorship of international academic conferences.

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