Middle Path and Modernity of Korean Buddhism

Abstract

Can the Mahāyāna teachings be the teaching of the historical Buddha? It has been one of the key questions among Korean Buddhists after the encounter with the outcome of the Western philological studies on the Buddhist texts. Nowadays, there hardly is anyone who claims both the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra and the Avataṃsaka-sūtra were produced during the time of the historical Buddha. Traditionally however these texts, core texts within the East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, had been regarded as the word of the Buddha (buddhavacana). Master Seongcheol (1912~1993), one of the most representative modern Korean Seon (Korean equivalent of the Japanese Zen) masters, was the one who realized the seriousness of this problems. As the 6th Supreme patriarch of The Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, he spread Buddhism domestically and internationally through his simple and acute teachings and disciplined life. In 1967 he became the head of the monastic teaching Centre in Haein temple which is famous for preserving the 84,000 woodblocks of the Tripitaka Koreana. During the summer retreat, he gave dharma talks to the assembled monks and nuns together with laity for two to three hours every morning. His sermons went on for almost a hundred days, until the end of the summer retreat. These dharma talks were recorded and later in 1992 published as a book entitled ‘Sermon of One Hundred Days’. In this book, he clarified that the theory of the middle path could be the core of Buddhism, and he tried to explain all Buddhist philosophy and doctrinal history in light of the middle path. In 2010 this book was translated into English and published by Equinox under the monograph series from Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. This paper will deal with master Seongcheol’s life and his idea of the middle path in terms of the problems concerning the nature of the Mahāyāna teachings and of the buddhavacana.