Tag: Buddhism

Westernization of Buddhism: A New Denomination?

Throughout time and within the current of growing globality ideas, philosophies, morals, and religions have all been introduced, interpreted, and shared worldwide.  Notably, from the 1880s and 1890s until the early 1910s, there was a growing fascination with Buddhism in what is known as the West. Europeans and Americans who traveled to Asia brought back knowledge about Buddhism, among other religions. This knowledge about Buddhism began to grow both in the scholarship realm and the populous. Chapter Two of Thomas A. Tweed’s The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent, “‘Shall We All Become Buddhists?’ the conversation and the converts, 1879-1912” covers this growing fascination with Buddhism and why it struck Westerners so much. Importantly, the chapter discusses how the Western interpretation of Buddhism led to converts to the religion in America especially, and if that Buddhism was really the same as the Buddhism practiced in Asia.

Colonization may have opened the world up, but it also brought many challenges, one of which was the way that religions and their practices were interpreted. Buddhism, in the 1880s and 1890s, was brought to the West through Western scholars who would translate and read Buddhist texts, and then interpret them in their own Western mindset, a mindset that was heavily influenced by Christianity. There was very little conversation with Asian scholars of Buddhism, and thus this interpretation of the religion and philosophy led to a perhaps different Buddhism in the West than what was practiced in Asia.

Religion is something that is very important to many people who practice, and even those who do not. The importance of religion, thus, begs the question of whose ‘denomination’ or whose ‘interpretation’ of religion is the true one. Christianity has gone through many changes through that questioning, and interestingly enough, in the late 1800s and early 1900s in America, there was a similar line of questioning among Americans who were converting to Buddhists.

There were several Buddhists from Asia who immigrated, a “majority” of whom “were Chinese and Japanese living on the West Coast and in Hawaii”1. While there is not an exact number of practicing Buddhists at the time, there were twelve Pure Land Buddhist groups by 1906 along the West coast, and eight more by 19122. This slow growth of Buddhism correlated with the growth of Caucasian Americans who converted to Buddhism. Their Buddhism, however, “combined traditional Buddhist doctrines with beliefs derived from Western sources”3. This blend of Buddhism was informed mainly by the Western scholarship gathered about Buddhism that was not engaged in conversation with Asian scholarship on Buddhism and was heavily influenced by how Europeans viewed the world and their mainly Christian-centered ideals. Can this Buddhism be seen as part of the religion of Buddhism practiced in Asia or by Asian immigrants in America? As the text points out, “the Chinese transformed Indian Buddhism rather significantly”, however, some 19th-century writers questioned the authenticity of the Caucasian American Buddhists, saying they were “expressing, simplicity or explicitly, either competing personal religious convictions or naively self-assured notions about the true ‘essence’ of Buddhism”4.

There are many different ways to view such a complicated subject. On the one hand, there could be the view that most people in the late 1800s who converted to Buddhism “got it wrong, that only a handful were ‘real’ Buddhists” or that they “might have been driven more by love of the exotic or the quest for attention”5. However, the text also argues for self-definition- to trust the definition that each religious person chooses for themselves and that many of the Caucasian American Buddhist converts truly believed that they were Buddhist, even if it wasn’t the Buddhism practiced in Asia.

Self-determination is a weighty trust to give, that probably should be given weight, however, does that change the religion, or make it a different denomination? One could argue, certainly, that it does. The globality of Buddhism in the 1880s-1910s certainly argues that westernization of religion was important and that religion, as always, is never simple.

  1. Tweed, Thomas A. The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (Chapel Hill, 2005), p.  34 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p. 36 [↩]
  3. Ibid, p. 40 [↩]
  4. Ibid, p. 41 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p. 42 [↩]

Tanaka Chigaku’s ‘The Age of Unification’ and its justification of Japanese militarism

Tanaka Chigaku was born in a staunch Buddhist family in 1868, only a few years before the Meiji Restoration.1 Disillusioned by the Meiji regime’s attack on Buddhism, he abandoned his priestly training to become a lay evangelist, preaching his doctrine of Nichirenism.2 In the 20th century, this doctrine would justify Japan’s militarism, nationalism and imperialism, through his belief that the entire world must be unified around Japan.3 An exert, ‘The Age of Unification’, from his seminal text – Nichirenshugi kyogaku taikan, or ‘An Overview of Nichirenshugi Doctrinal Studies’, originally published between 1904 and 1913 – perfectly describes and explains his desire for unity. While mostly discussing world unity in peaceful, religious terms, the ongoing background of Japan’s militarism and subsequent imperialistic expansion under these terms makes the text an important document of history.

 

Tanaka repeatedly stresses the need for a ‘world unification’ of religion, morality, society and government.4 He stresses that past attempts at world unification – through solely military means, such as those of Alexander or Napoleon, or solely diplomatic means, such as international law and peace conferences – were lacking in religion and morality.

He offers a few steps on how this can be achieved. First, Japan must have a coexistence between religion and government; ‘government must be subsumed within Buddhism, and then Buddhism must be applied to government’.5 Other religious practices, such as Shintoism (which he describes as the ‘barbarous practices’ of worshipping foxes and badgers) must be eliminated.6 As evidence, he recounts prosperous periods in Japanese history in which Buddhism and government were aligned, such as the reign of the Emperor Kanmu; and periods in which the government did not accept Buddhism, such as under Nobunaga, when ‘spiritual poison’ seeped into the nation.7 After the government has accepted the great dharma, Nichiren writes that the emperor must hand down an edict for an ordination platform to be built; Tanaka interprets this that, if Nichiren was writing about the shogunate or military government, then in Tanaka’s era a resolution of the National Diet would do.2

And what of resistance to world unification? Tanaka writes, euphemistically, that ‘debates are ultimately resolved by the power of finance or aggression’; thus Japan must strengthen herself both financially and militarily.8 He writes that, if Japan follows his instructions, during the ‘impending’ Russo-Japanese War the country will be able to deploy fleets in the Japan Sea, the China Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and send a division to Siberia – specifying for the first time his exact military desires.2 He makes it clear that when a priesthood ‘forgets the two great practical forces of financial power and military might’ it ‘becomes powerless to accomplish anything’.2

 

Thus Tanaka’s doctrine of Nichirenism firmly justifies Japanese military expansion and imperialism around the world. Although it predates the Russo-Japanese war, it predicts the Japanese Empire which in a few decades’ time would span from Alaska to Singapore.

  1. Jacqueline I. Stone, ‘Tanaka Chigaku on “The Age of Unification”, in Georgios T. Halkias and Richard K. Payne (eds), Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts: An Anthology (University of Hawai’i, 2019), p. 632. [↩]
  2. Ibid. [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
  3. Jacqueline I. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree: Politics and the Issue of Ordination Platform in Modern Lay Nichiren Buddhism’ in Steven Heine and Charles S. Prebish (eds), Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition (Oxford University Press), p. 193. [↩]
  4. Stone, Tanaka Chigaku, p. 650. [↩]
  5. Ibid, p. 640. [↩]
  6. Ibid, p. 646. [↩]
  7. Ibid, p. 644. [↩]
  8. Ibid, p. 647. [↩]

Paradise on earth: Uchiyama Gudō’s imaginations of a (Buddhist) anarcho-communist utopia

The utopian vision of Uchiyama Gudō (1874-1911), a Zen Buddhist priest who was executed for his purported role in the plot to assassinate the Japanese Emperor Meiji in 1910, offers a unique example of the fusion of Buddhist and socialist ideas in early twentieth-century East Asia. Throughout his writings, Gudō repeatedly imagines a vision of tengoku, explicitly evoking the Christian idea of “soteriological and eschatological” paradise rather than the Buddhist jōdo (Pure Land) or gokuraku (land of bliss).1 Although connections between Christianity and the development of socialist revolutionary thought in Meiji Japan by Rambelli help to contextualise the contemporary meanings and connotations of tengoku, it is arguably most significant in the negative sense; that is, the imagination of an earthly, anarcho-communist utopian ‘paradise’ over a Buddhist heavenly bliss.

Gudō’s (Buddhist) anarcho-communism formed part of a broader wave of emerging Radical Buddhism in late Meiji Japan. He was not alone in his focus on earthly paradise; contemporary anarchists like Tanaka Jiroku were similarly advocating ideas of genseshugi (‘this-world-ism’).2 In China, both Taixu (1890-1947) and Lin Qiwu (1903-1934)  developed similar imaginations of a “pure land in this world” where anarchist utopia and Marxism respectively were “one and the same” as the Buddhist Pure Land.3 Yet, not only do Gudō’s ideas predate many of these other anarchists, his utopian imagination also differs in a critical way in its absence of Buddhist spiritualism. Avoiding references to the pure land, Gudō situates his paradise purely in the earthly realm; in a way, he subverts Radical Buddhism, which views socialism and anarchism as paths to an explicitly Buddhist ‘pure land’, and instead proposes an anarcho-communist revolution in which consciousness and freedom is achieved through Buddhism (as Buddhism and socialism are two sides of the same coin) yet paradise itself is defined by its material, social and political conditions rather than ‘heavenly bliss’. For example, during his interrogation for his alleged role in the High Treason Incident of 1910, Gudo describes his intellectual conversion to anarcho-communism as a result of reading about the communal lives of the Buddhist sangha in Chinese monasteries4. However, this is framed from a specifically worldly perspective; it was the communal and egalitarian aspects of the sangha that appealed to Gudō, as opposed to their spirituality and religious practice. Thus, Gudō removes the distinction between Buddhism and anarcho-communism; he is not striving for a spiritual awakening to nirvana or pure land, but for a (Marxian) social revolution through labour unions to achieve “the ideal land of anarchist communism, where all are free and live a comfortable life”.5

As Rambelli emphasises, Gudō was seeking to transform the (earthly) world as a Buddhist anarcho-communist, rather than “striving for a socialist form of Buddhism”6. Paradise would be distinctively and exclusively anarcho-communist. Whilst inherently informed by the semantic, epistemological, and ontological frameworks of Gudo’s Buddhism, paradise on earth in its realised form seems more rooted in classical Marxism. Paradise would thus begin when the capitalist bourgeoisie “reject[s] the old crime of living out of his capital” and “realize[s] that all human beings must secure their clothing and food through their own labor”.7

Consequently, Gudō’s vision for paradise was both inseparable from his conception of Buddhism and yet fundamentally material. This fusion of Buddhism and socialism was the path necessary to achieve individual and collective consciousness to eliminate oppression and achieve freedom. Attaining social consciousness and establishing paradise would be achieved through Buddhism not because he imagined a future land of heavenly bliss, but instead because the worldly anarcho-communist ‘paradise’ envisaged by Gudō would be the true realisation of Buddhism on earth.

  1. Fabio Rambelli, Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharam of Uchiyama Gudō (Berkeley, 2013), p.31. [↩]
  2. Lajos Brons, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism (Santa Barbara, 2023), p.76. [↩]
  3. Brons, A Buddha Land in This World, pp.92-95. [↩]
  4. Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.20. [↩]
  5. Uchiyama Gudō, Museifu Kyosan kakumei, quoted in and translated by Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.50. [↩]
  6. Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.30. [↩]
  7. Uchiyama Gudō, Heibon no jikaku, quoted in and translated by Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.63. [↩]

Korean Buddhism: Understanding the Key Factors of its Survival.

‘Korean Buddhism was already considered ‘half dead, half alive’, representing ‘nothing more than other-worldly hermits in the mountains.’[1]

There are multiple factors to consider regarding Buddhism within Chosŏn Korea and its fight for modernisation. Darwinism, socialism, the Tonghak uprisings and Japan all influenced Buddhism to reconsider its mechanisms in order to survive this new social demand. However, depending on the historian these factors differ in value. Jin Park[2] and Vladimir Tikhonov[3] both focus on one important historical figure which enabled Buddhism to modernise in a way that would ensure its survival. Han Yongun had a variety of education which differed in forms which was essential to understanding what exactly a modern Korea should look like, and how Buddhism might be able to keep its place within the country’s future.

Jin Park does not give much context regarding why Han Yongun was influential within the modernising of Buddhism other than his open-minded ideas regarding the freedom to marry for monks and nuns, however this does give insight to the influence in which Japan had on Korean Buddhism. In the areas which Jin Park has been unable to highlight Han Yongun’s importance, Tikhonov has been able assess the different factors which enabled Han Yongun to understand how society was beginning to function under Darwin’s concept of ‘survival of the fittest’. With his collaborated text of ‘Selected Writings on Han Yongun: From social Darwinism to Socialism with a Buddhist Face’[4], Tikhonov is able to highlight other factors such as the Tonghak uprisings and the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese war, which Han Yongun was able to witness, enabling him to better understand what survival meant for Korea and how the modernising world around Korea may influence it.

Another factor that Tikhonov highlights is the influence of Laing Qichao upon Han Yongun, which is mentioned within both of his texts. Through this Han Yongun was able to obtain a better understanding of Social Darwinism and how it can be used to ensure the survival of Buddhism. ‘The main lesson the Korean nationalists were keen to learn from Liang was the Social Darwinist understanding of evolution as a competitive dog-eat-dog ‘struggle for survival, where the downfall of the ‘weaker devoured by the stronger’ was blamed only on the victims’ ‘failure to strengthen themselves’.[5] Although Buddhism was and is strictly non-nationalist, there were monks like Han Yongun, who were able to disassociate it with Social Darwinism and take the relevant information from it to create the necessary means for strengthening Buddhism’s place within a modernising Korea. This is perhaps why there is such an emphasis on Han Yongun within Tikhonovs texts because through this Buddhist figure there is a variety of factors which all connect to the modernisation of Korea. Han Yongun was educated on nationalism through his experience of the Tonghak uprising and his travels to Russia, however, he was also educated through Confucian and Buddhist teachings. Therefore, he was able to use this knowledge to understand which areas of Buddhism could be changed to adapt better to Korean society which would attract a bigger following and ensure its capability to compete against other religions.

Tikhonov highlights why Buddhism would perhaps struggle to finds its place within the religious competition, especially within Korea. These were factors such as the lack of European language skills which the majority of the Korean Buddhist shared, the isolation which the monks and nuns experienced as a result of Confucianism being more favoured, which therefore lead to Buddhism lacking any form of solid ground within Korea. The result of this meant that toward the late nineteenth century Buddhism within Korea was beginning to experience a decline in followers. However, Yong-u Han, Vladimir Tikhonov and Owen Miller focus their argument on supporting Buddhism and why it could be deemed more suitable to creating progress within the modern world in comparison to  Christianity and Confucianism. The main strength of their argument comes from using figures such as Han Yongun and Laing Qichao to highlight that those who followed the belief were capable of comprehending the modernisation of Buddhism and the route it must take to establish that. By focusing on the inner workings of Buddhism and the influence of Laing and Yongun the argument focuses on the qualities of Buddhism which places it above Confucianism and Christianity. These qualities are the ability to reject self-righteousness and ignorance, which would therefore, ensure progression for those who followed the belief because they would not be swept up by a world based on capital and survival.

[1] Vladimir M. Tikhonov, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings (1800s-1920s): “Survival” as an Ideology of Korean Modernity (Brill, 2010) p.117.

[2] Jin Y. Park, Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism (SUNY Press, 2010).

[3] Vladimir M. Tikhonov, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings (1800s-1920s): “Survival” as an Ideology of Korean Modernity (Brill, 2010).

[4] Yong-un Han, Vladimir Tikhonov, Owen Miller, Selected Writings on Han Yongun: From social Darwinism to Socialism with a Buddhist Face (Global Oriental, 2008).

[5] Yong-un Han, Vladimir Tikhonov , Owen Miller, Selected Writings on Han Yongun: From social Darwinism to Socialism with a Buddhist Face (Global Oriental, 2008) p.5.

The Buddhist-Imperialist Nexus: How Buddhist Doctrine Conformed to the Imperial Ambitions of Japan in the Early Twentieth Century.

In the early twentieth century, Japan sought to assert itself as a great power. Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 dismantled any notion of ‘white invincibility’, launching Japan into an imperialist odyssey whereby it attempted to become the hegemon of East Asia. Arguably, such hegemonic ambitions were achieved, for by 1942, according to Aaron Moore, Japan had secured one of the largest empires ever known in the history of the world[1]. Yet, the effects of Japan’s militaristic expansion were devastating, especially in China, whereby Japan’s territorial conquest resulted in some 14 million Chinese deaths[2]. Given such seismic consequences, how did Japan legitimise its imperialist expansion? Rana Mitter and Jeremy Yellen argue that Japanese imperialism was an attempt to rival the ‘west’: a quest to be considered equal to Great Britain and the United States[3]. Yet, such explanations overlook important cultural factors, most notably, the malleability of Buddhist doctrine in supporting Japan’s imperial ideology. As Brian Victoria notes, Zen Buddhism was viewed as the ideal doctrine for a modernizing Japan, and thus an explanation of Buddhist justifications for Japanese imperialism merits further exploration[4].

An interesting point of departure in our analysis is what Christopher Ives describes as the ‘accomodationism’ of Japanese Buddhism. For Ives, Buddhists in the 1930s interpreted concepts such as ‘on’, which is a debt of gratitude owed to those from whom one gets a favour, as representative of the categorical imperative of self-sacrifice central to a militaristic, imperialist regime[5]. Furthermore, citing a Buddhist journal called Chūō Bukkyō, Ives argues that Buddhist authors equated Japan’s imperial mission with the bodhisattva: the state of Buddhahood whereby one seeks to alleviate the suffering of others, not just oneself[6]. Evidently, Buddhist doctrine was used in myriad ways to justify the multitudinous aspects of Japan’s imperial regime and justified the pursuit of empire by framing it in terms of a virtuous and compassionate mission.

In addition, in Zen at War, Brian Victoria exposits the arguments made by the eminent scholar of Zen Buddhism Ichikawa Hakugen. Hakugen identified twelve Buddhist precepts that were receptive to imperialist interpretation, and thus, in turn, became the cornerstone of Buddhism’s collaboration with the militarist regime[7]. For example, the ideal imperial subject was conceived as being someone who sacrificed their individuality in order to become a servant to the state, intent on actualizing Japan’s modernizing and imperial mission[8]. This concept was supported by the Buddhist ideas of selflessness, but also the middle way doctrine[9].  For example, the middle way doctrine entailed the search for constant compromise, thereby avoiding confrontation, meaning that the imperial subject ideally accepted the prevailing social order in order to avoid conflict with others[10]. Moreover, the concept of karma, with its concomitant idea of retribution, justified inequalities in the social order, as good or bad fortune in this life was explained in terms of one’s conduct in a previous life[11]. Hence, the predicament of colonized subjects may merely be due to their bad conduct in previous lives, thus justifying their occupation. There were, of course, many other examples of Buddhist precepts that fostered imperialism. However, the crux of Hakugen’s argument is that this connection is deep rooted within the history of Buddhism, and thus the existence of a Buddhist-imperialist nexus in the early twentieth century is undeniable.

Hence, Japan’s pursuit of hegemony was not simply conceptualized in political terms, as Buddhism provided fertile ground upon which religious and moral justifications for empire could be made. Therefore, given that Japan’s imperial conquests are still a sore point in East Asia, particularly in China where anti-Japanese sentiments are rife, it seems surprising that the majority of Buddhist sects have failed to acknowledge their role in facilitating Japan’s military endeavours of the early twentieth century[12].  Yet, their role is evident, and should be uncovered if we are to truly understand this period of history.

[1] Aaron Moore, Writing War: Soldiers Record the Japanese Empire, (Cambridge, 2013), p.9.

[2] Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival, (London, 2013), p.5.

[3] Ibid., pp.24-26. Jeremy Yellen, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire met Total War, (Ithaca, 2019), p.3.

[4] Brian Victoria, Zen at War, (Oxford, 2006), p.58

[5] Christopher Ives, The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Modern Japan, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 26:1, (1999), p.101.

[6] Ibid., pp.89-90.

[7] Brian Victoria, Zen at War, (Oxford, 2006), p.171

[8] Ibid., p.172

[9] Ibid., pp.172-173

[10] Ibid., p.173

[11] Ibid., pp.171-172.

[12] Ibid., p.152.

Gender or: How Buddhism Learned to Stop Floating and Love the State

The focus of this week’s readings was on Buddhist world orders, and in particular the way in which the religion – and its followers – oriented themselves within the world. In particular, I wanted to understand how Buddhism was deployed in support of the Japanese state. At a first glance, it seems like such a move is impossible. Buddhism is an other-wordly religion which argues that ‘attachment’ to the material world brings about suffering.1 Nevertheless, Buddhism was used to legitimate Japanese power, the tension between this/other-worldly resolved. In order to understand how this was done, I took a look at several ways in which ‘Buddhism’, as an idea, was reinterpreted and imagined by the state. One such way was through gender. The extract below, from the journal Chūō Bukkyō (1934), demonstrates how Buddhism was reimagined in gendered ways, and how this helped resolved the this/other-worldly tension described.

Through a karmic connection Japan received a daughter from another home as its wife. With a sincere heart this wife worked hard to take care of our home, having children and then grandchildren. Our home, not her original home, has been foremost in her mind. Indeed, from early on, more than a daughter from another home, she has been our wife and mother. (( Ōta Kakumin, ‘Zokuhi zokkai’ in Chūō Bukkyō 18:3 (1934), p. 194 in Christoper Ives (tr.), ‘The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Japan’ in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1/2 (Spring 1999), p. 86 ))

This extract encodes Buddhism with the female gender (‘wife’, ‘home’, ‘children’) contra the Japanese state, which is coded male. This has two effects. Firstly, the term ‘wife’ is used to build a sense of unity between the Emperor’s law and Buddha’s law (王法佛法一如).2 ‘Marriage’ conveys the notion that the Japanese state is in line with the Heavenly Way (天道), and that there is a lot of doctrinal overlap between Buddhism and the state. The emperor, for example, plays the role of the buddha, looking out for his subjects-as-children with the compassionate heart (心). In turn, this gives the state spiritual-legitimacy, with the added bonus of elevating the emperor to an ethereal, buddha-like status.

Secondly, this gendering also imparts feminine stereotypes onto Buddhism, and presents us with an image of the religion as passive and – crucially – subjugated to men.3 This limits Buddhism’s influence within society by channelling its doctrine into areas that are ‘acceptable’ for its ‘gender’, so to speak. Any priests that choose to rebel against the state, therefore, are seen as stepping beyond the boundaries of their ‘gendered’ role. Thus, in siphoning Buddhism’s influence into specific areas, gender imposes boundaries onto the religion so as to limit its power. Buddhists are now no longer unconfined by space and time, like clouds.4 Gender confines Buddhism – and Buddhists – to specific realms that are appropriate and least disruptive to the state.

  1. Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism (1998), pp. 70, 73 [↩]
  2. Christopher Ives, ‘The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Japan’ in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1/2 (Spring 1999), p. 85 [↩]
  3. See He-Yin Zhen, ‘On the Revenge of Women: Part 1: Instruments of Men’s Rule Over Women’ (1907) in Lydia He Liu, Rebecca Karl, Dorothy Ko (eds.), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (2013) [↩]
  4. Hwansoo Kim, ‘The Adventures of a Japanese Monk in Colonial Korea: Sōma Shōei’s Zen training with Korean masters’ in E. Anderson (ed.), Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (2017), p. 63 [↩]

Buddhism and Social Darwinism: The Changing Functions of Korean Buddhism

When Liang Qichao’s (1873-1929) writings were first introduced into Korea in the late 1890s, his Social Darwinist understanding of evolution took hold of the Korean intellectual consciousness.[1] Liang believed in a world defined by competition, and suggested several ideas to emerge victorious, such as ‘self-strengthening through (modern) education’ and ‘the encouragement of a collectivist, self-sacrificing and adventurous spirit’.[2] We see evidence of Liang’s influence across Korean Buddhist thinkers during the turn of the century like Han Yong-un (1879-1944), Kwon Sangno (1879-1965) and Yongsong Jinjong (1864-1940). I will examine how they engaged with the evolutionary and scientific ideas of their time, highlighting similarities not just within their ideas but also with prominent Western theories at the time, concluding that evolutionary theory was ultimately inescapable as an influencing factor, and on a broader scale, ask what this meant for the existential role Korean Buddhism was to play.

Han Yong-un wrote extensively on the ‘modern’ aspects of Buddhism, citing its altruism and the idea of a Buddha-nature present in all beings as indicators of equality – and hence, modernity – inherent in Buddhist ideas.[3] Han also drew Social Darwinist ideas from the translated works of Liang, emphasizing ideas such as degradation, strength, and competition in his works.

On the topic of the education of monks, Han writes: ‘The absence of education mean[t] degradation to the level of barbarians or animals’.[4] This conveyed a fear particularly popular in the West during the late 19th century when theories of degeneration took off. Cesare Lombroso and other public intellectuals proposed the notion that as there was no moral rationale to evolution, there is no guarantee that progress will take place instead of regression.[5]

The other great ‘forebearer’ of Korean Buddhism alongside Han was Kwon Sangno, who published a treatise titled ‘Materials on the Evolution of Korean Buddhism,’ in which he set out four key reforms to revitalize Korean Buddhism.[6] Social Darwinist principles appeared not just in Kwon’s title but also throughout the treatise. For instance, Kwon warned that ‘if Buddhism does not conform with the civilization of the future we will definitely fail in revitalizing it, even if we were to bring back to life Martin Luther and Cromwell and put them to the task’.[7] This idea had obvious parallels to Liang Qichao’s earlier work. Liang’s writings discussed heroism extensively, including pieces on heroes such as Napoleon, Columbus, Bismarck, Washington and others on which the ‘survival of nations in the evolutionary competition’ depended.[8] But unlike Liang, Kwon took pains to emphasize that heroism alone was not enough to revive Buddhism in the modern landscape.

Han and Kwon evidently integrated ideas of Social Darwinism, but other Buddhist monks were less accommodating. Yongsong Jinjong was concerned with the longevity of Buddhism in a time when Christianity was rapidly on the rise. He believed that in order to rival Christianity, he must offer a Buddhist narrative on the ‘arising’ of the world and its inhabitants.[9] His ‘Mind-Only Theory’ did just that, arguing that the mind was the origin of all dharmas including everything from the four elements to the ripening of fruit.[10] Yongsong further critiqued scientific explanations of natural phenomena, disregarding evolutionary theory for his own version of the ten causes for human life, including such causes as ‘thought arising’, ‘essence of the true mind’ and ‘non-enlightenment’.[11]

Yet, Yongsong’s ideas are more similar to Han and Kwon than immediately apparent. Kwon placed a similar priority on the mind as Yongsong does, emphasizing as his first rule of reform for Korean Buddhism that monks must ‘reform their minds before the material realities’ such that all monks would be ‘unified in mind’.[12] In this way, Kwon almost appeared as a middle way between Yongsong who disregarded science and leaned on the primacy of the mind instead and Han who fully endorsed evolutionary theory as the primary cause of the environment surrounding us.

However, we must not discount evolutionary theory from Yongsong’s ideas completely. Huh argued that Yongsong refused to provide more detailed answers regarding his theory of how the world came to be because ‘he just assume[d] that the evolution of the corrupted world “naturally” proceeded. By perceiving the corrupted situation of the world as a “natural” phenomenon, Yongsong avoid[ed] the necessity of answering those questions’.[13] Much like his Social Darwinist counterparts, Yongsong assumed that the world proceeded along its natural stages to become what it is now. Also, similar to the proponents of the degeneration theory of the time, Yongsong does not preclude the rising of a corrupted world from natural phenomena, because as Lombroso argued, there was no moral rationale behind evolution.

Traditionally, Buddhism has been regarded more as a way of life rather than a religion. However, by the end of the 19th century, Buddhists were beginning to turn to Buddhism for answers to questions beyond the ‘how,’ as they delved deeper into the ‘why’. Korean Buddhists wrestled with questions on what it means to be human by engaging with theories of evolution or of the mind, either looking to integrate science into their worldview or by forming a theory distinctive due to its opposition to science. And in a climate where Buddhism seemed to have fallen out of favour in comparison to Christianity, Buddhists attempted to modernize their own religion by incorporating science. Ultimately, evolutionary theory permeated the ideas of major Korean Buddhist figures during this time, and even those who attempted to disregard it had themes of evolutionary theory in their writings.

[1] Han Yongun, Selected Writings of Han Yongun: From Social Darwinism to Socialism with a Buddhist Face, trans. Vladimir Tikhonov and Owen Miller (Folkestone, 2008), p. 1.

[2] Ibid, 2.

[3] Ibid, 7.

[4] Ibid, 58.

[5] R.B. Kershner, ‘Degeneration: The Explanatory Nightmare’, The Georgia Review 40 (1986), pp. 431.

[6] Kim Hwansoo Ilmee, Empire of the Dharma: Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877-1912 (London, 2012), p. 301.

[7] Ibid, 304-5.

[8] Han, Selected Writings, p. 6.

[9] Huh Woosung, ‘Individual Salvation and Compassionate Action’ in Jin Y. Park (ed.), Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism (Albany, 2010), p. 29.

[10] Ibid, 31.

[11] Ibid, 30.

[12] Kim Hwansoo, Empire, p. 303.

[13] Huh, ‘Individual Salvation’, p. 32.