Organizer: Clark W. Sorenson, University of Washington
Chair: Donald L. Baker, University of British Columbia
Youngsook Pak, University of London
Buddhist scriptures offer a rich literature of legends and miracles related to holy men and to particular monuments, a powerful instrument to excite the imagination of devotees and to enhance the narration of events with a supra-mundane character. Miracle gives to religion an entity and divine perpetuity. In the jataka, the collection of stories of the previous lives of Buddha Sakyamuni, and in other orthodox Buddhist scriptures, it is not unusual to find miraculous stories. In fact, collections of miraculous stories known as lingxian zhuan (Korean: yonghom chon, literally "collections of spiritual experiences") assisted in the promulgation of a particular doctrinal teaching and in enabling it to gain wide popularity. Such stories consolidated the status of the divinity in question and supplemented the scriptures already in existence about him. When the sanctuary of a Bodhisattva became known, miracles and legends appeared concerning the deity and that particular holy place. Wutaishan in Shanxi Province is known as the center of the cult of Manjusri. Putuoshan in Zhejiang Province is believed to be the abode of Avalokitesvara. In Korea, Naksan at the east coast in Kangwon Province became the sanctuary of Avalokitesvara. Jiuhuashan in Anhui Province, known as the sanctum of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, became a popular destination for pilgrims. Legends or miracles related to these deities provide new elements in the iconography of the expanding pantheon of Mahayana Buddhism. Thus, for the proper interpretation of a Buddhist painting in which the iconography does not follow the formal description found in doctrinal scriptures, the identification of the underlying literary source is vital.
In this context, the highly unusual iconography of Suwol Kwanum in Daitoku-ji, Kyoto, an important Koryo painting, in which a group of figures bring offerings to the Bodhisattva, is a case in point. What is the textual source of this painting? Among Koryo Avalokitesvara icons is this painting unique? In the Chinese tradition are there any other paintings similar to this iconography? How can we interpret the Daitoku-ji Koryo painting? These questions will be examined.
Matthew Levey, Birmingham-Southern College
This paper is an attempt to explore the evolution, in late imperial China and Korea, of the "Study of Nature and Principle" (hsing-li hsueh; songnihak).The focus will be on the Ming and Yi Dynasties, when in both China and Korea attempts were made by proponents of the "Ch'eng-Chu" "School of Principle" to deal with the two thorniest issues in the texts of Chu Hsi and his later followers: (1) do humans, as Mencius argued centuries earlier, have an impulse (or Nature) that is the agent of its own expression to do what is morally good in the concrete moral situations of one's daily life, and (2) whether or not the good nature is distinct onto-genetically from the impulses and their source to do evil. I will compare Ming-Dynasty thinkers-such as Hsueh Hsuan (1389-1464), Ts'ao Tuan (1376-1434), and Lo Ch'in-shun (1465-1547)-and the major participants in the "four-seven debate"-Yi Hwang (T'oegye, 1501-1570), Ki Taesung (Kobong, 1527-1572) and Yi I (Yulgok, 1536-1584)-to show that in late imperial China and Korea there were two distinct patterns of development of the Chu Hsi tradition.
On the one hand, Chinese Neo-Confucians concluded that Chu Hsi did not remain within the Mencian tradition, which posits the moral nature as the agent of human moral responses to the "myriad things and affairs," because, they argued, Chu Hsi made the claim that "nature" (hsing), or li ("principle") does not move and is onto-genetically distinct from the agent of human behavior, the mind (hsin) or ch'i ("material force") or "psycho-physical stuff"). These conclusions-that Chu Hsi ultimately abandoned the notion of an active nature or principle and did so because he was an ontological and cosmological dualist-prompted a "restructuring of Neo-Confucianism in the late Ming," toward a monistic cosmology and ontology.
In contrast, Korean Ch'eng-Chu proponents not only argued that Chu Hsi understood nature to be the agent of human moral expression but explicitly rejected the monistic path taken by the Ming-Dynasty Ch'eng-Chu proponents. Although they differed over a number of important issues, especially over whether the so-called "four sprouts" (Chn., ssu-tuan) and "seven feelings" (Chn., ch'i-ch'ing) can or cannot be correlated exclusively with li and ch'i respectively, the participants in the four-seven debate ultimately worked within the dualistic framework established by Chu Hsi and saw in it the Mencian conception of the active impulses of nature as agents of truly moral responses to the things and affairs with which humans come into contact.
In sum, this exploration is part of an ongoing investigation into Chu Hsi's philosophical thinking and its legacy. Rather than posit a Chu Hsi system, I prefer to think of his corpus as a constellation of elements that are related in a number of systematic ways. For example, in certain contexts Chu Hsi spoke of an active nature or principle by linking "nature and feelings" (ch'ing) to each other as "source and current" (yuan-liu) or "root and branch" (pen-mo), while in others-perhaps, even in most cases-he denied precisely this point. His legacy, then, was not a single pattern of thinking but a constellation of elements that were structured in multiple patterns. The controversies in Ming China and Yi Korea show this quite clearly and also indicate how the two distinctly different paths of intellectual development outlined above stem from Chu Hsi's constellation.
Jongmyung Kim, University of California, Los Angeles
The Calamities-Solving Ritual was one of the most often held Buddhist rituals during the Koryo dyansty (918-1392) in Korea. While being the Buddhist expression of the Koryo people's view of cosmology, the ritual was also an esoteric Buddhist ritual performed with the highest frequency among the rituals held as needed. Koryo was unique in that the ritual named the Calamities-Solving Ritual was found only there. An analytical examination of ritual sites, purpose, the king's view of good governing, and the social situation under review shows that the Koryo Calamities-Solving Ritual was an event to suit the needs of the court, and to wish for royal longevity, and unable to play a role in creating state solidarity. This conclusion challenges traditional scholarship concerning the concept of state protection Buddhism and the social role of ritual as source of political power. This research also suggests the need of an in-depth study of esoteric Buddhism for better understanding of medieval Korean society.
Jin-hee Kim, Indiana University
This paper explores the character of influence studies across border and in the new mode by considering how a Korean drama, Mountain Corner, written by Se-duk Hom in 1936, is deeply interrelated with Western dramatic traditions and yet construes counter-Western receptions.
Two most important developments brought to older models of influence studies are ideological criticism and reader response theory. From the vantage point of the Marxist perspective, every act of writing in Western genres by and for Koreans furthers Western hegemony and encourages Koreans to think of their own culture as inadequate. On this account, Mountain Corner, being a Western adaptation (precisely of John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea), could only function as a non-indigenous text which, despite its subject matter is anything but Korean in character or purpose. Yet the evocation of reader response theory makes clear that such an understanding can never adequately account for the place of Western texts like this one in Korean culture. This means that those who bring traditional Korean expectations to the text, unaffected by Hom's intentional effort to create a parallel relationship with the Irish drama, would confirm the truthfulness of a Korean world view rather than the Western constructions of reality. The very essence of studies of cross-cultural literary relationships, as these theoretical contradictions indicate, lend themselves to no easy simplification.
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