Jogye order of Korean Buddhism announces intent to globalize

Jogye order of Korean Buddhism announces intent to globalize

The head of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, Venerable Jaesung, has announced a long-term plan that will help promote Korean Buddhism throughout the world in the coming decades. The Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism is the largest Buddhist order in Korea today. Korean Buddhism has remained relatively insular despite having a 1700-year history, something the order would like to change.

At a conference yesterday held in Paris, Venerable Jaesung said, “I admit Korean Buddhism has been focused on settling internal struggles within the orders over the last 10 to 20 years and consequently unable to look forward to the future. Now as the orders are in harmony, we will concentrate on promoting Korean Buddhism to the world through a long-term plan to come to fruition 10 to 20 years or 40 to 50 years later.”

One of the best-known faces of Korean Buddhism here in the West was that of the late Zen master Seung Sahn, a Jogye master who established the international Kwan Um School of Zen. The Kwan Um School of Zen has been successful, in part, due to its allowing laypeople to receive dharma transmission (an allowance not present in the modern-day Jogye Order), with their two ranks of Soen Sa Nim and Ji Do Poep Sa Nim comprised of more laypeople than monastics.

Read the full story from the Korea Times here.

Photo by Anja Johnson. CC BY 2.0. (Lotus Lantern Fesitval – Seoul, South Korea – 연꽃 축제 – 2009)

Source: http://www.shambhalasun.com