226 CHAPTER NINEBenefiting from strong political patronage from the Koryos, monasteries
grew in size, wealth, and influence. Many became major landholders, with
large numbers of serfs. Some even embarked on commercial ventures such as
alcohol, noodle, and tea production, and monks became embroiled in court
politics. Son monks in particular were renowned for their mastery of geo-
mancy, which kept them involved in building projects and ceremonies and
pulled them away from their meditation practice. As had happened in many
other countries, worldly success began to corrupt the Korean Sangha. This
sparked a backlash from both inside and outside the Buddhist community.
Confucians mounted their usual attacks on the religion as a whole, whereas
Buddhist government officials accused individual monks of ordaining not for
spiritual reasons but merely to avoid military service and to exploit the lucra-
tive potential of monastic life. In the tenth century, the government instituted
a series of restrictions to limit the participation of monks in secular affairs; in
the twelfth century, it ordered that all monks breaking their precepts be
forcibly disrobed.
In the midst of the political and ecclesiastical turmoil of the period, three
Korean monks-Uich' on, Chinul, and T' aego-applied working models from
China to raise the standards of the religion and to heal the split between doc-
trine and practice that had begun under the previous dynasty. Their efforts,
which transformed the original divisions of five teachings and nine mountains
(major Son temples) into five teachings and two sects, have shaped Korean
Buddhism ever since.
9.4.1 Oich'onUich'on (1055-1101) began his life as a royal prince. At the age of11 he en-
tered a Hwaom monastery; in 1085 he went to China to collect texts and fur-
ther his studies. There he studied widely with noted masters from various
schools, but was especially drawn to T'ien-t'ai. He vowed to the memory of
the Chinese master Chih-i (see Section 8.5.1) that he would expound the
school's doctrine in his homeland, viewing it as the ideal means to synthesize
competing traditions by avoiding the pitfalls inherent both in study without
practice (represented by the five orthodox schools) and practice without study
(represented by Son). In particular, Uich'on criticized contemporary Son prac-
titioners for abandoning what he saw as their school's original reliance on
study as a basis for meditation.
Enjoying the advantages of royal patronage, Uich' on's order soon flour-
ished, attracting members from all quarters of the Buddhist community. His
early death, however, put a halt to his attempted unification of Korean Bud.:.
dhism. Instead of bringing Buddhists together, Uich'on succeeded simply in
adding one more school to the already crowded field. Nonetheless, the exam-
ple of his attempts provided important lessons for the more successful re-
former, Chinul, one century later.