232 CHAPTER NINEoffering healing through meditation, and providing instruction in such arts as
painting, flower arranging, and music as forms of spiritual training.
Korean Buddhists are actively proselytizing not only at home but also
abroad. Most prominent in this regard has been the Chogye monk Seung Sahn
(b. 1927), famous for his teaching of "don't-know mind." His Kwan Urn
School, founded in 1983, now claims more than 50 affiliated groups through-
out Europe and the Americas.
Not all is rosy, however. The wealth and power won by the Chogye Order
have led to charges of corruption coming from within the order itself. Partic-
ularly serious have been charges of collusion with the government. In the late
1970s, as a reaction to the Christian churches' support for political dissidents,
the government began promoting Buddhism as an expression of Korean iden-
tity, and the order established a Monks' Militia for National Defense. Accusa-
tions that the upper echelons of the order have funneled Sangha funds to
sympathetic politicians have given rise to concern that the pattern of the
Koryo dynasty will be repeated, whereby government patronage breeds
monastic corruption.
9.8 Life in a Son Monastery
Despite the rapid secularization of Korean society, the Korean Sangha is prob-
ably the strongest monastic institution in east Asia. Life in the traditional Son
monasteries and nunneries continues largely unchanged from the pattern it
has followed for centuries, providing an accurate picture of conditions in the
Sung monasteries on which they were modeled. As a result, these institutions
offer an important corrective to many of the stereotypes about Ch'an/
Zen/Son that fill the popular press. Reading the teachings of the ancient
Ch'an masters, one would assume that they avoided books entirely and lived
totally spontaneous, iconoclastic lives. Upon visiting a Son monastery, one
discovers, however, that the monks devote their early years to a thorough study
of the classical texts, and that throughout their monastic careers they adhere to
a strict code of discipline and etiquette. As we noted in Section 8.5.5, most
extant Ch'an literature was composed during a period when life in Ch'an
monasteries had become extremely formalized. In Korean monasteries we can
see living examples of how Ch' an life and literature were originally designed
to interact, each providing a corrective for the shortcomings of the other.
Four large "forest" monasteries exist in Korea today. Located on hillsides
sheltered by mountains in remote areas of the country, their location reflects
not only the principles of Chinese geomancy-which maintains that moun-
tains provide protection from baleful influences-but also the geographical
isolation imposed on Buddhist institutions under the Yi dynasty. In theory,
each monastery preserves the four strands of tradition that have come to de-
fine Korean Buddhism-Son, Hwaom study, Vinaya, and Pure Land-al-
though the balance between these strands differs from monastery to monastery.
In some, seminaries are maintained, offering the traditional curriculum estab-