BUDDHISM IN KOREA AND VIETNAM 235day of the twelfth lunar month, which usually falls in January). The entire pe-
riod is one extended meditation session. No one sleeps; breaks are taken only
for meals. In this way the participants reenact the Buddha's all-out practice on
the night ofhis Awakening.
Although meditators will often choose to enter retreat at a particular
monastery because of the reputation of its Son master, few have any close con-
tact with him. The meditator is free to choose his own k'ung-an and to find
his own techniques for focusing on the hua-t'ou (crucial phrase-see Section
8.6) so as to maintain the mind in the preverbal state called the "great doubt,"
in which Awakening can be gained and then matured. The master will give a
formal lecture once every two weeks and will conduct required private inter-
views once or twice during the retreat, but that is usually the extent of his in-
teraction with the itinerant group that has taken up residence in the meditation
hall. A meditator may schedule an interview with the Son master at any time,
but young monks are usually too timid to do so, whereas older monks tend to
feel that the master has nothing to teach them that they have not already heard.
The fact that Korean meditators are encouraged to stick to one k'ung-an for
life may be a factor here. As a result, a master may spend his career teaching all
the active meditators in the country without leaving behind a single personal
disciple.
Periodically, the strict division between meditators and support corps is
put aside, in keeping with the principle of unimpeded interaction. All able-
bodied monks are called out to help with planting and harvesting in the
monastery's fields, to fight forest fires, or to help with labor-intensive jobs in
the kitchen, such as pickling vegetables or making Chinese dumplings. The
lunar New Year;, shortly after the period of ferocious effort, brings a three-day
respite in the schedule, during which all the monks feast together, sing songs,
and play games. At the end of these periods, the division oflabor resumes.
If, after several years, a monk finds that he is suited to the meditative life,
he will abandon the meditation-hall circuit and retreat to a forest hermitage to
develop his meditation in isolation, returning to the large monasteries when
he feels the need for group support to reinvigorate his practice. If his under-
standing develops sufficiently, he may eventually return to his home monastery,
where he may be elected to one of the subsidiary positions of authority in the
meditation compound, or even to the position of Son master when the office
falls vacant.
By far the vast majority of Korean monks, however, do not meditate. Ei-
ther they never attempt the meditative life to begin with, or find that it does
not suit them when they do. Thus they remain in or return to the support
corps of their home monastery, filling positions in the kitchen, the field, or
the office, perhaps even being elected to the position of abbot, going into re-
tirement when they grow too old to work. In this respect they carry out a tra-
dition of specialization within the Sangha that goes back not only to Sung
China, but to the earliest centuries of Indian Buddhism; a tradition whereby a
minority concentrated on gaining Awakening in this lifetime, while others fa-
cilitated that effort in hopes of acquiring merit for future lives.