. esoteric buddhism under the chosn 635
Figure 4. Printed sheet with Sanskrit bīja. Songgwang Temple, ca. 1650.to enlightenment. However, at the same time, the Sŏn tradition para-
doxically was increasingly influenced by doctrinal and devotional
forms of Buddhism. It is somewhat difficult to establish to what degree
elements of orthodox Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism influenced Sŏn practice
during the Chosŏn,^34 but as we shall see below, practices related to
both Esoteric Buddhism and the Pure Land tradition would eventually
leave their visible marks on the Korean Sŏn tradition. Esoteric Bud-
dhist elements show up in Sŏn Buddhist writings from the fifteenth
(^34) There is virtually no trace of Ch’ŏnt’ae practice in Korean Sŏn from the fifteenth
century onwards. However, it is known that individual monks within the school of
Sŏn continued to study the major works of that tradition. The continued importance
in Chosŏn Buddhism of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtra should probably be seen in
the light of this.