Taming the tiger of hwadu absolutism
Kanhwa Sŏn/Chan practices understood from the perspective of ritual practice and experience
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4871137 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sung-Eun Thomas Kim (0000-0003-1998-9931, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 223-241 |
| Publication date | 2022-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0008-4298 • E-ISSN: 2042-0587 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00084298211027360 |
| OpenAlex | W3206011092 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
Kanhwa Sŏn has often been perceived as iconoclastic and impervious to theorizing. Furthermore, its critique of "hermeneutical rigidity" and " hwadu absolutism" point to the impossibility of a meaningful dialogue between its practitioners and scholars of Buddhism. It has even been argued that such characteristics of kanhwa Sŏn have compromised the possibility of its practice becoming adoptable in contemporary life. But kanhwa Sŏn practiced in the summer and winter Sŏn/Chan retreats has all the trappings of ritual. In an effort to build a methodological bridge, this article attempts to provide the grounds for discussing kanhwa Sŏn practices from the perspective of social science. With this in mind, this article will highlight the experiences of the practitioners in the context of ritual practice while perceiving those experiences as socially determined manifestations. The reason for this attempt is that there seems to be much similarity in the soteriological structure of kanhwa Sŏn practice with the structure of ritual practice that involves constructing and eliciting transformative experiences. Further similarities are in the motif of returning from the ritual/retreat having been transformed into a person with a new identity. By framing the practice of kanhwa Sŏn as ritual practice and experience, one can bring the discussion of kanhwa Sŏn into the wider discourses of the academic study of religion
Aesthetics · Art · Buddhism · Epistemology · Framing (construction · Perspective (graphical · Sociology · Theology · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
Beginnings in ritual studies
Essays on the ritual of social relations
The Zen Monastic Experience
Deeply into the Bone
Chan Buddhism in Ritual Context
A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms
Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism
Revisiting the Insider-Outsider Debate
The Seon Monk Hyujeong and Buddhist Ritual in Sixteenth-Century Korea
The social construction of reality
The Ritual Process
Ritual
The Ritual Experience
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |