UCLA

This study seeks to move academic discourse on Wŏn Buddhism beyond didactic introductions and official narratives. Delving into tensions between a complex constellation of text, redaction, narrative, belief, praxis, and personal experience, I explore the quick transformation of Pak Chungbin’s small Buddhadharma Research Society into the contemporary and international Wŏn Buddhist order. On an immediate level, this study reveals a disparity between text and praxis that emerges after the death of the charismatic founder. On a broader level, it reveals the concrete ways adherents in a nascent religious order immediately alter text and praxis to fit their desires and needs, despite the trajectory on which the charismatic founder set his order. The Introduction provides a thorough review of existing English literature on Wŏn Buddhism, discusses historiographic and methodologic concerns, deliberates on the source material, and reveals the need for more sustained and focused investigations of Wŏn Buddhism. Chapter One surveys official narratives around Pak and the founding of the order. It also investigates the divine status of Pak as the Maitreya Buddha, which followers claimed after his death. Chapter Two provides an accounting of the early texts of the order, examines the redaction of Pak’s Pulgyo chŏngjŏn, and locates Pak’s teaching firmly within broader East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhist worldviews and schemata. Chapter Three provides a much-needed outline and accounting of the community: types of membership, governance, education of ordinands, and the daily life of the ordained in a variety of settings. This chapter also provides a complete accounting of temple structure, rituals, and the performance of dharma meetings. Chapter Three closes with three important critical issues facing the community: self-autonomy of ordained members, gendered discrimination, and the invisibility of LGBT members. Throughout this study, I include an extensive personal ethnography, weaving in my own subjective experience with the Wŏn Buddhist community.