Some Contemporary Dilemmas of Korean Buddhism: A Critical Review of the Jogye Order’s 2018 Periodic Report

According to the Jogye Order’s 2018 periodic report, the average age of monks is increasing and the number of monks is decreasing. In order to offer solutions to these problems, the report presents and analyzes by dividing those themes into six sub-topics, namely: decrease of births; decrease of pos...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religions (Basel, Switzerland ) Switzerland ), 2019-04, Vol.10 (4), p.234
Main Authors: Kim, Kyungrae, Kim, Eunyoung, Seo, Wangmo, Park, Cheonghwan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
aging monks
Buddhism
Conferences
decreased number of monks
Education
education for monks
educational innovation
Monks
Morality
Ordination
Religion
Seminars
Teaching
the Jogye Order
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:According to the Jogye Order’s 2018 periodic report, the average age of monks is increasing and the number of monks is decreasing. In order to offer solutions to these problems, the report presents and analyzes by dividing those themes into six sub-topics, namely: decrease of births; decrease of postulants; aging of postulants; rapidly changing educational environment; teaching aptitude of educators; education budget. The report lists a variety of information derived from the raw data and offers suggestions regarding these six topics. However, the report has several failings, as the research misunderstands the data at times, and their report does not present proper interpretations and concrete solutions. The final suggestions that the report proposes to increase the number of monks seem to be misguided and ineffective. This article critically scrutinizes the Jogye Order’s latest report to identify and correct some data misinterpretations and offer new insights that the authors believe would help our leaders come up with better solutions.
ISSN:2077-1444
2077-1444
DOI:10.3390/rel10040234