Korean Buddhist Journeys to Lands Worldly and Otherworldly

This Presidential Address explores Korean Buddhist travel undertaken for religious training, missionary propagation, and devotional pilgrimage. By traveling to India and throughout East Asia, as well as to the mythic undersea bastion of the faith, Koreans demonstrated their associations with the wid...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of Asian studies 2009-11, Vol.68 (4), p.1055-1075
Main Author: Buswell, Robert E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asian history
Asian studies
Buddhism
Buddhists
Chinese culture
Chinese languages
Cosmology
Cultural heritage
Cultural tradition
Geography
Holy places
Korea
Korean culture
Korean language
Landscape
Missionaries
Monks
Myth
Palaces
Pilgrimages
Presidential Address
Religious missions
Religious places
Sacred
Travel
Travel literature
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Summary:This Presidential Address explores Korean Buddhist travel undertaken for religious training, missionary propagation, and devotional pilgrimage. By traveling to India and throughout East Asia, as well as to the mythic undersea bastion of the faith, Koreans demonstrated their associations with the wider world of Buddhist culture, whether it be terrestrial or cosmological. Simultaneous with continued travel overseas to the Chinese mainland and the Buddhist homeland of India, Koreans also brought those sacred sites home through a wholesale remapping of the domestic landscape. As local geography became universalized, there was less need for the long, dangerous journeys overseas to Buddhist sacred sites: instead, the geography of Buddhism became implicit within the indigenous landscape, turning Korea into the Buddha-land itself. Once this “relocalization” of Buddhism had occurred, Korean Buddhists were able to travel through the sacred geography of Buddhism from the (relative) comfort of their own locale.
ISSN:0021-9118
1752-0401
DOI:10.1017/S0021911809990702