PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

312Pacific WorldIII. Trends and DifferencesIf we might consider ourselves in a situation trapped by the culturaland ethnic boundaries of our own tradition and we wanted to try toovercome the boundaries by opening the scope and vision of our owntraditional way of practice in Korean Buddhism, the first thing we wouldhave to do is identify those major cultural differences that lay between us.Here I would like to list a few areas of differences.(1) Monastic Versus Community LifeOne of the most conspicuous differences is the American Buddhist’spreference for ministry-focused Buddhism over monastic practice. Thetemples are the places where those ethnic or American Buddhist leadersteach and train new, incoming practitioners, after having done their owntraining and practices elsewhere. Traditional Korean monasteries performboth functions of teaching disciples as well as training their own monasticmembers while deepening their own religious practices. However, as thecase in a Christian church where ministers who have done their theologicaltraining elsewhere and are then dispatched to perform their pastoral work,the central role of an American Buddhist temple lies in teaching andtraining lay disciples.This preference also has a significant impact on the expectations thatshape the role of clergy, not only in terms of how they relate with the laypopulation, but also in regard to the mode of administrative and operationalcontrol of their religious communities. Korean Buddhism is quitepractice-oriented, and the emphasis on religious practice strongly dominatesthe minds of the Buddhist followers. They are generally expected tobe great practitioners, and have more alternatives to select from if they arenot interested in running a temple. In other words, even the monks andnuns who seclude themselves from society and make no “concrete” contributionto humanity earn respect and support from the Buddhist followers.In that scheme of expectations for themselves, the majority of monks andnuns in Korea rely mainly on donations coming from lay members of thetemple, especially those major and important supporters, who donate as ameans of accumulating merit.In contrast, the degree to which American Buddhist monastics rely onlay members or disciples for their own support and spiritual developmentis relatively much less than in ethnic Buddhism. Instead, they earn theirmeans of support by providing religious services to the members, such asoffering meditation courses and seminars, or engaging in fundraisingactivities, which are more like an earned income at the cost of their labor.