Daesoon Jinrihoe A New Religion Emerging from Traditional East Asian Philosophy Copyright ⓒ The Daesoon Academy of Sciences 2016 All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of The Daesoon Academy of Sciences. First Paperback printing June 30, 2016 Daesoonjinrihoe Press 875, Gangcheon-ro, Gangcheon-myeon Yeoju-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea, 12616 A CIP catalogue record of the National Library of Korea for this book is available at the homepage of CIP(http://seoji.nl.go.kr) and Korean Library Information System Network(http://www.nl.go.kr/kolisnet). CIP Control No. : CIP2016015603 Find The Daesoon Academy of Sciences here : Homepage : http://www.daos.or.kr E-mail : [email protected] ISBN 978-89-954862-7-6 Contents Preface 1 Daesoon Sasang: A quintessential Korean philosophy 1 Don Baker 2 Kang Jeungsan: Trials and Triumphs of a Visionary Pacifist/Nationalist, 1894-1909 17 Key Ray Chong 3 The Correlative Cosmology of Daesoon and Ecology 59 Young Woon Ko 4 Daesoonjinrihoe’s Religious Thought: From a Confucian and Comparative Perspective 85 Edward Chung 5 Truth and Spatial Imagination: Buddhist Thought and Daesoonjinrihoe 113 Jin Y. Park 6 Hoo‐cheon‐gae‐byeok as a Korean Idea of Eschaton: 135 A Comparative Study of Eschatology between Christianity and Daesoon Thought Hiheon Kim 7 Investigating Daesoon Thought: A Korean New Reiligion’s Approach to 157 Identifying and Creatively Sublimating the Values of Korea’s Traditional Religions Gyungwon Lee 8 Kang Jeungsan’s Taoistic Tendency and the Taoism Elements of Mugeukdo 187 Namsik Ko 9 The History and Theology of Daesoonjinrihoe 199 Daesoon Institute of Religion and Culture Preface ⅰ Preface Daesoon thought is a comprehensive system of truth representing the Great Dao of ‘resolution of grievances into mutual beneficence’. It originated from the promulgation of never-before-revealed Truth by Gucheon Sangje (the Supreme Being of the Ninth Heaven) Kang Jeungsan, who descended to Korea 146 years ago. Thereafter, Doju Jo Jeongsan, who inherited the orthodox religious authority through a revelation from Gucheon Sangje, established the Daesoon Truth on a firm foundation through specific ways of spiritual cultivation. Lastly, Dojeon Park Wudang, who accepted the leadership bestowed upon him by the last words of Doju Jo, founded and advocated Daesoonjinrihoe, and spread Sangje’s Daesoon Truth widely. Daesoonjinrihoe, which has currently grown into a representative national religion in Korea, is shining the light of Daesoon truth over the whole world as well as the Korean nation through carrying out its three major works including charitable aid, social welfare, and education on a yearly basis. A contemporary religion will prosper when its believers passionately partici- pate in various social activities helping people in need while inspiring sound religious values in its believers. Likewise, the importance of academic research activity cannot be emphasized enough, in that it is a good way to inspire religious piety and ardor in believers, while contributing further to the development of universal truth. Daesoon Academy of Sciences, which is an affiliated institute of Daejin University, publishes an academic journal twice a year, which amounts so far to 30 issues in total. Many scholars from various fields, such as Korean religion, philosophy and other humanities studies, have contributed to this journal. Their academic research activities coming from various perspectives have contributed to the better understanding of and propagation of Daesoon thought worldwide. However, these research activities and their presentations have mainly been published in Korean so foreign scholars have had little chance of learning about Daesoon Thought. Today, we have prepared this academic journal in English for ⅱ Daesoon Jinrihoe the first time especially for the scholars from English-speaking countries. We would like to express our regrets to those who have been looking forward to this publication of their submitted papers for such a long time because it has been delayed due to various unfavorable circumstances. We hope this publica- tion will be a good chance to arouse proper interest in Daesoon thought and promote subsequent research activities in this field from foreign scholars. Although there might be some errors in editing due to our lack of experience, your generous understanding would be much appreciated. Lastly, we would like to express our profound appreciations to all the authors. We hope the Grace of Sangje is with you always. Thank you. June 30th, 2016 Kim Wook Director of Daesoon Academy of Sciences Daesoon Sasang 1 Daesoon Sasang : A quintessential Korean philosophy Don Baker University of British Columbia For almost 40 years, since 1971, I have been involved with Korea and studying events on the peninsula. As an historian, I have been particularly interested in watching changes in Korean culture that are of historical significance. Over the last four decades, Korea has undergone many such dramatic and significant changes. When I first went to Korea as a middle- school English teacher, Korea was a poor country living under authoritarian rule. Now South Korea ranks among the early 21st-century’s economic powerhouses. It is also among the world’s most democratic countries. In addition to such rapid economic and political change, South Korea has also experienced a rapid transformation of its religious culture. Among those changes is the rise of the new religion of Daesoonjinrihoe to prominence. In the 1995 government census of religious affiliation, Daesoonjinrihoe for the first time moved out of the “other category” to merit a listing of its own. Even though the government only found a little over 62,000 people who said there were members of Daesoonjinrihoe (though Daesoonjinrihoe claims to have well over 6million members), that undercount still made Daesoonjinrihoe the 6th largest religious community in Korea, behind only Buddhists, Protestant Christians, Catholics, Confucians, and Won Buddhists. I am sure that Daesoonjinrihoe has grown even more since then. The growth is obvious not only in the many dojang (temple complexes) and hoegwan (single temples) which dot the peninsula but in the general hospitals and schools run by Daesoonjinrihoe. Pundang Jesaeng Hospital has been open 2 Daesoon Jinrihoe since 1998. Two more general hospitals, one in Dongducheon and another in Koseong, are under construction now. Moreover, Daesoonjinrihoe opened Daejin University north of Seoul in 1993 and is now constructing a branch campus in Chungbuk province farther south. The Daejin education foun- dation also operates 6 high schools. This is an impressive institutional presence for a religious organization less than half a century old. To create and sustain such an institutional presence, Daesoonjinrihoe must have a sizable membership. How has it managed to attract so many believers in such a relatively short period of time? For a religion to attract adherents, it must at a minimum do three things: 1) It must identify a problem that its intended audience will agree is a serious problem. 2) It must offer an explanation of that problem which appears plausible to that intended audience and therefore has persuasive power. 3) It must offer a solution to that problem which is also plausible and therefore also has persuasive power. Those three factors are not enough by themselves to give a religion persua- sive power. A religion should also offer guidelines on how to be a better human being--in other words, it should offer a reasonable definition of morality as well as reasonable advice on how to live a moral life. Moreover, it should encourage its followers to follow those guidelines. In other words, it should appear to teach its members how to be better human beings. A religion also must provide an object of worship for its followers, one that is perceived as a worthy object of worship. Whether or not that object of worship is an anthropomorphic deity or not (it can be the ground of ultimate reality or the object of ultimate concern) is not as important as whether or not the audience that religion wants to attract perceives the existence of that object of worship as plausible and as deserving of worship or utmost respect. In order to offer plausible explanations of recognized problems, offer plausible solutions to those problems, offer reasonable ethical guidelines, Daesoon Sasang 3 and propose a plausible and worthy object of worship, a religion has to use terminology that is both familiar to its audience and is also novel enough to distinguish it from other religions. Daesoon philosophy uses precisely such terminology. The vocabulary of Daesoon philosophy is both familiar to Koreans, and yet somehow new. That is because Daesoon philosophy, like most great philosophies and religions in East Asia, uses inclusive and multi- layered terminology for its most important concepts. One distinctive feature of East Asian thought has been the preference for terminological breadth and inclusiveness. In the Western tradition, especially the modern Anglo-American tradition of analytical philosophy, the more important a term is, the more necessary it is to give that term a precise and therefore limited range of meaning. However, in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, the most important terms, such as Dao (K. do), li (K. i), Qi (K. ki), dharma, and mind, have a wide range of meaning, so wide that any single short translation of such terms into English will be misleading, since much of what they imply will have to be left out of the translation. The same is true of the terminology of Daesoon philosophy, much of which is borrowed from Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism and then modified to express the new ideas Daesoon philosophy has introduced. It is precisely this combination of the old with the new that gives Daesoon philosophy so much persuasive power.