Hyodang Choi Beom-sul; Buddhism; Tea; Wonhyo; Independence Movement
摘要
This paper surveys the life of Hyodang Choi Beom-sul. When he was only 15, he was actively involved in the 1919 Independence Movement. Going to Japan to study, he met the most famous anarchists of the time, the Korean Park Yeol and his companion, Kaneko Fumiko. They drew him into a plot to assassinate the Japanese crown prince, but the great earthquake of 1923 put an end to that. From 1928, he was the head monk of Dasolsa temple in the hills behind Jinju. He turned it into a focal point of resistance to the Japanese occupation, then to the dictatorial regimes that followed Liberation. There, too, he began to develop his own practice of tea, planting more and more tea bushes, drying his tea each spring, and drinking it with those who visited him. He was a great Buddhist scholar, he established several schools and in his later years, especially, he was acquainted with many leading intellectuals and writers, to whom he communicated his love of tea, his own vision of a specifically Korean Way of Tea. It is suggested that certain aspects of the teaching of Wonhyo provided the fundamental inspiration for his entire life.
