Lee, Jae-hun.  “Ecological Discourses and Ideologies in New Religions in Korea: Focusing on Donghak, Won Buddhism, and Kumkangdaedo.”  Journal of New Religions 15 (Oct. 2006): 145-176.

Abstract

The gist of the ‘natural value’ that the present time’s religions pursue should be the very ‘ecological ideology.’ If there were nay religions that lack values of life and an ecological religion, their values as a religion could not be recognized. Thus, religions nowadays should be reborn as ‘ecological religions’ through self-examination and changes. This is because spiritual sensitivity cannot be formed without ecological sensitivity, and at the same time, the latter can be enriched by the former.

Korean new religions have rich resources that can bring about ecological sensitivity as they usually creatively succeed to the Oriental traditional ideologies. Actually, what provided ideological bases for the Hansallim movement and the ecological movement started by the poet Kim Ji-ha in the 1980’s was the Sicheonju ideology of Donghak. And, based on the viewpoint of the truth in Irwonsang and the beneficiary world view, Won Buddhism leads ecological movement in parallel with the so called world religions like Christianity, Buddhism and Catholic. In addition, though it is not so much socially known, Kumkangdaedo, thoroughly though being of small size, practices its ecological recognition taking as its central doctrines the world view of Sam Jae ‘the Three Elements.’ i.e., the sky, the earth, and the man, which is the core of the Oriental ideologies, the viewpoint of the truth in Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist Trinity, and the viewpoint of training in Sam Hap ‘Triad’ with the heart, the mentality, and the body.

While these three religions have unique measures for salvation respectively based on their own critical consciousness about the contemporary contradictions, they seem to have certain common structures from the ecological perspective.

First, though they are different from each other in detailed expressions an contents, the uniform world view of Sam Jae, the Heavenly Father and the Earthly Mother in Donghak, the Benefits from Heaven and Earth in Won Buddhism, and the Reverence for Heaven and Earth in Kumkangdaedo have something in common in that they emphasize the interrelationship between the human and nature. Moreover, all of them are contingent on Sam Jae of the sky, the earth, and the man as Il-Gi “the one force,’ which is a monist world view that takes the universe as a whole one, and thus has great values as an alternative to the Western dualist world view.

Second, they have the characteristics of understanding of nature under the organic equality of all things. In-O-Dong-Po and Mul-O-Dong-Po in Donghak, Dong-Gi-Yeon-Gye in Won Buddhism, and U-Ju-Ga-Haw in Kumkangdaedo simultaneously understand nature as a living organism, which provides an alternative that can overcome the abuses trigged by the modern Western mechanical view of nature.

Third, they take the way of training for internal transcendence to be important, the Si-Cheonju faith in Cheondogyo, the Cheo-Cheo Bulsang faith in Won Buddhism, and the Sim-Seong-Sin Sam Hap Ideology in Kumkangdaedo present the possibility of man’s ‘internal transcendence,’ which can be spread in the sense of encouraging man’s strong practice in preserving the ecosystem.

Nowadays, with regard to the world-wide crisis of the eco-system, it is desperately necessary to establish a new environmental ethics or world ethics from a global and civilizational viewpoint. In this respect, we are finding out infinite potentials and possibilities from the ecological ideologies from Korean new religions like Donghak, Won Buddhism, and Kumkangdaedo. Now, from a new perspective, we should turn our mind to see Korean new religions that we have belittled in the past. And, it is desperately necessary for the Korean new religions to  not only understand the ecological thoughts contained in each other’s doctrines and ideologies, but also cooperate to live together for ecological practice.