South Korean comic Yoon Seong-ho, often known as NewJeansNim, carrying monk’s robes and performing throughout an digital dance music occasion occasion for the annual Lotus Lantern Competition to rejoice the Buddha’s birthday in Seoul, on Might 12.
Jung Yeon-Je/AFP through Getty Photos
cover caption
toggle caption
Jung Yeon-Je/AFP through Getty Photos
SEOUL, South Korea — The deep roots Buddhism has sunk into Korean tradition over the previous 16 centuries had been on show on the annual Lotus Lantern Competition for the Buddha’s birthday.
It was Might, and Koreans and foreigners, folks of all faiths and no religion, had been gathering by one of many essential temples in South Korea’s capital of Seoul to observe musicians carrying colourful costumes and ecstatic expressions carry out and carry lanterns formed like deities and flowers.
The final efficiency of the night, although, got here as an illustration of how far Buddhists in South Korea are going to sort out points affecting their faith, resembling demographic decline, secularism and the expansion of Christianity.
A DJ takes the stage in Buddhist robes and with headphones on his shaven head. Because the digital dance music builds, he whips the younger crowd right into a frenzy.
Yoon Seong-ho is a 47-year-old Buddhist, comic, DJ and rising superstar.
His Korean stage identify, NewJeansNim, suggests a point of novelty and even progressiveness. It additionally seems like NewJeans, a well-liked Okay-pop woman group.
He works passages from Buddhist sutras and puns on Buddhist phrases into his units. He sympathizes with the worldly tribulations of his younger viewers members and tells them to sit up for future rebirths.
“Do you find Buddhism fun?” he asks the bouncing, screaming, cellphone-picture-taking crowd.
“My role is to draw people in”
“Buddhism is a free religion. It doesn’t force people to join or to leave,” Yoon explains in an NPR interview in a backstage tent earlier than his present. “I want people to just understand Buddhism. I’m not telling them to become followers.”
An issue he’s making an attempt to deal with, he says, is that many younger South Koreans discover Buddhism inaccessible and stuffy.
“My role is to draw people in. The rest is up to the great learned monks, whose role is to relay the teachings of Buddha.”
A Buddhist monk named Namjeon, who’s with the Jogye order, Korean Buddhism’s largest sect, says that Yoon has helped “break through these prejudices about Buddhism and improved its image.”
Namjeon, who’s answerable for the Jogye order’s efforts to unfold Buddhism, provides that “the boldness and fun that break down the idea that religion has to be stern and serious, that’s not something we monks can easily bring.”
Not all are feeling his vibe
He admits that not all Buddhists are snug with Yoon’s unconventional strategy. In Singapore and Malaysia, native Buddhist organizations objected to Yoon’s latest scheduled performances, forcing their cancellation.
Along with his shaved head and flowing monk gown, a South Korean DJ chants conventional Buddhist scripture combined with Era Z life recommendation over a thumping digital music beat, as the gang goes wild on Might 12.
Jung Yeon-Je/AFP through Getty Photos
cover caption
toggle caption
Jung Yeon-Je/AFP through Getty Photos
However Namjeon argues that Yoon is simply one of many newest in an extended line of reformers and innovators, stretching again 26 centuries to the Buddha himself.
“In the broad flow of history, there’s something Buddhism calls ‘expedient means,’” he explains, “which means adopting measures that are more convenient to the general public in spreading the teachings of Buddha.”
“Expedient means” implies a instructing that will seem unorthodox and even at odds with the ideas of Buddhism, however is suitable to the learner’s capability to grasp, and leads her or him towards enlightenment.
For that matter, from a Buddhist perspective, any try to clarify the reality with phrases and reasoning are solely an expedient substitute for direct expertise.
At any fee, Namjeon and different Buddhists imagine that one thing must be finished to stem their religion’s decline.
Buddhism faces quite a lot of challenges in South Korea to conserving the devoted.
South Korea’s demographic disaster, because the nation with the bottom fertility fee, presents one subject for sustaining devotees.
Census figures present greater than half of South Koreans observe no organized faith, and those that do are typically older.
However one other problem is that many individuals are turning to Christianity as a substitute.
A couple of decade in the past, Protestantism surpassed Buddhism to grow to be South Korea’s largest faith. A Hankook Analysis survey final 12 months discovered 20% of respondents recognized themselves as Protestant, in comparison with 17% for Buddhists.
Yoon Seung-yong, director of the Korea Institute for Faith and Tradition in Seoul, says Protestantism appeals extra to youthful Koreans as a result of it emphasizes particular person spiritual perception.
Buddhism, against this, Yoon says, focuses on custom and monastic communities. Features of Buddhism that do concentrate on people, he provides, are well-liked.
“Buddhism as an organized religion is in decline, but Buddhism in individuals’ everyday life is expanding, in the form of meditation or yoga. These two need to be distinguished.”
And simply because present traits seem grim, NewJeansNim, the DJ and comic, tells his viewers in his remaining ideas on the Lotus Lantern Parade, “nothing’s everlasting in this world. Don’t let your success make you arrogant. And don’t let your failure discourage you.”
He concludes cheerfully: “The world goes round and round. Endure, as I did. Then a good day will come.”
NPR’s Se Eun Gong contributed to this report in Seoul.
