Assignment of Education for Buddhist Priests in Contemporary Society

ABSTRACT

This present work is undertaken mainly for suggestion to some assignments of education for the Buddhist priests in modern society as well as to investigate the meaning of education and the education system in the context of traditional Buddhism and to research how the education systems reflecting the contemporary society were admitted and applied to the education for the Buddhist priests by age. In particular, how the conduction of education for Buddhist priests in the Korean Buddhist tradition was specifically investigated. Through the investigation, it was found that there were gradual changes in the education system according to the direction of Buddhist priests(Sangha) by age and the social changes from the period of There Kingdoms to the modern Korea, in the way of putting importance on the traditional education. Even though the modern forerunners proposed new education systems, those had been left without being properly regulated in the historical confusion. Even after the modern education system was established in the Korean society and in spite of the effort to introduce the modern system into the education of Buddhist priests, there is continued confusion between the existing traditional education and the modern education. In order to solve such problems, this thesis proposes the followings as the priority tasks; first, the education for the Buddhist priests shall be started from the regular university courses and the opportunities to take various kinds of professional modern educations for the religious leaders shall be given; secondly, the traditional educational activities like ascetic practices and training of preliminary disciplines as the regular courses shall be conducted at the same time in order to preserve and uphold the tradition of Buddhism; and thirdly, it is necessary for those purposes to examine the plan to reorganize the current educational facilities, which are institute for Buddhist priests in the temple(Sangha University), Sangha University, Dongguk University and so on, designated as the basic educational institutions into the integrated education in stages and the professional education programs.