3. Philosophical Reformation Movement


Korean Buddhist thought devoted itself to philosophical reformation and the overcoming of fixed concepts from the beginning. Just after becoming thoroughly established, Korean Buddhism entered a phase of philosophical settlement already at the time of the Three Kingdoms and immediately began to make full use of the research being carried out. This openness and willingness to receive new thinking shows the reformation oriented character; this trend continued throughout the history, long after the period of establishment.

After unification, Buddhist philosophy was on a different level and Mahayana philosophy became fully developed. For it was not possible for the philosophy to stagnate at the level where it satisfied social ethics and sovereign ideology. And then once again, when Mahayana Buddhist philosophy met the limit of its conceptual development, Zen, which denies conceptual Buddhist thought, was introduced. It was a philosophical reformation movement. Encouragement of Buddhist studies in the early Koryo Period was done with the same view in mind. Thus Koryo masters did not merely continue the traditional thought system of Shilla Buddhism. They imported and integrated new thinking from Chinese studies. The community movements after the middle Koryo Period and the introduction of Zen in the later Koryo Period show stronger characteristics of philosophical reformation.