A. Going Forth


2. Renunciation and Study

Anyone in Korea who wishes to be ordained in the main Buddhist monastic order, Chogye, should have completed high school and be normally healthy in order to endure the rigors of the training. Usually a man or a woman wishes to ordain in order to attain enlightenment and to help living beings. The method used to accomplish this work is careful training and ardent practice for as long as possible -- even the whole life. Communal living, meditation, religious practice, the study of texts and listening to the words of great monks and nuns all form part of this way of life.
At first, the candidate becomes an aspirant. On entering the monastery, he cuts off relations with the outside world for a time, symbolized by shaving hair and beard and wearing gray or brown clothes. (Women do not shave their heads at first: this being a trial period, they would have difficulty returning home, if they so chose.) Traditionally, shaving the hair is a renunciation of rank, as well as a way to reduce vanity and to be more hygienic. During this period, the aspirant learns chanting, does chores about the monastery and cares for the senior monks. In addition, and probably most importantly, he must learn what the Buddha taught and the spiritual path ahead. For this he relies on the ancient texts as well as the commentaries written by practitioners through the ages.
Books have always been of central importance to Buddhism. Intrinsic to Buddhist philosophy is the fact that each person must study and test the teaching for himself. In all Buddhist countries, people have always been literate and the books as freely available as possible. In fact, books started with Buddhism

Books, Binding & Printing

Most of us buy paper back books these days. Piled at airports and in book shops, they look just exactly what they are: mass produced. Obviously they pop out of a machine ready-made and that is exactly how we treat them: with no respect. We carry them around in a pocket or a bag and the covers get bent and messy but we don't really care because that is what they are meant for. No-one seems to care, even the editing is lousy!
It wasn't always like that. We used to carefully bind books, covering them in leather, embossing them with gold and silver and there were even covers made of ivory and beautiful wood. In the west, the library of a great house was very important and a special place for delving into life's secrets. The books were treasures and even today, to be left a library in someone's will is a wonderful thing.
Books started with Buddhism. One of the most important practices in Buddhism since ancient times is studying the texts and therefore they had to be available to everyone. In Sri Lanka, the texts were written down on palm leaves (specially dried, the letters were scratched into the leaf with a needle and powdered ink rubbed into the marks) in about 80 BCE. The leaves were strung together and the resulting book was preserved between two slabs of beautifully decorated, often bejewelled, wood. The result could be carried around easily and, as it was often in the local script, everyone could read it. In China, the texts were carved on strips of bamboo, silk, stone and on wood but there seems to have been a tendency of preserving the texts in one place rather than spreading them around. It was in Korea that printing really developed. The first example of a printed "book" in the world is a Buddhist text consisting of 12 separate sheets from separate wood-blocks, stuck together to form a scroll dating from between 706 and 751. Today, now a World Heritage treasure, the over 80,000 wood-blocks completed in 1251 of the entire collection of Buddhist texts can be seen at Haein-sa Temple, near Taegu. These blocks are truly marvelous because of the evenness of the carving and the fact that there is not a single mistake in the whole collection -- unlike the paper backs of today!
In order to make copies of wood-blocks, ink is spread on the surface so that it soaks in for a few hours and then a new layer of ink is applied, a piece of mulberry paper is smoothed on top, the surface is carefully brushed with a ball of human hair (to remove any wrinkles and see that the letters are well formed on the paper) and then it is carefully peeled off and set to dry.
Due to the need to study so emphasized in Buddhism, books were in heavy demand. The labor intensive method of printing from the wood blocks was time consuming and costly. So a more available method had to be sought out: someone had to invent moveable type. And this is what happened. The characters were cast in the same way as coins and then lined up to print texts. The first book to be printed was The Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Son Masters in 1377 -- long before Gutenberg in the middle of the fifteenth century!!!
>From single sheets, to many stuck together in a scroll or in a screen, to printed sheets, the evolution of the book has played a central role in the development of culture. Once moveable type was invented, then the printed sheets had to be fixed together and protected. This is where the creation of book covers came into being and more efficient binding techniques were used.
Books were always prized and loved. In order to express and underline this feeling, beautiful covers were created. In Korea, embossed mulberry paper was usually used. The embossing formed a back-drop pattern and the covers were often dyed and sometimes oiled. The designs used were mostly traditional ones like water chestnuts, one of the most popular because, as the plant grows near the edge of ponds, people regarded it as a good luck charm for preventing the burning down of their homes -- and of the books. Also popular was the swastika, a symbol of peace and good luck in Asia. Lotuses, thunder clouds, tortoise shell and bats -- the Korean name is similar to the word for good luck -- were common motifs.
Binding was traditionally done with cord. The whole book was put together with a strand running length-wise on the back and on the front and then four horizontal strands held the pages together. Of course the technique was specialized and required dexterity and experience to execute well. Alas, all of this is long past and only available at great expense today. So, as paper backs are the current book form, maybe we have to learn to love them and treat them more decently!?

After about one year, it is then decided whether or not the candidate is suitable for monastic life and, if so, he chooses a teacher -- or they choose each other.
The aspirant is given ordination and takes the first set of basic training rules: the ten precepts which constitute the going forth" The teacher takes care of the disciple, now called a sami, (samini for women), materially and spiritually. The disciple, in turn, serves his teacher.
Next the young monk is sent to one of the Monks' Colleges. These are special institutions where the sami (or samini, separately) study the texts more deeply, learn Chinese characters, chanting and all the other talents required for a fully ordained member of the Buddhist community. In addition, these days there is a large number of more modern subjects available. Examples include English, psychology, techniques for teaching the young and the old are included in the curriculum. The most important lessons are in the art of communal living. As all the members of one year will stay together in one large room for the four years, they must learn to live harmoniously.