Healing Buddhism

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Buddhism and Healing

Monks, Medicine and Miracles:

Health, disease, and religion in early Korean history.

Don Baker

University of British Columbia

We all know what the world's oldest profession is. I would like to hazard a

suggestion that the second oldest may be that of priest-physician. We don't have to be a

Buddhist to recognize that to live is to sufferno one goes through life without falling ill

or feeling pain at one time or another. That has been true since there have been human

beings on this planet of ours. And it is likely that from the first time someone fell ill or

felt pain, they sought help from those around them.

We can safely hypothesize that some members of the first human communities may

have gradually acquired a reputation for having more success than others in offering

relief from the ravages of disease, either through blind luck or through trial and error. It is

likely that such success with healing was linked in many instances with a perceived

privileged access to the invisible realm of the gods, the ancestors, and other spirits.

Since the causes of disease are often mysterious and invisible to those not privy to the

discoveries of modern medical science, it is to be expected that the earliest explanations

of disease were at least partially religious, as were most of the earliest remedies. If

invisible forces caused disease, invisible forces had to be either appeased or mobilized to

cure or prevent disease. At least, that appears to be the case on the Korean peninsula.

Most scholars who have studied the prehistory of the Korean peninsula assume that there

must have been some shamans among the first healers. 1

It is also generally assumed that shamans and shamanistic rituals were not the only

recourse against disease available to the first patients on the peninsula. There was

probably also some local vegetation which had proven itself apparently effective, when

ingested, in either preventing, curing, or mitigating disease. In addition, there may have

been some incantations, some special verbal formulas, which had come to be accepted as

1The most informed speculations about how the inhabitants of the Korean peninsula may have conceived

disease and healing appear in Miki Sakae, Chsen igakushi oyobi shippeishi [the history of

medicine and disease in Korea] (Osaka, Japan: privately printed, 1962), part II, pp. 3-4; Kim

Tujong, Han'guk ihaksa (The history of medicine in Korea) ( Seoul: Tamgudang, 1981), pp. 6-28.

useful in warding off those forces which cause disease, as well as some taboos, some


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community recognition of situations or environments which experience had shown to be

particularly risky. Shamanism, herbs, incantations, and taboos were all primitive medical

strategies, lacking a comprehensive and coherent theoretical framework to tie them

together. This lack of a unifying theoretical thread undermined the consistency and

clarity necessary to inspire confidence that these various approaches to health and healing

could be trusted to provide the prophylactic protection or therapeutic treatment they were

supposed to provide.

For a medical theory to be truly effective in easing the fear we all have of disease,

and of the pain and the death disease can bring, and give us hope that those diseases

which threaten us can be overcome, it must offer relief in four major areas. First of all, it

must offer an explanation for disease. It must identify the causes of illness, telling us

why we get sick. Second, it must tell us how to prevent disease from attacking us and

those we care for. Third, it must provide some practical advice for overcoming disease if

prevention fails and we, or our loved ones, are afflicted. It must offer some specific

methods of treating both the symptoms and the causes of disease. Fourth, it must provide

a prognosis, a relatively reliable prediction of the likely outcome of a particular affliction,

so that physical pain will not be unduly aggravated by uncertainty over what is going to

happen next. Explanation, prevention, treatment, and prognosisthose are the four

features that make a medical theory persuasive, its practitioners believable, and its

strategies credible.

Those are also four features which a comprehensive religious philosophy can

provide. Religion may be described as an attempt to control the uncontrollable (through

ritual), explain the unexplainable (through doctrine), and predict the unpredictable

(through revelation). Disease and death were clearly among the most uncontrollable,

unexplainable, and unpredictable phenomena of pre-modern life and therefore were both

the subject of religious concern and the object of religious activities. Of the four medical

strategies most likely present in Neolithic Korea, only shamanism comes close to

fulfilling the functions of religion I have just described. A shaman was a master of ritual

and often during the course of the ritual offered revelations. However, the beliefs

underlying shamanistic rituals lacked the clear definition and broad scope necessary to

qualify as doctrine.

Religious philosophies resemble all other broad generalizations and theories: they

gain their persuasive power by combining breadth with depth. The greater the range of

phenomena they encompass within their explanatory framework, the more compelling the


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case for their acceptance. However, they must not become so general and abstract that

they neglect the minute details of every day life or they lose credibility. This greater

breadth combined with depth is what gives the more theoretically sophisticated religions

an advantage over the less doctrinally oriented religions such as shamanism.

When Buddhism entered Korea, for example, it gained converts partially because of

its theoretical power of its doctrines and their related theories. Buddhist monks could

explain pain, disease, and death both ontologically and medically. They could explain

suffering in general as an inescapable component of the human condition. That, after all,

was the Buddha's great insight. But, because they also brought with them a detailed

medical theory constructed from Indian, Chinese, and religious elements, they could also

explain why specific diseases struck and could offer concrete advice for preventing or

curing those diseases and could provide a prognosis of what course the disease would

most likely take, once they had identified it. Buddhism was aided in its drive for

acceptance by the fact that Buddhism does not share Christianity's aversion to sharing the

deities, beliefs or practices of other religious traditions and thus Buddhist missionaries to

Korea were able to absorb and build on many features of the indigenous religion,

including their medical beliefs and practices, rather than having to fight them.

There is no way to tell which specific diseases were afflicting the Korean people

when Buddhism first penetrated the peninsula, during the Three Kingdoms period. Most

of the references to disease in theSamguk sagiare brief mentions of some vague

pestilence attacking the population in the capital. The entry for the seventh year in the

reign of Kogury|s King Sosurim ( 377) is typical: In October it did not snow. There

was thunder. There was an epidemic among the people.2The entries for later centuries

are not much different. Kim Pusik tells us that in the seventh year of the Silla's King

Ky|ngmun (867), In May there was an epidemic in the capital. In August there was a

flood.3

When it is a member of the royal family, a court official, or some other specific

individual, rather than the people as a collectivity, who are afflicted, a little more

information is given about the nature of that affliction, but usually not much more. In the

2Samguk sagi (Seoul: Kwangjo Publishing Co., 1976), p. 312.

Ibid., p. 319. More examples from the same edition of the Samguk sagican be found on pages 18, 21,

22, 37, 38, 55, 58, 162, 176, 198, 202, 217, 298, 329, 343, 412, 393, 409, 436, and 437, These same

examples are cited in Miki, op. cit., pp.1-3.

Samguk yusa, for example, various people are said to suffer from lesions, pain, general


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weakness, or simply a disease but such vague language makes it impossible to identify

precisely which diseases they are suffering from.4In a few cases, as well as in some

Japanese records and in some Silla medical texts preserved in Japan, we find enough

information about diseases on the peninsula to even pinpoint which part of the body they

affected. Apparently, Koreans suffered from lung disease ( possibly pneumonia or

tuberculosis), skin troubles (boils, as well as pox diseases such as smallpox and measles),

stomach problems, fevers and chills, and maybe even leprosy. However, we are not given

enough information to be any more specific than that.5

We know a lot more about what Koreans of that time thought caused disease than

we know about those diseases themselves.Illness was, broadly speaking, ascribed to a

lack of harmony between the afflicted and the afflicted's surroundings. Those detrimental

surroundings could be either spiritual or material. Spirits of the lingering dead or other

invisible beings could cause illness, as could such material factors as a lack of food, an

improper diet, or a cold, damp, or excessively hot environment. Illness was also

sometimes explained as the result of a lack of harmony between what was supposed to be

done and what was actually done. In other words, Immoral or inappropriate behavior

could engender illness.

The famous Ch|yong story in the Samguk yusais one example of belief in

disease-causing spirits, although the plague spirit in that particular story was more

interested in sleeping with Ch|yongs wife than with spreading disease.6 The Samguk

sagi adds tales of vengeful spirits exacting revenge on those who had harmed them.

Kogury|s King Yuri (putative dates 19 B.C. -18 A.D.), for example, fell ill when the

spirits of two men he had executed hastily out of anger avenged that injustice from

beyond the grave.7

Behavior which violates physiological, psychological, or ethical norms could also

result in illness or even death.The Sutra of Buddhist Medicine (Puligy|ng), a text

4Kim Yongok, Samyuk yusa indk(Seoul:Tong namu, 1992), pp. 1001-02.

5 Miki, op. cit. ,pp.4-6, Kim Tujong, pp.99-101.

6Kim Yongok, p. 51; Samguk sagi, translated by Ha Tae-Hung and Grafton K. Mintz (Seoul: Yonsei

University Press, 1972), p.127.

7 Samguk sagi,p. 249; Yi Pu-y|ng, Illness and Healing in the Three Kingdoms Period: A Symbolic

Interpretation, KOREA JOURNAL, vol. 21, no. 12 (Dec. 1981), p.9.

probably available to Koreans in the Silla era, pointed out that illness can result from


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immoderate eating,excessive exertion, anger and vexation,[and] immoderate

sexual cravings, for example.8And theSamguk yusaprovides an example from Chinese

history of a rebel general, To Pa-tao, who brought illness upon himself by the way he

acted. To ordered his soldiers to attack a Buddhist monk who appeared at the gates of his

headquarters. The monk was uninjured but To ended up confined to his bed with a high

fever.9

Even if the spirits were benign and our behavior appropriate, we could still fall ill.

illness was portrayed in many cases, both in Chinese and in Indian medical theory, as the

product of either disharmony within the body or between the body and its natural

environment. In Han dynasty Chinese Confucian thought, the organs of the body were all

correlated with the five phases (symbolized by water, wood, fire, soil, and metal) which

characterized all interaction in the universe. In the Indian vision of man and the cosmos

which accompanied Buddhism to China and Korea, the body was composed of the same

four elements ((earth, water, fire, and wind) from which everything material was made. 10

In both five-phase and four-element theory, illness was often viewed as a naturally-

caused manifestation of a disequilibrium among forces which should be balanced and

cooperating harmoniously. Both these Confucian and the Buddhist explanations of health

and sickness had reached Korea by the Three Kingdoms period.

Koreans learned of the the Buddhist view not only in such explicitly medical texts

as the Sutra of Buddhist medicine but in more general works such as the Sutra of Golden

Radiance (Kmgwangmy|nggy|ng).11Books such as the Yellow Emperors Inner Classic

(Hwangje naegy|ng) introduced the Confucian version of medical theory.12Both

8 An English translation of that text is available in Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1985), pp.309-314. Kim Tujong (p. 73) lists the Sutra of Buddhist

Medicine among nine Buddhist healing texts from China which he thinks had been brought into

Korea by Silla times. Miki (part I, p. 39) provides an even longer list of Buddhist works with

information on both medical theory and healing practices which are included in the Kory| Tripitaka

and were probably known to Koreans for centuries before that Tripitaka was complied.

9

Samguk yusa, p. 184-85; Kim Yongok, op. cit., Samguk yusa ch|ngbon, p. 71, Peter Lee, trans. Livesof Eminent Korean Monks, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp.42-43.

10 Unschuld, pp.51-100, 132-153.

11 Kim Tujong, pp. 40, 73.

12 Ibid., pp. 29-36.

approaches to explaining the etiology of disease coexisted peacefully, sometimes even in


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the same person.

The same was true of medical treatment as well.13A Silla text which survives only

in bits and piece in the 984 Japanese compilation Ishimp (Core medical prescriptions) is

an example of such eclecticism. The Silla P|psa pang (prescriptions of a Silla Buddhist

monk) appears, from its title, to have been written by Silla Buddhist monks. However, its

prescriptions are a mixture of Chinese herb medicine and Buddhist healing practices. It,

along with the Paekche Sinjip pang (A new collection of Paekche prescriptions), which

also survives only in its citations in the Ishimp ,is the most detailed description we have

of specific medical practices in pre-Kory| times.14

In addition to the information we can glean from those fragments of Silla medical

guides, we also know which texts court physicians relied on, at least in Unified Silla.

According to the Samguk sagi, in 692, King Hyoso (692-720) established a medical

office staffed with two physicians. Those physicians were to base their medical practice

on seven basic sources: The Classic of Pharmacology (Ponchogy|ng), the Classic of

Proper Ordering (Kaplgy|ng), The Classic of Pure Questions (Somungy|ng), the Classic

of Acupuncture (Chimgy|ng), the Classic of the Pulse (Maeggy|ng), The Classic of the

Hall of Light (My|ngdanggy|ng), and the Classic of Difficult Issues (Nangy|ng). These

works are all within the classical Chinese Confucian tradition of acupunctural and herbal

treatment based on five-phases correlations.15This was formal medicine for the literate

elite and for the court. Informal medicine, both for the elite and for the people in general,

had a much broader repertoire of therapeutic techniques and healing practices, such as

exorcisms and incantations.

Buddhist monks, missionaries as well as native Koreans, were among the

practitioners of this informal medicine. Buddhist monks occasionally took on the role of

priest-physician for three main reasons. First of all, medicine was part of the package of

advanced civilization they brought from China, just as their Buddhist religion was. Their

strategy was no different from that of Christian missionaries centuries later who build

hospitals to show both the moral and the material superiority of Christian civilization.

Second, by engaging in healing, monks would meet Korean expectations of what

13Kim Tujong, p.78,

4 Miki, Part I, pp.21-23; Kim Tujong, pp.48-49, 74-77.

15Kim Tujong, pp.65-69, briefly describes each work.

religions should do. After all, the only religion which preceded them on the peninsula


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was the folk religion, which took healing as one of its primary functions. Those religions

with the most persuasive power are those which come closest to meeting the most

important needs of their target audience. In a recent survey of South Korean

attitudes,when asked what was the most important thing in life, more people (19.8%) said

health than gave any other single answer (money was second, at 16.7%). 16If we may

extrapolate from 1983 back more than a millennia, admittedly a risky extrapolation, then

health was important to Koreans in the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla periods as

well. Monks who could heal would therefore be guaranteed a large, and probably

receptive, audience.

Third, Buddhist monks knew that healing could do more than simple attract

attention to their overall message. It could also impress their audience with the power of

their deity. To replace the folk religion as the dominant religious orientation on the

peninsula, and to gain acceptance alongside Confucian medicine, it was necessary to

show that Buddhists could not only heal, they could heal diseases that no other healers

could, that their methods, and the spirits which supported them, were more powerful.

Not just effectiveness but superiority was essential to the use of healing as a missionary

strategy.

Theoretical superiority in easing fear of disease was clearly not enough by itself to

convince the targets of Buddhist proselytizing endeavors to accept Buddhism. Buddhist

monk-healers also had to show that their theories worked in practice. In other words, they

had to actually cure diseases, particularly diseases that had proven intractable to other

approaches. According to the Samguk yusa, that is precisely what some of the first

Buddhist monks on the peninsula did.

There is some confusion in the records available to us about the first Buddhist

missionary to Silla.17 Even Iry|n (1286-1289), the author of the Samyuk yusa, is not sure

whether Mukhoja and Ado are the same person or two different individuals. For our

purposes, who he is or who they are, is less important than the story told about both

Mukhoja and Ado that they first gained attention for their Buddhist message by healing

16Shim Jae-ryong, Modernity and Religiosity of Korean People Today, SEOUL JOURNAL OF

KOREAN STUDIES, vol. 4, 1991, p. 173.

17 Peter Lee provides a brief survey of the various theories about who Ado was. Lee, p. 6.

18 Kim Yongok, pp. 69-71; Samguk yusa, pp. 179-182, Lee, pp. 50-56.

the daughter of the king, after both shamans and medicine had failed to cure her.18 One


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reported result of that successful example of Buddhist healing was the first Buddhist

monastery in Silla, Hngnyun-sa, built by the grateful father of that now healthy

princess.19According to Iry|n, the association of Hngnyun-sa with healing remained

strong even in his day, with the soy sauce produced in that temple said to have healing

properties, particularly if applied to a wound while listening to the bells of Hngnyun-

sa.20

The power to heal was not limited to the first Buddhist missionaries to Korea. The

hagiographies of W|ngwang (?-630.)and W|nhyo (617-686) also include accounts of

their drawing on the power of Buddhism to heal otherwise incurable diseases.

W|ngwang, better known for supposedly authoring the five maxims which are popularly

believed to have been the guiding principles of the hwarang, also cured his king of some

indeterminate illness, after physicians had tried curing him and failed.

While expounding the texts and lecturing on the truth, he succeeded in gaining the

kings faith. At the first watch, the king and his courtiers saw that the masters head was

as golden as the disk of the sun. The kings illness was immediately cured.21

The story of W|nhyos involvement with healing is more indirect and apocryphal.

A Sung dynasty account of the lives of famous Tang era monks relates once when a

queen of Korea fell ill, a shaman said that she could only be cured by medicine from

abroad. But when the king sent one of his men by ship to obtain such medicine in China,

he was stopped in the middle of the Yellow Sea by the Dragon King. The Dragon King

informed that envoy that the queen could only be cured if W|nhyo wrote a commentary

on, and gave a lecture on, the Book of Adamantine Absorption (Kmgang sanmei

ky|ng,) a sutra which the Dragon King proceeded to give that envoy to carry back to

Korea.22One obvious point of this story is that Buddhism can heal where shamanism

cannot and moreover Buddhist healing makes Chinese medicine unnecessary.

A similar point is made in a similarly unreliable account of healing by another Silla

Lee, p. 62.

20 Kim Yongok, p. 127;Samguk yusa, p. 358.

21 Translation from Lee, p. 80. Also see Samguk yusa, p. 283, Kim Yongok, p.103.

22Sung Kao-seng chuan (Taipei: Wen-chin, 1987), pp.78-79; Robert I. Buswell, Jr., The Formation of

Chan Ideology in China and Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 43-48, Miki,

I, p. 40.

monk, Hyetong. The Samguk yusaclaims that, while studying in a monastery in China,


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Hyetong cured the daughter of the Chinese emperor by expelling a dragon which had

been causing her illness. That dragon fled to Korea, so Hyetong had to return to Korea

to tame that dangerous mythical beast. Not only did he succeed in getting that dragon to

stop bothering human beings, Hyetong also cured both a Silla king and a Silla princess

by uttering certain incantations. (Hyetong had learned the incantations of esoteric

Buddhism in China)23

Another Buddhist monk skilled in the healing practices of esoteric Buddhism was

Milbon. Milbon, we are told by the Samguk yusa, once healed Queen S|nd|k (632-0647)

of Silla by reading from the Yaksagy|ng (the sutra of the Buddha of Healing) and then

throwing a magical staff which pierced the hearts of both a fox and an old monk, the two

creatures responsible for the Queens illness. On yet another occasion, Milbon showed

that not all Buddhist healers were equal. After both a shaman and monk had failed to rid

Kim Yangto of a host of spirits which were afflicting him, Milbon was summoned and

proceeded to defeat those troublesome spirits, curing Kim of his life-threatening illness.24

It is unlikely that these stories of miraculous healing by Buddhist monks bear a very

close relationship to reality. They may not even date back to the time they are said to

have occurred. However, they do provide evidence that by the Kory| dynasty, when

most of these tales were recorded, a close link between Buddhism and healing had been

established. Moreover, we have other concrete evidence that the resort to Buddhism as a

medical strategy dates back at least to Unified Silla times. We find that evidence both in

the remnants of Silla medical texts which survive in Japan as well as in remaining

pre-Kory| sculptures of the Buddha of Healing.

Statues of Yaksa y|rae,sometimes appearing as Yaksa posal, are material

manifestations of the link between Buddhism and healing. His very name, master of

medicine is a verbal nod to that linkage, just as his identifying sign of a medicine bottle

in his left hand is a visual sign that healing was one of Buddhisms functions. Yaksa was

not the only healing figure in Buddhism. One of the faces of the eleven-headed statue of

23 Kim Yongok, p. 120;Samguk yusa, pp.333-3437; Miki, p. 40.

4 Kim Yongok, p. 116, Samguk yusa, p. 331-32. more on Hyetong, Milbon, and esoteric Buddhism in

Silla Korea can be found in Kim Chaegy|ng, Silla i Milgyo suyong kwa s|nggy|k, Pulgyosa

hakhoe, ed. Silla mita ch|ngto sasang y|ngu (Seoul: Minjoksa, 1988), 287-317; Ko Ikchin,

Hanguk kodae Pulgyo sasang sa (Seoul: Tongguk University press, 1989), pp.383-467.

the bodhisattva Kwanm in S|kkuram grotto is the face, common to statues of that


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particular bodhisattva, which expresses compassion for those who experience pain.25The

Samguk yusaalso relates one episode of possible healing by Kwanm. 26The Maitreya

Buddha is another Buddhist figure to which the ill may go for relief.27But it is Yaksa

y|raewho was the most explicit representation of the healing power of Buddhism.28

It is therefore significant that there are 17 Silla Yaksa statues in the National

Museum in Seoul, along with two more attributed to the Three Kingdoms Period. Mun

My|ngdae, in his inventory of Buddhist sculpture in South Korea, found an additional

seven more Yaksa statues which could be definitely dated to the Silla period and another

24 more of undetermined date. 29Yaksa clearly was not the most popular figure in Silla

Buddhism.There are a lot more Maitryea, Amitabha, and Kwanm statues. And they are

mentioned in the Samguk yusaa lot more than Yaksais.30But the existence of at least 26

statues of the Buddha of Healing which can be definitively dated to before the fall of

Silla, and the possible existence of 24 more, suggests that healing was a significant,

though not a dominant, thread in the fabric which made up early Korean Buddhism and

that any survey of healing practices in early Korea which excluded Buddhism would be

incomplete.

Of course, statues alone do not prove that Silla Koreans actually prayed to Yaksa

y|raefor relief from the ravages of disease. For stronger evidence that the Buddha of

Healing played a role in actual medical practice, we turn to SillaP|psa pang, that Silla

text embedded in a later Japanese medical manual. There we are given a prayer to be

25 Rhi Ki-yong, Silla Buddhism: Its Special Features, in Lewis Lancaster and C.S. Yu, ed. Introduction

of Buddhism to Korea (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, p.195-196.

26 Kim Yongok, p.124.; Samguk yusa,pp. 347-48.

27 Lew Lancaster, Maitreya in Korea, in Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre, Maitreya, the Future

Buddha (Cambridge, English: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp.143, 147.

28 For detailed information on Yaksa y|rae, see 1) Yi Chongik, Chungsaeng i apum salml

ttaras|yaksa y|rae, Pulgyo sasang, no. 3 (1984), p.225-231); 2) Leonard Zwilling, On

Bhaisajyagura and His Cult, in A.K. Narain, ed. Studies in the History of Buddhism (New Delhi:B.R. Publishing Co., 1980), pp.413-421; 3) Raoul Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha (Boudler:

Shambhala, 1979).

29 Mun My|ngdae, Hanguk chogaksa (Seoul: Y|lhwadang, 1984), pp.296-369.

30 Kim Yongmi, Tongil Silla sidae amita sinang i y|ksaj|k s|nggy|k, in Pulgyosa hakhoe, ed. Silla

mita ch|ngto sasang y|ngu, p. 127.

intoned while facing East (the realm of Yaksa) before swallowing some medicine. That


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prayer goes as follows:

I bow before the Buddha of Healing [Yaksa] who resides in the East in the land of Deep Blue

Radiance, the King of Healers and the Supreme Healer, the Bodhisattva JO(i,)vaka, and the child of

the Himalayas, asking that he graciously bestow on me that medicine which eliminates all disease

(agada) in order to cure the illness which afflicts me now, expel all noxious vapors, and help me so

that all the organs in my body will work together in harmony, the blood in my veins and arteries will

run smoothly and strongly, my entire body will be hale and hearty, my time on this earth will be

extended, and in all my comings and goings, whether sitting up or lying down, I will be protected in

this life.31

We also find in the Yaksasutra itself, the same sutra supposedly used by Milbon to

weaken disease-causing demons, not only promises of both prevention and healing but

also some specific prophylactic and curative techniques.

By Silla times there were at least three Chinese-language translations of the Yaksagy|ng

available, by Dharmagupta, Hsan-tsang, and I-ching, dating to the 7th and early 8th

centuries. All three appear in the the Kory| Tripitaka, but they were certainly known to

Koreans much earlier.32Taehy|n, a Silla monk, wrote a study of this sutra, so at least the

version he used, the Hsan-tsang translation, was on the peninsula during Unified Silla.33

There are some differences among the various versions, but all of them contain variants

of the 12 vows of Yaksafor which this Buddha of Healing is best known.34Of particular

interest to those who have fallen ill or are suffering from some infirmity are the Buddha

Master of Healings vows six and seven. In the I-ching version., they are:

Sixth Great Vow: I vow that when I attain enlightenment in a future age, if there are any sentient

beings whose sense faculties are incomplete, who are ugly, stupid, rheumatic, deaf, blind, mute,

Kim Tujong, p. 75; Miki, I, p. 21; Kim Chaegy|ng, p.314, n.50.

32 Kory| Daejagnky|ng, 10:1341-1366. On the various versions available to Koreans, se Ko Ikchin,

pp.394-399.

33 Taehy|n, Yaksa ponw|ngy|ng koj|kki, in Hanguk pulgyo ch|ns| (Seoul: Dongguk University,

1979-1980), vol. 3, pp.409-418.

34 Kory| Daejagnky|ng, 10: p.1341; 1347; 1358-59.

bent, lame, hunchbacked, leprous, insane, bound and constrained by the sufferings of all sorts of


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diseasesif such persons hear my name and with utmost sincerity call it out and hold it in their

minds, then they will all receive that which is auspicious and glorious, and they will be cured of all

disease.

Seventh Great Vow: I vow that when I attain enlightenment in a future age, if there are any sentient

beings who are sick with disease and have neither medicine nor physicianif they should hear

my name for but a fleeting moment, they will be cured of all diseases.35

In fulfillment of those vows to heal the afflicted, this sutra contains some concrete

advice on how to go about preventing or overcoming disease. There are mantras, one in

the Hsan-tsang version and five in the later, more Tantracized I-ching version. 36And

there are rituals, even one for raising people from the dead, or at least, in the translation

of one sympathetic scholar, awakening them from a coma.37As part of that death-defying

ritual, those who want to have their nearly departed regain [his] original vitality as if

waking from a dream, are told they must, among other things, Read and recite this

sutra forty-nine times. Light forty-nine lamps and make images of the Tathagatas, seven

in all, placing seven lamps before each image.You should release forty-nine living

creatures. By doing these things, you will be able to repel misery and suffering, and the

sick person will not be in the grasp of negative spirits.38

This medicinal undercurrent of Korean Buddhism did not die out with the fall of the

Silla dynasty. Yaksa y|rae and his sutra continued to appeal to a least some practicing

Korean Buddhists in the centuries which followed. Artists continued to sculpt the Buddha

of Healing throughout the Kory| and Chos|n dynasties.39 Moreover, he has maintained a

following up to the present day. As recently as this year(1992), I am told, Tonghwa-sa in

Taegu is building a large Yaksastatue in response to the wishes of the women in its

35 Translation by Birnbaum, p.193.

36 Zwilling, pp.417-418; Birnbaum, p. 92.

37

Birnbaum, pp.86-87.

38 Translation by Birnbaum, pp. 204-205; original in Kory| Daejagnky|ng, 10: 1362.

39 Mun My|ngdae, op. cit., has located 4 Yaksa statues which can confidently be attributed to Kory| and

9 to which he gives a Chos|nera date.

40 Personal Communication, Frank Tedesco, Seoul, June, 1992.

congregation.40Plastic Buddha of Healing statues are also available for a reasonable


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price, for those who want their own personal Buddha of Healing in their home or shrine,

from the miscellaneous goods shops along Chongno, across from Chongmyo, in Seoul.

The sutra itself has also survived, and not only in the Kory| Tripitaka. Volume

nine of the S|kpo Sangj|, the first piece of prose even written in hangl, is basically a

Korean language version of the less-esoteric Hsan-tsang Yaksa sutra.41Since the S|kpo

Sangj|l,was compiled by the prince who later reigned as King Sejo ((1455-1468), and

was written under the direction of King Sejong (1418-1450), clearly Yaksawas not seen

in the fifteenth century as a minor Buddhist figure and his sutra was not seen as some

insignificant, peripheral text.

Further evidence of interest in the medical side of Buddhism during the Chos|n

dynasty are the three woodblock editions of the Yaksagy|ngin the Kyujangak collection,

one printed in 1607 and two separate editions both printed in 1869. There are modern

editions as well. I purchased a 1992 printing of the I-ching (more esoteric)version,

including both a Korean translation and the Chinese character version (with hangl

pronunciation keys for every character), at a bookshop on the grounds of a Buddhist

temple in Seoul.42 And Silsang-sa, one of the original nine founding mountain temples

of meditative Buddhism on the peninsula, published its own Korean translation of the

Hsan-tsang version, with the original text in Korean with the Chinese characters

alongside it, in 1986.43

Silsang-sa published the Yaksagy|ng soon after witnesses reported that a statue of

Yaksa y|raeat that temple began to have episodes of sweating and of emitting rays of

light.44That is not the only example of Yaksa y|rae devotion in Korea today. On June 8,

1992: I intended a Yaksajae, a ritual centered on the Buddha of Healing, at Pongguk-sa,

a temple in Seoul.

There were at least 50 people in attendance at the mid-day, weekday ritual, mostly

middle-aged and older women. There were, in addition to the presiding monks, three men

present (two of whom were middle-aged) and two young (pre-school) boys. They started

41T|kchu S|kpo Sangj|l,vol. 6, 9, 11 (Seoul: King Sejong Memorial Society, 1991), pp. 99-179..

42Yaksagy|ng (Seoul: Kmnyun Publishing Co., 1992).

43 Yaksa yurigwang y|rae ponw|n kongd|kgy|ng(Namw|n, North Ch|lla province: Silsangsa, 1986)

44 Ibid., pp. 76-77.

off by chanting the Ch|nsugy|ng, a prayer to the bodhisattva Kwanm. The audience


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chanted along with the monks, apparently by memory.

After this, the monks led the people in chanting Yaksas name. They chanted over and

over again Yaksa y|rae pul. for about thirty minutes. Some read the Yaksagy|ng while

the chanting went on. (copies were available for sale in front of the temple, and also for

borrowing in the main hall during the service.At the end of the two-hour ritual, there was

a one hour sermon by a visiting monk, who said nothing about Yaksa y|rae.

Pongguk-sa is an interesting temple, in that it has Yaksa y|rae. as its central figure

in the main hall. Yaksahas Sakyamuni on his left and Kwanm on his right. It is

important to note that this is not the original main hall (that is now the office) but is

bigger than the original. That suggest that attendance at this temple has been growing.

Of course, Yaksa y|rae. is not the only manifestation of the Buddha worshipped at

Pongguk-sa. Beside the monthly rituals for Yaksa y|rae., there are also monthly rituals

for Kwanm and Chijang. But the survival, if not the flourishing, of Yaksaworship, at

Pongguk-sa, Silsang-sa, and other places in Korea today shows that healing and the

search for relief from the threat of disease remain a vital part of Korean Buddhism today,

as they have been for centuries, since Buddhism first arrived on the peninsula.

There is a tendency, in academic studies of Korean Buddhism, to focus on

outstanding monks, doctrinal development and meditative practices. Such studies are

necessary, of course, Without them, we would not have a very clear sense of even the

broadest outlines of the history of monastic Buddhism on the Korean peninsula.

However, if we want to understand popular Buddhism as well, it is well to remember that

as the literate elite in late Silla Korea began turning toward the sophistication of S|n

Buddhism, the masses at the same time were beginning to pay more attention to another

side of Buddhism, the popular side, which included healing.

Though medical theory and healing practices were clearly part of Buddhism in

Korea from the very beginning, the specific manifestation of that concern for health and

healing among the Buddhist faithful through worship of Yaksadid not become significant

until the late seventh or the early eight century. If Yaksahad been important earlier,

W|nhyo 617-686) , who apparently wrote about everything Buddhist known to him,

would surely have written something about the Yaksagy|ng.45Nevertheless, once Yaksa

worship took root on the peninsula, it remained an important strand in popular, if if not

45Yi Kiy|ng, Hanguk Pulgyo y|ngu (Seoul: Hanguk Pulgyo y|nguw|n, 1982), p. _______

monastic, Buddhism. Its survival over the centuries shows that health and healing have


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remained significant concerns of the Buddhist community ever since. That survival also

shows that Buddhist healing, even as Indian medical theory has been overshadowed by

Chinese Confucian medical theory, has continued to serve, not as an alternative medicine,

but as a supplement to shamanism, local herbal recipes, Chinese medicine, and, in the

modern era, even modern medicine.

Buddhisms ability to address questions of health and healing, to promise some relief

from both the uncertainty, the pain, and even the terror disease and illness bring, was one

factor, though certainly not the only or the most important factor, in Buddhisms

successful penetration of the Korean peninsula. Its medical reach has also been a factor,

though again not the only or the most important factor, in the resilience and continued

vitality of Buddhism as a significant part of Korean religious culture. For this reason, any

survey of Korean religion in general or of Korean Buddhism in particular which

overlooks Buddhist medical theory and practices in general, or Yaksaworship in

particular, risks simplifying the complex fabric which is Korean religiosity, depriving it

of its full richness, complexity, and vigor.

By the same token, any survey of the history of Korean medicine which neglects

religion would be incomplete. Any look at the different ways Koreans have thought

about questions about health and illness, or at the different tools they have used to stay

healthy and fight disease, must include some discussion of how religious beliefs and

values have both shaped and reflected Korean medical thinking and techniques. A full

understanding of how medicine has developed over the centuries in Korea requires that

some attention be paid to religion's role in soothing the afflicted and healing their

afflictions. Yaksa y|rae, as well as Buddhist doctrines and rituals, shared in that role.

Finally, the interaction of religion and medicine, as an attempt to deal with the most

basic issues which face all human beings, including the ultimate issue of mortality itself,

merits inclusion in any general history of Korean civilization. It is widely recognized

that a full understanding of any civilization requires that attention be paid to the effect

religious beliefs and values had on those individuals who lived and constructed that

history. That is why survey histories also include at least a brief discussion of religious

teachings and religious leaders. However, those same textbooks normally say little, if

anything, about medicine.Yet understanding how those same civilizations have

responded to the challenges which have faced them, including those challenges posed by

viruses and other infectious agents, and how they have survived, flourished, or decayed in

the face of those challenges, is also important. Yaksa y|rae, and the Buddhism which


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brought him to Korea, therefore are more than a mere footnote to Korean history. They

are at the very core of that history, providing part of the dynamism, the resilience, and the

vitality which has kept Korean civilization alive, and Korean, for well over a thousand

years.

Healing Buddhism

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