Female Practitioners’ Religious Lives: The First Generation of Female Wŏn Buddhist Clerics

Abstract

For Korean women, the Japanese colonial period was a transitional period in which Confucian patriarchal culture still prevailed, but some options for a social identity outside the home as “new women” were beginning to emerge. In this era, Sot’aesan, the founder of Wŏn Buddhism, put forward the teaching of “equal rights for men and women” as one of the core doctrines of Wŏn Buddhism and opened the way for many women to find their true selves through Buddhist teachings and practices. This path was that of becoming a kyomu (Wŏn Buddhist ordained clerics). By analyzing the biographies of the first 146 female kyomus, this paper sheds light on how these devotees were transformed from women with no identities outside the home into Buddhist masters or mothers of the world.