From the Tea to the Coffee Ceremony: Modernizing Buddhist Material Culture in Contemporary Korea

Abstract

Tea has been associated with East Asian Buddhism at least since the eighth-century. Buddhist monks were involved in cultivating, selling, and transporting tea from its birthplace in southern China to Korea and Japan. In addition to using it as an offering and as an aid for wakefulness in meditation, they developed a Buddhist tea lore which has been mirrored in their poetry, myths and monastic rituals. Tea has become such a central symbol of the contemplative life in East Asia that it is rather surprising to discover that in some of the major monasteries in Korea today over half of the meditation monks are said to have switched to coffee. In fact, numerous Korean temples today possess top-of-the-line hand-drip (filter) coffee machines, some offer Buddhist coffee workshops and barista certificates for monks and laypeople, and others replace their old tea shops with new modern cafés. In this paper I will present what I think are fascinating ethnographic examples of the recent Korean Buddhist coffee trend, and discuss the debates regarding the appropriateness of coffee to Buddhist practice. I will illustrate how some Korean Buddhists attempt to remain relevant in contemporary coffee-crazed Korean society by re-branding the taste of Buddhism and creatively associating coffee with propagation, meditation and insight.

Keywords:

• Buddhism
• Korea
• tea
• coffee
• food anthropology
• material culture
• religion
• ritual
• modernity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Morgan and my anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on previous drafts.

Notes

1 In the past 15 years or so the Chogye Order, which is the most dominant Buddhist organization in Korea, has developed an exam and “continuing education” system for all monastics wishing to climb up the Order’s hierarchies. The current system includes five different exams: via passing the fifth level exam one transforms from a postulant to a novice, the fourth level exam allows one to take full ordination, and the third, second, and first level exams are necessary for those wishing to climb up in ranks and positions within the Chogye Order. This course on coffee has been offered once so far, and other general courses on philosophy, cinema, literature, and yes, also tea, are offered sporadically within the “continuing education” programs, which must be joined periodically by those wishing to sit for these higher exams. For details see Kaplan (2015). For the new lay education-based ranking system see Kaplan (forthcoming).

2 Anna King (2012, 443) illustrated how the communal sharing of vegetarian meals in the ISKCON movement is one of the most powerful means to celebrate the divine.

3 The advertisement and schedule for this seminar can be found online at: http://www.mediabuddha.net/m/news/view.php?number=1556 [Accessed on April 22, 2016].

4 For a historical analysis of the Temple Stay program of Korean Buddhism see Kaplan (2010).

5 My methodology here is partly influenced by Kopytoff’s (1986) cultural biographical approach.

6 For translations of the tea ceremony procedures in Zen monastic regulations see Yifa (2002).

7 Arjun Appadurai (1988) emphasized food culture’s ability to reinforce the existing class and hierarchy structure.

8 The entire script for this dharma talk can be found in an internet blog at: http://cafe.naver.com/oksunsa/18 [Accessed on April 22, 2016].

9 See for example the online newspaper column by Kim (2013).

10 The Japanese government at the time promoted meat eating in order to civilize the Japanese and achieve physical and mental parity with the “modern” west, and specialized meat-eating menus for the military were established. It also lifted the ban on meat eating among the Buddhist clergy, and Buddhist clerics in Japan have been participating in modernity and eating meat ever since.

11 For meat consumption in contemporary Korean monastic regulations see Kaplan (2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Uri Kaplan

Uri Kaplan began his academic career in Anthropology and Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University, pursued graduate work in Korean Studies and Asian Philosophy at Yonsei and Korea Universities, and received a PhD in Asian Religions from Duke University in 2015. His research is focused on Buddhism and other East Asian religious traditions.

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