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

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,...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Kaplan, Uri (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Taylor & Francis [2017]
Dans: Material religion
Année: 2017, Volume: 13, Numéro: 1, Pages: 1-22
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Korea / Buddhisme / Rite / Thé / Changement culturel / Café
B Korea / Cérémonie du thé / Changement religieux / Café
RelBib Classification:AG Vie religieuse
KBM Asie
Sujets non-standardisés:B food anthropology
B Tea
B Buddhism
B Material Culture
B Rituel
B Modernity
B Religion
B Coffee
B Korea
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Résumé: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.
ISSN:1751-8342
Contient:Enthalten in: Material religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2016.1271969