Postulant Education within the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism: A Critical Examination of Its Past, Its Present, and the Issues Facing Its Future

Over the last three decades of evolution, the Jogye Order’s postulant education system has made considerable progress in standardizing, centralizing, and modernizing Buddhist education for aspiring monastics. As celebrated by the order’s 2022 publication The 30-year History of Buddhist Monastic Postulant Education, the order’s program has successfully seen over 9800 ordained novices graduate since its launch in 1991. However, there is a broad consensus within Korea’s Buddhist community that the religion is in crisis and, within the order in particular, that its future is in peril. Unless it is reversed, the trend portends the very real possibility of the order’s demise by the end of the century, if not sooner. The order recently vowed to reverse the downward trend in monastic recruitment and raise the annual number of ordained novices to 150 by 2025 through a multifaceted plan involving greater youth outreach efforts, an increased social media presence, and online Buddhist educational materials, along with an expansion of the order’s international missionary efforts. Given that postulant recruitment is critical to the order’s survival, this paper examines the past, present, and future of the Jogye Order’s postulant education system in light of the current membership crisis, as well as the order’s recent publication of The 30-year History of Buddhist Monastic Postulant Education.