When the history of Christian monasticism is written for the twentieth century, it will include one surprising and revolutionary development that nothing in its previous history could have prepared it for: the living dialogue with Buddhism. Over the past thirty years, while Christian theologians were eagerly discussing their doctrinal traditions with their Buddhist counterparts and rethinking their characterization of the "non-Christian" world, men and women monastics East and West were sharing methods of meditation and experiencing life in one another's communities. All of this, in turn, was part of a larger pursuit among religious-minded people across the world for a revitalized spirituality, one open to the inheritance of traditions previously considered false or at least irretrievably foreign.
As the essays gathered together in the book will show, with Buddhist and Christian populations almost evenly distributed and the preservation of community-based monasticism still living in both traditions, Korea is in a unique position to reflect on the ideals of a life of "self-renunciation" as they have been conceptualized and embodied in these two world religions, and to ask what meaning the monastic experience still has for society at large.