원효 전집 (Collected Works of Wonhyo — Foundational Korean Buddhist Philosophy)

...various “doctrinal essentials” texts. The Venerable Woncheuk and State Preceptor Daegak Uicheon, two minds that shone brightly throughout East Asia, left us the cherished legacy of their commentaries on important scriptures. These helped disseminate the broad and profound views of the Mahāyāna and offered a means of implementing those views in practice. The collected writings of Seon masters like Jinul and Hyujeong revealed the Seon path of meditation and illuminated the "pure land" that is inherent in the minds of all sentient beings. All these works comprise part of the precious cultural assets of our Korean Buddhist tradition. The bounty of this heritage extends far beyond the people of Korea to benefit humanity as a whole.

To make Korea’s Buddhist teachings more accessible, Dongguk University previously published a fourteen-volume compilation of Korean Buddhist works written in literary Chinese—the traditional lingua franca (common language) of East Asia—comprising over 320 different works by some 150 eminent monks. That compilation effort was a great act of Buddhist service. From that anthology, ninety representative texts were selected and translated first into modern vernacular Korean and now into English. These translations are being published in separate thirteen-volume collections for global distribution.

At the onset of the modern age, Korea was subjected to imperialist pressures from both Japan and the West. These pressures threatened the continuation of our indigenous cultural and religious traditions and caused our greatest cultural assets to be locked away in archives that neither the general public nor foreign-educated intellectuals had any interest in opening. For any people, such estrangement from their heritage is discomforting, as the present only has meaning if it is grounded in the memory of the past. It is only through the self-reflection and wisdom accumulated over centuries that we can define our own identity in the present and ensure our continuity into the future. Therefore, it is crucial that we bring the treasured dharma (teachings) legacy of Korean Buddhism, currently embedded in texts composed in often impenetrable literary Chinese, to the attention of a wider public.

Our efforts to disseminate this hidden gem that is Korean Buddhism...