The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Kim Iryeop

1896–1971

Also known as Kim Iryŏp, Kim Iryop

Writer of Korea's "New Woman" movement who became a Seon Buddhist nun, and drew on Seon teaching to ask what the authentic self is and how a woman can be free.

Kim Iryeop was a leading figure among the “New Women” of early twentieth-century Korea, a prominent writer and intellectual active in the women’s movement. After she was ordained as a Buddhist nun she gave herself wholly to Seon practice and philosophy, and though she no longer took part in the women’s movement, her thought went to the roots of women’s questions.

Almost three decades after she became a nun, three books appeared, among them Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun, and returned to public life. She is read today as a feminist and Buddhist philosopher who showed how Buddhist teaching could serve personal and social transformation, and who held that religious training contributes to building a virtuous society.

Key ideas

The small self and the great self
The individual “small self” is a confined “I”, for a woman constrained by society’s gender norms. The authentic “great self” is not a separate thing but the openness of the self, free of those restrictions.
Beyond restriction and freedom
Before she became a nun, Kim sought liberation from social norms. Seon practice took her beyond the very contrast between being restricted and being free, to a deeper, non-dualistic liberation rooted in spiritual insight.
Creativity
Creativity, which is each person’s original mind and the wellspring of their existence, is the way out of the small self into the great self. Recognising it makes one a “complete being”, in harmony with the universe.
Philosophy from experience
Her essays take her own life, lived as a woman in a society ruled by men, as material for philosophy, asking about human existence, identity, social constraint and love, and reading them in the light of Buddhist teaching.
Tradition
Korean
Region
Korea
Themes
The self

Key works

  • Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun

Sources

  1. Lucy Hyekyung Jee, Korean Buddhism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  2. Halla Kim, Korean Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy