Mind humanities seeks to cure social ills

Won-Buddhist institute endeavoring to restore humanity in modern society

By Chung Ah-young

People say the humanities are in crisis with a lack of interest and support. Yet some claim the humanities are the very answer to the fast-changing and materialistic modern society. So how can one cope with the crisis?

Park Kwang-soo, professor at the Won-Buddhism department of Wonkwang University based in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, finds its solution in “understanding the minds.”

“We are living in a society dominated by economic achievements, knowledge and cutthroat competition without understanding the nature of human beings, which are bringing about many social problems,” Park told The Korea Times in a recent telephone interview.

He took the “crisis in the humanities” seriously to bring back humanity to modern society and found that the understanding of the minds is key to resolving all these modern malaises.

To further research and develop the idea, he and his fellow scholars and Won-Buddhists at the Institute of the Won-Buddhist Thought of the university are launching the Research Center of the Mind Humanities on Tuesday.

The professor, also the director of the center, decided to develop it as a new discipline called “mind humanities” two years ago.

“The initial idea of the mind humanities started with questioning how to solve the problem of the crisis of humanities. The center will become a new hope for creating the values for human beings’ spiritual civilization,” he said.

The mind humanities is a new discipline to focus on researching the minds of human beings based on various human studies both from the East and the West and apply it in everyday life of the real world.

It is based on an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach that encompasses traditional Western and Eastern philosophies and religions including Korean traditional values along with medical sciences such as psychology and neurology.

The launching of the center is part of the beginning of the new studies that requires decades. It consists of four fields — thoughts (philosophy); healing body and mind; education (nurturing humanity through practices); and social networks.

The thoughts field deals with traditional philosophies from the ancient, medieval and modern times of the East and West, and reconstitutes them into a new paradigm.

The healing field adopts joint research by Western psychology and neurology specialists and Oriental medicine experts to seek harmony in body, mind and spirit.

The education field is designed to create mind-healing programs through practices such as yoga and meditation to be used as part of curriculums in schools and universities.

The social network field is to digitalize the contents related to the mind humanities and provide them widely to make more people share them and create a digitalized cultural atlas, which consists of a cultural database, operating system and service programs.

The director also noted that the mind humanities also share many things in the values and virtues of Korean traditional religions and philosophies such as Confucianism, Jeungsangyo, Taoism and other indigenous beliefs.

“It has the core of the mind-healing virtues of the Won-Buddhism as I devoutly believe in. But at the same time, it is a comprehensive search combining various religious philosophies to cure the social ills that cannot be solved by just one religion,” he said.

“The mind humanities are distinguished from other similar established disciplines its focus on practical purposes that actually probes the loss of humanity and alienation, to fundamentally discover answers for humans and society. So we are going to develop comprehensive programs for the practical uses,” he said.

The director is ultimately seeking the globalization of the mind humanities through thorough research and preparation in coordination with both Korean and foreign scholars. To achieve that, the center is preparing to publish the Journal of Mind Humanities in a few years.

“I think the mind humanities have not only Korean values but universal virtues that strive to cure social ills and enrich the human spirit. So I think it can appeal to other parts of the world in the future,” he said.

The launch ceremony of the center will take place at the academic symposium titled “A New Vision for the Spiritual Civilization of Human Societies,” organized by the Institute of the Won-Buddhist Thought at the Sungsan Memorial Hall of the university on Jan. 25.