“Efficacy of Ganhwa Seon” is the first to be published in an internationally renowned SCI academic journal

(On the left) Monk Jeong Do, Director, Institute for Study of Jogye Order, Dongguk University; (On the right) Yu-ri Kim, Associate Researcher, Institute for Study of Jogye Order, Dongguk University

Study by research team of Institute for Study of Jogye Order, Dongguk University published in

Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine

○ A collaborative study from the research group of the Institute for Study of Jogye Order, Dongguk University (Monk Jeong Do, Director) was published in the SCI international journal “Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.” Yu-ri Kim, an associate researcher, Institute for Study of Jogye Order, Dongguk University is the lead author of “Efficacy of Ganhwa Seon,” which is the first paper to be published in an internationally renowned SCI journal. Ganhwa Seon is a traditional practice in Korean Buddhism.

○ The study titled “The Effects of Mindfulness and Buddhist Meditation Coaching on Mental Health Outcomes in College Students” intends to determine whether Dongguk University’s meditation curriculum can be a useful tool in relation to the mental health of university students. It is aimed at university students who participated in the “Self and Meditation” course, a program of Dongguk University, which is a Buddhist missionary institution. It examines the changes before and after 15 weeks of the course and consists of the applied meditation and traditional meditation (Ganhwa Seon) programs. In this respect, it carries academic significance.

○ This study, which is the first to examine the combined effect of applied meditation (mindfulness) and Ganhwa Seon, a traditional Korean Buddhist practice, substantiated that the ‘Ego and Meditation’ course significantly improved adult ADHD and self-identity.

○ In particular, in this study, the meditation instructors who teach the courses are one of the strong points of Dongguk University’s unique meditation curriculum. As a drawback, previous studies conducted abroad have highlighted the differences in efficacy of meditation courses due to the varying competence of meditation instructors. In Dongguk University’s meditation curriculum, the instructors, who are monks preparing for the Buddhist priesthood, led the classes by completing the doctoral course at the same university. Moreover, there is an integrated guidebook for conducting the “Self and Meditation” course. This approach to teaching meditation can close the gap between the various meditation instructors for each class, which has been identified in prior studies abroad as a barrier to the efficacy of meditation classes. This can be considered an advantage of the meditation curriculum of Dongguk University, which is a Buddhist missionary university looking for standardization and advancement of meditation teaching approaches.

○ Yu-ri Kim, associate researcher, Institute for Study of Jogye Order, Dongguk University said, “I have been studying meditation coaching from the perspective of practice beyond the functional use of meditation. This issue was discussed during the “Meditation Talk” of the “3rd Seoul International Meditation Expo,” and I am delighted to publish it as a paper. This result, in my opinion, was made possible with the assistance of the supervisor and co-corresponding author Monk Jeong Do, who also serves as the director of the Institute for Study of Jogye Order, Professor Nana Keum of the Department of Food Science and Technology, and Jaewon Gil, co-author and student of the Department of Food Science and Technology. Thank you.” 

○ Dongguk University’s Institute for Study of Jogye Order, which opened in March 2011, has been talking about the role of Buddhism in modern society. Monk Jeong Do, Director, Institute for Study of Jogye Order, Dongguk University said, “[We] will play a role in discovering and arranging meanings in various areas such as the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, Dongguk University, and the practice, culture, history, and ideology of Korean Buddhism.”