Jungto Society, the international Buddhist community founded by the revered Korean Dharma master and social activist Venerable Pomnyun Sunim (법륜스님), recently conducted its 33rd annual pilgrimage across India and to Nepal. Held under the theme “Following in the Footsteps of the Buddha,” the pilgrimage, which ran from 19 January to 2 February, was attended by more 500 practitioners.1
This year’s pilgrimage was particularly notable for two reasons: first, the participation—for the first time in the Jungto pilgrimage’s 33-year history—of non-Korean practitioners: the 500-plus Korean Buddhist pilgrims were accompanied nine practitioners from Italy, Japan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam. Some of them are members of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB), including two bhikkhunis from Thailand, while others are graduates of Jungto Society’s English-language Dharma School. Second, the pilgrimage also coincided with celebrations for the 30th anniversary of Sujata Academy, a remarkable community school and social empowerment project established by Ven. Pomnyun Sunim in Dungeshwari, in the northeastern Indian state of Bihar. A project that has transformed the lives of an entire community of people who have faced systemic social and economic exclusion as a result of India’s conservative Hindu caste hierarchy.**
Jungto Society is a volunteer-run community of practitioners who aspire to embody the Buddhist teachings through social engagement, and by promoting a simple lifestyle centered on sustainable living. The community seeks to address the crises of modern society, such as greed, poverty, conflict, and environmental degradation, by applying a Buddhist worldview of interconnectedness and living in line with the principle that everyone can find happiness through Buddhist practice and active participation in social movements.
On the penultimate day of an extensive and, at times, grueling pilgrimage itinerary—through which the pilgrims were privileged to follow the footsteps of, and bear witness to, the key chapters in the life of Shakyamuni Buddha and the birth of the Buddhadharma some 2,600 years ago—BDG imposed on Ven. Pomnyun Sunim to take time away from his duties as the pilgrimage’s tireless guiding teacher, for a quiet moment of reflection on the past and the future.
BDG: 2024 is something of a landmark year for Jungto Society, marking the 33rd Jungto pilgrimage to India as well as the 30th anniversary of Sujata Academy.** Can you talk a little about your aspirations for the future of Sujata Academy?
Ven. Pomnyun Sunim: From the beginning, our primary goal at Sujata Academy was to eradicate illiteracy in Dungeshwari. Now that we can see we’ve been quite successful in attaining that goal, our remaining work could be providing higher education for the children, or assistance to help them find employment. You might say that this is our remaining objective, but, at the same time, I know that it’s unlikely we can completely address this issue.
Since it would likely be too difficult for us to provide higher education for all the children and to ensure that they are all employed, I am instead thinking about the alternative possibility of providing technical training.
In India, there is a great need for medical personnel, for example. And since India is now rapidly industrializing, there is also a great need for skilled tradespeople. So now I’m thinking in terms of training in trades related to construction—electricians, and so on. However, this goal is somewhat controversial within Jungto Society because our original intention was only to tackle the basics: ensuring literacy and numeracy for the community. At this point, we haven’t concluded whether or not we can or should go beyond this level.
Conversely, there are people who ask whether it wouldn’t be better for us to look at other communities where illiteracy and innumeracy are still rife, so that we can instead focus on addressing these basic issues for a greater number of people.
So this is where we are now, and we have yet to make a final decision.
Alongside these issues, there used to be a very high rate of tuberculosis within the community at Dungeshwari—something like 300 people. Now there are fewer than 10 cases. So we can see that our aspiration to introduce a high level of comprehensive healthcare has also been successful. Likewise, the rate of infant mortality has been greatly reduced, as well as the mortality rate for women giving birth. And this is all thanks to setting up small local medical centers and mobile clinics, which can treat minor emergency cases and ailments—broken bones, snake bites, and the like. For more serious health conditions, then we will send the local residents to a government hospital for more specialized treatment.
We also have a broader community-development plan, which was drawn up from the beginning but has yet to be fully implemented. We can say, for example, that we’ve successfully solved the problem of ensuring access to clean drinking water, but we fallen short of success in some areas, such as increasing the earnings of local residents.
If the locals had landholdings, we could help them set up and manage a cooperative. Then they could increase their earnings by working together. However, most of the local residents are Dalits,*** who don’t have any land holdings and can only earn money through their labor. And they’re also shouldering high levels of debt. So far, we haven’t found a sustainable way to overcome this situation.
We have looked into helping the local community to set up a micro-financing and micro-banking scheme, but because of local security issues, we haven’t been able to move ahead with that yet.
This is the current situation as it stands.
▶️ Published by BDG on April 1, 2024
▶️ Read more: https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/footsteps-of-the-buddha-ven-pomnyun-sunim-and-the-transformative-power-of-engaged-buddhism/
