Wonhyo (元曉)
617–686 · East Asian Buddhism · Little-known
Wonhyo is the most seminal thinker in Korean Buddhism, and he arrived when the country's schools were at war with each other. He answered by showing each side which piece of the truth it was holding, all of them contained in one Mind. He called the method harmonizing disputes. He carried chanting and plain devotion out to villagers, and treated the line between monk and layman as no line at all.
Signature
The position Wonhyo is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence
- Paradox
- Coincidentia Oppositorum
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- mildly leans Indescribable (65 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (16 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (80 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (88 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Wonhyo refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Wisdom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Non-Dual Awareness
What do we directly perceive? - Agency
- Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Mind-Only
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Cyclical Return
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Paradox
- Coincidentia Oppositorum
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Karmic Cycle
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Innate Good / No-Self
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?