A Buddhist Mindfulness View of Paradox: Silence and Skepticism of Language to Dismantle Paradoxes.

This study investigates how Buddhist mindfulness, particularly from the Yogācāra tradition, enables Korean Buddhist managing monks to navigate and ultimately dismantle the paradox between their spiritual values and the financial demands of temple management. Through nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in three Korean Buddhist temples, the research identifies a temporal cognitive process where monks initially use differentiation tactics (building role boundaries and switching roles) and later integration tactics (removing linguistic boundaries and searching for mutual benefits) to cope with this paradox. Central to this process is "mindful awareness," manifested as silence and skepticism of language, which acts as a mental buffer and cognitive trigger that leads monks to question and dissolve the linguistic categories underpinning the paradox, resulting in the paradox no longer being experienced. The study challenges prevailing paradox theory by highlighting language's paradoxical role in creating tensions and proposes that deep silence and emptying the mind—core aspects of Buddhist mindfulness—offer an alternative pathway to transcending paradoxical conflicts rather than merely managing them.