인성(人性)과 불성(佛性)의 비교

Abstract

It is a very meaningful work that studies the ideal state of human being in both Neo-Confucianism and Zen of Buddhism within the comparative perspective. On one hand, Neo-Confucianism ultimately aims at a state of being a Man(;being a moral saint) through the cultivation and the continuos learning of himself. On the other hand, Zen's thoughts in china aims at the presentative completeness of being a Buddhis saint(;being a state of Buddha himself). The idea of this presentative completeness in being couldn't be ever found in originally existing Buddhism of India so far. This great idea could have been established by the result from the influence of Confucianism on Buddhism, when it came inside into China and the conventional thoughts in China. There is a big difference between a state of being a Man as the ideal image and a state of being Buddhist saint, in that Confucianism never goes beyond the correlational tie of sociality while Buddhism carries on the religious dimension of its isolated nature in the first place. This feature would be brought up by the different opinions on the nature of human being each other. That is to say, Zen's thoughts rest on a firm basic idea of the commonness in all things of the universe similar to Taoism, meanwhile Confucianism pays intensive attention on human being's own peculiarity. Therefore, Zen in Buddhism pursues the discussion about human nature within the possible sphere while Neo-Confucianism regards human nature as something that can be firmly determined with value sets. According to these different viewpoint, it is absolutely natural that there are differential ways of realization and its results in human nature.