元曉 화쟁사상에 대한 새로운 조망

Abstract

I will set out the logic of the thought on the basis of the Commentary on the Awakening of Mahayana Faith(起信論疏) and the Exposition of the Vajrasamādhi Sūtra(金剛三昧經論). There’s ‘the one mind and its two gates’ in the Awakening of Mahayana Faith. The one mind is divided into a thusness gate and an arising-and-ceasing gate. Wonhyo illustrated the fact that there’s the phenomena out of the thusness gate in the Expository Notes on the Awakening of Faith and gave an account of its feature being hidden, which made people overlooked it. Therefore, the one mind becomes splitted into the essence and the function. The essence of thusness is the principle respectively out of the thusness gate and the arising-and-ceasing gate and the fuction of thusness is the phenomena respectively out of the thusness gate and the arising-and-ceasing gate, which made it possible to reinterpret the one mind and its two gates from a point of view of the principle and the phenomena. Consequently, the one mind is not only classified as the thusness gate and the arising-and-ceasing gate but also progressed toward the all-embracing view of the thusness gate and the arising-and-ceasing gate. Wonhyo attained the thought endowed with both the essence of thusness exists in the fuction of thusness and the fuction of thusness exists in the the essence of thusness. The essence of thusness is the saint’s unformulated principle of the universe. It is ‘the primal void of possibility’ of the thusness gate and the arising-and-ceasing gate. ‘The essence of thusnessㆍthe fuction of thusness’ is the Wonhyo’s view of asceticism in which he makes use of the application of the function out of the thusness and makes it possible to employ the application of the function while laying over the essence. That means the coexistence of both the thusness gate and the arising-and-ceasing gate. Wonhyo became conscious of the fact that true-suchness is ultimate suchness, not invariable but free. Wonhyo’s reasoning is that he denies the certain idea first and contradicts it again. However, he uniquely performs the subsequent denial which includes the meaning of the first negation. ‘The wholehearted affirmation’ underlies the meaning of the first negation. This distinct characteristic potentializes the idea of ‘the theory of the essence of thusnessㆍthe fuction of thusness.’ His ingenious reasoning begins with his enlightenment. Due to ‘his wholehearted affirmation’, I earlier represented it with the word of all-embracing view, not the harmonizing disputes. The theory of the essence of thusnessㆍthe fuction of thusness is connected with ‘the three voidnesses’. Among the three voidnesses, ‘the characteristic of voidness is also void’ reflects that characteristic of uniformity eventually expresses absolute truth by abandoning the conventional truth. Buddha’s one four-line gāthā proves the persuasive power of the theory of the essence of thusnessㆍthe fuction of thusness. “Objects that are produced by causes and conditions, Those objects are extinguished and unproduced. Extinguish all objects subject to production and extinction, And those objects will be produced and unextinguished.” These indicates the fact that production is in fact calm extinction, and extinction is in fact production. That’s because the essence contains the function and the function contains the essence.