초기 중국불교 법신론(法身論)에 나타나는 실체론적 사유경향의 원인 고찰

Abstract

In order to understand properly the characteristics of theory of dharmakāya in early Chinese Buddhism, it is essential to examine the historical background, of which the Buddhism was transmitted in earlier time in China. The Buddhism in the Kushan empire is the most influential factor on the formation of early Chinese Buddhist Society. Kushan empire had been built by the Central Asia Aryan who were originally nomadic people. Their main religion was Zoroastrianism and it gave a great influence on the formation of central Asian Buddhism. The Zoroastrianism is a kind of monotheistic religion which people believe Ahura Mazda as one absolute God having the goodwill. Ahura Mazda is a salvational god who saves people from the distress of this world. The salvational characteristics of this God is thought to be the most influential factor to form the concepts of Maitreya and Amitabha Buddha in Central Asia. The strong belief in these Buddhist gods and the commercial success of the Kushan empire through the international trade of silk road enhanced to build giant Buddha statues in their territory. The popular belief in Maitreya and Amitabha Buddha as an absolute being is thought to be an important factor to develop the theory of Buddhadkāya or Dharmakāya. The reason that this paper summarize the explanations of brain science, mordern philosophy of religion, and modern Buddhist philosophy regarding the concept of god is that those explanation is necessary to understand more analytically the concept of an absolute Buddha. The concept of an absolute god is thought to be formed by the process of ‘Agenticity’ in extreme in terms of brain scientist like Shermer, to be formed by the substantial understanding of the overwhelming power of nature surrounding us in terms of philosopher like van Peursen, and to be formed even in Buddhist theories by the permeation of the Vedic concept of absolute god into Buddhism in terms of Buddhist philosopher like Kalupahana. This paper analysed the text 『Dachengdayizhang 大乘大義章』 of Huiyuan(慧遠), one of the representative Chinese Buddhist monks in Wei-Jin(魏晉) period of China. The arguments of dharmakāya based on the substantial understanding of Buddha are frequently shown in this text. This tells us that the phenomena which are occurred when the god is understood as a closed being are also appeared in the early Chinese Buddhist dharmakāya theory. In addition, this text shows that Huiyuan(慧遠) understood the substantiality of dharmakāya by the concept of an immaterial pure Chi(純粹氣) as most of Buddhist scholars in Wei-Jin period utilizing the metaphysics of Xuanxue(玄學).