중국 초기선의 지역별 발전사를 통해 본 선법 계승의 사회적 의미 연구

Abstract

The Chinese Seon sect, unlike any other doctrinal school, is independent socially and economically. This paper is to study the temporal background of that independence. Some ideated terms are used for mentioning the history of early Chinese Buddhism, like the Eastern Jin (東 晉) Dynasty that had the tendency of the aristocratic or the pedantic Buddhism, the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms of Five Ethnic Groups (五胡 十六國) that was linked closely with the politics and the society, and the period of the Northern Wei (北魏) that was glorified excessively to have established the national Buddhism. But, it is not sure if these terms can be used for the succession of the way of Seon before the establishment of the Seon sect. In this paper, I examined the meaning of the succession of the way of Seon in the Northern and the Southern regions in the time of the Eastern Jin and of Sixteen Kingdoms of Five Ethnic Groups. I reconsidered if one could tell the succession of the way of Seon in the Eastern Jin, which had developed with its intentional distance from the central region, as the same aristocratic Buddhism. Also, I found the meaning of the succession of the way of Seon in Sixteen Kingdoms of Five Ethnic Groups in the light of the fact that venerable monks who practiced the way of Seon acted in many ways because of their political and social background. It should be noted that all monks basically practiced the way of Seon in the Northern and the Southern regions before the establishment of the Seon sect, and that successors of the way of Seon stood for the principle of the separation of religion and politics rather than they were indifferent to the political and the social matters. This trend was also in the Northern Wei of the national Buddhism. So, these trend of the times gave the foundation of which successors of the way of Seon had more religiosity than sociality or scholarship before the establishment of the Seon sect. These things can shed light, I think, on the economy of the temple and the social activities after the establishment of the Seon sect from Chinese Buddhist perspectives.