「物不遷論」 저술 의도의 검토

Abstract

Śākamuni Buddha preached ‘a 12 āyatana doctrine’ to mankind living in a world of relativeness and discrimination that at low levels karman becomes a cause and eventually produces a consequence. Instead of dealing with fundamental questions, he tried to correct misconceptions and misunderstandings arising when the world is viewed through the prism of mankind, and advocated a doctrine of pratītya-samutpāda. Śūnya and madhyamā-pratipad is the most quintessential concept of mahāyāna that spread out from dvādaśāṅga-pratītya-samutpāda to prajā and dharma-puṇdarika. The contemporary chinese, who understood only superficially Buddism through apparently similar philosophical concepts of chinese origin without systematic learning, adequate acceptance and practise of the then foreign religion, might not have fully appreciated Ban-Ruo-Wu-Zhi-Lun(般若無知論) of Seng-zhao(僧肇). The reason why Seng-zhao wrote Wu-Bu-Qian-Lun(物不遷論) after Ban-Ruo-Wu-Zhi-Lun, I reckon, was also to warn people, who either misunderstood Buddism or distorted the view of the world. The chinese style of philosophy as amply represented by Zhou-Yi is to discuss basically natural changes and the resulting diverse consequences. This tendency first helped accept Buddism having emphasis on anitya, but I consider it soon became a barrier to reaching the fundamental essences of the religion. I maintain that Seng-zhao wrote Wu-Bu-Qian-Lun in order to interpret and, simultaneously, restrict the changes of the phenomenal whole and the definition of events discussed in Zhou-Yi and Zhuang-Zi as some kind of lessons useful to everyday life. In order to minimize probable errors in introducing prajā philosophy to the then chinese society, he might have had to understand the systematic and gradual doctrines of Buddism as well as redefine the original chinese philosophy while distinguishing between the two.