李通玄과 中國 傳統思想

Abstract

When Buddhism that had been born in India was introduced to China, it can be said to have started to be sinicized already. In the early times, Buddhism was known to people as similar to the Lao-Zhuang Thought out of Chinese traditional thoughts with relying on terms of Lao-Zhuang, but Buddhist gradual settling down made these attempts to rely on other religious terms decrease and diminish. In Tang dynasty, Buddhist flourishing times, many Buddhist thinkers were eager to propagandize the idea of their own sects, and it was not the more than Fa-zang(法藏) of the Hua-yen School. But Li Tong-xuan(李通玄) accepted Chinese traditional thought constructively and made his creative Hua-yen thought. There are two evaluations on his thought. Some say that he accepted Chinese traditional thought into Buddhism and coordinated them. The others that he imported the Laozi(老子) and the Zhou-yi(周易: I Ching) out of Chinese traditional, and tried to accorded them to Hua-yen thought. However, the latter seems to be unreasonable when we take account the movement of the world of thought in time of Li Tong-xuan and his way of acception of Chinese traditional thought. Li Tong-xuan, ranging over extensive and various Chinese thoughts until forty years old, was an intellectual in the upper classes and, not like any other Buddhist thinkers, as a layperson, that is, with not being a monk, studied and practiced Hua-yen thought. Also, in his times, no one took an unfriendly attitude to any other thought and studies on the Laozi and the Zhou-yi was very popular. These seemed to make Li Tong-xuan embrace Hua-yen and Chinese thought altogether. He regard Chinese saints in the same light as Buddhist great masters, and took a friendly point on their teachings. In other words, he recognized ideas of Chinese and Buddhist saints as one that did for the sake of sentient people altogether. Also, he explained Buddhist terms quite freely with not only the Laozi and the Zhou-yi but also the Theory of the Five Natural Elements and the Yin-yang(陰陽五行說) and the Twelve Horary Signs(十二支). Especially, he frequently used the Zhou-yi and the Theory of the Five Natural Elements and the Yin-yang to make his point clear. We can conclude that Li Tong-xuan tried to explain Hua-yen more easily through his way of interpreting Chinese traditional thought.