離言絶慮의 의미론

Abstract

In the Diamond Sutra, there are more than thirty instances of the peculiar declarative sentences which I propose to call “the statements of expression-reference.” For instance, “World is not world. Therefore is it called world.” or “Particles of dust are not particles of dust. Therefore are they called particles of dust.” Those statements have made the reading of the Sutra notoriously difficult, not only for the common readers but also for the commentators of the Sutra. I suggest that the linguistic distinction between “use” and “mention” be applied to the statements of expression-reference: “‘World’ is not a world. Therefore is it called ‘world’.” or “‘Particles of dust’ are not particles of dust. Therefore are they called ‘particles of dust’.” Rewritten this way, the statements of expression-reference turn out pretty mundane utterances, with nothing difficult to understand. They simply indicate the basic linguistic fact that the verbal expressions only refer to particular things in the world, rather than identifying themselves with the things. Then the question arises why Lord Buddha utters such mundane linguistic facts in his sermon. I suggest that Lord Buddha tells us the limitation of a human language: it is of no use to explicate the Buddhist Truth in a language and so you had better abandon the language in your efforts to learn the Truth and reach enlightenment. I refer to Buddha's way of explication of this type as a “transcendental mode of explication.” However, Wonhyo (617~686), one of the foremost Buddhist monks and scholars in the Shilla dynasty, points out that one can only abandon one's own language only by means of the language. This paramount paradox is part of Wonhyo's Buddhist teaching known as the Logic of Hwajaeng, literally “harmonious quarrel or dispute.” Based on Wonhyo’s Logic of Hwajaeng, Shin (2003b) proposes a new way of approaching the semantics of human language: a “transcendental semantics” as opposed to our usual empirical semantics. I see a possibility in his proposal that transcendental semantics organized in terms of the logic of Hwajaeng can lead to the “Buddhist semantics of noble silence” beyond visible and audible utterances. However it is yet to be explored how we establish a full-fledged theory of transcendental semantics.