儒敎의 憂患 意識에 관한 小考

Abstract

Mankind has experienced countless pains and sufferings through the history, and when they were faced with a trouble they struggled to overcome the crisis with a consciousness of suffering. In farming culture, the typhoon was always a risk factor. In rice farming, if a typhoon hit when the ears were coming out, the farmer was highly likely to harvest only empty heads of grain, and if a typhoon came during the harvest it laid the plants down and made it difficult to harvest the grain. Although the farmers had experienced the damage of typhoons on their crops every year and were worried about the coming of a typhoon without knowing when and how it would come, however, they did their best for the crops, sowing, weeding, etc. in the belief that they would be able to defeat the typhoon. Even faced with heavy damages on the crops inflicted by a typhoon, they admitted it calmly and worked hard together for recovery. Confucianism has also developed through changing situations by healing pains of the time and overcoming sufferings based on its consciousness of suffering for society, nation, and mankind. The Confucian consciousness of suffering is well represented by King Wen (文王) who wrote divinative sign grams (卦辭) for the 64 trigrams out of his concern over the future of the world, Confucius who regarded it as life‐long sufferings to hear but not carry out righteousness, not to correct wrong, etc., Mencius who said that people are born in suffering and die in peace, etc. If one is faced with a suffering but fails to cope with it adequately with a consciousness of suffering, he may confront with a critical situation and meet an irreversible consequence. For example, if a sick patient does not look for a remedy or seek for a doctor’s prescription, the illness may grow worse and threat his life. Many of safety accidents occurring frequently in our society also take place because the seriousness of situation is not assessed properly and even the situation is belittled and concealed and, as a result, we feel at ease and fail to take actions promptly. Moreover, there is rampant selfishness that knows the seriousness of problems in our realities but do not try to solve the problems with responsibility or intentionally ignores or is indifferent to them. In order to keep healthy, we should always be cautious about being lazy, eat different types of food, do exercise regularly, get enough sleep, etc. Even for problems that may come in the far‐off future, we should solve immediate problems one by one. Furthermore, we need to recognize good and bad situations that have happened as well as possible dangers that may come in the future. In this sense, the Confucian consciousness of suffering, which emphasizes that we should be cautious at every moment and get ready to cope with any situation, is still effective today, and is also worthy of reconsideration for achieving stable society.