우파니샤드와 선불교의 관점에서 본 예이츠의 반자아

Abstract

In the paper, "The Anti-self in Yeats's Per Amica Silentia Lunae" published on Dec. 2004, I studied the theory of Yeats's anti-self in the occultic meditation. In "Ego Dominus Tuss," Ille finally found his anti-self. In "Anima Hominis," Yeats said that the saint like Christ and Buddha, and the poets like Dante and Keats attained the anti-self. The anti-self is the opposite of daily self and the egoless self. After leaving the Golden Dawn in 1917 Yeats explored a wide range of meditative traditions such as Zen Buddhism, Upanishads, Tibetan Mysticism and Chinese Taoism. Throughout his poetic career, Yeats defined poetry, and indeed all art, as a form of meditation, as an experience which can reveal the unified "Self," defined by the Upanishads, and unlock its creative energy stored in the "deep of the mind." In "Discoveries," Yeats said that the more he tried to make his art deliberately beautiful, the more he follow the opposite of himself. In this paper I argue that Yeats's anti-self is similar to the "Self" of Upanishads and the Buddhahood of Zen Buddhism. In "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes" the girl dancing between a Sphinx and a Buddha in the fifteenth night is the anti-self of Yeats. In a moment the girl, the Sphinx, the Buddha and the poet himself had overthrown time in contemplation. They remain motionless in the contemplation of their real nature, Buddhahood. Full moon is the light of Samadhi and Turiya which is the forth state corresponding to the whole sacred word "AUM," pure personality, the "Self" of Upanishads. Only when Yeats becomes the anti-self he can be a totally subjective mind, overcome the illusion of duality, and find a "revelation of realty." It is a deliverance that leads simply to seeing things the way they really are, in their most naked reality. The process of spiritual realization is cognitive, for knowledge unites the knower and the known together, reverting to the language of "A Dialogue of Soul and Self," intellect no longer knows/ Is from Ought, or Knower from the Known. "The Self is Brahman": the individual soul is seen to be the universal spirit. When each man realize that his original nature is the eternal spirit, no matter how ordinary he is, he will enter Buddhahood. Like Bodhisattvas who, on the verge of their own enlightenment, vow to hold themselves from that final bliss until all sentient beings are released from the phenomenal world Yeats would like to be an Avalokitesvara in this rag-and-bone shop.