대행선에 관한 일고 -『한마음 요전』을 중심으로 -

Abstract

This thesis aims at investigating the course of truth seeking Venerable Myogong Daehaeng (1927-2012) took by herself and at examining her full awakening to the truth, rather than viewing Daehaeng Seon from the standpoint of patriarch Seon, gongan Seon, ganhwa Seon, or the theory of original buddhahood. The scope of my investigation is restricted to the period ranging from Daehaeng’s childhood to her arrival at Baengnyeonsa Temple in Jecheon City in order to ‘dim her radiance and mingle with the dust of the world’ 和光同塵 as recorded in the Han mau m yojeon: Daehaen g sunim haengjanggi, peobeojip. My thesis is generally based on this book. Before and after Daehaeng’s teen life, Korea was in the gloomy conditions under Japanese colonial rule. On account of dire poverty and ill-treatment by her father, Daehaeng at that time had an extremely hard time: she frequently run away from home and slept in the open air. But on the contrary this situation allowed her to thoroughly investigate such things as ‘life’, ‘uncertain self-existence’, ‘refuge’, and ‘existence’. She pursued to find out a compassionate ‘father’ in her inner world as a replacement of her cruel father in the troubled external world. This is the starting point of Daehaeng Seon. At the age of nine, Daehaeng came to the recognition of life through the question of “Who led me to such a state?” She looked straight on the reality of the world full of discrimination and hardship, but discovered that there is an inner world, namely ‘he(father),’ in which people can find their inherent peace and refuge beyond this troubled world. In other words, she understood that ‘he’ and ‘I’ are coexistent. At the age of fourteen, when she met Master Hanam, she longed for seeing the actual appearance of ‘father’ with Hanam’s compassionate nature as condition. Ten years after that, she realized that the actual ‘I’ and inherent ‘he’ are non-dual. Before, the actual ‘I’ followed the inner ‘him’[master] but now she penetrated a basic spiritual barrier upon removing the boundary between ‘he’ and ‘I’. In 1950 when she was twenty-four years of age, Daeng became a novice nun. Master Hanam noticed Daehaeng’s capability of following the buddha-way and acknowledged that she had been free from affliction. Hanam gave her the dharma name Cheonggak 靑覺 and entrusted her with an order that she now go her own way. Daehaeng continued her traveling practice firmly abiding in the contemplation of no-thought in which she stayed only at the things touching to her comfortable mind. One day both at a graveyard and from her reflection in water, she reached a thorough realization that the ‘I’ in the actual world and ‘he’ in the fundamental nature are neither the same nor different. Thereafter, in her capacity as a free person, she set off to extend compassion to all sentient beings, manifesting unrestricted competency. Daehaeng had already realized that the troubled reality [guest] and secured inner fundamental nature [master] are both coexistent and non-dual. All Hanam did was merely to approve Daehaeng’s intent of Seon. Furthermore, Daehaeng did not know about the Chinese Chan (Seon) in Tang China. However, rather than being in the style of the ‘ordinary mind is free from troubles’ 平常無事 of Mazu Daoyi 馬祖道一, Daehaeng Seon corresponds to the lineage of Shitou Xiqian 石頭希遷 because Shitou Chan emphasizes the original self whose aspects in the actual world and fundamental nature are not rejected but maintained as they are, and considered as non-different. Like this, we can find that Daehaeng Seon embraces in Seon all the activities such as looking straight on both the nature and actual world; thereby finding out an inner refuge; and realizing one’s ‘original self’ in which one can reach the union of various phenomena. I think this features prominently in Daehaeng Seon.