유럽인의 눈으로 본 불교 -독일 불교도 게오르크 그림(Georg Grimm)의 불교이해-

Abstract

This article examines the Buddhist Georg Grimm who led the German Buddhist movement in the early 20th century. He was a Buddhist from Munich, Germany. After World War I, he began his activities by establishing a Buddhist organization and publishing Buddhist magazines. However, he was a proponent of Buddhist theory, which is rare in European Buddhist history. This article examines his Buddhist theory and its characteristics. He learned almost alone the Pali language, studied Buddhist scriptures, and then presented his own theory of Buddhism. Of course, his original intention was to reveal the true nature of Buddha's teachings which recorded in Buddhist scriptures. However, he was a European intellectual who studied philosophy a lot and had a lot of problem consciousness about philosophy and religion. Therefore, his understanding of Buddhism was to reinterpret Buddhism according to his religious and philosophical point of view in many ways. First of all, he thought Buddhism, unlike Christianity, was a religion based on "rational perception,". Therefore, he thought that Buddha's teachings took the form of logical perception. So, he argued that Buddha's method of deriving truth was syllogism, a deductive argumentation method. In addition, he thought that the problem consciousness of the realm of transcendence in human thought was very important and had a tremendous impact on human history. Therefore, he wanted to assume a transcendent world that exists on the other side of the current world. Based on this perspective, he was able to develop his Buddhist theory. At that time, discussions were underway among German Buddhists over the doctrine of “non-self”. According to this doctrine, there is no ‘true myself’ (in German, ich selbst) as a fixed entity. But he was able to develop his own theory by opposing the Theravada Buddhism in the Ancient Times which denied ‘true myself’ according to this doctrine. He thought that the denial of “true myself” results in pessimism about life. Therefore, in order to overcome this problem, he wanted to assume ‘true myself’ in the 'transcendental realm'. He criticized the Theravada Buddhism after the Buddha era and tried to return to the original form of Buddha's teachings. With this intention, he named his understanding of Buddhism "Old Buddhism." However, his understanding of Buddhism was to put his perspective at the forefront in many ways. As a result, he tried to grasp the nature of Buddha's teachings, but he had no choice but to reinterpret Buddhist scriptures in his own way according to his point of view.