퇴옹성철의 선문헌 번역사업의 배경과 의의

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the publication background and history, meaning of Sŏllimgogyŏngch'ongsŏ(禪林古鏡叢書) (the collected works of the old mirror of the meditating forest) which was made by T’oeong Sŏngch’ŏl(退翁性徹 , 1912~1993), one of the representative buddhist monks of modern Korean Buddhism. The Sŏllimgogyŏngch’ongsŏ is largely divided into two parts: in the first collection, total 37 books of the Sŏn literature were translated into Korean and fully published, and the second collection was published in 2015 since 1993 when two different kinds of the Sŏn literature started to be translated. In the modern Korean buddhist history, it is rare to find the cases of translation and publication only on the Sŏn literature, and in here it reflects deeply inside the critical mind of T’oeong on the identification of the Sŏn school(禪宗). In the period when he was, the true dharma of the Sŏn school already disappeared, so he felt right thought of old Buddhas and patriarches in danger and tried to cope with it in various aspects. For example, the dharma talk based on the Sŏn literature which started from 1967 led to One hundred days dharma talk in 1967, the Linjì lù dharma talk, and the publication of Sŏnmunjŏngno in 1981. T’oeong’s dharma talk based on the Sŏn literature focused on Sudden enlightenment and sudden cultivation(頓悟頓修) as the basis of Xiūzhèng Lùn(修證論) of the Sŏn school, and especially emphasized on right interpretation of three cases of Linjì in the Linjì lù dharma talk. And it was more widely popularized by publishing Sŏllimgogyŏngch’ongsŏ.The publication of this collection made T'oeong have the objective sources on the true dharma of the Sŏn school which he stood for and became an opportunity to let Korean society know the Sŏn literatures.