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책을 읽고/독서일기01-05

마이클 캐리더스 - [부처](Michael Carrithers, the Buddha, Oxford) [2004년?]

by 길철현 2016. 12. 6.

*Michael Carrithers, the Buddha, Oxford


[감상]

우선 이 책은 부처에 대해 가지고 있던 고정 관념, 첫째, 왕의 아들, 둘째, 처자를 두고 출가했다는 이야기가 근거가 빈약하다는 걸 보여주었다는 점이, 그래서 고정 관념을 깰 수 있었다는 점이 반갑다. 그리고, 이 책은 과거의 성현들, 예수이든 부처이든, 공자이든, 그 당시의 시대 및 사회적 배경 속에서 탄생한 것임을 재천명하고 있고, 그 부분에 대해서는 나도 크게 공감하는 바이다. (물론 이들이 위대한 인물인 것은 그러한 시대 및 사회적 배경 가운데 나왔음에도, 그 시대 및 사회적 배경을 뛰어넘어 보편적 진리(?)로 향하는 핵심을 포착해서 보여준 때문이라는 점을 간과하는 것은 아니다.)

종교로서 기독교는 종교적 색채(그러니까 독단성인가?)가 강하다면, 불교는 철학적 색채가 강하다. 그 중간의 경과야 어찌 되었던, 두 종교 다 삶에 대한 의문과 해답을 시도하고 있고, 많은 사람들이 그 해답을 따르고 있다. 기독교에 있어서, 하느님의 존재가 의문의 핵심이라면, 불교에 있어서는 견성 혹은 해탈이 무엇인지, 그리고 윤회설을 과연 받아들일 수 있는가가 문제시 될 것이다. 다시 말해, 예수나 부처 같은 성현들이 다다른 사고의 극점이 나름대로 의미를 지니면서, 동시에 한계성을 지닐 때(그 당시에는 그 생각들이 아무리 혁명적이었다고 할지라도) 그것을 어떻게 받아들이느냐 하는 문제가 될 것이고, 또 다른 한편으로는, 내가(혹은 이 종교를 바라보던 누구든지) 이들의 사고를 얼마나 정확하게 이해하고 있는가 하는 문제도 생각해 볼 수 있을 것이다. 어쨌거나, 이 글의 저자인 Carrithers가 다음과 같이 요약하고 있는 말에서 나는 부처와 공감할 수 있는 면, 혹은 부처의 위대성을 본다.

 

The Buddha was an optimist in that he thought humans capable of skillful rationality, but a realist in that he knew this rationality to require an emotional transformation as well. (93)


 

*His thought was revolutionary, but it was a revolution which had already been in the making for a long time. (4)

*The scriptures give us license to accept that he lived to a ripe age, eighty years, and that he taught for forty-five years. (8)

*we are familiar with thought which is general not particular; abstract not concrete; and argued rather than certified by supernatural sanction, illustrated by customary imagery or sanctioned by tradition.

But when we look to Socrates and his predecessors in Greece, and to the Buddha and his forebears in India, these habits seem fresh and newly acquired. (10)

*they<the Sakyas--one of a number of people spread along the northern edge of the Ganges basin, at the periphery of the then developing North Indian civilisation> did not have kings in the strict sense, and therefore the later tradition that the Buddha was a king's son must be dismissed. (13)

*First, it asserts that a criminal, whether Brahman or Servant, Warrior or Husbandman, would be sentenced by the king of a newly centralised state strictly according to his deed, not according to his estate. This was quite contrary to the old view, however, for there the punishment - envisaged as reparation or penance - was to be appropriate to the person, to the estate of the transgressor, not only to the crime. Were Brahmans and Warriors to be treated like common criminals? Were the estates not to be respected? And second, the discourse points out that, in the urbane world of the Buddha, it was quite possible for someone born of high estate, a Brahman or a Warrior, to be employed as a servant by someone of low estate, a Servant or a Husbandman. Such an eventuality was wholly inconceivable under the old order; Servants could only serve, Brahmans and Warriors only command. (17)

*He was just 'a youth, with coal-black hair, in the early stages of life' when he left the world. This casts doubt on the existence of the wife and child later traditions awarded him, but it does illustrate that to leave the world was a whole life's vocation.

There was also a specific motive for renunciation: 'it occurred to me that life in the home is cramped and dirty, while the life gone forth into homelessness is wide open; it is difficult to live a spiritual life completely perfect and pure in all its parts while cabinned inside. (21)

*This school <Jainism> held a particularly strong version of the transmigration theory, to the effect that to hurt any living being, each of which has a soul, is to injure one's own soul by making defilement adhere to it, as dirt to a cloth. In order to cleanse oneself of defilement already acquired one was to undertake voluntary self-mortification such as fasting; and to avoid further defilement one was to avoid any injury to living beings, great or small: this is the doctrine of harmlessness or non-violence, ahim sa. (27)

*He had contact with both kings and prostitutes, merchants and Brahmans. His role as a peripatetic mendicant allowed him a freedom to see every way of life and every corner of his civilisation. He enjoyed a license allowed to those, the religious beggars, who belonged to no particular part of society, free to move everywhere because in principle they threatened no one. (29)

*Psychologist who have investigated such effects <effects of meditation> confirm not only that measurable physical changes accompany such meditation, but also that -quite apart from beliefs about what should happen - there are psychological changes such as a heightened awareness of the object of meditation, feelings of comfort and pleasure, and detachment from the surroundings and from one's own preoccupations. (32)

*'Know not by hearsay, nor by tradition. . . nor by indulgence in speculation. . . nor because you honour [the word of] an ascetic; but know for yourselves.' (39)

*The Buddha's teaching was devoted to the apparently selfish purpose of self-liberation, being directed to sentient beings in so far as they are capable of misery and final liberation from misery. But the teaching also touched sentient beings as moral agents, as agents capable of affecting the welfare not only of themselves but of others as well. Some of his teachings seem to treat only personal liberation, others morality, but for the Buddha the two matters were always intimately and necessarily connected. (54)

*The doctrine of suffering presupposes a vulnerability to disease, death, natural calamity and human oppression that characterised the Buddha's world, as it does much of the world today. (60)

*And this, O monks, is the Truth of the Arising of Suffering. It is just thirst or craving(****) which gives rise to repeated existence, which is bound up with impassioned appetite, and which seeks fresh pleasure now here and now there, namely, thirst for sensual pleasures, thirst for existence, thirst for non-existence. (63) (경전)

*Craving may be spoken of comprehensively as 'thirst for existence'. This is, to be sure, the 'thirst which gives rise to repeated existence', but perhaps a better way to think of it is as the desire for becoming other than what present experience gives. (64)

*'Thirst for existence, O monks, has a specific condition; it is nourished by something, it does not go without support. And what is that nourishment? It is ignorance.' (66) (경전)

*Hence from a radically moral standpoint it is by choosing badly, by being greedy and hateful, that we bring upon ourselves the suffering we meet in birth after birth. (68)

*. . .dependent co-origination served two functions: it refuted the idea of an independent permanent soul, and it described the origin of suffering. (70) (연기설--실체 부정, 고의 기원 설명)

*In the very long run Buddhism was strikingly successful: it became a world religion which until recently reigned over the Far East and mainland South-East Asia, the most populous areas of the globe, and now it is making its way in the West. (79)

*That is, just as I am subject to pain and pleasure, so are others, and just as I wish myself well, so I should wish well to others. Throughout the Buddhist world loving-kindness, supplemented by compassion for suffering, was to become the model for social sentiments beyond the family and a value in its own right. (89)

*The Buddha was an optimist in that he thought humans capable of skillful rationality, but a realist in that he knew this rationality to require an emotional transformation as well. (93)

*If one cannot change the world, one can at least change oneself. True, a practice for laymen such as the meditation on loving-kindness must be partly dependent for its effectiveness on one's being part of a Buddhist community which cleaves to such values; but the final effort is one's own and the focus of effort is oneself. A Kalaman travelling to Kosala or a Kalaman working his ancestral fields could both equally well practise loving-kindness and compassion. (94)

*In the light of our deeply disillusioning experience of the teachings of the past as they have been applied in the world, we might very well doubt that any past master still bears cogency and relevance. And one might further object in the case of the Buddha that his mastery is not world-wide, but is grounded upon views of the cosmos, such as transmigration, which can never be accepted by the West. (97)