The two key words which occur on almost each page of the
Mahāyāna writings are Bodhisttva and emptiness. What then means
first of all Bodhisattva? Buddha is the one who is enlightened.
Bodhisattva means literally an Enlightenment-Being. He is a
Buddha-to-be, one who wishes to become a Buddha. The
Bodhisattva in this sense strives for reaching the perfect
Enlightenment not only for himself, but also for other sentient beings
with the skill in means, through which the latent seeds of
enlightenment in others can be brought out and mature. The
following ist the famous passage from the Diamond Sūtra illustrating
this point:
Here, O Subhuti, a Bodhisattva should think thus: “As many beings
as there are in the universe of beings - be they egg - born, as born
from a womb, or moisture-born, or miraculously born ; be they with
born, or without ; be they with perception, without perception, or with
neither perception nor no-perception - as far as any conceivable
universe of beings is conceived; all these should be led by me intoNirvāṇa, into that realm of Nirvāṇa which leaves nothing behind. And
yet, although innumerable beings have thus been led to Nirvāṇa, no
being at all has born led to Nirvāṇa. And why? If in a Bodhisattva the
perception of a ‘being’ should take place, he would not be called an
‘enlightenment-bing’.”
Bodhisattva is a being having the two contradictory forces of
wisdom and compassion. In wisdom, he sees no sentient beings at
all; in compassion, he is full of firm resolve to save them. The
ability to combine these contradictory forces makes him to stay in
this world and to practice Bodhisattva-Path, thereby saving himself
and others.
Bodhisattva, the Sūtra tells us, should cultivate these two things,
with the thought: “I will never abandon all sentient beings
notwithstanding the fact that all things are empty.” We must now
make an effort to understand this important idea of Emptiness. Here
the meaning of the sanskrit word śūnyatā deserves to be interpreted
as a synonym of Non-Self. For Buddhists, emptiness is a term for
the absence of self, or for self-effacement.
Emptiness is that which stands right in the middle between two
extremes: affirmation and negation, existence and non-existence,
eternity and annihilation. Tathāgatas teach the Dharma of the middle
to be free from both extremes. This Dharma is now called
emptiness. The following famous passage from the Diamond Sūtra
illustrates this point well:
The lord said: “Wherever there is possession of marks, there is fraud,there is fraud, wherever there is no-possession of no-marks there is no
fraud. Hence the Tathāgata is to be seen from no-marks as marks.”
From the other point of view, the emptiness is called Suchness
(tathatā), because the emptiness is realized, when the real nature of
the thing is seen, without superimposing any ideas upon it.
At the level of the world of conventional Truth, the Lotus Sūtra
appears to accept the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness. A world
where spiritual progress is paramount, truth very often depends
upon context. Here is a very famous passage from the XIV chapter
(安樂行品) of the Lotus Sūtra to illustrate this point :
Further, a Bodhisattva Mahāsattva looks upon all phenomena as
emptiness. He sees them duly established, remaining unaltered, as they
are in reality, not liable to be disturbed, not to be moved backward,
unchangeable. It is existing in the highest sense of the word, having the
nature of space, escaping explanation and expression by means of
common speech, not born, composed and simple, aggregated and isolated,
not expressible in words, formless, really without existence, innumerable
infinite, independently established, unrestrained, only existing by causes,
and manifesting themselves owing to a perversion of perception.
The IV chapter(adhimukti-parivarta, 信解品) of the Sūtra reads:
“All is emptiness, non-form, and non-action.”
The V chapter(Oṣadhī-parivarta, 藥草喩品) of the Sūtra also
speaks:But the Thus Come One(如來) knows that this is the Law of one
form, one flavour, namely, the form of emancipation, the form of
separation, the form of extinction, the form of ultimate nirvāṇa, of
constant tranquility and extinction, which in the end finds its destination
in emptiness(終歸於空).
The feature of laudatory self-reference, a characteristic of early
Mahāyāna Sūtras, is very much to the fore in the Lotus Sūtra. If a
person hears just one verse of the Sūtra and rejoices in it for even
a moment, the Buddha predicts that person to realize the Perfect
Buddhahood. The Sūtra should be not only recited and promulgated,
but it needs to be worshipped, as if it were the Buddha himself,
with “sundry-offerings of flower perfume, necklaces, powdered
incense, perfumed paste, burnt incense, silk canopies and banners,
garments or music.” Those who preach the Sūtra will themselves
see the Buddha - the Lotus Sūtra enjoins active missionary work in
promulgating the Sūtra and its teaching as follows:
After entering the abode of the Tathāgata, putting on his robe and
sitting down on my seat, the preacher should, undaunted, expound this
sūtra. The strength of charity is my abode. The apparel of forbearance
is my robe. And emptiness is my seat. Let the preacher take his stand
on this and preach.
Therefore, the principal message of the first half of the Lotus
Sūtra is: the Buddha’s skill in means, the doctrine of the One
Vehicle, and the complete joy of the Buddha’s disciples in findingthat they will, indeed they must, attain Perfect Buddhahood.
The teaching of skill in means (or skilful means) is a crucial
ancillary of one among the other principal doctrines of the Lotus
Sūtra, that of the One Vehicle (ekayāna). The Buddha has employed
his skill - in means and devices (upāya/ upāyakauśalya) in order to
adapt his teaching to the level of his hearers. The concept of skill in
means extends to the core of Mahāyana spirituality, and is one of
the central teachings of the Lotus Sūtra. Due to the issues around
this concept, it has enabled the success of the Lotus Sūtra in East
Asian countries.
Broadly speaking, the teaching of skill in means demonstrates the
Buddha’s compassionate to adapt his teaching to the level of his
hearers. The teaching, however, should be regarded as the ladders,
or, to use an age-old Buddhist image, as a raft being employed to
cross a river. There is no need to keep up with carrying the raft
even though the journey has been already done. When used, such a
teaching transcends itself.
According to Nāgārjuna in his Mūlamadhyamakakārika XXIV, 18,
it is dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) that we call the
emptiness (śūnyatā). We might gloss this by saying that it is
because entities originate in dependence on causes and conditions
that they are empty. Here, emptiness is identified with the lack of
inherent existence (niḥsvabhāva).
In China, particularly in the Tien-t'ai tradition, the teaching of
the Lotus Sūtra was linked with that of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra,
which advocates the tathāgatagarbha doctrine, and also with that ofthe Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna.
기타파일
44P 미리보기
