An Aspect of Interchange between Confucianism and Buddhism based on the Exegetical Tradition of the Analects
Youngho Lee, Sungkyunkwan University
In the history of East Asian thought, there were numerous interchanges of thoughts between Laoism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Confucianism. It can be said that this is one of the ways it was developed. To be specific, it was not only Confucianism reborn as a new type of Confucianism after converging with Buddhism, but also Buddhism was reborn as Chinese Buddhism after converging with Confucianism. In this process, these two thoughts experienced mutual osmosis and it provided a meeting place to Kongzi and Buddha, two main saints of the two thoughts. Meanwhile, this interchange of two thoughts has both similarities and differences. That is, as for the Confucian incorporation of Buddhism into their ideology, we can examine the essence of this incorporation through the Analects 論語 study of Huang Kan 黃侃, Xie Liangzuo 謝良佐, Zhu xi 朱熹, and Li Zhuowu 李卓吾; for Buddhism, we can find the patchwork of this incorporation through the Lunyu Shuo 論語說 of Zhixu Chanshi 智旭禪師.
The meeting between Kongzi and Buddha, which can also refer to the contact between Confucianism and Buddhism, was begun by Huang Kan’s work on the Analects. At the beginning, the convergence of Confucianism and Buddhism started with imitating the counterpart’s writing style, and then was developed as borrowing the Buddhist ideology to interpret Confucianism. At the end, it reached to confirm the possibility that Confucianism and Buddhism are able to communicate with each other; or, some scholars even believed that they found the homogeneity. On the other hand, even though they, too, tried to find the similarities, Buddhists emphasized that Buddha is a saint whose personality is superior to that of Kongzi by a wide margin. However, considering the fact that Buddhism also aggressively accepted the Confucian thought that focused on the extraneous substance, it is evident that the interchange between Confucianism and Buddhism showed their strong eagerness to understand each other.
The meeting between Kongzi and Buddha, which can also refer to the contact between Confucianism and Buddhism, was begun by Huang Kan’s work on the Analects. At the beginning, the convergence of Confucianism and Buddhism started with imitating the counterpart’s writing style, and then was developed as borrowing the Buddhist ideology to interpret Confucianism. At the end, it reached to confirm the possibility that Confucianism and Buddhism are able to communicate with each other; or, some scholars even believed that they found the homogeneity. On the other hand, even though they, too, tried to find the similarities, Buddhists emphasized that Buddha is a saint whose personality is superior to that of Kongzi by a wide margin. However, considering the fact that Buddhism also aggressively accepted the Confucian thought that focused on the extraneous substance, it is evident that the interchange between Confucianism and Buddhism showed their strong eagerness to understand each other.