불교의 인간론

Man in Early Buddhism

불교의 인간론은 무아설로 집약된다. 이것을 구조적 측면에서 설명하면 오온설이 되고, 발생적 측면에서 설명하면 연기설이 된다. 무아설에 의하면 어떤 것을 나의 것 혹은 나의 소유라고 생각한다면 잘못이다. 붓다는 무아설에 의해서 진실한 실천적인 목표를 달성하려고 하였다. 즉 외적 혹은 구체적으로 파악되는 어떤 것에 대한 집착이나 번뇌를 끊고 온화함을 획득한 위대한 사람이 되라는 것이다.

Buddha rejected the view of a man as a construction from material particulars. He also rejected the view of a man as a eternal self(atman). There is not such a thing as a ‘self’, but five aggregates of processes. There is not an unchangeable thing belongs to me, but a result of twelve causal relations. The false belief in a ‘self’, or a ‘substance’ is the cause of all sufferings. But Buddha did not deny explicitly a ‘self’. The metaphysical dispute like whether real self exists or not, he thought, interrupted the Self-realization. He claimed that mental and material elements or functions which constituted a empirical individual were not a real self. They are changed, so they can not be a eternal self. If we could get rid of our selves, we would be perfectly happy. By this doctrine of ‘not-self’, Buddha alms an entirely new attitude to life. As a Buddhist, man must learn to behave as if there were no ego. We must awake and live like Buddha.