선(禪)과 셰익스피어 읽기

Zen and Reading Shakespeare: Hamlet

How to read English literary works taught in the university class room has been one of the most important and practical questions for Korean English professors who use English as a second language. Finding ways to get at the core of the thoughts and emotions stored in the English passages and delivering that to the students is crucial to helping them understand and enjoy English literature in general. The aim of this paper, then, is to apply the methodology of Zen to the reading, for example, of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The basic philosophy of Zen Buddhism is to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one's own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism. For the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu, getting at the true nature of things requires "mind-fasting"(心齋), "mind-forgetting"(坐忘), and "clear as the morning" (朝徹). Mind-fasting is very important because it is a form of mental training. Chuang Tzu writes: "Maintain the unity of your will. Cease to listen with the ear, but listen with the mind. Cease to listen with the mind but listen with the spirit. As to the spirit, it is an emptiness responsive to all things. Tao abides in emptiness; and emptiness is the fast of mind." "To listen with the spirit" is to listen with Qi (기, 氣), which is translated as "natural energy", "life force", or "energy flow." Qi is stored in a human body through the breath and from there serves as its mode of communication with everything else around. From the earliest stage then, Zen practitioners are advised to be attentive to the stay awakened to the in-&out of breathing. The basic structure for reading Shakespeare is as follows: In this way I affirm that our experience of the text is deepened and widened by such training in Zen practice. Of note is that the text, from this perspective, should be understood as storage-house of the author's intended emotions and thoughts, and a living thing inviting the reader to respond to it (to interpret it) by way of the empathy of breath. Zen reading differs from ordinary reading in the speed, pitch, rhythm, and length of the voicing, and that difference in turn allows the emotional flow of the passage to show and to be felt more clearly. The question however remains as to whether this method lives up to Shakespeare's own definition of true performance, that we should "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action."