Four Quartets와 태장계 만달라에 육화된 자비와 신앙

Compassion and Faith Incarnated in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and GarbhakoSadhãtu Mandala

This study is concerned with the compassion of God and Mahaāvairocana, the Great Sun Buddha, and the believer’s faith in the eeming grace em-bodied in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and Garbhakośadhatu(Womb) Mandala, an image of the universe and a theophany employed in esoteric Bud-dhism to realize integration with Mahaāvairocana. Garbhakośadhātu Manda-la represents the cosmos as the womb which is the incarnation of the com-passion of Mahavairocana, the cosmotheistic and transcendent apotheosis of the historical Buddha. He embodies the emptiness and interpenetration of prínciple and phenomena (理事無陽 li-shih-wu-ai) and of all elements in the universe(사사무득 li-shih-wu-ai), a central doctrine of Hwa-yen Bud-dhism which is a radical reinterpretation of Nagarjuna’s philosophy of empti-ness(sūnyatā) from utter vacuity to ontological fullness and cosmic togeth-erness embodied in the dependently arisen phenomena(pratitya-sam tpada dharma). Hwa-yen Buddhism is a Chinese transformation into positivism of the negativism of the Nagarjuna’s middle path which posíts no difference between reality. (nirvāna) and appearance (samsara). The Buddhas, Bodhísattvas, and other deities incarnated in the mandala are geared to the spiritual capacity(根機) of the practitioner who uses the mandala as a vísual skill-in-means(方便) to realize spíritual rebirth. The pracitioner realizes integration with the body, speech, and mind of Mahā-vairocana by means of the “three mysteries of mūdra (sitting positions), mantra, and yoga (meditation). Mandala is a picture of the cosmos which helps with yoga meditation of Mahāvairocana. It ís essential for the practi-tioner of the three mysteries to have faith in the redeeming grace of the Su-preme Being. The Womb Mandala focuses more on the external thrust in which the compassion of the Great Sun Buddha is incarnated through the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who play the role of skill-in-means employed by the practitioner to achieve Nirvana. The phenomenal world characterized as the “neither being nor non-being of the “wondrous being (妙有) in Maha-yana Buddhism has been transformed into the incarnated Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as skill-in-means. Eliot’s modernist poetry and poetics were influenced by French Symbol-ism, which is based upon the mystical vision of the cosmos as the vertical correspondences between the supernatural and the natural, and the horizon-tal correspondences between the heterogenous elements of the natural. The Hwa-yen doctrine of non-obstructive interpenetration of universal-princi-ple with particular-phenomena and that of particular-phenomena with par-ticular-phenomena which underlies the ‘symbolic mysticism of mandala has a remarkable parallelism with the vertical horizontal correspondences of French Symbolism. In Eliot’s Four Quartets the love of God is incarnated in the four elements which constitute the universe: the air of “Burnt Norton is the incarnation of the Father, the earth of “East Coker that of the Son, the water of “The Dry Salvages that of St Mary, and the fire of “Little Gidding that of the Holy Spirit, respectively. The mutable and fallen world has an ontological structure of God’s love to the enlightened eyes purified by faith in the re-deeming grace of the Incarnation: the darkness of the world is transformed into the light of God. The seeming darkness of the world is in reality the blinding light of God: it appears dark only to those who have not reached spiritual maturity. The Hwa-yen principle of mutual interpenetration ob-taíns between the three divine Persons and St Mary associated with them on the one hand, and the four elements on the other. Therfore, “only through time time is conquered.