In the early canon, the state of nirvana without a remainder of clinging was often explained through the image of a fire extinguished. An early idea of this state could be traced through one of the well-known discourses between the Buddha and Vacchagotta concerning one of the four unanswered questions: the state of the Tathāgata after death. As its name suggests, the early canon did not really answer this question. Thus, there have been many attempts to fill the silence of the Buddha through clarifying this metaphor of a fire extinguished, and which was the case for F.Otto Schrader and Peter Harvey to insist the state of nirvana without a remainder of clinging cannot simply be mere non-existence, based on some passages in the Upaniṣads and in the early Buddhist canon respectively. However, their suggested interpretations seem to lack one of the most important aspects of the dialogue: the methodology, or the way of thinking, underlying their conversation. The methodology used by the Buddha could be termed yoniso manasikāra meaning "thinking according to the cause." The Buddha, according to Gombrich in his book, How Buddhism Began, "was not an essentialist, and in contrast to Brahmins was interested in how things worked rather than in what they were". From the modern terminology, these two ways of looking things seem to correspond to two types of methodology suggested by Karl Popper in his book, The Open Society and Its Enemies: methodological essentialism and methodological nominalism. Karl Popper explained the first, methodological essentialism, as to aim at finding out what a thing really is and at defining its true nature, by asking for example what is movement or what is an atom; whereas the second, methodological nominalism, is to aim at describing how a thing behaves in various circumstances, by asking for instance how does a planet move or under what conditions does an atom radiate light. His point according to Gombrich is that 'knowledge and understanding do not advance through asking for definitions of what things are, but through asking why they occur and how they work'. The content of yoniso manasikāra could resemble modern scientific method and, as far as I am concerned, this methodological difference should be considered in interpreting the dialogue between the Buddha and Vacchagotta. There are two main concerns around this last issue of the unanswered questions: whether the Buddha accepts a certain state reachable by an enlightened one after death and on what grounds he wants this question to remain unanswered. In my opinion, the Buddha for the first matter seems to leave such a state, a kind of absolute, aside, since it is outside the range of his methodology which explains things through the causal relationship between phenomenal existents(dharma). For the second, I could say that his methodology, thinking according to the cause (yoniso manasikāra), could help to account for his leaving questions on the state of the Tathāgata after death unanswered.
目次
1. 서언 234 2. 불교의 방법론과 무기 236 3. 무여열반의 의미 243 4. 결어 247
