Tasŏk Yu Yŏngmo on God as Nothingness Halla Kim Acta Koreana, Volume 22, Number 2, December 2019, pp. 267-285 (Article) Published by Keimyung University, Academia Koreana For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/756406 [ Access provided at 2 Oct 2021 09:28 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] ACTA KOREANA Vol. 22, No. 2, December 2019: 267–286 doi:10.18399/acta.2019.22.2.004 Tasŏk Yu Yŏngmo on God as Nothingness HALLA KIM In the East Asian philosophical traditions, the concept of nothingness has been occupying a central place. Yu Yŏngmo (1890-1981, pen name: Tasŏk 多夕; hereafter Tasŏk) was one of those who accepted Christianity in the early twentieth century Korea yet incorporated its notion of God into the broad framework of nothingness. For him, God (Hananim 하나님), far from being identified with an anthropomorphic, personal being of certain supernatural properties, is closely associated with the primordial void (mu; ŏpsŭm 없음). In other words, despite having accepted the Christian Bible as the basis of his fundamental faith he integrated its central doctrines into the ancient traditions in East Asia. As sons and daughters of God, i.e., as embodied divinity expressing True Self (cham-na) or Spiritual Self (ŏl-na), we also participate in this spiritual order of nothingness. There are thus strong Buddhist-Confucian-Daoist elements that are found in his indigenized form of Christianity. Keywords: God (Hananim), nothingness (ŏpsŭm), spirit (ŏl), emptiness, t’aegŭk, Dao HALLA KIM ([email protected]) is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Sogang University, Korea * This article was part of the conference that was supported by UPEI’s international Seed Program for Korean Studies grant (AKS-2017-INC-2230001) through the Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service (KSPS) as well as the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS). I thank Prof. Edward Chung, Jae-soon Park, Hyosŏk Kim, Paul Williams, Ji-Yeon Kang, and Jang-hee Lee for comments on an earlier draft of this article. I also thank the audience at the University of Prince Edward Island conference on Korean Spirituality in 2018 as well as at the Claremont conference on philosophy of religion in 2017. Finally, thanks are also due to the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments. 268 Acta Koreana, Vol. 22, No. 2, December 2019 The concept of nothingness has always occupied a central place in the East Asian philosophical tradition (Kim, forthcoming). Traditional Korean philosophy is no exception, especially with regard to its variations in Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, and Daoism. What is interesting is that, even after the introduction of Western philosophy and religion, this trend continued. Yu Yŏngmo (1890–1981, pen name: Tasŏk 多夕; hereafter Tasŏk) was one of those who accepted Christianity yet incorporated it into the broad framework of nothingness. The result is a peculiar and far-reaching indigenized Christian philosophy. Among the most important Korean philosophers in the past who have spoken of nothingness or the Void are the more well-known Wŏnhyo (617–686) and Chinul (1158– 1210), (Kim, Halla 2015) and more recently, Pak Chonghong (1903–1976) and Ham Sŏkhŏn (1900–1989), Tasŏk’s own student, who developed a distinctive view of Korean spiritual identity with an employment of negativity (under what he calls “sunan” or “konan” [suffering]) for the ultimate purpose of absolute affirmation of the dynamic reality in Korean history (Kim, Halla 2016b). In terms of sustained reflections on nothingness mu( 無; ŏpsŭm), however, Yu is unparalleled and unsurpassed. As Tasŏk himself puts it, “the Westerners know nothing about nothingness (ŏp 없). They have been operating with being (it 있) so their view is not far-reaching. Thus, the Western civilization is frustrating as it is surrounded by brick walls” (Yu 1993b, 309). What is more, Yu explicitly accepted the Christian Bible as the basis of his fundamental faith yet synthesized its central doctrines within the frame of nothingness following the ancient tradition in Neo-Confucianism. There are thus strong Buddhist-Confucian-Daoist elements that are found there. Indeed, for this reason, we will see that some of the doctrines that he develops will be palpably inconsistent with the more traditional tenets of the Christian religion. It remains true, however, that in Yu one sees an unprecedented insight about the concept of nothingness (Yu 2001; Chun 2016, 190). The structure of the paper is as follows. In the introduction, I address Tasŏk’s notion that God “exists without existing (ŏpsi kyesin i)” and show that the concept of nothingness is intertwined with the notion. Then, in Section 1, I discuss Tasŏk’s attempt to understand nothingness in terms of the Buddhist notion of “Emptiness.” Sections 2 and 3 introduce Tasŏk’s explication of nothingness in terms of the Neo-Confucian principle of T’aegŭk (太極, C. taiji) and the Daoist notion of Dao, respectively. Section 4 then deals with Yu’s view of religions and religious pluralism. Finally, in Section 5, I discuss a criticism of Tasŏk’s attempt to elucidate the notion of God as nothingness in terms of the three seemingly incommensurable frameworks in East Asia. Nevertheless, instead of giving up the substance of Tasŏk’s syncretic, indigenized Christian philosophy from the outset for this reason, I show how we can emendate it in a way that can avoid any palpable contradictions without sacrificing the substance of his syncretism. Kim: Tasŏk Yu Yŏngmo on God as Nothingness 269 1. The Non-Existing Existent (ŏpsi kyesin i) Despite his classical upbringing in Confucianism, Tasŏk converted to Christianity in 1905, when he was 15. However, he experienced a major, life-changing religious revelation in 1942, when he was in his early forties. It is clear from the outset that, for Tasŏk, God is the most important part of his religious faith. However, God is also an integral component of his theoretical system of negativity. Tasŏk typically and paradoxically refers to God as the non- existing Existent (ŏpsi kyesin i) (Yu 1993b, 34). This is presumably because, even though God rules over all things in the phenomenal world, he also transcends the phenomenal world. Indeed, for Tasŏk, God, Heaven, the Father, and the Void are the same (Yu 1993b, 285; Chun 2016, 204). God exists yet he does not exist. First of all, for Tasŏk, God cannot be simply said to “exist.” According to him, we human beings have an inborn longing for the absolute being, which is typically referred to as “heaven.” Tasŏk reminds us of the symbolic fact that the human head is always directed toward heaven. As Tasŏk puts it, “just as we are born with sexual desires, we are also born with the metaphysical desire for the absolute being (God)” (Yu 1993b, 15). Being absolute, however, this being cannot be on a par with the world. Therefore, it cannot be a being—it does not exist. If it were found anywhere, it would not be the absolute one. If it were described or named, it would not be the absolute one (Yu 1993b, 15, 34, 98); it would then be an idol. Indeed, the absolute being cannot be defined. It is beyond beings, images, and concepts. This is why the absolute being is not a being (on a par with things in the world). Therefore, God is non-existent in this respect; God obtains without existing (ŏpsi). For Tasŏk, then, God simply goes beyond the world we live in. God is transcendent. On the other hand, that God does not exist (in the ordinary sense of the term “exist”) does not mean that he is a mere opposite of being. God as the absolute one cannot be literally nothing. If God were merely non-existent, nothing would come out of it. Without God, everything we see and feel around us would not have come to exist. If the absolute God is not only not nothing but also gives rise to everything out of it, then it must have a positive characteristic, presumably as an infinite resource of being. God is infinite and the beginning of all things in the world. Everything comes to be because of God, in other words. Furthermore, God is none other than the unitary whole (hana) (Yu 2002, 40). If God were pure nothing, nihil, nothing would originate from it and sustained by it. On the contrary, God is the inexhaustible source of life and its essence. In this respect, God must exist. Indeed, in the Western tradition, the aspect of God as being has been consistently emphasized (Kitaro 1970, 237; Yu 1993b, 309). For example, Thomas Aquinas once described God as subsistent being itself (ipsum esse subsistens) (Aquinas 1989, 1, 8). Paul Tillich also suggested that God is the being as being or the ground and the power of being (Tillich, 1957, 10). But Tasŏk goes beyond this and suggests that God is nothingness beyond being and non-being. Of course, that God is nothingness does not mean it is the source of despair. This is why God is not an ordinary ‘nothing’ but an absolute nothingness or Void (pint’ang handae, 虛空) (Yu 1993b, 156, 161). 270 Acta Koreana, Vol. 22, No. 2, December 2019 Tasŏk’s further claim at this point is that God is within reach on our part because God is originally in each of us. God is not only transcendent but also immanent. In order to seek God, we look no further than ourselves. For Tasŏk, God is intrinsically internal to each of us. Just as Chapter 1 of the Confucian classic Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸) claims that our nature is none other than what Heaven bestows upon us—or just as Mahāyāna Buddhism holds that Buddha resides in each of us unbeknownst to us or, alternatively, just as Laozi urges to return to our “self ” in our pursuit of Dao—we have a special, inborn nature (pat’al) (Yu 1993b, 314).