《高僧傳》「亡身」書寫意蘊初探──兼與列維納斯「絕對他者」的對話

〈亡身〉做為《高僧傳》獨立一科，從作者慧皎（497-554）之〈論〉而觀，乃將捨身布施一者視為一「難行而行」之修行途徑；另者，也視其為殘毀形骸、壞福田相，得在忘身，失在違戒。然而揆諸〈亡身〉眾僧之悲願及其承繼《佛本生傳》所載佛陀捨身的精神意蘊，或者就其體證《蓮華經．藥王品》「燒身供佛」一事，無論是慧皎、道宣（596-667）的褒貶並陳，或是贊寧（919-1001）的全然肯定，都無法忽視〈亡身〉高僧們憫恤眾生、為他者忘我的那一分初心，確為樹立大乘「不捨世間」之慈悲真正要義。本文擬參酌猶太裔法國哲學家列維納斯（Emmanuel Levinas, 1905-1995）「絕對他者」的觀點，重新審視《高僧傳》中「亡身」背後潛在的意涵，在相異時空背景下，檢視兩者思想在宗教與倫理雙向度上的異同與交會，並以之做為相互詮釋視域下另一種跨文化之對話。

As a separate section of The Biographies of Eminent Monks,“The Dead Bodies”considers a Buddhist practice of“doing the difficult tasks”of sacrificing one’s life from the viewpoint of Huijiao’s (497-554)“discourse.”On the other hand, it also regards the doctrine of sacrificing one’s life as the destruction of one’s skeleton. Also, one gains from forgetting his body yet loses from violating the Buddhist doctrine if he disfigures his face. However, as one regards the sad wishes of the monks in“The Dead Bodies”and the spiritual implications of Buddha’s sacrifice of himself or the event of“Burning One’s Self”embodied in The Lotus Sūtra, the Buddhist scholar monks such as Huijiao and Daoxuan (596-667) hold both positive and negative viewpoints on the matter of“Burning One’s Self,”whilst Zanning (919-1001) holds a positive viewpoint on it. Despite the disputes of these scholar monks, one can hardly ignore these eminent monks’initial intention, as revealed in“The Dead Bodies,”to empathize compassion with the human beings and never forget their original intention of sacrificing themselves for the other. This is indeed the true essence of Mahayana’s compassion of“never abandoning the world.”From Levinas’viewpoint of the absolute other, this paper attempts to (1) re-examine the potential sense behind“The Dead Bodies”in The Biographies of Eminent Monks, (2) survey the intersection between the similarities and differences concerning the religious and ethical dimensions of the two thinkers in the two different time and space, and (3) use it as a cross-cultural dialogue of mutual interpretation.