세계 주요 종교사상의 존재의 대둥지 (The Great Nest of Being) 고찰: 대순사상과 비교하여

Abstract

‘The Great Nest of Being (The Great Chain of Being)’ is a key ontological concept in Perennial Philosophy. The Great Nest of Being shows the depth of the world’s religions that have existed historically, and in this context, they represent holarchies of existence and consciousness. This paper examines the nests of various beings in order to grasp the depths of the world’s mainstream religions, and reveals that the great nest of being that appear in the Daesoon Thought has the characteristic of synthesizing other nests that have emerged previously in history. According to Perennial Philosophy, the differences among different religions in regards to ultimate reality are not differences in reality but merely differences in semantics. In other words, these differences are only ‘different expressions of the same ultimate reality.’ Thus, linguistically, ultimate reality in the great nest of being can be summarized as the ‘same in what is signifié (signified, 記意)’ and ‘different in the signifiant (signifier, 記標).’ As stated in a preceding study; however, ultimate reality in Daesoon Thought is both transcendent and personal, as well as intrinsic and impersonal. This fact is specifically stated in the Four Tenets (4大 宗旨) of Daesoon Thought. In other words, the Tenets of Daesoon implicitly acknowledge not only the concepts of reality and the direction that emerges from the base of existence in existing systems of religious thought, but also can encompass the ideologies of those systems of religious thought. Considering the four quadrants as the Kosmos (AQAL), it encompasses a universal ideology. Therefore, the tenets of Daesoon Thought encompass the same significance (meaning) of the major systems of religious thought throughout the world in regards to ultimate reality and provide a clue to the solution to the presence of different signifiers (signs).