La pensée de Hanshan Deqing (1546-1623) : une lecture bouddhiste des textes confucéens et taoïstes

摘要

Hanshan Deqing 憨山德清 (1546-1623) is one of the “Four Eminent Buddhist monks” of the late Ming dynasty in China who realized the importance and the necessity of the reconciliation between the three Chinese philosophies: Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. His annotations of the Zhuangzi, of the Daode jing, of the Doctrine of the Mean, of the Great Learning are of seminal importance in the attempt to fusion the three philosophies. He was indeed the first monk to have written so many commentaries of the Taoist and the Confucian classics in order to show that numerous thoughts of these two philosophies originating from China are similar to the ones of Buddhism. He is also the writer of a dissertation that demonstrates the possibility of establishing bridges between the three philosophies, even if he considers Buddhism as superior. Studying closely all his non-Buddhist commentaries and his dissertation about the three philosophies, we noticed that the monk had transformed the Taoist thought and the Confucian thought nearly into Buddhist doctrines, sometimes close to the Mahāyāna, sometimes close to the Hīnayāna, depending on the examined passages. Some Buddhist concepts are very recurrent in his non-Buddhist commentaries. Hanshan Deaing points out that the writers of the Taoist and Confucian classics that he annotates had already sensed the importance of the concepts which are at the heart of the Buddhist mind and enable to reach the enlightenment or the realization of the soteriological practices.Through these commentaries, we can discover Hanshan Deqing’s intention: to make the lettered persons, the Taoists or even the Buddhist disciples themselves aware of the procedures allowing them to reach the Awakening and then to help others beings to be released from their blindness and their attachment to the world.