Bockja Kim

How, to the extent that it directs us to detachment from and renunciation of this worldly concerns, does the Buddhist Negative Ultimate of “Emptiness” support the other cardinal Buddhist doctrine, Compassion, which requires, and indeed entails, positive social engagements? Does the Buddhist ultimate goal, Nirvana, ultimately lead us to be “detached” from, or rather “actively engaged” in, social and practical matters? This article discusses the difficulty of the Buddhist metaphysics of ontological “emptiness” in relation to its axiological “compassion” that demands social engagements in the context of Korean Zen Buddhist. It will suggest in terms of Hegelian dialectics that the Buddhist “exclusive” transcendentalism, which tends towards solipsism and passiv1sm in C앙Tying out the commitment to socio-ethical engagements, needs to be complemented by the “Immanent” transcendentalism which includes the mundane matters such as active socio-ethical engagements as the internal requirement of Compassion. Before we give a philosophical reflection on how Korean Buddhism addresses the above problem and whether the problem is dealt with successfully, let us first explore, as a preliminary work, the fundamental problems of this dialectical interplay of ontological emptiness and axiological compassion in Mahayana Buddhism. The dialectics of Christian ontology and axiology will also be examined to address the point that axiology has been more developed in Christianity than in Buddhism. And this is so because Christian ontology is understood in terms of “Being,” whereas Buddhist ontology is understood in terms of "emptiness.”