개리 스나이더의 공성(空性)

It is said that the Buddhist principle of interdependent arising(pratityasamupada) complements the concept of emptiness(sunyata). There is no independent, inherently existing self because all things including human self arise and cease depending upon causes and conditions. This dependent attribution is nothing more than the middle way in Nagarjuna’s terminology. The principle of dependent co-arising reasons Gary Snyder’s compassion for non-human beings. The poet who was resolved to fight against eco-destructive forces early in the 1940s warns danger in blind industrial expansionism again in his recently published poetry danger on peaks. In this book, Snyder delivers a serious message that our own contemporaries should realize the concept of sunyata and the principle of interdependent arising, and practise compassion both for sentient and non-sentient beings. The practice of compassion arising through realization of sunyata(thus, pratityasamupada) includes political resistance and individual, communal recovery of the Old new culture as well. The poet demands that we humans re-sensitize ourselves to wildness on the one hand and resist danger in blind industrialism on the other.