In “Among School Children” Yeats meditated on lover’s passion, nun’s piety, and mother’s affection in the tradition of Plato’s dualistic philosophy. Plato’s philosophy is an idealistic system resting on a sharply defined dualism between mind and matter, God and the world, body and soul. Soul is always superior to body. Soul is the ideal world; body is the present world. Therefore, those who worship images like lover, nun and mother can not fulfill their dreams in the present world. There is a conflict in the dualistic world. But in the last stanza of the poem, the poet showed us the unified world of soul and body as in Hawom thought. The main features of the Hawom thought belong to Tushun and Chihyum, and Bobchang in China. Great Monk Euisang studied under Chihyum and later held the title of National Teacher in Shilla Era of Korea. His thought was given a pictorial form: a meander design made up of a poem consisting of 210 Chinese characters entitled the Hwaom Iisung Bubgyedo: the cosmology of dharma in the One-yana of Avatamsaka philosophy. In this paper I interpret the last stanza of the poem in the light of Euisang’s Hawom vision. The Hawom vision of the world can contribute to solving the problem of dualistic conflict. The Hawom vision of the world is based on the Mahayana ontology of Emptiness(sunyata) or nonsubstantiality. In Euisang’s Bobsungge, soul and body are not different from each other because both have nonsubstantiality. Yeats also said “Labour is blossoming or dancing where/ The body is not bruised to pleasure soul” in the first and second lines of the last stanza. He continued his song, “O Chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,/ Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?” Euisang sang “One is in all, all is in one: one is all, all is one.” A Chestnut-tree consists of the leaf, the blossom, and the bole. The relationship between a part and the whole is in “organic” unity: a part is in the whole, the whole is in a part: a part is the whole, the whole is a part. Yeats argued “How can we know the dancer from the dance,” Euisang suggested ie is not differ from sa. For example, in a golden statue of lion, gold is ie, the statue is sa. ie is represented by sa. The dance is represented by the dancer. Nothing is self-sufficient and all things are interdependent. The Hawom philosophy views the world as a harmonious whole without any dualistic conflict of its fundamental nature. Euisang and Yeats showed us a beautiful vision of the universal reconciliation and harmony of all beings in the world. Euisang called it Buddha’s world whereas Yeats called it “Unity of Being.”

• 서혜숙(건국대) | Hye Shook Suh