Mind Practice of ‘Reducing’ of Confucian : The Educational Meaning of “Ilseongdo(日省道)”

The purpose of this paper is to examine the meaning of “Ilseongdo(日省道)”, a diagramwritten by Hwang Deok-gil, a confucian scholar of the late Joseon Dynasty, to the present-day education. “Ilseongdo” was created for the purpose of educating students in the author’s later life. “Ilseongdo” was presented through the illustration of five sentences. It means to take out the unnecessary from the inner (thought), personal (learning, work), and relational (talk, relationship) aspects one’s in everyday life. And it deals with Gyeong(敬), which is the core principle of Confucian practice, as a practice of ‘reducing’ in daily life. Since the beginning of modern education, education, it has always placed importance solely ‘adding’ education. Thus, we have now come to think of only accumulating a lot of knowledge and achieving a lot of results through education. Current education has not been able to teach students the values of ‘emptying out’ and ‘resting’. Amid the numerous comparisons, conflicts, and competitions occurring in a hyper-connected society, education of ‘reducing’ suggested by Hwang Deok-gil in「Ilseongdo」comes to be meaningful. Before analyzing the contents of Ilsungdo, this paper examined the thought of Hwang Deok-gil on Gyeong(敬) It which follows the thought of Song Dynasty(宋)'s confucian and toe-gye(退溪) in Choseon Dynasty(朝 鮮), but is characterized by the fact that Gyeong(敬) is mainly discussed from a practical point of view. Hwang Deok-gil's Ilsungdo has originality that distinguishes it from previous scholars’s works in discussing Gyeong in daily life. It is a valid discussion in our daily life today, where the Confucian debate on the mind has disappeared.