Jalan Menembus Realitas: Dialektika Etis dalam Teks Bubuksah-Gagangaking

Santosa, I Nyoman Wahyu Angga Budi

Jumantara: Jurnal Manuskrip Nusantara
Vol. 16 No. 1 (2025): Juni

So far, both in studies and through readings of the Bubuksah-Gagangaking texts, there has been a determination that the characters of Bubuksah and Gagangaking are representatives of Siwa and Buddhism. The observant reader will certainly not find such a statement of association explicitly in the text. However, the voice of tradition and later interpretations give rise to such an association; Bubuksah becomes associated as a symbol representing the practice of realization of Buddhism, and Gagangaking becomes associated as a symbol representing the practice of realization of Siwa's teachings. No previous research on this text has focused on exploring this issue, either through an examination of the text itself or a search of textual sources related to Siwaism and Buddhism. Even though it's not directly mentioned in the text, this study tries to uncover the truth behind the connection by looking at how each character behaves while practicing their asceticism, which shows the different ways of understanding their practices in the text. Using critical heuristic and hermeneutic methods, this study finds two things that become the keywords of the association of the Bubuksah-Gagangaking text with Siwa and Buddhist practices; they are Ambherawa and Ambherawi. Ambherawa is the text's typical designation for the practice of Buddhism, and Ambherawi is the designation for the practice of Siwaism. Both Ambherawa and Ambherawi practices are kawi receptions in understanding the ethical elements of each teaching, which the text describes in a dialectical way between the conversations of the two characters. This discovery reveals how the kawi literary tradition of thought understands the teachings of Siwa-Buddha not merely as a doctrine but also abstracts it in the depiction of ascetic practices and elaborates the teachings of Siwa-Buddha through the depiction of the characters Bubuksah and Gagangaking. This discovery will help find out how the kawi mind comprehensively understands the teachings of Siwa and Buddha.