Studies On Taoist Training Of Inner Energy Of Life And Chinese Instrumental Music Culture

Taoist Training of Inner Energy of Life and Chinese Instrumental Music Culture are two different fields within Chinese traditional culture. The former belongs to religious studies and the latter musical studies, but sharing the same supreme purpose to pursue the ultimate Tao as the 'Harmony of Human and Nature', these two appear to be apt to merge and coagulate. The 'Harmony of Human and Nature', as a liaison linking the Taoist Philosophy, the Taoist Aestheticism and the Taoist Training of Inner Energy of Life to the Chinese Instrumental Music Culture, is the media of the intervening of the two sides and it functions as the starting point and conclusive final of this thesis. Thus, the introduction and following seven chapters will analyze that the 'Unity of Human and Nature' is the ultimate philosophical conclusion, the supreme context and super ideal of both the theoretical system and the practice of the Taoist Training of Inner Energy of Life and the Chinese Instrumental Music Culture.Introduction: The connotation and denotation of the 'Taoist Training of inner Energy of Life' and the 'Chinese Instrumental Music Culture' are defined first and the specifically refrained radiant scope of these two terms in this thesis is given. Then the effort goes to the analysis on the outside trend and inside motivation that lead Chinese instrumental music culture return to the native traditional culture. Thus the theme of this thesis is proposed: the Taoist culture is the root to where the Chinese instrumental music culture can return. In addition, this part briefly introduced the research method and initiatives adopted into this study.Chapter One: Tranquility: Transcendence is the permanent theme religions andarts, and to tranquil one's heart is the first step to put transcendence into practice. From tranquil heart to tranquil tone and to tranquil life, all shows that the theory and practice of tranquility in Chinese instrumental music culture is greatly influenced by the Taoist tranquility theory and practice.Chapter Two: Purification of Ch'I: The Taoism founded by Lao-tse and Zhuang-tse is the affirmation of the Ch'i monism in ancient Chinese philosophy. The Taoist belief in purifying Ch'i directly influences the formation of'spirit-resonance ' theory controlling the atheist level in Chinese ancient arts. From the Taoist theory that human being should train both the physical and the spiritual energy, the Chinese instrumental music culture also take the form of a bilateral performance emphasizing both the physical and the spiritual atheism and practice. And the musical Ch'i Tao-'Spirit, Ch'i and Energy' thus becomes the only way to realize the excellence both physically and spiritually.Chapter Three: Reverse: The Taoist inner reverse training refers to the reversed training consisting of 'physique-spirit-Ch'i-energy-tranquility-Tao' to make the human spirit and energy back to Tao. This has generated the hypothesis of this paper, i.e., the proposition of the reverse consciousness in Chinese instrumental music culture. To specify, systemize, define and theorize this proposition will help the practice of the reverse consciousness in Chinese instrumental music culture, so as to explore a performance that differs from that of the Western instrumental music culture and that is characterized by Chinese instrumental music culture.Chapter Four: Harmony: Influenced by Taoist theory of harmony, the Chinese instrumental music culture reflects kinds of practice of harmony. Theoretically, fromChronicles of Ly-shi to "Sheng Wu Ai Le"-"Xi Shan Qin Kuang", there is atheoretical theme of harmony in Chinese instrumental music culture. In practice, harmony in smooth note, harmony between sections and harmony of the whole system reflect the harmony theory of Taoism, especially the harmony of the whole system being correspondent to Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate is the best illustration of this Taoist influence.Chapter Five: Softness: To attach importance to Softness is one of the main features of the ideas of Lao-tse and one main principle of both...