Su Shi And Buddhism

In this dissertation, the writer, in terms of Buddhism, makes a survey and study of SU Shi and his literary works in order to reveal the close relationship between SU Shi and Buddhism, so that we could have a comprehensive and precise understanding of SU Shi and his works, and offer a typical case for us to study further the relationship between Chinese literature and Buddhism.SU Shi had no chance to be Prime Minister of his time, but had many chances to be closely tied with Buddhism. His birthplace, Meishan, Sichuan Province, is rich in Buddhist culture since it is quite near to the Scared Place of Buddhism---Mount E'mei, and even nearer to the world-famous Giant Sitting Buddha in Leshan City. Thus his family is full of essence with his parents, brothers and his step-wife believing in Buddhism. Because of the imperceptible influence by his family, the born-talent SU Shi was keen on Buddhism when still a teenager. When he just began his political career, conducted by one of his colleagues WANG Da-nian, he started to study Buddhism and he loved the Buddhist writings and cherished Vimalakirti. All through his lifetime, he was assigned to different posts in different places. Wherever he went, he would visit the Buddhist temples if any, and made friends with the abbots, who had great influence on him. On the other hand, SU Shi spent more than half of his lifetime in the whirl of conflicts among political sects, in which he found himself unable to come to terms with those in power. That resulted in his political persecution and he was assigned to such remote areas as Prefecture Huang, Prefecture Hui and Prefecture Zhan.Lost in political life, he found great comfort in the Buddhist sect of Chan Zong by studying Buddhist classics and meditating. He also managed to integrate imported Buddhism into local Confucianism and Taoism. He entered a new spiritual world. He called himself Dongpojushi, and haunted temples and meditated there reflecting himself, feeling that he had forgotten everything in the world including him himself. In a word, SU Shi was totally devoted to Chan Zong and gained a high Buddhist accomplishment.SU Shi expressed his understanding of Buddhism in his works. In quite a lot of his writings, we can find Buddhist meditations. How should we treat such works? On the whole, such works are not religious booklets designed to publicize Buddhism, but a reflection of the author's living and thoughts. Therefore, it is quite necessary to survey SU Shi and his works in terms of Buddhism.In this five-chapter dissertation, the writer studies the close relationship between SU Shi and Buddhism from the following aspects: how SU Shi started Buddhist meditation, his Buddhist accomplishment, meditation and literature.Chapter I: The process of starting meditation. In time order, happenings in his life in different periods of time and the social background are presented, and why he started meditation is also analyzed to reveal the progress in his mediation.Chapter II: SU Shi's Buddhist accomplishment. SU Shi treated Buddhism differently in that he just learned from Buddhism rather than believed in it. What he learned from Buddhism is the essence of Chan Zong culture, which greatly enhanced his daily conduct and spiritual world. Hence, in this chapter, the writer analyzes SU Shi's attitude towards Buddhism, his favorite Buddhist classics, Buddhist ideas accepted, and how he integrated Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.Chapter III: Interpretation of SU Shi's Buddhist understanding. To SU Shi, writing is the best form of expressing his ideas. And his advanced Buddhist accomplishment is sure to make its way into his works. In this chapter, some Mahayana ideas such as emptiness of all things are introduced to interpret SU Shi'sunderstanding of Buddhism and reveal the inner relationship between literature and Buddhism.Chapter IV: The Chan implications in SU Shi's poetry. The wonder of Chan lies in sudden enlightenment. It is the same is to poetry. There are many similarities in these two essentially different types of culture. In SU Shi's eyes, Chan and poetry are just the same. In his daily life everything is poetic and full of Chan, anywhere, anytime.Chapter V: How SU Shi drew on Buddhist classics in his poetry. Since SU Shi knew well both Mahayana and Chan writings, while writing poems, he would draw on these writings as he liked. In this chapter, several forms of his drawing on these writings such as quotation of Buddhist references are analyzed to show how Buddhist references find their way into the world of poetry and how Buddhism changes poetry.The following conclusions can be drawn from the above research:1.There are several factors that help bind SU Shi and Buddhism closely together, such as cultural background of the society and the local community, influences by his family, his born wisdom. He is keen on Buddhism but does not actually believe in Buddha. He is more a scholar-official learner of Buddhism than a devout Buddhist.2. SU Shi managed to integrate Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism into his thoughts. He does not treat the three individually but as a whole. He draws on the classical works of Mahayana and Chan Zong and absorbs the essence of the Buddhist culture. However, he is not a pure theorist of Buddhism, but actually a practitioner of Buddhist theories.3. SU Shi's way of living is closely related to Buddhism. Wherever he went to fulfill his mission, he would make benefit for the local people. This is the result of Confucian theory: to work hard for the people, as well as Buddhist theory: to have selfless compassion and pity for all the sentient beings. He suffered political persecution for several times but did not feel frustrated but felt detached. This isthe result of his high Buddhist accomplishment.4. Buddhism has a thorough influence on SU Shi's works. He was so wise as to be able to produce countless works. Such wisdom originated in Mahayana. He knew well a lot of Buddhist classics and expressed his views on Buddhism in terms of literature rather than philosophy. He often converted all the sudden enlightenment and inspiration gained from meditation into literary words in his works. He made full use of Buddhist references, vocabulary and theories in his works, thus brought great changes to traditional poetry. His successful practice quickened the steps for the poetry of Song Dynasty to be argumentative and philosophical. In this sense we say that, after such literary giants as WANG Wei and BAI Juyi, but prior to HUANG Ting-jian and QIN Guan, SU Shi plays an important role in expressing Buddhist ideas in the form of literature.