Century Literature, The Religious Spirit

In Chinese culture and literature, there are probably no true religious beliefs but not genuine religious spirit does exit. Therefore, the author first defines the concept of religious spirit. Then by comparing Journey to the West and the Pilgrim's process from diffirent perspectives,the auther explores the fundamental connotation of the religious spirit, In the auther's opinion,its two fundamental directions are the concerns for human's suffering and seeking help from surpernatural existence, the author also analyzes the paradox in religious spirit, including human nature and holiness, reason and faith.Off course, The power and aim of theory lies in the forceful guidance for practice.Based on the theoretical analysis of religious spirit, the author summarizes a main line for the spiritual characteristics and trend inside the religious literature at the end of thecentury, that is rational observation--culture reflection--pan religious spirit--religious conversion, of cource, this summary is macroscopic, neglecting some vague intermedinate state. Morever, in microscopic textual analysis, the author employs some examples to explore the whole thing, in the chapter rational observation, the author takes Liping and Wang Zengqi as the examples to analyze the writers'attitude towards religious practice and reason. The author believes that the cultural origin lies in Chinese traditional culture, inclding the reborn consciousness of Confucianism, Taoism and Chan. When looking from critical methods, this seems to tend to be culture criticism. In the chapter"religious conversion", the Author analyzes two generally acknowledged saints--Zhang Chengzhi and Beicun on several levels. Zhang has experienced the process of changing from an idealistic vagrant to a zheherenye biliever,while Beicun is religion-oriented. Concerned with research method, this chapter tends to be text analysis and at the same time is mixed with a reader's emotional experience. Therefore, in value judgement, it is more subjective and lacks sober thingking. As for the chapter "culture reflection" and "Pan religious spirit", their intermediate position. The research method used in these two chapter is strongly coloured with culture criticism and does not lack text analysis.