Sun Chao Poetry Thought Research

The contents of this paper include four Chapters which are the social thoughts inthe Dynasty of Wei and Jin, Chuo Sun’s lifetime and his literature creation, theindications of the Confucianism and the Taoism contained in Chuo Sun’s poetic prose,and the phenomenon of mixture of the three sects, i.e. the Confucianism, the Taoismand the Buddhism.The factors that can influence the formation of one’s thoughts are various,including but not limited to the political scene, the social environment, the differencesof the Ideology, the family background, the family tradition, the personal characters,the life experience, intercourse and travel, and so on. As to Chuo Sun, it is sure thatthe formation of his own thoughts had been also affected by the above factors, and thefactor which had played the most important role is the Metaphysics trend that at thattime was expanding gradually and was being filled with the whole society. Theembodiment of the three sects and their mixture contained in Chuo Sun’s literaturesreflected well the Zeitgeist at that time. So in Chapter One of this paper it will simplydescribe the ethos in those Dynasties in three views: the Confucianism, the Taoismand the Buddhism.Chuo Sun had been “both official and hermit” in his life time. When he wasyoung he lived in seclusion for ten years in East Mountain, and then he stopped theseclusion and entered the political stratum till his death. From the beginning to theend, he had served for Liang Yu, Bing Yu, Hao Yin, and so on. So this paper uses twosections to introduce his life time respectively as “seclusion in East Mountain” and“entrance to the politic stratum”. All the literatures of Chuo Sun were created andfinished after his serving for the government, so although he absorbed the ideas of allthe three sects, his literature creation are based on his practices in the officialdom.What this paper is studying is the thoughts contained in Chuo Sun’s literatures,so it is necessary to liquidate all his works systematically. In Academia now there arenot any forms of collections which have systematically and completely liquidated allChuo Sun’s extant works. Comparing with the others, one collection called Collation and Annotation of Chuo Sun’s Collections was relatively complete andsystematical, which was made by Xiaoli Jiang as her Master thesis in2005inDongbei Normal University. In this Collection, it compiled and also collated andannotated most of the extant poetry and prose; however it is still not so complete andwonderful and it couldn’t include all Chuo Sun’s works. In my papers I shall try mybest to collect his poetries and prose more completely. After going through hispoetries and prose, we can find that his works are of different literary style, and theircontents are also wide-ranging, involved the three sects. In chapter Two I shall at firstjust sort out his works in a simple way.The Chapter Three and Four will make a deep analysis to Chuo Sun’s thoughtscontained in his poetries and prose. Chuo Sun is famous for the metaphysical poetry;although the metaphysical poetry begun to be added the “SanShiZhiCi” fromChuosun, Xun Xu, Dun Zhi, we can find, through analyzing Chuo Sun’s extant poetryand prose, that his poetry and prose didn’t involve any elements of the Buddhism, butmainly the ideas of the Confucianism and the Taoism. So by analyzing mainly hispoetries, the Chapter Three interpreted the thinking features of the interflow of theConfucianism and the Taoism. His thoughts regarding to the Buddhism are mainlyembodied in his other works of the different style, such as Yu Dao Lun、Dao XianLun、You Tiantaishan Fu and Ming Deshamen Zan, so the interpretation to therelationship among the three sects should be on the basis of these works. In ChapterFour it will take You Tiantaishan Fu and Yu Dao Lun for example to restore thethinking features of the mixture of the three sects. In You Tiantaishan Fu, it manifestitself as that it makes “the dreams of the Taoism mixed with the words of theBuddhism” and also “the Ideology of the Taoism mixed with the personal status of theConfucianism”; in Yu Dao Lun, it is showed like that it “interprets the Buddhism bythe ‘non-action” of the Taoism”,“expounds on the Buddhism by the ‘retribution’ ofthe Confucianism”,“recognizes the Buddhism by the ‘indoctrination’ of theConfucianism” and “to the Buddhism by involving the ‘filial piety’ of theConfucianism”.