The Buddhist Doctrines And Its Expressive Strategies Of The Record Of Buddhist Temples In Luoyang

The Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang is a prose work, which mainly describes the Buddhist temples in Northern Wei capital Luoyang, meanwhile records the anecdotes related to politics, economy, culture, custom and history at that time. Though The Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang is regarded as one of the three prose representatives in Northern Dynasty, its research lags behind in a very long time. The research situation can't be improved until the 20th century. Those famous persons known as Tangyan, Zhang Zongxiang, Zhou Yannian, Zhou Zumo, Fan Xiangyong, Yangyong, Han Jiegen, Zhou Zhenfu have devoted to the arrangement and correction on the work. Their notes widely adopt other researchers'advantages therefore making considerable achievements.After the 1980s, the research on The Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang has made a great progress. Those issues related to the author's family name, the work's versions, creation ideas, notes listing, literature value, documental value, the communication in and abroad, mid-ancient linguistics, temple building and gardening arts gradually enters researchers'mind. They make the professional study on the book from various perspectives such as literature, history, architect, or linguistic. A review to these researches can draw a conclusion that it is a pity for that though the achievement is great and the study perspectives are abundant, as a famous work close connected to Buddhist in Northern Dynasty, it lacks a professional work to study the Buddhist doctrines related to the work systematically and comprehensively. Attributed to this reason, I attempt to offer a new perspective, to research and illustrate the book through the angle of Buddhist doctrines. This is the significance of my essay.This paper focuses on the Buddhist. I try to illustrate this book in terms of Buddhist. The entire essay consists of three chapters.The first chapter is the introduction of the author's name, life, his work's versions and spreading.The second chapter is the body part of this paper, which uses a whole chapter to check up the materials of Buddhist doctrines related to The Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang, and summarizes the Buddhist doctrines in the work. There are four Buddhist doctrines in the work which can be recorded as ignorance and clinging, impermanence for everything, miserable for everything, and causal karma. Others Buddhist thoughts, such as giving, discipline, meditation, supernatural power, reborn are also reflected in the text. I think that those persons in the author's description are the most suitable embodiments for the Buddhist doctrine:ignorance and clinging. In the statement on them from the author, we can see this ignorance and clinging from their attitude towards wealth, power, fame, feelings and sex. In the mean time, the doctrine of impermanence for everything also exists in the entire work. Wherever in the recollection of history or anecdote, or in the description of historical sites, we can find the doctrine. In the description of the public in the Northern Wei, we can easily and clearly feel the doctrine that life is a suffering. All the eight sufferings of Buddhist such as life and death, oldness and illness, love and separation, complain and hatred, pursuing but obtaining nothing can be found in those materials. Causal Karma is one of the Buddhist doctrines and which means that one's action, speaking and thoughts will receive a result. Both life nowadays and receiving in the future are attributed to what one did in the past. The thoughts of retribution in this life and retribution in the next life have the explicit embodiment in this book.The third chapter focuses on the research of Buddhist doctrines'expressive strategy and illustrates from the perspectives of the choice of materials, the comprehensive application of expression, and the innovation of novel techniques. In this chapter, the author of this paper thinks that the different materials delivers different Buddhist doctrines and which of course are not the same. For instance, those materials of history and legend mainly are the embodiment of the doctrine of impermanence for everything. In the meantime, it is also combined with the doctrines of ignorance and clinging, miserable for everything, and causal karma. Meanwhile, the building materials reflect the Buddhist doctrines of impermanence for everything as well. And those materials of the legendary novels and the ghost stories reflect more about the three Buddhist doctrines that are ignorance and clinging, impermanence for everything and causal karma. It is obvious that the delivery of the Buddhist doctrines is related to the expressive skills which the author adopts. In generally, those stating materials are relatively more complicated and which usually includes the doctrines mentioned above, such as the doctrines of impermanence for everything, miserable for everything, and causal karma, and so on. In contrast, those descriptive and illustrative materials are relatively simple, which is mainly are the embodiment of impermanence for everything.Something important is that the author not only inherits the memorial characteristics of the novels in the Six Dynasties, but also has some innovations when he wrote those materials of legends for some persons and ghosts. This legendary novels are mainly the recorded truth, but the ghost stories has more features reflecting the combination of both actual and imaginary situation, and then its novel trait is more clearly.Something good is that whether in the legendary novels or the ghost stories, there are some excellent works which not only has structural integrity, but also character distinctive. Some these good works have convoluted plots, as wonderful as those best novels such as, A New Account of Tales of the World and Anecdote and Spirits and Immortals. In these novels, the author applied many types of novel techniques on them, and as a result making these novels occupying the important position in Chinese novel history. Thanks for these excellent novels, it not only brings us the enjoyment, but also delivers us some useful and interesting Buddhist doctrines.All in all, I think that there are four most distinguished embodiments in The Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang which are ignorance and clinging, impermanence for everything, miserable for everything, and causal karma. Meanwhile, those thoughts such as transmigration, giving, discipline, meditation, supernatural power and reborn can be found in the book as well. Though The Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang is not a professional Buddhist work, and doesn't express these Buddhist doctrines directly and explicitly, we can still easily understand the doctrines contained in it when in reading. Why The Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang can deliver these Buddhist doctrines explicitly is due to the author's material choosing, comprehensive expression using, and novel writing technique innovation. This paper starts from Buddhist and aims at offering a new research perspective and a personal analysis for the book. That is my purpose for writing this essay.