Bai Juyi's Poetry And Chinese Buddhism

Bai Juyi is a famous poet in the middle of Tang period, while his intercourse, thoughts and poems show his affinity for Buddhism. During the middle period of Tang Dynasty, the ideas of Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism and Taoism were three main thought systems in society. During the same time, Chán Buddhism grew to become the largest sect in Chinese Buddhism. This thesis intends to put the texts of Bai Juyi within the cultural and historical context, based on subjectivity, religious psychology, the close reading of the texts and his poetic thoughts, to probe the relationship between Bai Juyi's poetry and Chinese Buddhism by means of the comparative literature research.The thesis includes three parts: introduction, main body, and conclusion. In the introduction part we retrospect the development of Bai Juyi study concisely, then relate the current Bai Juyi study in China and the thesis's conception briefly.The main body part is composed of six chapters. In Chapter One we show Bai Juyi's subjective choice in Buddhism religion. From Bai Letian to"Xiang Shan Layman","as a Buddhist disciple", Bai Juyi spent a long time to choose Buddhism as his own religion subjectively with the change of his thought: in his early life, Bai Juyi had only a superficial knowledge of Buddhism. Because of some changes in his life, especially after he was reduced to Jiāng Zhōu SīMǎ, he came to experience the life with Buddhism by himself. Gradually, he kept the harmony not only in his thought of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism but also in his daily practice with having more profound apprehension about Mahayana Buddhism and deeper sentiments about Layman. In the last few years of his life, re-construction of Xiang Shan Temple attained his ambition to be a Layman. And all these changes and individual experience were recorded in Bai Juyi's poetry.In Chapter Two, from Religious Psychology perspective we analyze Buddhism conversion of Bai Juyi, his religious consciousness's development and his choice among the ideas of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism through the whole life of Bai Juyi and his poetry. According to developmental model of individual religious consciousness, Bai Juyi's religious consciousness development can be describe like that: extrinsic religious consciousness—religious consciousness with observance—intrinsic religious consciousness—obsessed in religious consciousness. Throughout three different life stages, that is AD772—Winter 815, AD Winter 815—826, AD827—846, Bai Juyi's Buddhism consciousness was ingrained in his religious consciousness deeply day after day, eventually he converted to Buddhism. Meanwhile, his poems with individual complicated emotions and thoughts demonstrated personal experience in Buddhism conversion, his experience with"singular characteristics"is concerned with society, culture and Bai Juyi's characteristics during the Tang Dynasty.In Chapter Three and Chapter Four, we explore the relationship between Bai Juyi's"poet subjectivity and the consciousness of poet subjectivity"in his poetry and Chinese Buddhism based on the texts of Bai Juyi. We try to interpret his strong life consciousness, self-consciousness and self-introspection consciousness contained in Bai Juyi's poetry and the relationship of these personal consciousnesses to Buddhism in Chapter Three. From our opinion, Bai Juyi's life consciousness and self-consciousness made him express his sentiment about short life in his poems. Meanwhile, his self-consciousness and self-introspection consciousness also urged himself to achieve self-transcendence from pains and persistency on ego. The idea of Buddhism helped him maintain peaceful mind and harmonious life when his self-consciousness and self-introspection got strengthened caused by indulging in Buddhism step by step. Finally with the affirmation of personal life experience Bai Juyi achieved self-transcendence and expressed the feeling of comfortable and harmonious life in his poems.We continue deeper to interpret his underlying"poet subjectivity and the consciousness of poet subjectivity"in his poems in Chapter Four. After being aware of the impermanence of life, Bai Juyi expressed himself especially his feelings about concerning himself extremely in his poems. And with the creation of poems he demonstrated the"having possession in poetry"which is common during the period of middle Tang Dynasty. Just like Stephen Owen said, this"singularity"and the discourse-level"possession"existing in Bai Juyi were related to his thought about the impermanence of life, and this thought makes him comprehend Buddhism thought easily. He was guided by Buddhism thought, especially Zen School thought such as the Hongzhou of Mazu, and by creating poems with some specific poetic words and forms, he expressed the Zen's self-understanding in special way. This is what we called Bai Juyi's personal interpretation. In Chapter five, we study Bai Juyi's poetics. Bai Juyi claimed that emotion is the root of poetry; and it is not hard for people to read his poems so that his poems were popular in domestic, even foreigners loved his poems at that time, so his poetry was criticized"qiǎn qiè"and"sú". That means his poems with language, prosody and meaning are easier to read and accept which is the unique style of Bai Juyi's poetry. We find that inspired by Zen school ideology, Bai Juyi chose this feature consciously as the external manifestation of pursuing his personal style. (That is his"singularity"with true feelings.)We think Bai's some thoughts about creating poems contained his concerning of poet subjectivity. And from his thought of regarding poetic creation as integrality including dialectical views on poetic creation, we could analyze the relationship between Bai Juyi's thought with Buddhism especially its integral and dialectical way of thinking.In chapter six, based on the analysis on Bai Juyi's concept of feeling and reason, we want to explain the deep reason why Bai Juyi is called"guǎng dàjiào huàzhǔ"by a poet Zhang Wei in late Tang; at the same time through this, we try to reveal the fact that Bai Juyi have apprehended the essence of Mahāyāna Buddhism and grasped the practical facet of Chinese Buddhism. The name—"guǎng dàjiào huàzhǔ", means Bai Juyi led the poetry sector in poetic effect and the intention of creation at that time—not only reflects his opening and frank personality seen from his poems, but also demonstrates his creativity in expanding the state of poetry. Through guiding life by Buddhism, Bai Juyi finally gained the wisdom of life with letting go of self-conscious and judgmental thinking. It is more important that his attainment of awakening from life and direct individual assessment finds expression in his poems. And Bai Juyi enjoyed his new life in the higher state at the same time of discovering Buddhism inner value and practice. His choice and assimilation from Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism manifests the function of dialectical-reason thinking which lies deeply in Chinese traditional culture.The last part is the review of this thesis. Here we re-emphasize the principle of Bai Juyi's practicability with which he blended the thought of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism harmoniously and grasp them thoroughly. By using Chinese Buddhism thought like keeping the integrality and harmony without boundary, using to free beings into enlightenment and letting luck or fate go without feelings, he broke through the boundary between literary creation and Buddhism as faith. This gives us a typical sample of Buddhism intellectuals of post-Tang period who merged Buddhism practice into their personal life. This would also be a symbol of the religious and philosophical ideology of Buddhism already merging into Chinese society and traditional ideology on the whole.