The Leisure Wisdom Of Chinee Traditional Religions

Chinese traditional religions, mainly Buddhism and Taoism, are important spiritual and cultural resources of Chinese people, and have exerted very profound effects on people’s leisure thoughts and leisure behaviors. Taking the academic theory of leisure studies as a guide, this dissertation adopts integrated use of study methods of diverse subjects, including philosophy, religion, cultural history, aesthetics, psychology, literature, sociology, and so on, with an attempt to conduct a comprehensive and systematic study on Chinese traditional religions, so that the rich and valuable leisure wisdom contained in them be thoroughly revealed. The main contents are as follows:Chapter one briefly discusses Chinese traditional religion and leisure. It begins with an overview of Chinese traditional religions, and then discusses the concepts of leisure, religious leisure and other related ones, attempting to give reasonable explanations to the nature and meanings of these concepts. Finally, this chapter successively analyzes the impacts of Chinese traditional religions on the origin of leisure and on the leisure thoughts and leisure behaviors of different groups.Chapter two discusses the significance of traditional religious leisure (mainly Buddhist leisure and Taoist leisure) to human existence. Buddhism and Taoism, from their own understanding of the plight of human existence, respectively pursue corresponding leisure targets to meet people’s meta-need and to implement their concern for human existence.Chapter three discusses the leisure realms of traditional Chinese religions. Purification of the mind characterizes the leisure realms of Buddhist sects of Tiantai, Pure Land, Huayan, and earlier Zen. After the rise of Zushi Zen, the leisure realm of Zen sect turned to feature naturalness, comfortableness and unconstraint, but because of discrepancies in the perspectives of different branches and masters, its contents take on several forms with different emphases. Many of the leisure thoughts of Taoist school were inherited and carried forward by Taoism, the reflection of which is the recognition and pursuit of the state of mind that is empty, quiet, and indifferent to fame and benefit.Chapter four discusses the leisure experiences of Chinese traditional religions. The enlightenment of Zen can enable people to break through the subject-object way of things and find novelty in ordinary things——the realm of Zen is the poetic realm of life experience. The enlightenment in Taoism can also bring about poetic aesthetic leisure experience, while this kind of experience often involves the enhancement of the realms of both body and mind. It is also possible for Buddhist leisure and Taoist leisure to result in a kind of experience which is extremely unique and of tremendous value——mysticism experience. Mysticism experience is a sort of peak experience in which a person and the ultimate reality of the universe and life are merged into a single whole. It can enable a person to get rid of all negative emotions, can bring him extremely great peace and inner joy, and so is a kind of most advanced leisure experience.Chapter five discusses the ways and forms of leisure in Chinese traditional religions. In non-ritual religious life, the practices featuring relaxation can be regarded as Gongfu of leisure; collective and personal religious rituals (especially the latter) often contain many leisure elements. Literary and artistic leisure, landscape leisure and tea leisure are representative forms of religious 1(?)an be included into religious practices in a broad sense.Chapter six discusses the ideals of leisurely societies in Chinese traditional religions and the corresponding effects in social practice. Both Buddhism and Taoism have their own ideals of leisurely societies, under the guide of which, various social effects in social practice came into being. For the society, most of these effects are of some kind of positive value.In the remainder of the thesis, the significance and value of Chinese traditional religions to modern leisure is first discussed, then some basic principles to develop modern religious leisure are proposed, on the basis of which given are some directional recommendations for government departments, religious circle and other relevant sectors to take as references.