On Buddhist Implications In Feng Zikai’s Aesthetic And A Artistic Thought

Feng Zikai is a lay Buddhist, and his personality, his art and his paintings comprehensively embody the Buddhist culture. He elaborates the aesthetic and artistic problems with his unique "tranquil" and "sympathetic" mood, showing his powerful appeal for promoting China’s Buddhism. His works and thought have become the miracle in China’s art history and aesthetic history. However, in the long past, there is a view in the academic field that Feng Zikai "upholds the idealist world outlook of Buddhism and has fallen behind the time". Some "try to cover this for him", and emphasize that "Buddhism does not dominate Feng Zikai’s thought", and say that "those who think that Feng Zikai has been greatly influenced by Buddhism have made a fundamental mistake in orientation." Then what has Feng Zikai learnt from Buddhism? Is the Buddhist influence on him necessarily negative? In what ways is Buddhism acknowledged, digested, absorbed, reformed and merged into his aesthetic and artistic thought?Feng Zikai’s conversion to Buddhism is due to the complex cultural background of his time and the psycholofical factors. Since the modern times, the transformation from "being above the world consideration to being involved in the world" has produced great influence on Feng Zikai’s spiritual life. Feng Zikai’s conversion to Buddhism and becoming a lay Buddhist is his reasonable choice in the conflicts of new culture and old culture and in the entanglement of the dual personality. The direct psychological motivation for him to become a Buddhist is his profound experience, comprehension, and intelligent understanding of the changeable grief. If Feng Zikai believes that the "religion is the ultimate concern for people", it can be said that "the ultimate concern" has led him to religion. Feng Zikai has lived a hermitic life, and the sense of alienation and inharmony between his inside world and the outside world are the other factors for him to be conversted into Buddhism so as to escape from the worldly affairs. In his youth, the cultural environment and the communications with his teachers and friends, especially with Master Hong Yi, Xia Mianzun and Ma Yifu, have implications on his Buddhist mentality. Influenced by Master Hongyi, Feng Zikai has high regard for Buddhism, but his Buddhist thoughts are mixed since Huayan School, Hossoshu, Pure-land School, Zen, Vinaya School are all embodied in him. Unlike Master Hong Yi’s "directly believing in Budhism", Feng Zikai is inteligerntly believing in Buddhism rather than superstitious in it. His purpose of believing in Buddhism is not for enlightenment but it is for cultivating his mind, for "taking the spiritual life for the substitute of material life." In his eyes, Buddhism is only the supreme realm of personality. It emphasizes "emptiness" and "Anatman." Being "anatman", one must firstly forget "oneself and his desires". Just for this fundamental point, Feng Zikai keeps his belief in Buddhism all his life and cultivates his personality with his practice. Feng Zikai keeps a negative attitude to the superstition in Buddhism, emphasises the talk to Buddhist spirit with one’s soul and understanding Buddha’s mercy of "the integrity of oneself and the universe" and the essensial meaning of "being void of vanities", which is consistant with people’s attitude towards religions during the May Fourth Movement. From the year of 1927 when he was converted to a Buddhist to 1937 when the Anti-Japanese War broke out, Feng Zikai was in his age from 30 to 40; and just in the ten years, Buddhism entered his spiritual life and became the voice over in his internal dialogue. It is the systematic and complete sytem of Buddhism that nourishes the soul of Feng Zikai and helps him pass through the critical period when his personality and outlook of the world were moulded. With the nourishment of Buddhism, Feng Zikai, while tasting and comprehending the meaning of life, has formed his ways of life-letting it be and self adaptation, his life sentiment-the broad mind-view on life and death, and his attitude towards life-allofness in participating the social activities.Feng Zikai’s special experience of conversion to Buddhism under the guidance of Master Hong Yi infuses strong Buddhist thinking into his aesthetic and artistic thought. Feng Zikai, a traditional modern Chinese man of letters, has creatively formed his aesthetic thought of life and art that takes "isolation" as its path, "sympathy" as its key, "childlike innocence" as its root and "interest" as its aim. It is found that Feng Zikai’s sincerity in Buddhism, like blood, runs up in his four aesthetic and artistic thoughts. Although he seldom mentions "Buddha says" in his exposition of his aesthetic and artistic thought, the use and arrangement of some of his kernel categories, especially in deep arrangement, are typical Buddhist ways of thinking, which can not be covered in Taoism or Mencius’ thought. By using the popular aesthetic language mixed with Buddhism and Confucianism, Feng Zikai narrates his aesthetic ideal of "anguish in life" and "artistic life."There are three essential meanings in Feng Zikai’s "theory of Isolation":First,"Removing all relations or cause and effect between things in the world so as to observe things isolatedly." Second, "What is seen is the appearance of the ontology of isolated and pure objects." Third, by "staying afar from the filthy world" and "cutting off the network of the world," he observes the world in an isolated or artistic persective so as to bring the artstic life in to reality." The three essentials of "the theory of Isolation" have on profound Buddhist background. From the perspectives of meditation, thusness and insight in Buddhism, it can be easily found that "the theory of Isolation" is Feng Zikai’s academic idea on the combination of the Chinese and western aesthetics, which provides a feasible way for Chinese Buddhism to solve problems in real life. The purpose of his effort is to infuse Buddhism into western aesthetics and make it adaptive to real life. Feng Zikai’s understanding of "artistic sympathy" is greatly influenced by Lipps "empathy theory," but its kernel essence is fundamentally "the one and only approach" in Madhyamika of Mahayana. When explaining the highest state of mind of "artistic vividness"---- "artistic sympathy", he always focuses on the relation between "Mind" and "Setting", which represents the infusion and initiativeness of "Mind" and "Setting phase", Feng Zikai’s explanation of "absolute spirit" is orininated in Buddhism in China rather than in western theology. The arguments among the Buddhists in China on body and spirit in Dynasties of Wei and Jin and North and South Dynasties have fundamentally influenced his artistic theory and his works. After the outbreak of the Aniti-Japanese War, his exposition on "Ren (benevolence)" is taken from Confucianism in literal form, but its connotations actually refer to Buddhism because "Ren (Benevolence) refers to "the state of enlightenment" in Buddhism. Feng Zikai’s understanding of "childlike innocence" embodies not only the "Character of Nature" in Taoism and the "Priori Moral Intention" in Mencius Theory but also the "Nature of Thusness" in Buddhism for the understanding and explanation of "True Mind" in "Mahayana sraddhotpada sastra (On Faith in Mahayana)" has influenced it greatly. The ways in which he invesgates his loss and regain of his "childlike innocence" are the typical ways of thinking of Buddhism, and it has left the trace of the predecessors in the philosophy of mind to introduce Buddhism into Confucianism. Feng’s explanation of childlike innocence is similar with Wang Yangming’s but sharply different with that of Li Zhi. who is a strong rebel of Old Confucianism. Feng Zikai, similar with the literati of the late Ming Dynasty, believes in Nembutsu Buddhism (Pure-land Buddhism) rather than Zen. On the basis of a thorough understanding of Confucianism and Buddhism, he takes the essence of Zen to persuit the aesthetic tastes of "self-adaptation and self-amusement’and advocates the aesthetic quality of "frankness and naturalness." which has manifested his "childlike-innocence" aesthetic essence characterized by "returning to the root and source and returning to nature". Feng Zikai’s understanding of "interest" is influenced by Kabt’s "disinterestedness in aesthetics", but his core spirit is connetcted with Buddhist realm and Buddhist interest. The natural and congenial philosophy of life in Zen has not only moulded his attitude towards life characterized by "artistic life," but also internalized as his stable structure of aesthetic psychology. Zen philosophy, just like the cultural enzymes of "collective unconsciousness," pervades Feng Zikai’s categories of "interest" and proposition of "artistic life." Integrated with the "duhkha-satya (suffering)" in Buddhism, he tells the "misery in life," and from Kuriyagawa’s "symbles of misery," he puts forth the aesthetic ideal of "the useless value" of art and "artistic life." In his view, the relation between the artistic relief of "the misery of life" and the religious relief of "misery of life" is the relation of "one is divided into two" and "two is combined into one." The reason why he elaborates on the artistic relief of "misery of life" while avoids the religious relief of "misery of life" is that he wants to "enlighten people in a round-about way."Feng Zikai, a lay Buddhist, has a strong cultural complex of Buddhism which is manifested by his six volumes of "Paintings on Protection of Life", for which he has devoted his whole life. "Paintings on Protection of Life" is of great social and artistic values. Moreover, the Buddhist concepts such as "taking benevolence and mercy as the basic principle, and universally loving all creatures in the world," "retributive justice and devoting oneself into good actions," "keeping vegetarian diet and cherishing blessings, keeping an inclination to goodness and offering alms to the poor and needed," "longing to the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss and keeping mind and action clean" contain profound ecological aesthetic wisdoms and are of great significance of reference and enlightenment for natural ecological protection. The intrinsic defects of the theoretical foundation of views on the protection of life in "Paintings on Protection of Life" has broght him in front of the inavoidable theoretical dilemma and he is consequently criticized by the literati such as Rou Shi and Cao Juren. Starting from Ma Yifu’s understanding of the relation between the truth and things in the world, Feng Zikai defends his view from the perspective that "the protection of life is the protection of one’s mind. He takes the protection of life as a way of cultivating one’s personality and tries to realize the harmony between people and the harmony between people and nature by the mercy and sympathy of the people with aesthetic cultivation. His defence for "Paintings on Protection of Life" gives us the enlightenment that the present study on ecological aesthetics should be the combination of the value of nature and the value of man, and sparkplug the "ecological humanism" that unites the "naturalism" and "humanitarianism". Ecological aesthetics is human science, but not the ecology in science. The fundamental objective of it is the study of the spirit of human beings. In other words, ecological aesthetics is the aesthetics of life, or the aesthetics of ontology for ontology is more suitable to be its noumenon than ecology.