Ceremony And Daily Life

This study starts from the question about “Thirty-one Scenery Spots in Humble Administrator Garden”,an album of paintings by Wen Zhengming,a scholar and painter in the Ming Dynasty.The album was finished after the completion of the Garden,but not drawn before the commencement of the Garden as ordinary people used to think that “Scholar Painting” should be used as a plan.What is the intention behind the drawing of the album of the “Thirty-one Scenery Spots in Humble Administrator Garden”? Following this thread,the study by Craig Clunasspeculates that the album of paintings about the “Thirty-one Scenery Spots in Humble Administrator Garden” must be an outcome drawn by Wen Zhengming under the entrustment made by the owner of the Garden during some literati gathering.The owner's intention should be that he hoped his garden would go down in history in virtue of “poems or paintings” by an eminent person.From this,we can find the significance of historical inheritance in the form of picture presented by suchScholar paintings.For a garden,the completion of its construction does not mean the end of gardening,instead,every literati gathering is a new mix of the garden space and the very ritual event.The combination of natural form(artificial hill)applied in a garden and the presence of literati(gathering)creates a complete gardening ritual.When a garden inspires its owner(or visitors)'s meditation,the “Gardening Ritual” system is activated,and the ritual process of harmony between soul and matter starts.In this paper,“Conceptual Gardening” is defined as the process that the meditation relating to “Nature and Inner Life” generated as a result of activity of human would completely release the significance of a garden space.Conceptual Gardening includes three parts:Space – Medium – Activity of HumanRitual Venue –landscape space related to the natureRitual Medium – paradigm hillSubject of Ritual – literati meditation or gathering This paper intends to,from the perspective of the ritual and daily life in conceptual gardening,to find a road to practice for the inheritance and rendering of traditional gardening today.First,the paper identifies a set of analytical approaches appropriate for different eras and different aesthetic systems from the classification methods for the study;second,the paper provides a ritual practice for Chinese literati to meditate the universe and their inner life,which matches Chinese gardening ideas;finally,the paper finds a system of paradigm gardening for inheritance,reference and innovation.The conceptual gardening ritual discussed in this paper differs from religious rites,and is markedly different from the worship in Taoist and Buddhist rites: it has a different purpose.For instance: in China,Taoist and Buddhist rites,there are creeds and rules relating to that a man should reach a supernal state by means of personal cultivation.And both Taoism and Buddhism base on the causationism to get reward through personal cultivation.The gardening ritual discussed in this paper is a medium across time and space for Chinese literati to observe the universe & the nature and to meditate.Moreover,the paper provides a set of paradigms for proof and practice of today's conceptual gardening.Conceptual gardening ritual and daily life focus on three aspects: 1.Ritual is a classification system for study on traditional gardens.The paper intends to draw a conclusion how today's gardening in China should actively fit into ordinary people's daily life on the basis of classification of different power classes governing imperial power,religious authority and Confucian power as well as of positive or negative formal language generated with the identification of gardening ritual.2.Under the theory – to verify “Integration of Things” on the basis of “Investigation of Things and Interaction”– a branch of the philosophy of the mind proposed by Wang Yangming(an ideologist in the Ming Dynasty),literati in the late Ming Dynasty bent themselves to exploring the elegant taste of literati and scholars to present self-moderation in gardening special aesthetic in private space and further to displaying their aesthetic fashion of briefness & elegance and hermitage unraveled in their “Conceptual Gardening”.Based on the analysis from the perspective of characteristics of powerization,the paper considers that this type of aesthetic fashion might be the final spiritual resistance of literati and scholars in the late Ming Dynasty under an increasingly degrading internal political environment and an external environment where the climate of that current society was tending to extravagance and to getting worse.3.Based on the analysis of external form of ritual,the paper expresses that “Conceptual Gardening Ritual” is a significant medium for cultural and artistic inheritance: internal –eventual presence;external – paradigm hill and water;and the ordinariness of the ritual generated as a result of the combination of the abovementioned aspects.The paper intends to introduce the conclusion from its analysis to the present society and to unfold the new conceptual gardening practice in today's context via the experience of “Self-investigation and Interaction”.Since the entry of this paper's annexes,I have introduced many different teaching units which are designed to launch special creation exercises containing daily life meditation by dint of three types of paintings: Chinese traditional hanging scroll,hand scroll and album and the subject of “Garden Constructing Paradigm”.Such paintings bring us toward gardens one after another through their considerate touches of wonderful scenes just like a spring breeze.In gardening,whether from moral quality or mental state,most of traditional literati love to follow models and tend to touch traditional spirit of craftsman by referring to the original ones.Besides recreation based on flowers and birds and sightseeing,that we can be drenched in traditional paintings and gardens is a flexible adaption of theories.While our understanding of those small abnormally structured articles goes deep into modular dimension of hills and waters,appliances in the garden,fittings on the desk and the connotation of paintings and calligraphies.This “Garden Constructing Paradigm” seems gentle and cultivated with a perfect balance of preciseness and unworldliness.To some extent,gardening is living.Compared with the function of entertainment,to seek a set of meditation ritual people of our era can inherit from daily life appears to be more important.