A Study Of The Metaphors In Zen's Language

The wide applying of metaphors is a distinctive feature of Zen's language. It's also the key to understanding Zen's ideology. So, we think it's necessary to approach and analyze these metaphors in the light of the characteristic context and the mode of thinking in Zen. We hope it would be helpful to understand Zen's documents better.We chose some representative Zen's recorded sayings and historical materials as the objects of study. Then tried to find out all metaphors in the chosen materials and classified them in accordance with some criteria which come from Liu Da-wei's theory of cognitive metaphor. Next did some interpretation and analysis about the metaphors' meanings and usages. Lastly, according to three evaluating principles of creativeness, we made some evaluations of the creativity of these metaphors.