Spirituality And Leisure

In Qing Dynasty, Yuan Mei set up a school called "Spirituality", whoes literary concepts of attaching importance to emotion and aesthetics and poetics beyond the tradition have groundbreaing significances and influences. This thesis, starting from the point of Spirituality, conveys a comprehensive case-study on Yuan Mei’s theory from the perspective of leisure.Yuan Mei was born for peotry, loving freedom and pursuing carefree life. In order to change the life of the status quo, he had to go to win fame, strayed into official circles, however, Yuan Mei was unhappy, with the officialdom and eventually began the Hermitage life for half a century.Yuan Mei was not a negative Escapsit, on the contrary, he had positive leisure ideas, which mainly manifest as his spiritual love for aesthetic ideal, the pursuit of individual freedom, the affirmation for actual self and true interest and the affirmation for selfish desire.In the aspect of leisure style,Yuan Mei attached great importance to the present life, he changed the Sui Garden three times to enjoy the pleasure of home; he went on sightseeing tours to enjoy the joy of the landscape; wrote recipes to keep healthy; and the most important thing is that he maintained the enthusiasm for poetry for his whole life, and writing poetry became the most important leisure activity into in his life.In the aspect of leisure state, the realm of Yuan Mei’s life was obviously periodical with duality. The realm of utilitarian, morality and aesthetics reflected in different stages of his life, in general, Yuan Mei was positive materially and he has reached a transcendent realm in spirit life which realize the aesthcendance of his life.