Aesthetic in the emotions of all things
Su Zhong's awareness of prose and poetry creation seems to be inseparable from the word "Zen". It was his collections of works "Happiness is Zen" and "Zen Landscapes" that caught my attention.
However, what are the characteristics of Su Zhong's "Zen"?
It is not easy to explain in limited words, and "Zen" itself pursues "no words" and focuses on "comprehension", and it varies from person to person.
However, one characteristic is obvious, that is, Su Zhong's "Zen", which is integrated into the emotions of all things.
Japanese Zen master Suzuki Daisuke believes: "In the West, thinking is advanced on the basis of dividing things into two. In contrast to this, in the East, (thinking) steps out before making a dichotomy." Sexual awareness.
The "division of things" mentioned here is what we often call "the distinction between subject and object." When people think and examine the world outside themselves, they distinguish between things and self and distinguish between subject and object in their consciousness.
Here, people first need to establish their own subjectivity, take everything as an object, and identify it as their own inspection object.
In fact, this general distinction between Eastern and Western thinking is not completely accurate. In the pre-Socratic natural philosophy era, Westerners have not fully awakened their self-consciousness independent of nature, and the thinking characteristic of "dichotomy of things" has not been formed. It was only after the School of Sophists put forward the "standard theory" of human beings that the existence of human beings became independent from natural thinking, and only after the proposal of Descartes' "Cogis" philosophy did it have a distinct subject-object duality of subjective thinking characteristics.
In the ancient China of the East, not only did it emphasize the unity of man and nature, and the separation of subject and object, there was also a dualistic thinking of subject and object in which man and man were separated.
In order to emphasize that "the heart of the East is Zen" and to highlight the characteristics of Eastern thinking that are different from those of the West, Suzuki made the above general and differentiated expression.
Of course, the "Zen" he revealed is an infinite function of the mind, so he believed that "the ordinary mind is the Tao".
I don't know if Su Zhong has read and comprehended Suzuki Dazhuo's Zen thought, but the "Zen" in his works clearly bears the traces of the profound meaning of "Zen" revealed by Suzuki Dazhuo.
Most of the prose poems of Su Zhong that the author has read are based on his travels and whereabouts.
Su Zhong uses the magic of verbs to present the aesthetic immersion of things and I forget.
For example, "Spring is plucked out by the birdsong in Changbai Mountain." "Although the lake water is a little lower at this time, and the sky is a little higher." "After the night is hollowed out, the day slips in in the blink of an eye." There are many such sentences in Su Zhong's prose poems.
In layman's terms, this is just an anthropomorphic approach, and it is not surprising that it can be seen everywhere in traditional literary works.
In classical poetry, of course, such techniques are numerous.
In Su Zhong's prose poems, it is through the wonderful use of such verbs that the Zen in his heart is directly presented.
In these works of his, a large number of anthropomorphic techniques are used, which combine the subject and the object, and the blending of the human and the scenery.
The most typical is "Mohe Snow Country". In the whole chapter, in addition to the opening two sentences, and then through the wonderful use of a series of verbs and adjectives, everything in front of them presents their own fresh life situations, fresh and lively. Gotta be immersed in a fairytale-like scene of winter life.
In the works, "snow", "reindeer", "white birch forest", "smog", "firewood stack", "ice on the eaves", "smoke", "corn", "red lantern", "snowman" and "Usuli River"... These are outside the author's soul. The scenery and objects of the "Mohe Snow Country" outside are all the fresh life in the early morning of the "north of the extreme north" of China in winter, forming a peaceful winter snow country in which people and all things coexist in harmony.
All the actions of "life" here are actually the externalization of the author's mind, that is, the first sentence of the opening "Mohe is a mood".
Everything depends on the author's "mood".
There is no distinction between inside and outside, and there is no distinction between subject and object. It is the result of the infinite potential of the "infinite creativity in the human mind's foundation" and the infinite function of the Zen mind that unconsciously conforms to the natural "movements" produced by the outside world.
In some of Su Zhong's prose poems, such as the Zen poems of the Zen monk Shi Yunxiu in the Song Dynasty, "quietness" is a kind of "movement", and "movement" implies "quietness". Perseverance, to reach the Zen state of the inner "source of life" rhythm.
Let's look at this piece of work: "The spring mountains are chaotic and green, and the spring waters are full of empty green. There are so few heaven and earth, how can one look independently." The greenness of the spring mountains and the blue waters of the spring waters depicted here all show the vitality of life.
No matter how fast or slow the plants grow or the depth of the flowing water, once spring comes, they all grow and move according to their own life. Between heaven and earth, there is a huge life scene where all things are competing, each showing its own interest.
Here, the poet uses two life-giving verbs "stack" and "yang" to integrate the noisy spring between heaven and earth and the Zen meaning of "little" and "independence" in the author's heart with "hope to what extreme".
Su Zhong's prose poems, such as the above-mentioned "Mohe Snow Country", use various verbs and adjectives to vividly describe the winter morning of Mohe, and present the harmony between nature and human beings incisively and vividly.
The above-mentioned aesthetic realm revealed by Su Zhong's prose poems is rooted in his personal life realm and his feelings for the world.
As he said in the concluding sentence of the chapter "Forging Iron Flowers": "I recognize the former emotions that all things have." In the emotion of recognizing that everything is present, it is a kind of life that transcends the self-centered pursuit of consciousness when facing the aesthetic object, and steps out before the dichotomy of subject and object is deliberately performed.
(Author: Lin Meimao, professor of the School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China, this article is a phased achievement of the key research base project of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education "Aesthetic Reconstruction and Historic Review of Contemporary Prose Poems" [15JJD750012])