Appreciation of Wu Rong's Peony Poems in Ode to Peony with Monks

Appreciation of Peony Poems in Peony and Monks Ode to Peony

Wu Rong

It is unintentional to sell everything, but there is depth in seeing flowers.

They are full of romantic feelings, and the fragrant core has become a song.

As a monk, according to the teachings of the Buddha, one must be pure in heart and desire and transcend the mortal world. Naturally, it is difficult to get rid of dust. As for chanting flowers and trees, it may be normal to associate it with the joys and sorrows of life and the rise and fall of society. In the title of the poem, the monk wrote a poem after seeing the fragrance of peony, expressing his extreme sadness and sorrow after seeing the flowers. Wu Rong wrote this harmonious poem after reading it, which euphemistically satirized the monk and showed the poet's philosophical attitude towards life and society in his later years.

As the poet said in the tone of a Buddhist disciple, since you have cut your hair and become a monk, you should abandon all secular ideas, such as life and death, feelings and so on. "Unintentional" means that there should be no worldly desires. Why do you hate flowers? The poet gently criticized the monk by rhetorical question, saying, "Why are you so depressed and sad when you see the flowers coming back?" The monk's original poem can't be verified now, but Wu Rong's poem undoubtedly highly condenses the basic content and emotional tone of the original poem. The monk must have thought of the shortness of life from the withering of peony flowers. From the word "deep", you can imagine the sadness of this monk.

People with different experiences and ideas about life sometimes have completely different views. Seeing the monk so sad, Wu Rong also thought of himself. "Zhilang" is another name for monks in ancient times. At the end of the Han Dynasty, there were three eminent monks in Wei Chu, who supported fiber and light, and supported thousands. Zhi Qian came from Yue (now Gansu). He is slender, black and thin, with white and yellow eyes. He is proficient in Buddhism and has many strategies. At that time, people made up a nursery rhyme and said, "Zhilang is a think tank with yellow eyes and thin body." Since then, "Zhilang" has become synonymous with learned monks. In Wu Rong's poems, he called the other person "Nao Lang". It seems that he is not a monk who thinks he is a monk, but "Quan Zhilang" is a monk who thinks he is. The poet was in his twilight years when he wrote this poem. When Tang Zhaozong fled to Fengxiang to avoid chaos, he was too old to accompany him and left Chang 'an to live in Min Township (now Lingbao County, Henan Province). He became a monk when he was unaccompanied and lonely. "It's all a romantic feeling." The poet is talking to the monk: you and I are both people in troubled times, and we have all suffered misfortune. As long as we can achieve "everything is empty", adapt to troubled times and live in peace. "Fragrant flowers can also sing", this poem and the previous poem constitute a conditional complex sentence. The poet earnestly advises each other: as long as we can look at life from a philosophical perspective, even broken flowers are worth singing and enjoying. Why should we be so depressed and trouble ourselves?

Wu Rong was a famous poet in the late Tang Dynasty. This poem was written after the first year of Tang Zhaozong Tianxia (90 1), only four or five years before the final downfall of the Tang Dynasty. The poem of flower wound written by that monk did not penetrate into the pain when the Tang Dynasty was about to overthrow. In this regard, Wu Rong behaved so calmly and philosophically, which was rare among scholars at that time. From an aesthetic point of view, this poem also has its own unique aesthetic view. Generally, most poets regard flowers as beautiful and fragrant, but the red flowers are withered and the fragrance is still so unsightly. Wu Rong thinks that "the fragrance is missing" is also a kind of beauty, which is also worthy of praise and appreciation, which is rare in many flowers-watching poems.