Li Shutong’s tragic and joyful legendary story from a romantic genius to a famous monk
Tiger Pao, southwest of West Lake, under the White Crane Peak of Daci Mountain. In the 14th year of Tang Yuanhe, that is, in 819 AD, Master Xingkong built Guangfu Zen Temple here. Because he dreamed of two tigers digging the ground to make holes and attracting spring water, and the words "planing" and "running" are interlinked, it was also called Hupao Temple. The temple was changed to Daci Temple in the 8th year of Dazhong of Song Dynasty, and the word "Dinghui" was added in the 3rd year of Qianfu of Emperor Xizong.
On the thirteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar in 1918, Mr. Li Shutong became a monk here and bid farewell to the mortal world. From then on, he began the traveling career of Master Hongyi, wearing mango shoes and robes, and hanging tins everywhere for twenty-four days. He lived until his death in southern Fujian in 1942.
When I stepped into the gate of Hupao and walked on the quiet path with falling leaves, I thought that this year marks the 70th anniversary of the death of Master Hongyi. If all the stories, big and small, that had happened in this temple for more than a thousand years were recorded in books, then the books might fill a Buddhist scripture building, but today, they are all empty.
As we walked along the ancient pavilion road, withered grass stretched to the sky, and there was no sound of chanting. The Dinghui Zen Temple in Dacishan, which used to be very popular in the past, became a park nearly a hundred years after Mr. Li became a monk. The monk has long since disappeared. Only the gurgling spring water and the silent mountain forest remain the same as before. People here believe that Hupao Spring is blessed by God and is pure and fresh. Drinking it will make you healthy.
When Master Hongyi was still Li Shutong, he also believed in these views, so he chose to fast here for recuperation. He also believed that fasting could solve the unbearable conditions of the body, mind and soul, such as incurable tuberculosis and life stress. Caused neurasthenia. Here he fasted and practiced meditation, which naturally led him to become a monk.
Nothing in the world is normal. People are always lonely in this world. It seems that there is no shortage of friends, but there are very few people who really know each other. Therefore, people need to be involved in the world, but also need to be thoughtful; they need to observe and explore. Use different experiences to fill some gaps in life, share the content of life, walk slowly, from darkness to mist, to light, and find that the world has not changed, but the heaviness in your heart has become slightly lighter.
"The Diamond Sutra" says: "All appearances are false. If you see all appearances that are not appearances, you will see the Tathagata." As soon as a person falls to the ground and there are traces of activity in the world, it is like Activating a new account begins the process of life exploration. This process is practice. Being a monk is just a formality, and being at home is also an experience. Do not be attached to, entangled with, or greedy for anyone or anything, because everything in the world is empty, and desires for fame and fortune are all superficial. Only by completely breaking away from your attachments, cultivating a non-discriminating mind, and seeing through that all appearances are empty, Then gradually he saw the true face of Tathagata.
All identities are just coats to decorate the body. If you throw away these coats, who is Li Shutong?
We might as well restore him to a human being, remove the blessings given to him by future generations, remove the halo of light on his body, and let him walk out of the glass cabinet.
As a result, some real stories that happened at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century slowly unfolded, neither sad nor happy.
But there is a mixture of sadness and joy.
Endless Desire
On September 20, 1880, Li Shutong was born into the Li family of Tongda, a prominent family in Tianjin. His first name was given to him by his father Li Xiaolou, who was over seventy years old. He was a well-known writer in his generation. His first name was Li Wentao, his courtesy name was Shutong, and his nickname was Chengqi. Later, he gave himself countless names, fancy and plain, and the names changed according to his situation and mood. Until his old age, he still gave himself various nicknames.
Li Shutong, a young man from an aristocratic family who lost his father at the age of five, has seen all the prosperity of the world since he was a child, but also saw the indifference of human nature. His mother's status was low, especially after his father's death. The mother and son depended on each other for life. Since the eldest brother passed away, it was his second brother Li Wenxi who was more than ten years older than him who took on the responsibility of the family. Wenxi was his inspiration in childhood. teacher.
The huge Li family was home to many lonely and homeless people, such as Li Shutong’s eldest brother Wen Jin’s mother, wife and daughter-in-law, three widows, three lay Buddhists who fasted and chanted Buddha’s name all day long, and even Wen Jin’s wife. After Jin's son, parents and Wen Jin's wife passed away one after another, the eldest brother's daughter-in-law committed suicide by swallowing gold because she could not bear the teaching of Kongjue. Li Xiaolou's third concubine, Mrs. Guo, had no heirs and lived by reciting sutras and worshiping Buddha.
Li Xiaolou himself is a Buddhist layman. The death-bed prayers, salvation and Buddhist services he arranged for himself were, in the eyes of young Li Shutong, one mysterious drama after another. Li Shutong's eventual turn to Buddhism was indeed related to his childhood influence, but it was not the main reason. Otherwise, he would not have believed in Tenrikyo with his Japanese wife after crossing east to Fuso, nor would he have read Buddhist scriptures and copied Tenrikyo's chants while fasting. After the fast, he also became interested in Taoism for a while.
When he started reading at the age of six, Li Shutong’s favorite line to read was “Life is like the sun on the west mountain, wealth is like frost on grass.” This is not to compose new words. Sadness is about the warmth and warmth of human feelings, which we have experienced since birth. People come and go around him, and reality is like floating clouds. He is smart and precocious, does not like business, and prefers epigraphic poetry. This is his nature and his escape.
At the age of 20, the Reform Movement of 1898 failed, and a rumor that "Mr. Kang of Nanhai is my master" made him inexplicably included in the suspect list of Kangliang's comrades. He took his mother and his wife to escape trouble in Shanghai.
Politics is discussed very little in this book. Li Shutong did not have much ambition or interest in politics. He wrote a lot of poems to suit the occasion, but they were just to suit the occasion. He used poems to express his feelings and comfort his sorrows, which was what many literati of his time did. He is not Lu Xun.
A young man who is unable to control his family, unable to make decisions, and full of sorrows has nowhere to go. Gradually, such a young man becomes a popular figure. In the youthful age of wearing bright clothes and angry horses, when passion bursts out, it is like a bursting river, accompanied by a series of beautiful poems, flowing through Hua Fu's writing.
At the age of twenty-six, his mother passed away in Shanghai. Li Shutong returned to Tianjin with his wife and two young sons, and held an unprecedented Western-style farewell ceremony for his mother. Later, he went to Japan to study and changed his name to Li Ai. . He once said that from that time on, his life was one of constant sorrow until he became a monk. Becoming a monk was a brand-new transition in Li Shutong's life. Through this, he truly elevated his aesthetics to a religious level.
For example, his disciple Feng Zikai used the metaphor of "three floors of life" to describe him.
The first level is material life. Li Shutong's truly prosperous life was from the time he was born to the time he went to study in Japan at the age of 26 until he returned five years later. In the first thirty years of his life, he had almost no worries about this. But this does not mean that he is truly rich. He does not have real control over the Li family's economic power. When he was 20 years old, he moved to Shanghai with his wife and mother. His expenses came from the Tongda Li family's money shop in Shanghai. Received on a monthly basis, similar to alimony. Especially when he returned to China at the age of thirty-one, he experienced the bankruptcy of the Li family in Tianjin. A few years before he became a monk, his salary as a teacher was divided into four parts every month: one for his wife in Shanghai, one for his wife and children in Tianjin, and one for his wife and children in Tianjin. One share was given to Liu Zhiping of Japan, and the last share was reserved for himself. Although he has been facing unbearable financial problems, he has never been truly depressed. His material outlook is always nihilistic. Even a life with adequate food and clothing cannot stop his life from moving forward;
The second level is spiritual life. Material life cannot satisfy him. Love should be considered a part of his spiritual life, but it cannot satisfy him either. He is looking for his lover on the dance pavilion, and he is also looking for a different self. In the final analysis, he is looking for a different kind of beautiful existence. His love is an aesthetic experience, and his art is also an aesthetic experience. Even his attachment to his mother is both painful and tragically beautiful. His opera exchanges with Yang Cuixi in Tianjin, his writing and ink exchanges with Li Pingxiang in Shanghai, his affectionate singing with the singer, and his love in the studio with his second wife after going to Japan. Love only exists in his imagination. middle. From the information about him, there is no trace of his enthusiasm for his Japanese wife, let alone his first wife, Yu. He subjectively does not want her to exist. In terms of art, he is knowledgeable in poetry, calligraphy, seal cutting, painting, drama, music... He has played the role of a pioneer in different fields and is a cross-border genius. In every field, he is not the best, but the best. The earliest one; he is very loyal to his self-feeling and does not put fame and wealth first, but comes from extraordinary interest. He would give up doing things halfway, not because he couldn't do them well, but when he found that he couldn't obtain new happiness, he started new explorations in other directions.
The third level is soul life. He has desires in life that others cannot match, and his desires are difficult to satisfy. In the end, his desires transcend material and spiritual matters. He needs to reach the peak of aesthetic realm, abandon the past and past, and absolutely choose to become a monk and reach the religious level. However, the matter of becoming a monk, It’s just the first step to a satisfying soul life. Human life is only once. Most people stay on the first floor, a few people reach the second floor, and only a handful of people can climb to the third floor. After reaching the third floor, he did not stop and spent time among the evening drums and morning bells. Among the monks, there are many people who lecture on sutras, but few on the law. He must find the method that suits him best. Since he became a monk, he has made an oath: not to be an abbot, not to ordain others, not to be a teacher, that is, a teacher of Buddhism or a interpreter of doubts, but to become a scholar-type philosopher monk. He practiced Pure Land Sect and Huayan Sect intensively, and was guided by friends such as Ma Yifu. , studied the Nanshan Law that had been lost for seven or eight hundred years, blazed a unique and bright path in the monk world, and finally became the eleventh generation ZTE lawyer of Nanshan Law.
From Li Shutong to Master Hongyi, from a mortal to a generation of eminent monks, how to move to the third floor step by step and realize the transformation of life. I have not written everything in the life of Master Li Shutong to Master Hongyi like other biographers. In fact, no biographer can write the complete life of a person. I flipped through the historical materials like a big wave, omitting many details, and tried to tell the story in less wordy language, hoping that the readers would not find it boring.
Come as you go
Before becoming a monk, he was Li Wentao, the third young master of the Li family, Li Guangping, a student of Nanyang Public School, Li Ai, a student studying in Japan, Li An, a painter participating in the White Horse Club, and Li Xishuang, a puppeteer. The teacher Li Shutong, Li Ying who was reborn after fasting, Taoist Xinxin who stayed in Taoism... After becoming a monk, he was the Buddhist disciple Hong Yishi Yanyin, the old man Wan Qing who swore martyrdom during the war, and who converted the people and helped the world with Buddhist verses and propagation of Dharma. Good dream master.
A name is an encounter. Sometimes his name overlaps with his identity, and sometimes it is divided according to different eras.
It is not easy for one person to do well in a lifetime, but it took him sixty-two years to complete many times the life of ordinary people.
Why?
Because he is an imperfect perfectionist, he is a complete person.
His character has great flaws, the most obvious being his isolation and sensitivity caused by his repressive family growth environment. He was not good at interacting with others. He left Jinmen at the age of 20 because he was almost forced by his family and social environment. He went to Shanghai to settle down and live in a thatched cottage in the south of the city. When he was performing in a drama at Chunliu Society, he heard some controversial voices and lost interest. He no longer appeared on the stage; after returning to China, he worked for the "Pacific News", which was closed shortly after; he went to Chengdong Women's School, Zhejiang No. 1 Normal University and other places to teach... almost wherever fate pointed, he went.
Life is like a guest, drifting in the rapids, feeling helpless at being influenced by the world. He was not content with a long and mediocre teaching career, but he did not use his artistic talents to follow the path of a pure artist. He was full of ambitions, but often felt sorry for himself and passively accepted his fate. After becoming a monk, he failed to realize his wish to propagate Buddhism several times in Fajie Temple, Wulei Temple, and Jinxian Temple. The monks were not peaceful. In some aspects, they were no different from the secular world. The problems encountered in the secular world were also encountered in the monks. , and he still can't handle it with ease.
But on the other hand, being solitary and sensitive can make him sit quietly in front of his desk, study knowledge, and practice discipline in a monastery. He will deliberately place himself in an isolated environment and think deeply. Through inner meditation, you can stay away from pain, be content with books and scriptures, and find satisfaction and peace. Precisely because he was too sensitive, he could not settle into a fixed state of life when he was secular, and his emotions could not be pinned on a certain person. After becoming a monk, he did not meditate in a monastery until his death.