Professor Xu Feng of the Department of Literature and Science of Nanjing Normal University
Xi'an Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Xuanzang statue
"Journey to the West" is Chinese well-known classic novel, telling the story of the four Tang monks and disciples who took the sutras from the West Heavens, the Buddha and Guanyin arranged a lot of monsters to obstruct all the way in order to test the sutra collection team, and the four masters and apprentices experienced a total of 9981 difficulties. Its last difficulty is "falling into the water to dry the scriptures", it is said that the old shrew of the Tongtian River crossed the river for the four masters and apprentices to help, in the middle of the river, the old shrew asked about his request to the Tang monks, but the Tang monk forgot, the old shrew anger and threw the master and apprentice into the river together with the scriptures, and finally the precious scriptures, although fished out of the river, were damaged a lot, leaving irreparable deficiencies. Wu Cheng'en concludes with this story, which is not only based on some facts learned from history, but also may also imply that life is "holding on to the remnants" and is really difficult to complete. The Chinese people know the last difficulty in "Journey to the West", but few people know that Mr. Hu Shi has changed this last difficulty. In terms of plot, Hu Shi's adaptation is quite shocking and full of visual imagination, and if it is adapted into a movie, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a restrictive violent horror film. How did Hu Shi come up with the last difficulty of changing to "Journey to the West"? As we all know, Hu Shi was a pioneer in the field of ancient Chinese novel studies. He said: "Ten years ago, I told Mr. Lu Xun that the eighty-first difficulty (ninety-ninth time) of Journey to the West was too cold, and it should be greatly rewritten to be able to withstand a big book. Although I have this heart, I finally have no leisure, so ten years have passed, and this change to "Journey to the West" has not been realized. A few days ago, by chance, I wrote this article, completely rewriting the eighty-first difficulty of "Journey to the West". The article was published in the Monthly Journal of Learning Literature in 1934.
Twenty years ago, I happened to read This article by Hu Shi during my college years, and my impression was far more profound than "Tongtian River Encountering Shrews". Many of the details reflect Hu Shi's profound Buddhist attainments, with many religious implications. Hu Shi devoted a lot of energy to the study of Zen history in the 1920s and 1930s, so this adaptation can also be regarded as the result of his Zen research. Years later, I read the Romanian religious historian Mircea Eliade's famous book Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, and I thought of Hu Shi's last difficulty, "Tang monks cutting flesh and crossing the devils", just like the "Initiation" of shamanic candidate shamans. It is worth a literary anthropological analysis of it from the perspective of religion and anthropology.
Sacred places and sacred stories
The last difficulty of Hu Shi's rewriting did not occur in the Tongtian River, but on the banks of the Buga River in the borneo state. The four Tang monks and apprentices came to the famous monument "Three Beasts blocking the waves". This monument is the place where Rulai burned himself to make offerings to the Heavenly Emperor during his first bodhisattva practice in the past. Tang Monk was very happy and busied himself with dressing and hating to pray to the tower. Then he began to tell his disciples about the Buddhist allusions of "three beasts blocking the waves." The three beasts are a rabbit, a fox, and an ape, and the Buddha was reborn as a white rabbit before becoming a Buddha, and practiced with foxes and apes. The Heavenly Emperor interpreted himself as a test of his cultivation and transformed into an old man begging for food. The three beasts foraged for the guests separately, the fox returned with the carp in his mouth, the ape returned with his hands picking fresh fruit, only the white rabbit found nothing empty-handed, and finally the white rabbit gave himself into the fire, willing to use his own body as food to relieve people's hunger. The basic form of the buddhist building is to bury the relics left by the Buddha Shakyamuni after his cremation, and its basic form is to build a circular or square pedestal with bricks and stones, and there is generally a right winding path around it, a circle of fences, and four pagoda gates. On the pedestal, a hemispherical bowl is built, that is, the tower body, the outer masonry of the tower, the inner solid soil, and the buried relics container.
Hu Shi's narration of the "Three Beasts Blocking the Wave" is laying the groundwork for the situation. Since it is a building where the relics are buried after the death of the monk, it is naturally a sacred space. In such a spatial place, it becomes possible to communicate with the gods and realize their own transcendence. The good deeds of the three beasts in helping the beggar old man are a sacred story that once happened in this sacred space. In particular, the Buddha's incarnation of the white rabbit in his previous life was the most shocking. Such sacred places have a kind of "inducing" nature with sacred stories. The Tang monk said, "When I was a child reading the Miscellaneous Treasure Sutra and the Sutra of Laws and Laws, I knew the cause of this white rabbit's sacrifice. Who wants to come back today and worship this thousand-year-old pagoda! How I don't rejoice! "In religious practice, the path of the practitioner's practice is to be sanctified and sanctified, to see the wise and the wise. The holy relics and sacraments laid by Hu Shi were to elicit the holy deeds of the Tang monks below.
Hu Shi rewrote the eighty-first difficulty
Tang Monk settled into his nightmare
The main theme of the story begins with the Tang monks entering the settling. Tang Monk said to his disciple, "It is rare to enjoy this boundless moonlight on this thousand-year-old pagoda." The three of you may go down first to guard the scrolls and rest in the cave door under the tower. I'm going to sit on this tower and fix my heart. ”
Meditation, which aims to absorb the distractions of the mind and concentrate on one state, is the means of the necessary process of practicing bodhisattva behavior. In the history of the development of Buddhism, monks have meditated more often than in the remote and secluded mountain grottoes. Hu Shi's description of the scenery of the night made a good environmental setting for the Tang monks to enter the house:
It is said that the Tang monks swept the pagoda in all four places, and when they reached the top floor, the bright moon was nearly the middle of the sky; Looking at the Bhagia River in the distance, it became a shining milky way; The four fields were quiet, but they saw a dusty world rising from the vast silver mist. Tang Monk didn't feel a scream at this point.
Tang Monk was meditating and concentrating. In his concentration, he suddenly heard someone shouting in the air: "The holy monk came with me, and he went to a public case!" ”
At this point in the narrative, the first climax of the story, that is, the nightmare of the Tang monk, appeared. He saw thousands of strange-shaped ghosts and monsters, shouting in unison from all directions: "Tang Monk has returned my life!" ”
Although Tang Monk had experienced countless disasters, he couldn't help but tremble with fear at this point. Only to hear the man who came with him whisper, "The holy monk need not panic." The little god was instructed by the bodhisattva to lead the holy monk here to end a public case. These unjust souls are the ghosts of the big and small demons that the holy monks encountered on the way from the east and the west to seek the scriptures. ...... Because they have sinned against the holy monks, they will forever enter the evil path and will not be allowed to be reborn. Now they are all following the instructions of the Bodhisattva Of Jizo and have come here to ask the holy monks to settle this case. ”
In such a situation, Tang Monk had no idea for a while, and his mood was complicated. However, when he thought of the story of the white rabbit's sacrifice and the lesson of the Buddhist family's "immeasurable compassion", he slowly settled his mind and raised his hands on the stone to ask the ghosts of the public to quiet down.
Here Hu Shi's description of the mental state of the Tang monk is testing the Tang monk. He told the story of the Three Beasts through the mouth of the Tang monk in order to elicit whether a practicing monk also possessed the self-sacrificing spirit of the sages.
Next, the Tang monk wrote down the blood book and prepared to cut the flesh and give alms. This is one of the "highlight moments" of the Tang monks in the novel.
At that time, countless ghosts saw Tang Monk standing in the moonlight, solemn and kind, and each one felt an incredible power.
Hu Shi begins his violent shots:
[Tang Monk] took off his tight clothes, drew out a sword that had not been used for seventeen years, sat down on the stone, cut a piece of meat from his left leg, picked it with the tip of the knife, handed it to the ghost nearby, and smiled: "This is Tang monk meat, but it is not much, please eat each of you." ”...... Tang Monk cut off one by one, and the blood flowed down the stone, and the stone became a pool of blood in front of him. Some fish spirit turtle monsters followed the old mandarin woman and drank blood in the pool of blood. In the pan silk cave, the dry son,—— bees, bees, midges, ban mao, cattlehoppers, plasters, dragonflies,—— also flew to suck blood.
Tang Monk cut off all the flesh that could be cut off on his body, and saw that only one head was left, and one right hand had not yet been cut. At this time, the circle of moon was about to fall to the ground, and on the other side of the long river, the moonlight came flatly, illuminating the lonely monk's head, and the black shadow of that head was hundreds of miles long, dangling on top of the tens of thousands of ghosts. At this time, I overheard a cry in mid-air, "Zenya! It's true bodhisattva behavior! Tang Monk looked up, only to see that the world was shining brightly, and all the ghosts were gone.
Tang Monk Ru woke up from a big dream, calmed down, and Wu Zi sat on the side of the stone railing on the highest floor of the Three Beasts Pagoda, and did not move at all. ...... He reached out and touched his leg, and there was no trace of a cut. He wondered in his heart: Could it be that I had a nightmare in Dingzhong?
Just when I was in a state of alarm, I could only hear footsteps on the lower level of the tower, and the practitioner and the eight precepts came up, and the eight precepts shouted, "Is the master out of the way?" It's almost dawn. Tang Monk felt happy in his heart, and without saying anything broken, he stood up and went down the tower with them.
Descending from the pagoda, I saw sha monk leading a dragon horse, and standing on the side of the eight great kongs, saying in unison to the Tang monks, saying: Congratulations to the holy monks in one night, this public case has been completed, and it has become ninety-nine disasters! One thought of immeasurable compassion, three thousand Buddhas and Bodhisattvas praised in unison. Congratulations, congratulations!
Hu Shi was very clever in placing the last difficulty in the dream of the Tang monk. If Hu Shi directly let the Tang monks cut meat and feed ghosts in the real world, it would be absurd, and Hu Shi, who advocates science and pays attention to evidence, will not allow himself to do so. And it is possible to construct and make sense to orchestrate an illusory ritual in the dream state, and in such a ritual, for the Tang monks to achieve self-transcendence and reach the spiritual realm that countless sages have reached.
There are many details of tang monks entering the fixed and fixing nightmares that are worth savoring. For example, "Wu Zi sat on the side of the stone railing on the highest floor of the Three Beasts Pagoda, and did not move at all." It shows that the position of the Tang monks is at a high place. It is once recorded in the Zen Secret Essentials Sutra: "Think of yourself with the power of concentration and contemplate your own body." Such as the white jade man knot plus sitting. Illuminate everything with white bone light. When doing this. Extremely clear. Sit on this table already. Such as psychic people. Stay at the top of Mount Meru. See the four sides. There are no barriers. See yourself. It's clear. See white bones. White as snow. It is a description of the meditator's fantasy of sitting on a high platform and meditating.
The Tang monks settle down and enter the realm of meditation, in which the practitioner will be given visions that prove the purity or impurity of their karma. In Hu Shi's rewriting, the process of tang monks cutting flesh and crossing the demons is undoubtedly violent and cruel, so in fact it constitutes a "contemplation of impurity". Although the process is bloody and unclean, the usual result is the comfort and ease of the visualizer. Hu Shi wrote: "It is also strange to say that tang monks saw that these tens of thousands of hungry ghosts could eat vigorously and chewed tastefully, and he only felt happy in his heart, and he did not feel pain at all. ”
The joining formula of the candidate shaman
The meditative state of the Tang monks can also be understood as "altered States of Consciousness." Its mental imagery is presented in the form of "visualization". This kind of "vision" in a dream has a strong taste of anthropological and religious rituals. In Shamanism: Ancient Enchantment, Iliad tells the story of many shamans in a seductive tone. Before becoming a shaman, those who have the potential to become a shaman have a stage of being chosen, a process known as the "Chosen Shaman of God." Those candidate shamans usually go through a "sicknesses and dreams" ordeal process. Eliad points out that all the fascination experiences that determine future shamanic missions involve initial rituals: suffering, death, resurrection. Although the content of these ecstasy experiences is rich, it is nothing more than several themes: dismemberment and the subsequent renewal of organs and internal organs; Ascend to heaven and earth and converse with the gods and the shamans of their dead ancestors. In Buryatia, south Siberia, young people chosen by the gods or the late shaman become absent-minded, dreamy, and withdrawn. The Buryats believed that at this stage, the souls of the candidates were captured by the gods. They were taken to the palace of the gods, and their souls were guided by the ancestral shamans. Only after this initial stage can the soul return.
Mircha Iliad is the Chinese edition of Shamanism: Ancient Enchantment
A Yakut shaman recounts the story of a future shaman who "died" and lay in a tent for three days without eating or drinking. At first, the candidate underwent three rituals during which his body was dismembered. Another shaman gave a more detailed introduction. The candidate's limbs are cut off and separated by an iron hook; Bones are washed, flesh is scraped off, bodily fluids are lost. After this operation, all the bones were collected and chained together. Another Yakut shaman recounts the equally thrilling experience of fascination. The evil spirit carried his soul to the underworld, where he was imprisoned for three years. His head was chopped off, cut into pieces, and subsequently distributed to evil spirits with different diseases. Only after this severe test can the future shaman have the ability to heal. His bones were covered with new flesh and were endowed with new blood.
There is also a very famous Shamanic initiation of the Yakutites. The future shaman first dreamed of himself being guided down to a cave by his ancestral gods. In the cave, a naked man is pulling a bellows, and a cauldron with "half the size of the earth" is placed on the stove. When the naked man saw the shaman inductee coming in, he clamped his head down with fire tongs and chopped his body into pieces and steamed it in a pot. Afterwards, he was forged on the anvil and beat his head. Finally the naked man fished out the corpse pieces from the pot and put them together, and said to him: You have a new life, you can become a shaman and heal people. At this time, the future shaman regained consciousness from the madness and has since gained the mana of a wizard.
There are many depictions of such candidate shamans becoming fascinated in the book Shamanism. Fascination is a deep spiritual experience and a test for a candidate shaman. Like the Tang monks, the candidate shaman watched his own severance ceremony the whole time, but according to the description of the person concerned, he was not shocked by the cruelty of the process. We can see the "vision" of the Tang monks after they have been settled as a "joining style". Its essence is a "death and regeneration" of the subject.
In shamanism, bones have an important symbolic meaning, and life can be regenerated from bones. Whether it is a human or an animal, its "soul" resides in the bones, and through the bones it can regenerate life. Therefore, in the enchantment ceremony of the candidate shaman, the candidate often goes through the process of "rebirth". As Mary Ellen Miller, a scholar of the Maya, once pointed out, "X-ray perspectives can be used to emphasize people in another identity." In many types of prehistoric art (including faience, petroglyphs, etc.), there is X-ray perspective art, which is presented in the form of skeletons or internal organs. In the "vision" after the Tang monks were settled, the Tang monks cut the flesh and crossed the group of demons, cutting the monk's head that only had bones and lone edges left, which really exposed the bones completely. The behavior of the Tang monks is also exactly consistent with the "skeletalization" that Buddha Shakyamuni also experienced. In some religious figures that represent Shakyamuni, Shakyamuni is usually thin and skeletal. This is an image reproduction of the strictest asceticism against him. His asceticism lasted for six years, vowing to cut off all food, remaining motionless, resembling a skeleton, in stark contrast to the plump witch who accompanied him in an artistic image. This is a way of achieving skeletalization through self-starvation. The skeletal prominence indicates that he is at a moment of breakthrough and transformation in the realm of life. Therefore, Hu Shi borrowed the Tang monk's mouth and said, "It is not that the poor monks are reluctant to give up this stinky skin bag." When the Tang monk cut the flesh to the end and only the bones were left, the Tang monk only felt happy in his heart, which was the spiritual "going to the old and the new", which was "clear mind", that is, "enlightenment".
At this point, Tang Monk survived the last difficulty and turned into nine or nine disasters! One thought is immeasurable compassion! The group of demons seen by The Tang monks in their concentration can also be understood as the demons of the Tang monks, and the Tang monks realize the construction and transcendence of their own spirit by cutting flesh (deconstructing). The candidate shaman is also deconstructed in the joiner, and then reshaped to achieve transcendence.
Shakyamuni (Kyzyl Caves)
According to Iliad' research, as an ancient primitive religion, many of the concepts of shamanism have influenced Bon, Lamaism, and Buddhism. Both meditation and shamanism "joined" enter into a "nother state of consciousness," reflecting the invisible chain of Buddhism and shamanism at several levels of thought and practice.
Editor-in-Charge: Huang Xiaofeng
Proofreader: Yan Zhang