China and the West

Aufführung von Twelfth night von William Shakespeare in der Übersetzung von Cao Weifeng [ID D23707] durch das Shanghai dian ying yan yuan ju tuan (Shanghai Film Studio) unter der Regie von Lin Zhihao.

Film : Wang zi fu chou ji = 王 子復仇記 = Hamlet von William Shakespeare, mit Laurence Olivier, synchronisiert von Sun Daolin nach der Übersetzung von Bian Zhilin [ID D23517].

Film : Ta de yi sheng = 她的一生 [The story of her life] unter der Regie von Li Chenfeng und dem Drehbuch von Li Chenfeng nach Maupassant, Guy de. Une vie. In : Gil Blas ; 27 févr. (1883). = (Paris : V. Havard, 1883).

Film : Yi ye feng liu = 一夜风流 [The unforgettable night] unter der Regie von Bu Wancang nach Tolstoy, Leo. Voskresenie. (Purleigh, Maldon : V. Tchertkoff, 1899).

Film : Sheng si lian = 生死恋 [Love in life and death] unter der Regie von Bai Ke nach Dumas, Alexandre fils. La Dame aux camélias. Vol. 1-2. (Paris : A. Cadot ; Bruxelles : Lebègue, 1848).

Film : Mu zi lei = 母子泪 [Mother's tears] unter der Regie von Zong You nach der japanischen Übersetzung Yureito von Kuroiwa Ruikô, einer Adaptation von Williamson, Alice Muriel. A woman in grey. (London : G. Routledge & Sons, 1898).

Wang, Daoqian. Guan yu Rang-Baoluo Sate. In : Wen hui bao ; 10. Mai (1958).
Er schreibt : « Essentiellement, la philosophie existentialiste de Jean-Paul Sartre et ses pièces théâtrales, oeuvres romanesques et essais littéraires inspirés de cette pensée sont réactionnaires, anti-socialistes et donc anti-humanistes. »

Yi wen ; no 6, 12 (1958).
Es steht über Albert Camus : « L'organe suédois de l'association de l'O.N.U. vient de publier und commentaire du professeur suédois A.F.H. lequel a critiqué le système adopté pour délivrer le Prix Nobel. Ce professeur a indiqué qu'en 1957, avant qu'Albert Camus ait obtenu le Prix Nobel, 'Le Soir de Stockhölm' avait déjà fait paraître un autre article qui s'opposait à ce système irrationnel. »
Yi wen défendait le le réalisme socialiste et la littérature soviétique contre Albert Camus : « Non seulement Camus a cité uniquement le nom de Pasternak pour le Prix Nobel, mais encore, Camus le qualifiait de grand écrivain. » Pour la Chine, Boris Pasternak était un 'traître à la Révolution d'octobre', à cause de son roman 'Le docteur Jivago'. Un 'personnage négatif est immortalisé par l'auteur. »

Erwähnung in Lian he bao dass Albert Camus 1957 den Nobelpreis erhalten hat.

Marián Gálik studiert an der Beijing-Universität.

Film : Ren hai gu hong [The orphan] = 人海孤鴻. Adaptation von Oliver Twist von Charles Dickens in Hong Kong.

Liang, Shiqiu. Tan Xu Zhimo [ID D27730].
Er schreibt : "A dominant feature of Thomas Hardy’s short poems is that they open with some minor scenarios in a rather simple tone but conclude with a tragic irony and this skill is picked up and successfully applied by Xu Zhimo to some of his poems."

Zhang, Xuexin. Lun xia lü di Bolangte de Jian Ai [ID D27992].
Sammlung von drei Artikeln von Professoren der Beijing-Universität und einer chinesischen Übersetzung eines russischen Vorwortes zur englischen Ausgabe von Jane Eyre von Charlotte Brontë 1958.
The basis tone oft he pamphlet was to criticize the capitalist social ideology conveyed in the novel in case that the Chinese readers may be corrupted and distracted from the socialist construction : 'It is hard for our generation to comprehend the happiness of love which the writer described in the novel. We are used to connecting the personal happiness with the collective and the whole society'. Jane Eyre could never find the right way to solve female problems completely for she did not devot herself into the course of working people.

In 1958 Ezra Pound had been released from St Elizabeths. Around 1960, he was entering a period of a confused, personal despair deeper than any he had lived through before, one produced perhaps by the combined shock of finding himself in a country, Italy, considerably altered by technology and events from the one he had left in 1945, and of finding himself, as if suddenly, old. The long period of silence that began about this time - "I did not enter into silence, silence captured me" – continued to his death in 1972. Pound was doubtful in this period about the wisdom of his faith in Confucianism, as he doubted perhaps all his former certainties. He doubted the effectiveness of adopting Confucianism as a platform from which to teach. He did resign from his lifelong, informal profession as teacher.
In 1962 Pound explained to James Laughlin, that he was silent 'because no one would listen to his economic ideas'.

David Rafael Wang beginnt sein Studium am San Francisco State College und erhält den M.A.

Han, Shan. The cold mountain poems. Transl. by Gary Snyder. [ID D29190].
Preface to the Poems of Han-shan
by Lu Ch'iu-yin, Governor of T'ai Prefecture
No one knows what sort of man Han-shan was. There are old people who knew him: they say he was a poor man, a crazy character. He lived alone seventy Li (23 miles) west of the T'ang-hsing district of T'ien-t'ai at a place called Cold Mountain. He often went down to the Kuo-ch'ing Temple. At the temple lived Shih'te, who ran the dining hall. He sometimes saved leftovers for Han-shan, hiding them in a bamboo tube. Han-shan would come and carry it away; walking the long veranda, calling and shouting happily, talking and laughing to himself. Once the monks followed him, caught him, and made fun of him. He stopped, clapped his hands, and laughed greatly - Ha Ha! - for a spell, then left.
He looked like a tramp. His body and face were old and beat. Yet in every word he breathed was a meaning in line with the subtle principles of things, if only you thought of it deeply. Everything he said had a feeling of Tao in it, profound and arcane secrets. His hat was made of birch bark, his clothes were ragged and worn out, and his shoes were wood. Thus men who have made it hide their tracks: unifying categories and interpenetrating things. On that long veranda calling and singing, in his words of reply Ha Ha! - the three worlds revolve. Sometimes at the villages and farms he laughed and sang with cowherds. Sometimes intractable, sometimes agreeable, his nature was happy of itself. But how could a person without wisdom recognize him?
I once received a position as a petty official at Tan-ch'iu. The day I was to depart, I had a bad headache. I called a doctor, but he couldn't cure me and it turned worse. Then I met a Buddhist Master named Feng-kan, who said he came from the Kuo-ch'ing Temple of T'ien-t'ai especially to visit me. I asked him to rescue me from my illness. He smiled and said, "The four realms are within the body; sickness comes from illusion. If you want to do away with it, you need pure water." Someone brought water to the Master, who spat it on me. In a moment the disease was rooted out. He then said, "There are miasmas in T'ai prefecture, when you get there take care of yourself." I asked him, "Are there any wise men in your area I could look on as Master?" He replied, "When you see him you don't recognize him, when you recognize him you don't see him. If you want to see him, you can't rely on appearances. Then you can see him. Han-shan is a Manjusri (one who has attained enlightenment and, in a future incarnation, will become Buddha) hiding at Kuo-sh'ing. Shih-te is a Samantabbhadra (Bodhisattva of love). They look like poor fellows and act like madmen. Sometimes they go and sometimes they come. They work in the kitchen of the Kuo-ch'ing dining hall, tending the fire." When he was done talking he left.
I proceeded on my journey to my job at T'ai-chou, not forgetting this affair. I arrived three days later, immediately went to a temple, and questioned an old monk. It seemed the Master had been truthful, so I gave orders to see if T'ang-hsing really contained a Han-shan and Shih-te. The District Magistrate reported to me: "In this district, seventy li west, is a mountain. People used to see a poor man heading from the cliffs to stay awhile at Kuo-ch'ing. At the temple dining hall is a similar man named Shih-te." I made a bow, and went to Kuo-ch'ing. I asked some people around the temple, "There used to be a Master named Feng-kan here, Where is his place? And where can Han-shan and Shih-te be seen?" A monk named T'ao-ch'iao spoke up: "Feng-kan the Master lived in back of the library. Nowadays nobody lives there; a tiger often comes and roars. Han-shan and Shih-te are in the kitchen." The monk led me to Feng-kan's yard. Then he opened the gate: all we saw was tiger tracks. I asked the monks Tao-ch'iao and Pao-te, "When Feng-kan was here, what was his job?" The monks said, :He pounded and hulled rice. At night he sang songs to amuse himself." Then we went to the kitchen, before the stoves. Two men were facing the fire, laughing loudly. I made a bow. The two shouted Ho! at me. They struck their hands together -Ha Ha! - great laughter. They shouted. Then they said, "Feng-kan - loose-tounged, loose-tounged. You don't recognize Amitabha, (the Bodhisattva of mercy) why be courteous to us?" The monks gathered round, surprise going through them. ""Why has a big official bowed to a pair of clowns?" The two men grabbed hands and ran out of the temple. I cried, "Catch them" - but they quickly ran away. Han-shan returned to Cold Mountain. I asked the monks, "Would those two men be willing to settle down at this temple?" I ordered them to find a house, and to ask Han-shan and Shih-te to return and live at the temple.
I returned to my district and had two sets of clean clothes made, got some incense and such, and sent it to the temple - but the two men didn't return. So I had it carried up to Cold Mountain. The packer saw Han-shan, who called in a loud voice, "Thief! Thief!" and retreated into a mountain cave. He shouted, "I tell you man, strive hard" - entered the cave and was gone. The cave closed of itself and they weren't able to follow. Shih-te's tracks disappeared completely..
I ordered Tao-ch'iao and the other monks to find out how they had lived, to hunt up the poems written on bamboo, wood, stones, and cliffs - and also to collect those written on the walls of people's houses. There were more than three hundred. On the wall of the Earth-shrine Shih-te had written some gatha (Buddhist verse or song). It was all brought together and made into a book.
I hold to the principle of the Buddha-mind. It is fortunate to meet with men of Tao, so I have made this eulogy.

The cold mountain poems
1
The path to Han-shan's place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges - hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs - unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?
2
In a tangle of cliffs, I chose a place -
Bird paths, but no trails for me.
What's beyond the yard?
White clouds clinging to vague rocks.
Now I've lived here - how many years -
Again and again, spring and winter pass.
Go tell families with silverware and cars
"What's the use of all that noise and money?"
3
In the mountains it's cold.
Always been cold, not just this year.
Jagged scarps forever snowed in
Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist.
Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,
Leaves begin to fall in early August.
And here I am, high on mountains,
Peering and peering, but I can't even see the sky.
4
I spur my horse through the wrecked town,
The wrecked town sinks my spirit.
High, low, old parapet walls
Big, small, the aging tombs.
I waggle my shadow, all alone;
Not even the crack of a shrinking coffin is heard.
I pity all those ordinary bones,
In the books of the Immortals they are nameless.
5
I wanted a good place to settle:
Cold Mountain would be safe.
Light wind in a hidden pine -
Listen close - the sound gets better.
Under it a gray haired man
Mumbles along reading Huang and Lao.
For ten years I havn't gone back home
I've even forgotten the way by which I came.
6
Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail.
In summer, ice doesn't melt
The rising sun blurs in swirling fog.
How did I make it?
My heart's not the same as yours.
If your heart was like mine
You'd get it and be right here.
7
I settled at Cold Mountain long ago,
Already it seems like years and years.
Freely drifting, I prowl the woods and streams
And linger watching things themselves.
Men don't get this far into the mountains,
White clouds gather and billow.
Thin grass does for a mattress,
The blue sky makes a good quilt.
Happy with a stone under head
Let heaven and earth go about their changes.
8
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the word's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?
9
Rough and dark - the Cold Mountain trail,
Sharp cobbles - the icy creek bank.
Yammering, chirping - always birds
Bleak, alone, not even a lone hiker.
Whip, whip - the wind slaps my face
Whirled and tumbled - snow piles on my back.
Morning after morning I don't see the sun
Year after year, not a sign of spring.
10
I have lived at Cold Mountain
These thirty long years.
Yesterday I called on friends and family:
More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs.
Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;
Forever flowing, like a passing river.
Now, morning, I face my lone shadow:
Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.
11
Spring water in the green creek is clear
Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white
Silent knowledge - the spirit is enlightened of itself
Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.
12
In my first thirty years of life
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn't make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I'm back at Cold Mountain:
I'll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.
13
I can't stand these bird songs
Now I'll go rest in my straw shack.
The cherry flowers are scarlet
The willow shoots up feathery.
Morning sun drives over blue peaks
Bright clouds wash green ponds.
Who knows that I'm out of the dusty world
Climbing the southern slope of Cold Mountain?
14
Cold Mountain has many hidden wonders,
People who climb here are always getting scared.
When the moon shines, water sparkles clear
When the wind blows, grass swishes and rattles.
On the bare plum, flowers of snow
On the dead stump, leaves of mist.
At the touch of rain it all turns fresh and live
At the wrong season you can't ford the creeks.
15
There's a naked bug at Cold Mountain
With a white body and a black head.
His hand holds two book scrolls,
One the Way and one its Power.
His shack's got no pots or oven,
He goes for a long walk with his shirt and pants askew.
But he always carries the sword of wisdom:
He means to cut down sensless craving.
16
Cold Mountain is a house
Without beans or walls.
The six doors left and right are open
The hall is sky blue.
The rooms all vacant and vague
The east wall beats on the west wall
At the center nothing.
Borrowers don't bother me
In the cold I build a little fire
When I'm hungry I boil up some greens.
I've got no use for the kulak
With his big barn and pasture -
He just sets up a prison for himself.
Once in he can't get out.
Think it over -
You know it might happen to you.
17
If I hide out at Cold Mountain
Living off mountain plants and berries -
All my lifetime, why worry?
One follows his karma through.
Days and months slip by like water,
Time is like sparks knocked off flint.
Go ahead and let the world change -
I'm happy to sit among these cliffs.
18
Most T'ien-t'ai men
Don't know Han-shan
Don't know his real thought
And call it silly talk.
19
Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease -
No more tangled, hung up mind.
I idly scribble poems on the rock cliff,
Taking whatever comes, like a drifting boat.
20
Some critic tried to put me down -
"Your poems lack the Basic Truth of Tao."
And I recall the old timers
Who were poor and didn't care.
I have to laugh at him,
He misses the point entirely,
Men like that
Ought to stick to making money.
21
I've lived at Cold Mountain - how many autumns.
Alone, I hum a song - utterly without regret.
Hungry, I eat one grain of Immortal medicine
Mind solid and sharp; leaning on a stone.
22
On top of Cold Mountain the lone round moon
Lights the whole clear cloudless sky.
Honor this priceless natural treasure
Concealed in five shadows, sunk deep in the flesh.
23
My home was at Cold Mountain from the start,
Rambling among the hills, far from trouble.
Gone, and a million things leave no trace
Loosed, and it flows through galaxies
A fountain of light, into the very mind -
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:
Now I know the pearl of the Buddha nature
Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.
24
When men see Han-shan
They all say he's crazy
And not much to look at -
Dressed in rags and hides.
They don't get what I say
And I don't talk their language.
All I can say to those I meet:
"Try and make it to Cold Mountain."

Sekundärliteratur
2007
Robin Chen-hsing Tsai : Han Shan inspired Snyder primarily through his economy of form and spiritual-ecological theme. Snyder attempts, in translating 'Cold mountain' and more generally Eastern thought, not to superimpose a hierarchical relationship between the original and the simulacrum : his translation project is note purely a textual operation based on cross-referencing. He makes clear that Han Shan is the very embodiment of a cranky and eccentric poet-hermit who traverses the boundary between the sacred and the profane. This hermit's poems not only treat of the poet himself but of his relation to the physical environment of Cold Mountain and his state of mind. The second theme is that of Han Shan the man's relationship to the environment and the third theme contains the tripartite concept of Han Shan the man, his relationship with the environment and his state of mind. Like Han Shan, Snyder is looking for 'one mind' embedded 'in the flesh' in its true nature, as represented by the moon, the central image in the poem.
2009
Joan Qionglin Tang : Han Shan's Cold mountain poems may be heralded as condensed collection of Chinese philosophical ideas drawn from Confucianism, Daoism and Chinese Buddhism (including different branches of Chan Buddhism). Han Shan's spiritual journey to Cold Mountain is often seen as a reflection of the ancient Chinese literati's pilgrimage to Chan enlightenment. Han Shan's poems seem more colloquial, laconic and direct, but they still follow some of the main characteristics of Chinese classical poetry. The nature-Chan images used in his Chan poems not only make the ineffable Chan or 'dao' explicable, but also endow the poems with a high degree of literary virtuosity. Through translation, the legend of Han Shan and his poems were brought to such countries as Japan, Korea and the United States of America. The hermit-poet's name, Han Shan, has become synonymous with the recluse-rebel against the mainstream culture, and also with the 'dao'-Chan mountain spirit, whilst the place name, Cold Mountain, is often used to symbolize a nature-Chan world of peace, transcendence and enlightenment. In China, Han Shan is idolized as an incarnation of Manjusri ('keen awareness', 'the bodhisattva of wisdom') with the sword of wisdom.
Arthur Waley translated twenty-seven of Han Shan's poems in 1954, Gary Snyder twenty-four translations in 1958 and Burton Watson one hundred poems in 1962. But neither has proved as influential as Snyders translation. Waley and Watson looked at the poems only as translators, whereas Snyder responded to them also as a poet, as a Mahayana Buddhist and as a mountain hiker. He adopted a principle of selection and a visualization process in his translation to invent his own mentor in the person of Han Shan. His translations are all related to Han Shan, to Cold Mountain, and to a spiritual quest for Chan enlightenment. Through his translation, he discovered that Han Shan had fascinated him from childhood. Han Shan's life on Cold Mountain seemed to have overlapped with Snyder's early life in the American western mountains. As a Mahayana Buddhist, he was attracted by Chan enlightenment in Han Shan's Chan poems, Han Shan secluded life and Han Shan's meditative practice on Cold Mountain. He melded Han Shan harmoniously into his translation and later into some of his works, even into his life. Many years later, he still admitted that 'a bit of a Han Shan spirit' was present in him and others.
The eccentric life of the hermit-poet Han Shan, the vernacular style of Hans Shan's poems and the nature-Chan world of enlightenment on Cold Mountain accord with Snyder's interests, personality, and aims as a poet. His successful translation encouraged him to start his own spiritual quest for Cold Mountain, which symbolizes the literary mountain of ecopoetry for him. The comparative study of Snyder and Han Shan has been confined mainly to Snyder's translation techniques, or to the Chinese grammatical influence on Snyder's early works.
Both Han Shan and Snyder are not purists in pursuit of Chan enlightenment in their poetics. Han Shan's spiritual quest underwent a rather complicated process, the workings of which were enmeshed with a wide range of Chinese religious or philosophical ideas. He started from Confucianism, but resorted to Daoism after his failure in the Civil Service Examination. He soon accepted Indian Buddhism, and then absorbed the essence of Daoism and Chinese Buddhism, finally turning to Chan Buddhism. Snyder's eclecticism is quite different, for Snyder considers all Buddhist doctrines as 'one teaching'. Although he is a Zen practitioner in his daily life and claims himself as a Mahayana Buddhist, he never refutes other religious teachings in his work, such as Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism. Snyder's principle is to interweave these teachings with archaic values in an eclectic way to rebuild his sense of 'wholeness'. This principle encourages him not to exclude alternative and even opposing Buddhist sects from inclusion within his system of thought.
It was the mountain spirit of the poets that linked Han Shan and Snyder so tightly together that Snyder became an exemplary representative of an American Han Shan.
Snyder's poetic journey to Cold Mountain can be divided into three stages : pre-turning, turning and returning. This division is mainly based on his acceptance of Han Shan and Chan. It also assumes that Snyder as a poet has achieved a state of enlightenment after his self-cultivation, a 'kensho' in Japanese Zen terminology.
2011
Cong Zihang : One reason that Snyder chose to translate Han-Shan's poems is that these poems evoke memories of his childhood. The other reason is that the harmony and concord in Taoism echo with his ecological view, Snyder established 'depth ecology', which 'contains the concept of energy transformation, of that being a link in the food chain, human beings should be thankful for their food, and of that animals, plants, and minerals are equal to human beings'. Furthermore, concepts of 'impermanence, no-self, the inevitability of suffering, connectedness, emptiness, the vastness of mind, and a way to realization' propagated by Buddhism have too much effect on Snyder. Some of his researches show that it is Buddhism that further strengthens his aspiration for equality among humans and harmony between human and environment. Similar to ancient Chinese officials who served the society, or Taoists who withdraw from society to live leisurely in nature, Snyder combines 'meditation, morality and wisdom' and he himself is the perfect embodiment of the Confucian concept of 'self-cultivating, family-regulating, state-ordering and then nation governing'.

Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma bums.[ID D29211]. (8)
Sekundärliteratur
Real-life person / Character name
Jack Kerouac = Ray Smith
Gary Snyder = Japhy Ryder
Allen Ginsberg = Alvah Goldbook
Neal Cassady = Cody Pomeray
Philip Whalen = Warren Coughlin
Locke McCorkle = Sean Monahan
John Montgomery = Henry Morley
Philip Lamantia = Francis DaPavia
Michael McClure = Ike O'Shay
Peter Orlovsky = George
Kenneth Rexroth = Rheinhold Cacoethes
Alan Watts = Arthur Whane
Caroline Kerouac = Nin
Carolyn Cassady = Evelyn
Claude Dalenberg = Bud Diefendorf
Natalie Jackson = Rosie Buchanan

Quellen :
Aiken, Charles Francis. India and Buddhism. (New York, N.Y. : Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, 1917).
Asvaghosa. The Buddhacarita ; or, Acts of the Buddha. (Calcutta : Baptist Mission Press, 1935-1936).
Buddhaghosha. Visuddhi magga.
Burlingame, E.W. Buddhist parables. (New Haven, Conn. : [s.n.], 1922).
Carus, Paul. The gospel of the Buddha. (Chicago, Ill. : Open Court, 1915).
Digha nikaya. The dialogues of the Buddha. (London : Hamphrey Milford, 1921).
Goddard, Dwight. A Buddhist bible. (Thetford, Vt., 1932). 2nd rev. ed. (New York, N.Y. : E.P. Dutton, 1938). [Anthologie buddhistischer Texte ; enthält Diamond sutra, Surangama sutra, Lankavatoara].
Horne, Charles F. The sacred books and early literature of the East ; vol. 18. (New York, N.Y. : Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, 1917).
Hui-neng. The platform sutra.
Lotus sutra.
Pure land sutras.
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro.
The Dhampada.
Warren, Henry Clarke. Buddhism in translations. (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University, 1909).

Kerouac dedicated his novel to Han Shan. In the novel he not only portrayed his friendship with Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Phillip Whalen and other writers, but also described in detail Snyder's translation of Han Shan's poems and a Han Shan spirit in Snyder. This novel pushed Han Shan onto the American countercultural stage as a new mysterious Beat hero, while Snyder became a new living guru for the Beat Generation.

2004
Miriam Levering : While Kerouac was in Berkeley in 1955 and 1956 he was a 'real' Buddhist, and his novel The Dharma bums, written about his friendship with Gary Snyder, gives expression to real Buddhist insights and teachings. He wanted to devote his life to expressing dharma in wariting and conveys authentic Buddhist messages.
The Dharma bumsm in which Kerouac uses himsels as a model for the narrator (Ray Smith), Gary Snyder as the model for the hero of the novel (Japhy Ryder), and Allen Ginsberg as the model for Ray Smith's poet friend (Alvah Goldbook). But that best-selling novel was largely dismissed by literary critics as superficial, a kind of playing with Buddhism on the part of an author who was irresponsible, immoral, and undisciplined.
Beginning in 1953, Kerouac spent several years in concentrated Buddhis reading, study, and practice. Buddhism became central to his life and writing for the next few years.
Much of the novel draws a contrast between Ray Smith's attempts to practice Buddhism and those of Japhy Ryder, ways that correspond to what we know of the real ways of practicing Buddhism of Kerouac and Gary Snyder. But as the narrative time of the novel moves forward, tremendously admire Japhy's way of practicing Buddhism, and as the novel progresses Ray clearly becomes influenced by it.
One of the central structural devices of the book is the contrast it draws between Ray Smith's idea of bhikkhuhood and Japhy Ryder's model of Buddhist monastic life. Ray has also been practicing the Buddhist bhikkhu's restraint of body, speech, and mind.
Japhy, according to Ray, has learned Chinese and Japanese and become an Oriental scholar and discovered the greates Dharma bums of them all, the Zen lunatics of China and Japan. He too is practicing a kind of monastic simplicity. In Berkeley, Ray visits Japhy's small house, where he studies, meditates, and work on translating the poems of Hanshan. The Chinese poet Hanshan, Ray learns, is one of Japhy's great heroes and the chief model for his Buddhist practice.
There are two themes in the book that combine to make up the book's central Buddhist message, that America can be a Pure Land, a Buddha Land.The first theme is the association between purity, American mountains, and Buddhist realization. Japhy teaches Ray that mountains are the place where buddhas and 'true emptiness-marvelous being' are most directly experiences. Japhy and Ray agree, that America, this saha-world, is far from being a Pure Land. Both are critical of what America has become in the post-war period, the cold-war period of prosperity, the rush to experience the isolated conformist life of the suburbs, 'the organization man', the threat of the bomb, and the newly available wealth of electric appliances and TV.
The Dharma bums introduced the public to a romanticized and simplified version of the ideals, teachings, and practices of Buddhism in general. It also introduced readers to the wisdcom of Zhuangzi, Hanshan, Japanese haiku poets, and Buddhist masters. It also introduced readers to the long tradition in China and Japan of celebrating a life of wandering outside the settled world, and particularly in mountains, as a purifying and revivifying rout to the deepest kinds of human understanding of the world, the void, and the self. It also introduced readers to the notion that life's deepest meaning could be found in purifying the self and benefiting others, empowered by the dharma.

2007
Wang I-chun : Jack Kerouac, one of the leading members of the Beat Generation of the 1950s, impressed his readers with his melancholic sentiment, elegant style, and the themes of migration and exile. In his fictional and non-fictional writings especially, the recurrent motifs such as mutability of life, crossing on the borderlands and the discontent about life manifest the yearnings of the American lost generation. Throughout all the descriptions of the desperation and suffering of his characters, there is always a tough quality of the American spirit bespeaking the possibility of redemption and rejoicing of modern life through religion, especially Zen Buddhism. Kerouac confesses in several interviews that he was influences by Mahayana. Kerouac wins his celebrity by publishing a series of novels with his main characters troubled by their environment, economical problems and disengaged human relationship.
The Dharma bums proclaims the incorporation of Buddhism and Christianity in the life of the main character Smith. With the experience of spending a summer in isolation on the top of the Cascade Mountains as a fire look out, Kerouac uses the theme of migration to express another breakthrough : a 'satori', or sudden enlightenment. The Dharma bums represents a migration that evolves into a journey to appreciate a multitude of human lives and spirits. The mutability of life seems to be more keen and poignant because death and suffering fall upon Kerouac's acquaintances. He entitles his novel the wandering pilgrims. The speaker for Buddhism is Japhy who explains for Ray the meanings of Dharma. Basically, Dharma is trugh law, nature and concept. The ultimate Dharma as understood by Buddhists is to learn not to be overpowered by external phenomena, but Dharma to Kerouac does involce compassion and empathy.
Awareness of death prompts the Buddha to perceive the ultimate futility of worldly concerns and pleasures. Many of Kerouac's characters are devoted to transitory pleasures and material objects, and they are depicted as foolishly believing that wealth, power, friends, and family will bring lasting happiness. However, the calling from eternity is apprehended only by those who show real compassion and love.
Kerouac's most impressive dialogue revealing Buddhist teaching appears in Japhy Ryder. In Ryder he has merged the famous Buddhist disciple, Han Shan.
Throughout his years of traveling and writing, Kerouac tries to find Buddhism as an agent of equilibrium in his life and to provide an impetus to become a poet. His characters go to wilderness, to visit the landscapes that were infrequently visited, and they tend to cross the boundaries of physical realms to be enlightened by the simplest truth of nature.
In The Dharma bums Kerouac found his heaven, his Promised Land on the cold and windy Desolation Peak and he feels the energy of a blade of grass that is anchored on a rock. Along the road leading to Dalhart of Texas, he found the land was all mesquite and waste.

2013
Bent Sorensen : Kerouac's personal struggle with his childhood catholic belief which trapped him in unpleasant feeling of guilt at not being sufficiently devout and holy also served as an impetus for his quest for alternative enlightenment. It seemed for a while that travelling might offer one way for him to gain freedom from social and subjective repressions ; then it seemed that valorizing the ideal of madness might be another form of freedom from societal norms, and a productive means to deal with the effects of childhood guilt and the public conformity saturating American life in ehe 1950s.
The form of salvation Kerouac read into Buddhism was the potential for cessation of suffering, and his subsequent concept of heaven became a mixture of a Christian paradise and a Buddhist non-place of non-existence, nirvana. Kerouac sometimes envisaged nirvana as a condition that he could inhabit while still living here on earth, usually when he was closely in touch with the land and its unpretentious inhabitants, whom Kerouac called the fellaheen.
The novel starts out with a positive valorization of both social underdogs and outcasts, the titular characters known as dharma (or truth) bums. After Smith encounters Ryder's brand of Zen Buddhism with its emphasis on the mysteries and riddles of Zen practices, the novel eulogizes the so-called Zen lunatics of ancient Japan and China and contemporary California, where Japhy pursues free love, scholarship, poetry and mountaineering as if they were one and the same thing. This philosophy and life-style soon become so attractive to Smith that he apprentices himself to Ryder in order to refine his own brand of Buddhism with its emphasis on suffering and aloneness in the void as the central human condition. Smith characterizes himself as 'a serious Buddhist'.
The clearest example shifting valorization of madness concerns a minor character named Rosie, who suddenly goes mad and commits suicide. Smith's reaction to the death of Rosie quickly becomes inscribed in a guilt narrative that undermines his declared Buddhist credo that all is an illusion and that pain is not real.
For Kerouac, it seems as if madness has the potential, in Zen terms, to express a ceasing to grasp after conventional reality, an abandonment of conventional reason, and a pointer to the ultimate reality of a person's egolessness. While the mad ones promise much by way of liberation of mind and body, they ultimately succumb to silence and death, and Kierouac's narrators fall back on a Christian paradism to explain this as punishment for sin.
In the next decade of his life, Kerouac never again systematically examined Buddhist spirituality as a remedy for existential anomie and catholic guilt, but rather turned to alcohol do dull his pains. Catholicism circumscribed and tainted Kerouac's declared Buddhist creed from the very beginning, and it is the failure of his culture hoeroes or bodhisattvas to deliver on their promise of detachment from the material world, and from the ego-constraints of conformism, that leads him back into despair on the peak of desolation.
He wrote to Philip Whalen : "I'd be ashamed to confront you and Gary [Snyder] now I've become so decadent and drunk and dontgiveashit… I'm not a Buddhist any more, I'm not anyting, I don't care. I do care about hearts… I was all prophesied on Desolation."

Snyder, Gary. After the Chinese. In : Combustion ; no 7 (Aug. 1958).
She looked like a fairy
All dressed in shaky cheesecloth,
And ran off with a fairy poet
Back to town. Her hair
Was black as a mud-snail's bowels
Her skin was like chilled grease.
My sleeves are sopping wet
From crying. My white hair scraggly
And my eyes all red. Pour another
Cup of wine for this poor
Bureaucrat stuck out in the sticks.

[Twain, Mark]. Zai ya se wang chao ting li de kang nie di ke zhou mei guo ren. Ye Weizhi yi. ID D29600].
Ye Weizhi writes : "Twain not only used sixth-century England as a reflection of European monarchies, but also employed it to allude to the capitalistic United States of America... During the first few years after the Civil War, Americans from certain classes believed that theirs was a free country where everybody had “equal chance.” As time passed, this turned out to be a baseless myth. Although slavery was abolished, the spirit of the slave-owners and their spiritual numbness proved deep-rooted. Having got what they wanted, the northern capitalists allied with reactionary southern plantation-owners"

Liu Haiming : Ye Weizhi made a penetrating analysis of the time and setting of the novel, pointing out the book's progressive points, its strong opposition to feudalism and its indictment of Roman Catholicism. He felt the novel was an extremely imaginative work ; Twain's use of the contradictions generated by the juxtaposition of characters from the Middle Ages with one from 19th-century America resulted in a wildly fantastic plot. A literary style full of change and variety also characterizes this work.

Aufführung von Hei nu hen = "Sorrows of the black slaves" = Uncle Tom's cabin von Harriet Beecher Stowe = 黑奴恨, in einer Adaptation von Ouyang Yuqian, durch das Zhong yang xi yu xue yuan shi yan ju chang (Experimental Theater of Central Academy of Drama) in Beijing, zur Feier des 50. Geburtstages des 'hua ju'.
Ouyang Yuqiao schreibt im Nachwort : "Because of differences in viewpoints, changes have to be made in the plot, especially in characterization. It is impossible for my characters to think or act in the way Mrs. Stowe prescribe in the original text. I have mad George Harris into a man tempered in suffering, full of revolutionary ideas, endowed with organizational capabilities and therefore unafraid of taking action. The Tom of my creation is sincere, honest, noble, willing to sacrifice himself for the welfare of others. He has, at the beginning, some illusions that, with his kindness, he may effect changes in his greedy master. After he is put on sale twice and cruelly treated, he begins to think of rebellion. His class consciousness is being raised. At the time of his death, he has come to realize that all bosses are Legrees, as cruel as Legree, and that blood has to be paid by blood, accounts have to be settled with the oppressors."

The portrayal of the cruel slave owners and traders follows Stowe's novel closely, but Stowe's more sympathetic characters, such as the Shelbys, George Harris and the factory owner Wilson, are also exposed as hypocrites. Tom is portrayed as loyal, kind, and self-sacrificing. Unlike Tom in the novel, who is a devout Christian unto death and forgives his tormentors, Ounyang's Tom comes to a gradual awakening as a result of his bitter experiences. When he is first sold by Shelby to pay a debt, Tom is still grateful to this old master. After Tom is beaten by his new master Simon Legree, Tom is no longer sure of his old beliefs. He says "I used to believe that all the people could be changed with kindness. Today I realize that you big slave owners cannot be changed with kindness." In contrast to Tom's generally meek submission to oppression, George Harris is full of fighting spirit. Harris's dream of being free is finally realized when he arrives in Canada with his family. Ouyang's portrayal of Harris as a freedom fighter is an affirmation of resistance as the effective means against oppression. The emphasis on resistance and class struggle in the play was in keeping with the communist ideology and China's stated foreign policy in the 1950s : to support the anti-imperialist struggles of the oppressed peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Chinese critics commented that the play succeeded in 'making the past to serve the present, and the foreign to serve the Chinese' and commended Ouyang for transforming himself from a patriotic youth of his student days into a proletarian warrior in his old age.