How to understand the artistic conception of the Chinese painting Banana in the Snow

It is true that Wang Wei is a Buddhist. According to historical records, he "takes meditation as his career" all day long. No matter his poems and paintings, there is a strong Buddhist thought. As far as his paintings are concerned, works showing Buddhist themes, such as Vimalakīrti Elephant and Mount Huangmei, have long been very famous in history. Half of the axial paintings of Wang Wei 126 collected by the imperial court at that time recorded in Xuanhe Painting Spectrum were Buddhist themes. In connection with the enlightenment of the above-mentioned cold-lent night talk, we feel it necessary to discuss the relationship between "banana in the snow" and Buddhist thought.

Here, we might as well take a look at the two records in the biography of the monk, one of which is found in Volume 16, Biography of Tao [Sun Xin], which describes the strange scene after the death of Taoist [Sun Xin]:

It snowed that night, and on Wednesday, I was sweeping the road and burying bodies in the mountains. At night, there are different flowers, which flow around the body and gush out from the ground. The stem is one or two feet long, fresh and brilliant, like the color of winter, but the shape is completely different.

Another article can be found in Volume 26 of Fa Rong Chuan, which says:

2 1 year 1 1 month, "Hokkekyo" under the rock. When the snow is full of steps, the dharma keeps flowing, and there are two flowers in the frozen ice, like hibiscus, but as gold as gold.

The situation described in these two stories is very similar to the artistic conception of "banana in the snow", aiming to show that the diligence and lofty deeds of Buddhists can be "perceived by mystery", thus producing a rare wonder. Because they are all about blooming in the snow, which provides clues for us to understand the meaning of "banana in the snow".

It is particularly noteworthy that more direct materials about the meaning of "banana in the snow" can be found in Wang Wei's own works:

Volume 24 of Notes on Wang Youcheng's Collection contains an Inscription on Master Jing Jue of Da 'an National Temple in Datang, which records monk Jing Jue's practice of Buddhism and Taoism. The inscription praised the monk's determination to become a Buddha, and one of them said:

The host rummaged under his clothes before going out. Talent and integrity, half a word is the enemy of many smells; It's not just a moment's fatigue that stays in the sacred tire. Nine times, follow the trend and stay; 3. Go out of the house, bask in the sun, bask in the moon, and take photos regularly.

Immediately below it, there is a very important sentence:

Snow mountain boy, regardless of the body of banana; Yunbichu wants to make a kind of sugarcane.

Coincidentally, it corresponds to "banana in the snow". Isn't the so-called "snow mountain boy, banana in the snow" written in words?

Zhao Diancheng, the annotator of Wang Youcheng Notes, made a bet on the article Snow Mountain Boy:

The Buddha entered the snow mountain to practice, so he was called' Snow Mountain Boy'. An overview of the stone family: on wisdom, cloud, Sanskrit dove Moroga and Qin Yan's son. ..... If the Bodhisattva is a boy from the beginning, give up lust and even Bodhi.

Zhao Zhu's notes are very sketchy. In fact, the story of Snow Mountain Boy can be found in the fourteenth volume of Nirvana Sutra, which tells that when Sakyamuni was practicing Bodhisattva, he met Luo Cha on the snow mountain and jumped off the cliff for half a mile, so he was called Snow Mountain Boy or Snow Mountain Boy.

Zhao Zhu is classified as "The Body of Bananas";

Nirvana Sutra: weak as reed, ylang ylang, water foam, banana tree. There is another cloud: life is actually dry, and so are all beings.

This footnote means that this person is empty and unreal. Because from the Buddhist point of view, everything in the world is not objective and true, even the human body is not an entity, and its essence is empty. The Nirvana Sutra quoted above is to explain the emptiness of the human body with things that are not very solid, such as reeds and plantains, and to promote Buddhist idealistic theological theory with the help of images.

It can be seen that these two sentences in Wang Wei's Ming of Master Jingjue show this meaning. "Snow Mountain Boy" means firmly practicing Buddhism and Taoism; "Ignoring the banana body" is to give up your "empty body" categorically. And this set of ideas is very consistent with Wei Wang's own behavior. "Biography of Wang Wei in the Old Tang Dynasty" said: "All Uighur brothers worship Buddha, live in constant food to prepare blood, grow fast in their later years, wear no clothes, and have a good literary talent." The reason why he painted banana in the snow in Yuan An's Sleeping Snow Map is by no means an accidental brainwave, but a deep imprint of his own thoughts. The painting "Banana in the Snow" embodies the inner ideological essence from the external perceptual form of its artistic image, which should conform to the meaning of "a teenager in a snowy mountain, regardless of his body". /f？ Kz=959973055 Here is a detailed introduction.