THE UNENCUMBERED SPIRIT: REFLECTIONS OF A CHINESE SAGE . By Hung Ying-ming . Translated by William Scott Wilson . Tokyo : Kodansha International , 2009 . Pp. 224 . $19.95 .
摘要
This book is a rarity: it serves 1) as a “coffee‐table book” for anyone interested in “Eastern Thought”; 2) as a “supplemental text” for students in courses on Asian Thought or Religion; and 3) as an enhancement of scholars' appreciation of the near‐universal acceptance of the mutual validity of “The Three Teachings” (i.e., Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism) in Late Imperial China. Wilson translates a work called Ts'ai‐ken t'an (Caigentan, “Vegetable Roots Discourse”) composed ca. 1590 by a Chinese literatus here named Hung Yung‐ming (Hong Yongming), otherwise known as Hung Tzu‐ch'eng (Hong Zicheng). Wilson says that while the Ts'ai‐ken t'an“was briefly enjoyed in China,” it “achieved its greatest popularity in Japan, where it was first printed in 1822,” and bases his translation on a Japanese version (pronounced Saikontan). It comprises 357 parallel‐prose verses on living in simplicity, rooted in life's eternal verities. The first segment deals “with the art of living in society, the second … more with man's solitude and contemplation of nature.” Wilson suggests that to late‐imperial literati like Hung, “sagehood was no longer an unattainable ideal”: as the eleventh‐century Confucian theorists Chou Tun‐i (Zhou Dunyi) and Chang Tsai (Zhang Zai) had maintained, “sagehood was now understood to be the formation of one body with Heaven and Earth and all things.” Scholars might have wished for mention of pertinent scholarly studies or previous English translations. But for students and general readers alike, this contribution is certainly worthwhile.
