Journey to the west--天路历程宗教对比

The theme of “Journey to the west” comes from the story of Xuan Zang Buddhist sutras. On the surface, it seems a real tour that four persons travel over the hills and go through the rivers,in fact, all sorts of evil-doers are not existed, they are the blurred demons made by the author. Four master have a journey to the west, in other words, is a kind of behavior which transcend the reality in the religious world and arrive the ideal spiritual world. Via the heart of the practice all the way, to be sanctifying,become immortals and become Buddha, it is a state which three religions amalgamated into one, and finally, to complete the transcendence of spiritual freedom. The most characteristic of the theme about religious surpassing is the unity of “nourishing heart” of Confucianism, “clearing heart” of Taoism and “no heart” of Buddhism.Three religions are in mutual penetration and show the religious feeling of harmony between human-beings and nature.“Journey to the west”, four master achieved Buddhahood in the end, and accomplish the procession of consciousness from inhuman to mortals and than to prefect,namely, achieve the sublimation of sanctifying, becoming immortals and becoming Buddha. In this product, it make the human-being as a core, and pursue the spiritual liberation through the way of the internal transcendency model which is make “heart” as the core and the “no-myself” inner experience. For the individual, it means that theperfect personality is formed by the course of the epiphany of life, self-restraint, detached secular and reversing introspection; for the society, the final target related to the state in terms of rejuvenating will be reached by consciously self-discipline and the active participation.“Pilgrim's Progress” tells the story about a tough Christians embark on the long journey in terms of seeking eternal life, the journey is full of dangerous disasters and all kinds of temptations, but he blaze the way forward through all the difficulties and obstacles with an indomitable spirit, only wish that the guilt souls could be redeemed in the heaven. In terms of religious doctrine, “Pilgrim’s Process” is formed by the ways of rescuing related to the Christianity. To the beginning ,the leading character is burdened with a heavy bag of sin, what’s more, the character escapes the City of Destruction which is symbolizing the current life, and in the end, he could extricate himself front the heavy sin until he comes before the cross. The leading character experiences many stages, for instance, the stage of original sin, repentance,conversion, believing in the Lord, atonement, salvation and grace. After a variety of baptisms, the hero accomplishes the journey of saving his heart and becomes a convert of the Christianity. The journey is full of difficulties and obstacles, what’s more, there are a number of temptations and tests all theway. No matter the old sophisticated person’s secular, or the temptation of the prince of the devils, or the mixing situation of the vanity fair, or the place make people’s spirits droop, the leading character is struggling with all these sins and could enter in the Celestial City and atones for his crime in the last moment.The Christians who are described in the novel, is the embodiment of people seeking the ways of redeeming the soul. The author reveals the meaningful reality that human-beings are not perfect and are born with original sin through the novel, and it make people known that only by the ways of firming the belief and reflecting the consciousness about original sin, strengthening the atonement in psychological, could people absolve the sin and make the salvation of souls, in addition, obtain the value of existing and achieve the ultimate eternal realm, in this way, to make a combination between the individual soul and the divine spirit, in the meantime, accomplish the sublimation of life and the transcendence of the humanity.(REN,2007)Banyang and Wu Chengen both have an inventive mind in the using of prototypes in the process of creating the “Pilgrim’s Process” and “Journey to the west”. Through these prototypes, they showed respective ideas of creation and deepen the cultural connotation of Christianity and Buddhism. Two allegorical works describe the struggle between goodness and evil on each hero.By the deeply religious impact, Banyang and Wu Chengen use their profound culture about religions to create the products, in the meantime, they use an amount of religious alluding. Banyang borrows a lot of stories from the Bible and in the whole composition, he quotes 254 analogies, therefore, the imagery of Bible is filling the lines of the “Pilgrim’s Process”. As to the “Journey to the West”, a story related to the Buddhist monks go to the west to pilgrim, is mainly from the Chinese famous historical document named Buddhist Records and some of traditional folk fables. The characters, literary quotations and religious doctrines of Taoism ,Confucianism and Buddhism is appearing everywhere in the works. These two productions are both influenced by their religions of own countries respectively.[1]任慧君包磊《西游记》和《天路历程》的对比分析[J] 陕西科技大学2007.05。