Abstract
Lin Yutang advocated the thought of “It ought to be order” of Taoism of Moment in Peking, with Confucianism as foil. The overall structure of the whole book was the philosophy of Chuangtse. It indicated the particular opinions how Taoists think of property ,pleasure-seeking, life and death, love and marriage. It illustrated clearly Taoists' philosophy ideas of their optimistic and magnanimous attitudes towards life What’s more, the author’s characteristic in introducing traditional Chinese culture to the west is using the form of novel, by which he created a variety of typical and lively characters.
Key words: Lin Yutang; Moment in Peking; Taoism
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III. View of life and death
In Chuangtse's opinion, human's life and death depend on fate, that is to say "Death and life is fate." (From Chuangtse. Master). A man’s birth doesn’t act for himself, because he himself doesn’t exist at all at that time. Self comes from nothing, after one’s birth, there has been an “I”, “I” come to this world being stark naked. What am “I”, “I”’ arrival doesn’t get the permission of self. This kind of pure passive existence is fate itself. At the end of life, different from the time of birth, we have the ability to decide. But when we each face one’s death, does Death once talk it over with you and get your permission? No! It seems that we can choose a small amount of ways of death, but we cannot choose to live permanently, this, is fate, too. All the scientific rules point out the truth, the unchangeable truth. Facing the tremendous unknown field that is before birth and after death, a kind of drifting sense towards life cannot be avoided. That is the reason why Tao School sets human beings on “fate”. When LaoTzu talked about “fate”, he said, “Return to the root from which they grew. This return to the root is called quietness;
Quietness is called submission to Fate; what has submitted to Fate has became part of the always so. To know the always-so is to be illumined.”[16] Here, man’s Fate is the existing of origin. The western people say man likes a candle which shines over this world actively; while in Chinese people’s opinion, man likes a mirror, reflect on this world passively. During the process of shining over the world, human beings fight with Fate, like Faustus, struggle in the unchangeable existing condition. Struggle to the end becomes human’s fate. The traditional Chinese culture, Tao School tells people “to do nothing”. In the background of this kind of culture we do not make a detailed inquiry any more. We do not think deeply and struggle any longer. We just conform to the arrangement of Fate. We know that life is not always happy and cloudy. But the sun will always rise; tomorrow will be a better day. That is a faith. When we encounter the difficulty we should see the hope. We wait for spring in the cold winter. We await for flowers to come out again. We wait the sunshine day in the long dark. The Chinese live with this faith. This novel advocates thought of Tao School through different attitudes of different characters towards life and death as well. Life and death is eventually a natural phenomenon. But there are an immense variety of attitudes towards life and death because of different modes of thought. Though deaths of Mrs.Yao and Tseng family, we can see that Confucians take life and death too serious. They consider death is of endless pain, bitter and sorrow. Nevertheless, Tow school believes that life and death is gathering and distributing of breathes (i.e., state of atmosphere), gathering is life and distributing is death. Life and death differ from one to the other. The rotten and the magic change with each other is the law of nature circulation. Yak Si’an believes that life and death is the very law of existence. A true Taoist merely triumphs over death. He dies more c
