| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 中國文學研究所 === 106 === Through an analysis of Su Shi’s works about dreams, this thesis aimed to explore Su Shi’s reflections over waking and dream experiences, as well as his experience and psychological state.
This study found that even before being demoted and banished to Huangzhou, Su Shi had already grasped the dreamlike nature of life. Therefore, he quickly realized that the dream dimension has a different consciousness from that of the waking dimension. By turning the waking experience into a dreamlike one, Su Shi created a perfectly calm, clear, and tranquil realm, which seemed to be the perfect place to calm the mind and soothe the spirit. The waking dimension represents earthly life, full of complexity and impurity, a realm he must avoid and keep distance from.
When Su Shi was first banished to Huangzhou because of the Crow Terrace Poetry Trial, he experienced frustration. The whole ordeal made him feel very depressed and weak. His dream dimension was no longer lucid and peaceful, and he was often haunted by fear and disappointments, which reflected his subconsciousness. When awake, he felt at a loss; he was furious but simultaneously had a passive attitude towards the unlucky twist his life had taken. During the last years of his exile in Huangzhou, he started having unusual dreams, which revealed a form of inner communication between his consciousness and subconscious. This eventually caused Su Shi to attain peace and enabled him to go back to earthly life, that is the waking dimension, with renewed energy and vigor. Thereafter, the dream experience acquired a new meaning.
During the period known as the Yuan You Political Transition, Su Shi reached the peak of his career as a government official. However, external influences caused him to hold on to the waking dimension too tightly; consequently, he focused more on pragmatic affairs, thus revealing an increasingly secular approach to life. When the conflict between the three parties Luo, Shu, and Shuo became increasingly critical, Su Shi felt that he could not stay at the imperial court much longer. He repeatedly asked the central government for a posting as a local official elsewhere. At that point, he finally relinquished the waking dimension he had so endeared until then. Consequently, he started to become obsessed with the dream dimension. During this period, Su Shi had not attained the wisdom necessary to detach from both dimensions. After the Yuan You Political Transition, Su Shi gradually comprehended the inseparable unity of the two dimensions; he came to understand that this unity is attainable only by being completely absorbed in the current life, living in it, and knowing one’s destiny and believing in fate, with a calm, detached, and unperturbed attitude towards life and all its vicissitudes. During the Shao Sheng period, with a new party functioning as the government, he was demoted and banished to three other provinces in succession. He again had to endure the hardships and challenges of being sent into exile. At this point, Su Shi was more broadminded. Through his dream of Qiu-Chi, he constructed a space of spiritual freedom and established a set of special psychological mechanisms. He believed himself to be a gifted person sent by Heaven to live among mortal human beings and endure all kinds of suffering. From this perspective, his exile to Huizhou was a part of a bigger plan: he was meant to go to the area of Mt. Luofu, where Ge Hong had once practiced Taoism, to put his young aspiration into practice. Subsequently, when he was banished to Hainan Province, he felt onestep closer to death, which implies becoming closer and ultimately return to the immortal realm.
However, all of these spiritual meanderings did not yet surpass the realm of the “heart.” Indeed, the hardest domain to dominate is the heart itself, which tends to follow external events restlessly. In his dream of Qiu-Chi, Su Shi seems to attain ultimate freedom of the mind; however, once he awakens from the dream, he realizes that it is all void. Every time the poet praises himself as being an immortal celestial being, it turns out to be a mere self-consolation for the emptiness he is surrounded by and the void he feels deep in his heart. Hence, Su Shi’s state of mind could not transcend in a genuine and authentic way, so as to attain a dimension in which the dream and waking dimensions coexist in a pure and inseparable unity.
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