《水浒传》与禅宗丛林制度

Water Margin and the Temple Institution of Zen Buddhism

从说话艺术脱胎而出的《水浒传》,保存了不少鲜活的宋元禅宗文化图景,对禅宗丛林制度有多方面的叙及,主要包括寺庙经济如何运行、丛林职事制度中的分工与等级、丛林仪式的严谨与次序等等。小说揭示了檀越布施与寺产租金对于禅寺运营的重要性;介绍了禅寺内僧职的等级,透露出菜头在丛林中的殊胜地位,谈及俗僧们意图争做监寺的事实;对禅堂上的"参请"与颂圣,行脚僧人的挂褡与告香等仪式、仪轨也都有着详细而有趣的描述。细究这些仪式本身的流变,则能观察出丛林制度文化的世俗化倾向。《水浒传》中的这些描写与宋元时代的《禅苑清规》、《敕修百丈清规》、《五灯会元》等,相互印证也互有弥补。只是清规类书因其琐碎、枯干,宗教人士也少有翻阅,佛教语录中对丛林清规只是侧面谈及且更为零碎,反倒是通俗文艺的《水浒传》能以一种活泛、生动的民众感知方式,把看似隐秘的宗教生活场景以一种亲切的姿态呈现至古今读者眼前。禅宗文化,在本部小说中成为具有独特审美价值的"全息文化景观",它的存在也使得《水浒传》在文化传承上的价值与功效亟待重估。

Growing out of speaking art,Water Margin preserves much vivid cultural views of Zen Buddhism in the Song-Yuan period.There are various narrations on the temple institution of Zen Buddhism,mainly including how the temple economy was operated,divisions and grades of duty system in temples,preciseness and orders of temple rites,and etc.A secularistic tendency of the temple system and culture can be observed by exploring the evolvement of these rites.The descriptions in Water Margin mutually corroborate and complement with the Zen documents in the Song-Yuan period such as The Commandments of Buddhist Temple,Baizhang's Commandments by Master Huaihai,and Selected Works of Five Records on Transmission of the Lamp.Yet the books on Buddhist commandments are too sterile,and the Zen quotations only mention the commandments incidentally.Instead,the popular fiction Water Margin amiably presents scenes of religious life seemingly covert in a way of vivid demotic perception.The Zen culture becomes a kind of'holographic cultural scene'with unique value on aesthetics in Water Margin,which demands revaluation of this fiction on its value in cultural inheritance.