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A ghost can also become a Buddha
Yifei Sun
​Ma Fine Art Drawing

           At the beginning of Unit 2, I wanted to explore some topics and directions unknown to me. Research was the central theme of Unit 2. This just gave me the motivation to discover some directions that I would not normally pay attention to. This is where I did not do well in Unit 1, so I needed to spend more time on research. This brings me to the ghost story of my hometown, Nanjing, which once suffered greatly in World War II with such tragic events as the Nanjing Massacre. More than 300,000 of our compatriots died in the Holocaust. Because these people did not die normally, in China, humans who do not die normally have the legend that they cannot be reincarnated, and usually they are only turned into lonely ghosts. So there are many rumours of hauntings in Nanjing, and these stories stayed with me growing up in the city. Because of my Buddhist beliefs, I also observed many people praying for them and the great monks chanting sutras to help them reincarnate. This also aroused my interest in ghost culture, which, to my surprise, is also deeply influenced by Buddhist culture. It has even affected neighbouring countries, especially East Asian countries like Korea and Japan.

           In summary, I began my research and I found Venerable Chuan Yi, whom I knew well as the abbot of Pi lu tample. Pi lu tample is very well known in Nanjing, and even in Chinese Buddhist circles. So I think Venerable Chuan Yi can give me the most authoritative help. Venerable Chuan Yi said that the earliest fusion of Chinese ghost culture and Buddhism was during the Wei and Jin dynasties (220BC-420BC), when Buddhism was prevalent and the earliest Gui texts came from China's native religion, Taoism. Buddhism uses ghost culture as a vehicle and tool for propaganda, while incorporating Buddhist ideas and teachings into ghost culture, effectively changing the way it propagates people's ideas of good and evil. 

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Pi lu Tample Nanjing China

        Because the Wei and Jin dynasties were war-torn, the common people were uprooted and often had to face death, but because the imperial family was so busy with war, they were instead unable to control the common people in their beliefs and philosophical ideas. During this period, Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism fused with each other, creating a special cultural environment, and ghost culture, as a native culture, also began to merge with Buddhism. In order to make it easier for the general public to understand, the teachings of hell, the cycle of birth and death, and karma have been incorporated into ghost culture. The concept of hell was also pioneered by Buddhism, and the concept of the underworld was also present in traditional Chinese culture, but it was Buddhism that brought such a complete and systematic presentation of the concept of hell. The same period also saw the appearance of the Ox-Head and Horse-Face figures who were messengers from hell, leading the dead on their way to hell. Bull heads and horse faces are also presented in my later works. Ox-Head and Horse-Face were ordinary human beings before they became civil servants in hell.

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Ox-Head and Horse-Face

         In ancient times, most human beings, including emperors, aspired to immortality and feared death, which is understandable, like the most famous one, Qin Shi Huang, who had been sending out medical practitioners around to seek medicine and wanted to live forever, that is, during the Wei and Jin dynasties, the concept of reincarnation of life and death was deeply engraved in everyone's heart. Facing death is not scary, what is scary is that you have done so much evil while you were alive that when you die you will go to hell and will be judged by Hades, who will give you more punishment, and Hades is also shown in this series of my work.Conversely, the fresh ideas brought by Buddhist culture have given ghost culture a new dimension of creativity. It adds to the idea of cosmic space and the idea of life and time to ghost stories.The ghost novels of the Wei and Jin dynasties were greatly enhanced by the nourishment of Buddhism and reached their peak level until the Tang dynasty. Since ancient times ghost cultures have wanted to set up independent religions, developing like Satanism in the United States, but after Buddhism entered China, instead of setting up independent religions, ghost cultures even became a cultural buffer zone between Buddhism and Taoism, helping to unite Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism and becoming more culturally adapted to the general context of China at the time. During the same period, because of the Buddhist theory of the cycle of good and evil, karma and retribution, the ghost culture added a punitive function, and many people would feel fear inside after doing something bad, for example, after killing someone they would fear that the deceased would turn into a ghost to seek revenge on them. There is a Chinese proverb that says, "If you don't do anything wrong, you won't be afraid of ghosts knocking at your door. This is also how it comes about. So on another level, ordinary people who do bad things have a cost and will have a psychological burden. It is also from this period that people will have the concept of punishing evil and promoting good. In contrast to the Buddhist concept, the traditional Chinese concept of good and evil mainly emphasises moral self-restraint and has little deterrent effect on punishment, and mostly uses ghostly vengeance or celestial induction to imply the concept of good and evil. In contrast, the Buddhist concept of hell holds that every soul is equal in hell and will be judged, and that all karma is recorded in a book of ghosts, which will be judged and punished according to karma, and sent to different hells according to different sins. Buddhism emphasises that "the net of heaven is wide open", that no good can come to the wicked, and that punishment is shockingly cruel. The Buddhist concepts of hellish judgement, karma and the six paths of reincarnation are interlinked and have had a strong psychological influence on the traditional Chinese view of good and evil, and even on ghost culture and the underworld, leading to a large number of ghost stories with stories of hellish judgement and punishment. This influence has even come to the point that now, when most of society believes in science, the police will still use the fear of criminals after they have committed a crime to arrest them, and will even create psychic phenomena to break through the psychological defences of the prisoners.  The ghosts, wiser than the saints, watch over human behaviour in the underworld and are ready to punish. In this sense, the ghost story, like law and morality, maintains the fairness and justice of society. Its punitive function for society, subjectively, plays the role of self-restraint, with good people and the promotion of virtue, and objectively contributes to social indoctrination, maintaining social ethics and morality and regulating social behaviour. It helps Buddhism to teach the people from the side. Even more incredible to me was that Venerable Chuan Yi told me that ghosts can also become Buddhas, which was the source of my second unit theme. The Venerable told me that the Buddha was willing to redeem all sentient beings, including ghosts and monsters. The Bodhisattva of the Earth often goes to hell to redeem ghosts and monsters. Buddhism teaches the Six realms wheel of life, which includes Naturelaw, Asura Road, humanity, beasts Road, hungry Road, Hell Road, and that all things can become Buddha because all things have Buddha nature. The equality of all beings is at the heart of what is important.

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Six realms wheel of life

            Coming back to the creation of the work, when I talked to my own Chinese teacher about the series I was going to create, he told me that I needed to take this opportunity to find a way to paint in my own style, which made me uncomfortable and created a lot of suffering and resistance for me. I tried to find some painters and try to make a connection with them in my work. I discovered masters of colour like Pail Klee and Jean Dubuffet. I was blown away by their work, the balance between the characters was fantastic and the use of colour made the images very full.

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Senecio

Paul Klee

Date: 1922

Style: Cubism

Period: Bauhaus

Genre: portrait

Media: oilcanvas

Location: Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland

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Site aléatoire avec 2 personnages

Jean Dubuffet

Date: 1982

Style: Cubism

Period: Bauhaus

Genre: portrait

Media: Paintings, Acrylic and collage on paper laid down on canvas

          With the two masters mentioned above, I try to find my creative direction in their works. In terms of spiritual will I again admire Gaia Fugazza's work, which likes to highlight the relationship between the individual and the group, all aiming at stimulating a sense of self-awareness and communal presence within an animist landscape. And Russell Crotty, whose work on the construction of the universe and space has also had a great influence on my work, where the vast universe appears as a welcoming harbour. This is where I learn from him, I try to make the ghosts in my work look as integrated into the environment as possible rather than appearing abrupt and scary.

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Russell Crotty
The Moon is My Friend, 2018
24 x 24 inches
ink, acrylic, plastic, tinted bioresin and fiberglass on paper on wood

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Gaia Fugazza
Those Frogs 2019
Mappa burl veneered plywood. beeswax mineral pigments 25 x32 cm.Photo by Stefano Maniero. Courtesy the arist and Galleriapit 

          I also encountered many problems in the process of creating the work, for example, it was my first challenge to work with watercolour. On the whole the colours in watercolour are not as well saturated as those rendered in oil. So, with Sarah's help I met a lot of teachers from Print Making, and a big thank you to Sarah here, but due to time constraints, I didn't get to make some prints this time. So I used Photo shop to create a secondary artwork and I kept the black and white base during the process so I could colour to my heart's content, also during the colouring process I found it interesting that my artwork could be made in the style of Chinese paper cuts.

references

Paul Klee 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee

https://www.paulklee.net/

Jean Dubuffet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Dubuffet

https://www.moma.org/artists/1633

Gaia Fugazza

https://gaiafugazza.com/

https://www.instagram.com/gaiafugazza/

Russell Crotty

https://russellcrotty.com/

https://www.artsy.net/artist/russell-crotty

Philadelphia Museum of Art

https://www.philamuseum.org/collection/object/328897

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