Here, we might as well take a look at the two records in the Biography of Continued Monks, one of which is found in Volume 16, Biography of Tao [Grandson's Heart], which describes the strange scene after the death of the Taoist priest [Grandson's Heart]:
It snowed that night, and on Wednesdays and four miles, it was sweeping the road and burying the body in the mountains. In the evening, there are different flowers, which turn around the corpse and gush out from the ground. The stem is one or two feet long, and it is fresh and glorious, like a winter color, but its shape is completely different.
The other is found in Volume 26, Fa Rong Chuan, which says:
In November of the 21st year, Iwashita spoke about "Hokkekyo". When the snow is full of steps, the dharma flows endlessly, and two stems of flowers are obtained in the frozen ice, which are like hibiscus and can be as golden as gold.
The situation described in these two stories is very similar to the artistic conception of "banana in the snow", aiming to show that Buddhists' diligence and lofty deeds can be "felt by the mysterious", thus producing a rare and miraculous view. Because they are all about blooming in the snow, this provides us with a clue to understand the meaning of "banana in the snow".
It is particularly noteworthy that more direct materials can be found in Wang Wei's own works about the meaning of "banana in the snow":
Volume 24 of Notes on Wang Youcheng's Collection contains an article "Inscription on the Master of Dade Jingjue in Da 'an National Temple in Datang", which records the behavior of the monk Jingjue practicing Buddhism and Taoism. The inscription praised the monk's determination to make progress and become a Buddha, and one of them said:
The master dug under the clothes seat before leaving the house. Gifted and righteous, half a word is enemy to many smells; Staying at the sacred fetus is more than a moment of tiredness. Nine times, take advantage of the situation and not stay; 3. Get out of the door, expose the sun and the moon and take regular photos.
Immediately below it, there is a very important sentence:
Snow mountain boy, regardless of the body of banana; Clouds and bhikkhus want to be a kind of sugarcane.
Coincidentally, it corresponds to "banana in the snow". Isn't the so-called "boy in the snow mountain, the body of banana in the snow" written in words?
Zhao Diancheng, the annotator of Wang Youcheng's Notes, made a bet on the article "Snow Mountain Boy":
The Buddha entered the snow-capped mountains to practice, so he was called' the boy of the snow-capped mountains'. An Overview of Shi's Family: On Wisdom, cloud, Sanskrit dove Moroga, Qin Yan boy. ..... If the Bodhisattva is a boy from the beginning, giving up lust and even Bodhi.
The annotation in Zhao Zhu is very sketchy. In fact, the story of "the boy on the snowy mountain" can be found in volume 14 of Nirvana Sutra, which tells that when Sakyamuni practiced Bodhisattva in the past, he met Luo Cha in the snowy mountain and threw himself over the cliff for half a mile, which is called "the boy on the snowy mountain" or "the boy on the snowy mountain"
"Zhao Zhu" goes under the article "Body of Banana":
Nirvana Sutra: Being physically weak is like a tree of reeds, ylang ylang, water foam and banana. There is another cloud: life is actually dry, and so is all living beings.
The meaning of this footnote is to show that the person is empty and unreal. Because from the perspective of Buddhism, everything in the world is not objective and real, even the human body is not an entity, and its essence is also empty. The scripture of Nirvana Sutra quoted above is to use things that are not very solid, such as reeds and plantains, to illustrate the emptiness of the human body and to promote the idealistic theological theory of Buddhism with the help of images.
It can be seen that these two sentences in Wang Wei's "Inscription of Jingjue Master" show this meaning. "Snow Mountain Boy" means to firmly practice Buddhism and Taoism; "Ignoring the body of banana" means giving up one's "empty body" flatly. And this set of thoughts is very consistent with Wang Wei's own behavior. "Biography of Wang Wei in the Old Tang Dynasty" says: "All Uighur brothers worship Buddha, and they live in constant vegetables and prepare for their blood, and in their later years they grow fast and wear no clothes and literary talents." The reason why he painted plantains in the snow in Yuan An's Sleeping Snow Map is by no means an accidental brainwave, but a profound imprint of his own thoughts. The painting "Banana in the Snow" embodies the inner ideological essence from the external perceptual form of its artistic image, which should be consistent with the meaning of "a boy in a snowy mountain, regardless of his body". /f? Kz=959973055 here is a detailed introduction.