Among those fanatical lotus fans who are noble and narcissistic, Qu Yuan should be the first celebrity to associate himself with lotus and express noble interests. In Li Sao, he wrote: "He thinks clothes are clothes and hibiscus is clothes; I don't know if it is already embarrassing, and I feel that I believe it. " In poetry, Qu Yuan's interest is not only far from vulgarity, but also an avant-garde poet with some characteristics of performance art from a modern perspective. Lotus has become his vision for the ideal, and it has become a chicken soup to release the mind and relieve contradictions and mediate life politically, aiming at carving a self between sobriety and drunkenness, a new self with imaginative transcendence, and the power of this virtual wing is intentionally pinned on the perfect object of Lotus. The inheritance and development of lotus culture to China culture can be said to be incisive. People's love for lotus, frozen concept and poetic extension of lotus culture did not die out after Qu Yuan sank into the Miluo River, but tended to be perfect and rich, and then pushed to a lofty extreme.
Zhou Dunyi, the founder of Neo-Confucianism in the Northern Song Dynasty, is a generation of Confucian scholars who fixed the lotus image on ancient literati. I can recite his "Love Lotus" when I was in primary school. Now I can only remember it roughly as time goes by: "... Tao Jin Yuanming loves chrysanthemums alone; Since Li Tang came, people all over the world love peony. Love lotus alone, dirt-free, clear but not demon. Straight outside, not crawling, fragrant and clear. It is graceful and quiet, but it doesn't look ridiculous from a distance. If you want to call chrysanthemums, those who are hidden in flowers are also; Peony, blooming with wealth; Lotus, the gentleman of flowers. The love of chrysanthemum flowers is rarely heard after Tao; Lotus love, who is the giver; The love of peony is suitable for all ages. " In fact, Zhou Dunyi's criticism of peony is just a comparison. Poems about lotus flowers, which are loved by the Tang people, have been written from time to time, and have a mature and meticulous positioning of "flower lattice". For example, Bai Juyi's "The White Lotus Story of Tolin Temple" wrote: "The water in the north of the East is clear and bright. Bai Furong was born in China and has 300 stems. Glowing in the daytime, clear and fragrant. Fragrant silver capsules are broken, and the jade plate is inclined. I am ashamed of my dirty eyes. The wind is beautiful. It is called Honglian, but it has a clean name. The summer calyx is not resting, and the autumn chamber is exhausted. In the middle of the night, the monks went to bed and walked around the pool alone. I want to collect a coin and send it back to Chang 'an. But I'm afraid there will be no life out of the mountain. "From Bai Xiangshan's poems, we can see that the Tang people not only have lofty interest in lotus, but also worship white lotus more than red lotus. From Bai Juyi's poems, we can simply tell that different cultural connotations of lotus can convey different meanings in varieties and colors, which is why the great extension of lotus implication actually includes the transcendental philosophy of life, lingering earthly love and sorrow, and the meaning range of auspicious blessing.
Therefore, the styles of lotus flowers are different. White lotus is supreme purity, red lotus is affectionate. As for the "three-inch golden lotus" from here to there, it is already an aesthetic quirk, which has lost the distortion of China. Bai Juyi, a middle-aged meditator, clearly conveyed another level of lotus meaning to us: Bai Lianhua, as a Buddhist endorsement, has been widely circulated in the Tang Dynasty. Bai Juyi's admiration for lotus represents a spirit of introverted literati bowing to politics and reality, and a normal mentality of balancing inner sadness and doing something practical in music meditation. However, Zhou Dunyi may be more Wei, a wise man immersed in Buddhism. He regarded the physical and mental cultivation of forbearance, concealment, affection and victory as the basis of keeping a clean and honest life, and tried to dust off the DPRK, thus enlightening a good-oriented model of integrity, self-cultivation, keeping the family in order, governing the country and leveling the world. Zhou Dunyi, who was infatuated with lotus, was really a person who combined Buddhism with Confucius and Mencius' idea of "benevolence", so he later brought out two good disciples, Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, and harmed countless literati.