身體意識、存在焦慮與轉為道用－白居易詩的疾病書寫與自我治療=Physical consciousness, existential anxiety and transforming into the Dharma path-Bai Juyi's poems about illness and self-treatment
This study explores the illness written in Bai Juyi's poems through existential psychotherapy, perceptual phenomenology and ＂transforming everything into the Dharma path＂ theory. We found Bai Juyi used a lot of physical consciousness and carefully described the symptoms and subtle physical changes in his poems. He focused on sensing his body and explored the essence of the existence based on ontological mode, revealing his profound presence of anxiety and awareness. He constantly declared that he did not care about everything and then transformed the mental indifference after the collapse of the value structure into the reconstruction of the value of the Dharma, created a self-treatment therapy of illness while constructing the value of transforming into the Dharma path that is hard for illness to replace. Bai Juyi's turning illness effort is active and makes use of the three values of disease. The first is the condition lets people get idle; the second is to return from the mess of everyday living back to the fundamental outlook of life; the third is to get back the once forgotten body, to accept, face, and praise illness, leading to a well-performed psychological treatment. Bai Juyi further takes the positive action of ＂transforming illness＂ to reach his goal of polishing his mind. Especially through the practice of meditation and deliberately peaceful effort to achieve the emptiness. Moreover, the calmness and peacefulness of the mind affect the body's illness. Bai Juyi in his later years always considers being sick as lucky, and practices the Dharma’s ＂remember the death＂ teaching via a ＂claim ill when illness-free＂ concept. He starts a journey of practicing emptiness and mindfulness to treat endless cycle of chronic illness. This trip not only indicates a deeper level of treatment using the physical consciousness and sickness awareness but also transforms the illness into the practice of Dharma as regular.
