John Keats and Dharma: Suffering and Cessation of Suffering

約翰．濟慈與佛法：苦與離苦

許惠芬(Hui-Fen HSU)

Dharma ； enlightenment ； Keats ； Romanticism ； suffering ； 佛法 ； 開悟 ； 濟慈 ； 浪漫主義 ； 痛苦

輔仁外語學報

18期（2022 / 02 / 26）

187 - 218

英文

As one of the canonical Romantic poets, John Keats creates a pictorial and lyrical world imbued with meditative speculation on the beauty of nature and the fusion of separate self with natural sublimity in his writing. The unsettled disputation in Keats scholarship lies in the lauding of his intellectual and ideological weight versus the reduction of the poet as effete, escapist, and morally weak. As Keats's brief life was afflicted with illness and poverty as well as a series of losses, he had direct observation and experience of suffering. Central to his poems and letters are the reflections on death, decay, and mutability, and ways to battle against them. What starts as his personal lamentation over suffering addresses the predicament of all sentient beings. Based on the scholarly trend towards unearthing Buddhist philosophy embedded in Romantic literature, this study aims to explore the compatibility between Keats's thoughts and the main concern in Buddhism: suffering and cessation of suffering. Arguably, Keats exhibits the sufferings of pain, change, and conditionality in Dharma while his strategy to cease suffering evokes Buddhist conceptions such as emptiness, interbeing, mindfulness, and enlightenment. Read under a Buddhist lens, Keats's poetic world of intense beauty is not an escapist's shelter but a secular religion that provides solace for tormented hearts.

約翰．濟慈為浪漫派詩人代表人物。其所創造之詩畫般的抒情世界，不僅充滿對大自然之美的歌詠冥想，也將獨立個體融入崇高莊嚴的大自然之中。濟慈的研究在學界落於兩個極端－有一派讚揚他的知性及意識形態，而另一派則將其貶為柔弱、避世主義、及缺乏道德感。濟慈短暫的一生受疾病、貧窮及接連的死別打擊，他對於「苦」有親身的觀察和體驗，以詩作及信件表達了對死亡、凋零、無常之感慨及對抗之道。原本是濟慈自身的悲鳴，卻道盡芸芸眾生的困境。本研究以發掘浪漫文學中蘊藏佛法的學術思潮為基礎，分析濟慈的思想及佛法核心：苦與離苦之相容並蓄。他可謂展現佛法的苦苦、壞苦、行苦；止息痛苦的策略則呼應佛法的空性、互攝存在、正念、和開悟。在佛法詮釋下，濟慈詩中美感濃烈的世界，並非供人遁逃的避世所，而是能撫慰傷痛心靈的俗世宗教。

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