To Autumn

After a long time stop writing, today is 26 Feb 2013, I started to write again.

Today, I read the SparkNotes on Keats's Ode, To Autumn, it is a very good analysis: simple and precise.
What did John Keats think about To Autumn when he writing this Ode?
In his letter to his friends, Reynold,  talking about his feeling of this season, Autumn, he experienced. At that time, he was in lots of troubles: no money, no hope of earning any money from his literacy power, no hope to marry Fanny. He even did not dare to go back to Wentworth Place to see Fanny. He even suffered from the disease that killed his brother and he knew that he might soon be died too. He was  desperately no hope for the future. However, when he went for a walk under the golden season of Autumn. The Nature gave him rich colour, fruits smell, all harvest --Time to celebrate for the whole year's effort and to prepare for the coming of Winter. He suddenly forgot his own troubles and absorbed in the fruitfulness of this Season and wrote To Autumn. And the poem shown that he was more in peace, accepting all come to him as the cycle of the Nature.

When I read To Autumn, it led me thought of the death people face when they are at the life stage of elderly. Like me, getting older, awaring of more and more wrinkles on my face, death seems closer and closer. What we think of death?

The Christian belief consider Death is a punishment of Sin. By believing in Jesus, through his redemption, we have elternal life. Death seems the end of this earthly life and the start of the elternal life if you believe so.

In the traditional Chinese philosophy, I mean the teaching of  Confucius, they do not think of death that much cause they do not provide any wisdom on death, they consider how to live properly much more important about any thing happen after death. That is why they have so many teaching about how to handle the funeral properly which is for the living people but not for the dead. They ignor death cause it is nothing when thinking about life.

The teaching of Zhuangzi has something taught about death-- Death is just a natural phenomena.  Life and Death is just a cycle of the Nature. So life comes and goes. It is the natural law. As it is natural, we do not need to love life and hate death. We can only accept this natural phenomena and follow the Law. From the human's perspective, we get used to those people and lives around us and we do not want to leave them. However, when we stand out above the human's feeling and take the experience of the natural environment. We knows there is time of life and there is time of death. And John Keats's To Autumn is much similiar to Zhuangzi's teaching which I apppreciated and is much more closer to my understanding and feeling.

After come back from Hong Kong, I started reading Zhuangzi and Confucicus and thinking of their teaching. I tried to integrate all I read.