For the Hehe culture, Ji Gong is a very important and special image, which brings profound significance to people’s secular life. If we divide Buddhism into two levels, meaning theory and meditation (practice), the most important meaning of Ji Gong’s image belongs to the latter, that is, his main influence lies in the relationship between Buddhism and real life. At present, it has a wide range of influence in the Chinese communities in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, as well as in Europe and the United States. For example, the values advocated in these Chinese communities, such as “changing people for the better through moral education” and “helping the world and helping those in danger”, are in line with his Hehe spirit.
在和合堂进行的一场成人礼活动
During the process of the Hehe culture’s overseas spread, the most notable achievement is perhaps the international influence of Hanshan’s poetry, which is also a very prominent example in the history of Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. The poetry of Hanshan (including Fenggan and Shide) has gained a highly respected status outside the territory (especially in Japan and the United States). In Japan, along with the introduction of Zen Buddhism, Hanshan’s poetry was introduced in the 13th century, and widely circulated and highly praised, and he was recognized as a great Zen (or Chan) poet. His poetry has remained popular in Japan for hundreds of years for two reasons. The first is that poems with a sense of Zen enjoy a particularly high status in Japanese society. In Japanese tradition, many first-class poets are monks who write poems with strong Buddhist connotations; another reason is that Japanese have always welcomed Chinese poems with more vernacular elements. For example, Bai Juyi (772-846) and Yuan Zhen (779-831) are more highly regarded in Japan than in China. Concise and fluent writing is exactly what the Japanese prefer. Japan’s acceptance of Hanshan’s poetry is not only reflected in the internalization of the Zen meaning of the poetry into its own culture, but also in the fact that it has become a bridge of communication. The introduction of Hanshan’s poetry into the Western world (especially the United States) came by way of Japan as a communication medium, not directly from China, and the “Cold Mountain Fever” later was formed on this basis, which was regarded as ushering in the “beat generation” in the US, as Hanshan’s poetry influenced American society for nearly 20 years.
2018年6月13日，美国佛学（宗教学）专家参访天台和合人间文化园。
The American writer Charles Frazier’s masterpiece Cold Mountain, very popular when it was published in 1997, was listed on the New York Times bestseller list for 45 consecutive weeks, and won the National Book Award for “depicting the complex relationships and emotions between men and their land”. It was praised by critics as “one of the masterpieces in American literature” in modern times, on a par with Gone with the Wind. Directed by Academy Award-winning Anthony Minghella, and starring Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, the film Cold Mountain was also widely acclaimed and won international awards. The epigraph of the novel includes two quotations, one from Darwin (“It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war of organic beings, going on in the peaceful woods, smiling fields.”), and the other from two lines of a poem by Hanshan (which literally means “cold mountain” in Chinese): “Men ask the way to Cold Mountain. Cold Mountain: there is no through trail.” These two quotations summarize the theme of the whole book. The former shows the helplessness of men towards war, and the latter expresses the protagonist’s yearning for a beautiful life that is elusive but unattainable.
