Giving up Buddhism in Form but Getting Its Intrinsic Spirit in Soul: On the Buddhist Influence on ZHANG Da-qian’s Personality Thought

After the combination of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism into one during the period of Tang and Song Dynasties, the new Buddhism with Chinese features-Zen has become prevalent in China and it has exerted profound influence on generations of Chinese people. According to ZHANG’s close relationship with Buddhism, we can find that the Zen once played a vital role in his pursuit of natural, proper and poetic living style. And it guided ZHANG’s thoughts and made his personality thought characterized by pluralism, contradiction, endurance, freedom and openness which were brought about by Zen.