The researcher is deeply attracted by the art of Zen and has experienced the aesthetics of Zen writing, allowing the researcher can see more than mere religious creeds and come to know the correlation between daily practice of Zen and artistic creation. As a result, an idea of studying creative works of artists sprouted in the researcher’s mind, and this idea was taken as the basis for theory instruction of practical applications. Wang Wei, who combined his poetries and paintings with Zen, was chosen as the subject. By collecting previous studies on Wang Wei, the researcher could see how Wang Wei illustrated his own life stories with poetic literatures, as well as how aesthetic ideas are lacking in modern aesthetic education, application, and studies; the researcher therefore put the poetries of Wang Wei in certain a sequence to see his life stories, and then utilized hermeneutics on the poetic texts in order to discover the meanings of his works as well as to clarify the aesthetic ideas of Wang Wei. While establishing Wang Wei’s aesthetic system, the researcher found that Wang’s application of Zen practices on creative works was just the same as the researcher’s actual experience of Zen writing. Starting from vipaśyanā of the Tiantai School, of which the researcher has some understanding, the process of Wang Wei’s Zen creation was reviewed to fully see the following study items step by step:
1.How Wang Wei’s talents in engaging with artistic and religious cultures would be in his era as well as the factors and sentiment of his seclusion.
2.The connotations of Wang Wei’s poetic works; the scriptures that influenced his personalities, mentalities, values, aesthetic perspectives, artistic values, creation style, and illustrations of social observation; how these reflected his mindsets and creations; how he combined Zen and art to bring artistic theories into reality and surpassed his former self.
3.Wang Wei’s aesthetic criteria; how he fulfilled the aesthetic spirits of authenticity, plainness, and realization with realistic creative works and reached the goal of unifying inner minds and external expressions, which is the highest request for Chinese artists.
4.The application of aesthetic education based on Wang Wei’s ideas; applying it doesn’t mean to reproduce the historical background where Wang Wei was at or his life experiences, but to absorb the meaning of his Zen creations as the reference for teaching.
As a lecturer of aesthetic education, the researcher shared the experiences of applying Zen on aesthetic education in person while also presented practical and useful study results for subsequent conclusions and suggestions.