Everything Yearned For by Francisca Cho

Author:Francisca Cho
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780861718481
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

Buddhism and Poetry

In the history of East Asian Buddhism, the link between enlightenment and art has been consistently expressed through the transmutation of Buddhist practice into poetry. Beginning with the gatha, the four-line verse indigenous to Indian Buddhist literature, the tradition of versifying Buddhist teachings expanded into East Asia. There, poetry was used by Buddhists to express the values and virtues of religious life, particularly the life of mountaintop seclusion. In addition, poetry was seen as a contemplative, spiritual practice in itself.

The best of Buddhist poetry in East Asia has flowed in tandem with a tradition of nature poetry characterized by persistent themes, most particularly the joys of the simple life in retirement from the world and the beauty of remote mountain vistas that symbolize spiritual endeavor and fulfillment. These themes originate in China, with Daoist-inspired distinctions between the rustic, natural realm of fishermen and humble craftsmen, who follow the true “way,” and the cultural realm of emperors and ministers who dissipate their minds and their very lives in pursuit of political reputation. During the prolonged period of disorder between the fall of China’s Han dynasty in 220 C.E. and the establishment of the Sui in 581, the marriage of neo-Daoism with Buddhist “emptiness” philosophy forged an indelible association between spiritual wisdom and the contemplation of nature, particularly through poetry. Daoism taught a way that nourished the self by aligning it with the greater movements of the natural world. Buddhist emptiness philosophy insisted that the ultimate insubstantiality of the phenomenal world was best understood through immersion in that world. For the men of letters who reeled from the breakdown of Confucian political society in this era, these religious lessons were best practiced within the idealized realm of nature, as a specific antidote to the chaotic “world of dust.”

The themes that invoke these classic Buddho-Daoist values—the vicissitudes of the life of government service, the vanity of human endeavors, the joys of the simple pastoral life, are signified by a ready supply of imagery that served as raw materials for fresh poetic endeavors through the centuries. Thatched huts and brushwood gates, mountains and springs, white clouds, sedge capes and bamboo hats, poetry and wine—such objects are the inventory of this landscape:

The birds and their chatter overwhelm me with feeling:

At times like this I lie down in my straw hut.

Cherries shine with crimson fire;

Willows trail slender boughs.

The morning sun pops from the jaws of blue peaks;

Who ever thought I would leave the dusty world

And come bounding up the southern slope of Cold Mountain?16

Han Shan (mid-seventh century) of China’s Tang dynasty most famously ties Buddhist consciousness with landscape poetry. Immortalized in paintings as the quintessential Chan free spirit, Han Shan is the half-mad rustic sage who makes art of his life through his nonconformity and poetry. In addition to the traditional theme of retirement, this poem exemplifies the incomparable nature poetry for which East Asian poets are famed.

The links between nature, withdrawal from the world, and spiritual self-cultivation dominate the verses of Korean monk-poets as well.

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