How Did Buddhism Matter in Tang Poetry

Abstract

Buddhism was often a theme in poetry, especially when writing to monks and on Buddhist sites; it was sometimes a deep conviction on the part of individual poets that contributed to the way they represented the world. There was a period, however, from the ninth through early eleventh century, when Chan meditation shaped how poets thought about the very way of writing poetry. The common use of the [Buddhist] “Way” or Chan in parallel with “poetry” in couplets from this period worked through the possible relations: identity, similarity, complementarity, and mutual exclusion. But the presumption was that the composition of poetry was the counterpart of Chan meditation. Such serious reflection on the relation between Chan meditation practice and poetry eventually devolved into Yan Yu’s thirteenth-century comparison of Chan sectarian doctrine with the study of poetry.
Le bouddhisme est un theme tres frequent dans la poesie chinoise, en particulier quand le poete ecrit a un moine ou au sujet d’un site bouddhique. Il constitue dans certains cas une conviction profonde qui contribue fortement a forger la representation du monde telle que le poete l’exprime en vers. Il y eut cependant une epoque, entre le ixe et le debut du xie siecle, ou la meditation Chan a faconne la facon meme dont les poetes concevaient l’ecriture poetique. L’usage frequent des termes “Voie”  (bouddhique) ou Chan en parallele avec celui de “poesie” dans les couplets de cette epoque couvre la gamme de leurs relations possibles: identite, similarite, complementarite et exclusion mutuelle. L’hypothese commune a ces diverses options etait que l’ecriture poetique etait l’homologue de la meditation Chan. Ces reflexions elaborees sur les rapports entre les pratiques de la meditation Chan et de la poesie ont debouche au xiiie siecle sur la comparaison menee par Yan Yu entre la doctrine Chan et l’etude de la poesie.