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天然函昰著《瞎堂诗集》明代清刻本  广东省博物馆藏

天然函昰 Tianran Hanshi (1608-1685)

PDF: For the Triratna and for Samyak-saṃbodhi: The 'Quasi-poetry' of Tianran Hanshi
by Corey Lee Bell
불교연구 제49집(2018), 203～235쪽

This article discusses the eminent early Qing monastic leader Tianran Hanshi's 天然函昰 concept of “quasi poetry” 似詩, its relationship with contemporary debates on the relationship between Chan and poetry, and its impact on poetic ideas and practices in Buddhist monasteries in southern China. It begins by addressing how a shift in gentry-monastic relations in the late Ming / early Qing prompted some monastic writers, such as the renowned late Ming reformer Hanshan Deqing 山德清, to articulate a more radical identification of Chan with poetry. The article then introduces Tianran and the core principles he associated with his concept of “quasi poetry”, focusing on the ways in which this concept constituted an alternative – and possibly an implicit critique – of the radical identity theory. The third section shows examples of the application of Tianran’s “quasi poetry”, focusing on a response poem Tianran composed for the lay disciple Xie Jiu 謝揪. This is followed by a discussion on quasi poetry’s application and impact in and beyond Tianran’s Haiyun school. In a brief afterword I discuss how this concept was associated with new modes of literary interaction between gentry and clerical interlocutors that formed in the late Ming / early Qing period.