Yuan Hongdao

"An Elegant Gathering" by Chen Hongshou. This work depicts the first public presentation of Yuan's Xīfāng hélùn. Yuan Hongdao is depicted on the far left next to a tree.

Title page of Yuan's Collected Works, 1629.

Yuan Hongdao (Chinese: 袁宏道; pinyin: Yuán Hóngdào; Wade–Giles: Yüan Hung-tao, style name Zhonglang, 1568–1610) was a Chinese poet, littérateur and scholar-official of the Ming Dynasty, as well as an author on Pure Land Buddhism. He is one of the Three Yuan Brothers, along with his brothers Yuan Zongdao and Yuan Zhongdao. In Chinese Buddhism, Yuan is most famous for his Comprehensive Treatise on the West [Pure Land] (Xīfāng hélùn), an influential ten fascicle work on Pure Land Buddhism.

Life

Hongdao's life spanned nearly the whole of the Wanli period (1573-1620) in Chinese history. A native of Gong'an in Hukuang, his family had been officials for generations. Hongdao showed an interest in literature from youth and formed his own literary club at age fifteen. At an early age, Yuan took the jinshi examination (the highest gentry position in China) and subsequently received the official jinshi position in the government bureaucracy in 1594. During his years in the capital he also developed an interest in Buddhism, influenced by other elite Buddhist laymen of the time, like Jiao Hong. He initially studied the writings of Chan masters like Dahui Zonggao.

Yuan soon became well known in literati circles and famed for his writing, moving in the intellectual circles of the Ming elite. He was close friends with the radical Neo-Confucian (Yangmingist) and Buddhist philosopher Li Zhi 李贄 (1527-1602) who promoted the “Crazy Chan” (Ch.: kuang chan 狂禪) ideal. Li Zhi would be Yuan's main Buddhist mentor for over ten years. Likewise, Yuan studied Buddhist texts extensively together with his two other brothers.

The poetry of the Yuan brothers, which focused on clarity and sincerity, produced a following that eventually came to be known as the Gong'an school of poetry and essay writing. The main tenet of this school of poetry was that good writing was a result of genuine emotions and personal experience. Yuan Hongdao was also known as a leading author of the "short essay" (xiaopin wen).

In 1597, Yuan had already grown tired of working as a government magistrate and so he resigned. Afterwards he spent his time traveling, reading, and meeting with friends to write and discuss philosophy. During this retired period he spent some time with the eminent monk Yunqi Zhuhong at Yunqifa temple, later known as a patriarch of Pure Land Buddhism. Zhuhong clearly had an influence on Yuan, since he wrote in praise of him and his later Pure Land writing shows that Yuan studied Zhuhong's writings.

In 1598 he returned to Beijing and became a teacher at the imperial academy. He also started a literary society he called Grape Society. With more time for writing, he composed a work on the Zhuangzi. Yuan also wrote a treatise on Pure Land Buddhism which made its way into the Chinese Buddhist canon. This is the Xīfāng hélùn 西方合論 (Comprehensive treatise on [Pure Land of] the west, Taisho no. 1976). This systematic treatise on Pure Land Buddhism is actually the longest surviving text written by Yuan Hongdao. In spite of this, most scholars have ignored it, focusing mostly on Yuan's secular literature. In this work, Yuan breaks with the radical antinomian Chan of his teacher Li Zhi, advocating for a kind of Buddhism which affirms the importance of moral and religious cultivation.

Yuan remained working on the capital for some time as a conscientious and respected magistrate as well as a well known and prolific writer and literary critic. His Collected Works include essays on Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, along with poems, short essays (xiao pin wen), travelogues, prefaces, memorials, Buddhist commentaries, many letters, and works on civil examinations.

Some important works include a poetry compilation called Jietuo ji (Collection of One Released). When his elder brother Zongdao died in 1600, Hongdao retired to a small island in a lake to meditate and write poetry. The resulting work is Xiaobi tangji [Jade-Green Bamboo Hall Collection].

Pure Land thought

Yuan's Xīfāng hélùn (Comprehensive Treatise on the West) presents a comprehensive Pure Land Buddhist philosophy in ten fascicles (juan). The work answers numerous questions and critiques of Pure Land Buddhism with rational arguments and scriptural citations.

The work also criticizes radical Chan anti-nomianism which rejected basic Buddhist ethical principles. It defends the importance of vegetarianism and the Buddhist precepts. It also attempts to show that Pure Land Buddhism was intellectually respectable and philosophically profound, against the claims that it was only suitable for uneducated peasants. Yuan himself writes that the main reason he wrote the work was to counter the influence of "Crazy Chan" which overemphasized emptiness and rejected all other tradition Buddhist practices like nianfo and keeping precepts as a kind of grasping.

According to Yuan, these Chan teachings on non-grasping and the provisional nature of Buddhist practice is like water, which can put out a fire. When used too much, it can cause a flood. As such, Yuan wanted to bring some balance back to Buddhism by emphasizing the conventional truths of classic Buddhist practices. In this, Yuan was influenced by earlier figures like Zhiyi, Li Tongxuan, and Yongming Yanshou, as well as by the Da Zhi Du Lun. Yuan also his Pure Land treatise as a work which shows how Pure Land is deeply connected with Chan and Huayan. In a later work he even writes that "I made use of Pure Land in order to expound Chan". As such, he was not seeking to disprove or refute Chan, but to use Pure Land to broaden and expand the understanding of Buddhist practice in his contemporaries.

Throughout the Xīfāng hélùn, the work explains the nature of the various pure lands, answers numerous questions and objections about Pure Land Buddhism and provides a scriptural schema (panjiao) and an analysis of Pure Land scriptures. In fascicle five of the Xīfāng hélùn, Yuan discusses the relationship between the practitioner and Amitabha, as well as self-power and Buddha's other-power. According to Yuan (who cites Zhiyi), the Buddha's power is inconceivable and mysterious. As Jones writes, this means that "one cannot pin it down by saying that the practice is effective because of the Buddha's power, the devotee's power, both together, or neither...all dharmas are inconceivable, and one can never fully understand how causes produce effects." Thus, even if one is an unenlightened being or has different understandings of how other-power works, one can practice chanting the Buddha's name and one will still achieve the result of birth in the pure land.

Yuan also criticizes those who claimed that Pure Land was dualistic and that Buddhism was all about transcending dualities. In one passage, Yuan argues that if these detractors were so enlightened to the Buddhist non-duality as to be beyond Pure Land practice, they should be able to happily swim around in a latrine. For Yuan, it is the critics of Pure Land who lack true understanding, since if they truly understood non-duality and emptiness, they would see that the provisional truth of the pure land is not negated by these teachings on ultimate truth. Furthermore, as Jones explains, if it were true that one needed to fully purify one's mind and have knowledge of the ultimate truth before attaining the pure land, then this would lead to the absurd conclusion that "one would have to be able to adopt the fully enlightened viewpoint before being enlightened - a vicious circle." However, according to Yuan, the Buddha knows how to make use of the very dualistic viewpoints of ordinary beings in order to guide them to awakening through skillful means.

Drawing on the philosophy of Huayan (as well as Tiantai to a lesser extent), Yuan also shows how Pure Land Buddhism is actually in complete agreement with its most refined and deep metaphysical theories, arguing that Pure Land is thus the supreme truth of Buddhism when properly understood. For Yuan, Amitabha Buddha and Huayan's Cosmic Buddha Vairocana are not separate Buddhas and thus Amitabha pervades all realms. He also argues that the simple recitation of the nianfo, when done with a mind of compassion, bodhicitta, and coupled with a moral life, fulfills all Buddhist principles. Yuan also strongly defends the traditional Buddhist course of practice, including generating faith, taking vows, keeping precepts, living with good companions etc.

Yuan's Xīfāng hélùn soon became popular in Chinese Buddhist circles. It was included in the Jiaxing Buddhist Canon and the patriarch Ouyi Zhixu (1599-1655) included it in his Ten Essential [Texts] of Pure Land (Jingtu shi yao 淨土十要). It remains popular to this day, as shown by the space given to it in Guo Peng's 1982 study of Ming and Qing Buddhism.

Example poems

The Capital

Bright are the city walls of the capital;

Red-robed officials shout on broad streets.

There is a white-headed destitute scholar;

Hanging from his mule's saddle, sheaves of poems.

Clasping his calling card, he knocks on doors for work;

The gate keepers smirk at one another.

Ten try and ten fail;

Walk the streets, his face is haggard.

Always fear in serving the rich;

Sorry your flattery isn't quick enough.

Over an eye a black eyepatch;

Half blind, the fellow is old!

A strange priest

Bought his mantle to escape draft and taxes;

Now he's the head priest amid his splendor.

Recites incantations, but sounds like a bird;

Writes Sanskrit that looks like twisted weeds.

With his begging bowl he distributes food of the spirit;

On his seat he faces the lamp of Buddha;

If you don't devote you whole body and soul,

How can there be anywhere Buddhism at all?

Bibliography

• Chaves, Jonathan trans. Pilgrim of the Clouds, New York-Tokyo, 1978; new edition Buffalo New York: White Pine Press, 2005.
• Carpenter, Bruce E. "The Gentleman of Stones: Yüan Hung-tao", Tezukayama University Review (Tezukayama Daigaku ronshu), Nara, Japan, no. 24, 1979. ISSN 0385-7743
• Mair, Victor H. (ed.) (2001). The Columbia History of Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10984-9. (Amazon Kindle edition.)

External links

• oberlin.edu/mao_xiang
• renditions.org/yuanhd^[usurped]