3: Boo-dhism

Sorry about that; I needed to fit some kind of Halloween reference, and it's hard to shoehorn thrills and chills into Zhang Jiuling!

Matt asked me to talk about Buddhism in the third Poem of Encountering. For those of you with no experience of Buddhism whatsoever, the Buddha's most basic teachings are:

1. There is suffering in life.
   
2. Suffering comes from attachment to things.
   
3. Suffering can cease when attachment to things ceases.
   
4. There is a path out of suffering.
   

The "path" is the Middle Way of moderation, care, and compassion. Buddhism first came to China in the Han dynasty, carried by traders along the Silk Road and by pilgrims from India. It reached full flourishing under the Tang dynasty, when our poets lived and wrote. Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China, came from the West (that is, India) in the 5th century, and his movement flourished under the Tang alongside native religious and philosophical movements like Daoism and Buddhism. In fact, the three traditions were seen as complementary, and a term, Three Teachings (三教), arose to refer to all at once.

When I was a child, learning about this stuff for the first time, the fact that these three religious existed side by side without sectarian violence blew me away. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but the fact of the matter is that Zhang Jiuling was educated in the Confucian system, and surrounded by and familiar with Buddhist and Daoist teachings. The tension between Confucian thought, which emphasized engagement with the official world and duty, and Daoist or Buddhist thought, which placed less importance on worldly affairs, can be seen throughout these three poems. Daoism, with its emphasis on natural behavior and "flying free," is all through the first of these three poems; the image of the hermit-monk stretches between Daoism and Buddhism, but the poem's language, especially its emphasis on washing the mind and on freedom from attachment to worldly affairs, seems explicitly Buddhist to me. The anxiety I mentioned yesterday, though, is all Confucian.

Tomorrow, I'll focus on the way the specific words Matt mentioned, and the role they play in the poem. As per usual, this topic could consume another week all by itself!