Xie Lingyun

Chinese poet and philosopher

• Born: 385
• Birthplace: Zhejiang Province, China
• Died: June 26, 0433
• Place of death: Canton, Nanhai, China

Xie Lingyun was the first and greatest of China’s nature poets, the founder of a school of verse. A philosophical syncretist, he blended elements of Confucianism and Daoism with Buddhism to produce a uniquely Chinese synthesis.

Early Life

Xie Lingyun (shyee ling-yewn) was born into one of China’s most powerful and illustrious aristocratic families of the Six Dynasties (420-589 c.e.). As secretary of the Imperial Library, his father was the least prepossessing member of the Xie clan, which had included a host of distinguished poets, calligraphers, and high-ranking imperial officials. The Liu, Xie Lingyun’s mother’s family, was distinguished by its calligraphers, notably Wang Xizhi (321-379 c.e.). In the light of his familial background, Lingyun surprised no one by his precocity. As a small child, he was placed under temporary adoption in Hangzhou with Du Mingshi (Tu Ming-shih), a devout Daoist. Calligraphy was an integral part of Du Mingshi’s Daoism, and Lingyun proved an apt pupil. The boy remained with his foster family in the splendid aristocratic environs of Hangzhou until he was fifteen.

In 399 c.e., a rebel faction led by Sun En invaded Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, and in the ensuing struggle Lingyun’s father was killed. His family decided to send Lingyun to the safety of their house in the capital, Jianye (Chienyeh; now Nanjing). There he came under the decisive influence of his uncle, Xie Hun (Hsieh Hun), a handsome, aristocratic figure who was recognized as one of China’s foremost poets. Married to an imperial Jin princess and secure in worldly ways, Hun had drawn together a lively, exclusive literary salon, into which Lingyun was inducted. He was soon recognized as a stellar member. The precocious Lingyun cut a swath around Jianye even in an age notorious for social ostentation and eccentricity. He had inherited the title of duke of Kangluo (K’ang-lo); as such, he drew revenues from more than three thousand households. Xie Lingyun affected foppish dress, extravagant behavior, and a languor that challenged the efforts of scores of attendants. Dukedom also brought government appointments: He was made administrator to the grand marshal and, more important, administrator in the Redaction Office, a post that ensnared him in the political fortunes of Liu Yi (Liu I). It was thus that he was forced to endure a chain of misfortunes that dramatically altered the course of his life.

Life’s Work

When Lingyun entered service with Liu Yi, Yi had emerged as the most distinguished leader of a revolt against another rebel, Huan Xuan (Huan Hsüan), who founded the abortive Chu (Ch’u) Dynasty in 404 c.e. Yi’s victories against Huan brought him the dukedom of Nanping (Nan-p’ing) as well as a military governor generalship, these posts devolving on him from Liu Yu (Liu Yü), the titular restorer of the Jin Dynasty in 405 c.e. Lingyun’s fortunes might have been assured if Liu Yi had accepted Liu Yu’s political supremacy. He did not. Thus, between 405 and 411 c.e., a series of complex plots and inevitable military clashes between partisans of the two men resulted in Yi’s defeat and disgrace. Through the course of these events, Lingyun served on his staff, ultimately suffering the consequences of his fall. Moved to the periphery of power, Yi, with Lingyun in tow, was obliged in 412 to establish his headquarters at Jiangling in Hubei Province. There, Lingyun’s life changed decisively.

While posted to Jiangling, Lingyun visited the famed Buddhist center at the nearby Mount Lu. The Eastern Grove Monastery, which eventually became the most influential southern center of Chinese Buddhism, had been founded by Hui Yuan (Hui-yüan; 334-416 c.e.), himself the principal disciple of Dao An (Tao-an; 312-385 c.e.), who had been the first to emphasize the basic distinctions between Indian Buddhism—essentially an alien doctrine—and the casual versions of Buddhism that had been integrated with mainstream Chinese culture. Hui Yuan devoted himself to making the Chinese aware of the foreignness of Buddhist thought, hoping to make the purer form of its teachings and practices acceptable to well-educated Chinese aristocrats. Lingyun found that this transcendental, poeticized Buddhism, with its many concrete images, appealed to him far more than the intellectualized Buddhism common to the capital and his native region.

Moreover, Lingyun’s poetic sensibilities were overwhelmed by the beauty of the Eastern Grove’s setting—craggy, forested mountain peaks enshrouded in mists, lush gorges filled with tumbled boulders and riven by pure, roaring streams—and the austere way of life of its devotees. The contrast with the corruptions and hostilities of court life was compelling. In his poetic “Dirge for Hui Yuan,” Lingyun revealed his yearning to immerse himself in Buddhist study and to accept a place even as the least of Hui Yuan’s disciples.

As Lingyun was falling under the spell of Eastern Grove Buddhism, however, the fact that he and the Xie family had thrown in their lot with the wrong leader was becoming all too clear. Liu Yu, having consolidated his position, crushed Liu Yi, Lingyun’s mentor, on December 31, 412 c.e.; Yi eventually was killed. Liu Yu spared Lingyun, however, and coopted him into his service in 413 c.e., first as administrator to the commander in chief, then as assistant director of the Imperial Library. During the time that Lingyun held these posts, the Chinese monk Faxian (Fa-hsien; c. 337-422 c.e.), after fourteen years in Afghanistan, returned to Jianye rich in Buddhist lore. He reported having seen a gigantic image of Buddha, in a cave, shining with brilliant light and casting mysterious shadows. Hoping to replicate this image, Hui Yuan arranged a similar shrine for the Eastern Grove. Painted shades of green on silk, the Buddha image was consecrated on May 27, 412 c.e. As a noted poet and calligrapher, Lingyun was invited to produce a poem that he entitled “Inscription on the Buddha-Shadow,” one of his earliest surviving metaphysical verses.

As always, Lingyun’s fortunes were linked to political events. In 415 c.e., he was dismissed from office, and the following year Hui Yuan died. Lingyun’s fortunes improved, however, with new administrative posts. More important was Yu’s liberation of Chang-an (Xian), the center of Northern Buddhism. Many of its monks thereupon traveled southward, bringing about the mingling of the two schools of Buddhist thought from which a distinctive Chinese version was to emerge. Amid this intellectual and religious excitement, however, Lingyun was held responsible for eruption of a scandal and was again dismissed. Nothing is known of him for the next eighteen months. In 419 c.e., Liu Yu strangled the imbecilic Emperor An, ending the Jin Dynasty and allowing his assumption of power as Wudi (Wu-ti), first of the Song Dynasty (Sung; 420-479 c.e.).

In accordance with customary treatment of aristocrats after a coup, Lingyun was demoted to the rank of marquess over only one hundred households. Subsequently, the rise of his cousin Xie Huilian (Hsieh Hui-lien) as the chief of the emperor’s henchmen and the courtly influence of a number of other relatives and friends drew him into succession politics. Unhappily, Lingyun’s romanticism, imprudence, and willful personality led him to back the wrong forces. Shortly after the ascension of Yifu (I-fu) to the throne, the clique with which Lingyun associated was disgraced. Ill and impoverished, he was banished to the lowly post of grand warden to Yongjia, a backward town in Zhejiang Province.

The mournful poems written during Lingyun’s exile from the capital reveal a distressed man confronting reality in full maturity. Middle-aged, bereft of significant income, beyond the pale of elusive political power, stricken by tuberculosis, and plagued by ulcerous legs, he had only his literary talents and religious beliefs to sustain him. Indeed, in accordance with esoteric Daoist and Buddhist teachings, he thereafter sought consolation in a search for truth in the wilderness into which he was exiled. The two months of hard travel that it took him to reach Yongjia evoked a series of fine nature poems, elegantly descriptive and brooding. On arrival, he also commenced his “Bienzong Lun” (c. 423-430; “On Distinguishing What Is Essential”), a major philosophical work.

Many earlier Chinese philosophers had wrestled with problems examined in Lingyun’s “On Distinguishing What Is Essential,” and in this sense it is a work of many authors. This fact, however, does not diminish the value of Lingyun’s contribution to Chinese philosophical discourse. Two versions of truth preoccupied him: truth that was acquired gradually and truth that was revealed instantaneously. Many Buddhists believed that an arrival at truth (Nirvana) required several lengthy stages of spiritual and bodily preparation, involving faith, study, and good works. That, Lingyun acknowledged, was the gradualism that Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha, had taught. Yet Buddha, he argued, had used that explanation when teaching Indians, a people with a facility for learning but with scant predilection for intuitive understanding. Had Buddha preached to the Chinese, a people who had difficulty in acquiring learning but who were masters of intuitive comprehension, his message would have been different. Ultimate enlightenment—a state of nonbeing, or wu—although doubtless assisted by learning, would have been presented by Buddha to the Chinese as attainable in a flash, by a quantum leap in faith.

As his health improved and his literary reputation increased, Lingyun also became more intriguing because of his new character. He was neglectful of his official duties, despite some efforts to plant mulberry trees, improve local agriculture, and undertake hydraulic works. His change in priorities had to do less with an implicit criticism of the state than with an honest desire to withdraw from worldly vexations in a mystic pursuit of truth. The climbing boots with removable studs that he designed for expeditions into the mountains became fashionable at court, and a broad-brimmed peasant hat, knapsack, and staff came to be his personal hallmarks. Soon, he resigned from office. His Daoism, which promised immortality for the body as well as the soul, required a spartan regimen of yoga, breathing exercises, and preparations of drugs, herbs, and elixirs. His “Fu of the Homeward Road” and “On Leaving My District” signaled his return in 424 c.e. to the decayed family estate at Shining. There, moving toward a richer inner life, he labored assiduously in the mountainous wilderness. During the next several years, a number of monks joined him in his idyllic anchorite life. His continuous investigations into Buddhist meanings made him the most learned layman of his day.

The regard in which Lingyun’s poetry was held, added to the renown of his family name, made him useful to Emperor Wen on his ascension to power. Lingyun’s presence not only would grace the court with a leading poet and calligrapher but also would solidify support for the emperor among many who had wavered. Accordingly, Lingyun was offered the directorship of the Imperial Library. Because rejection would have constituted an affront to the emperor and meant peril for his friends, he accepted reluctantly. For several years, he collected and collated documents, including major Buddhist sutras; he wrote poems and painted for the emperor. Court life wearied him, however, and in spite of an impending promotion, he begged a sick leave, which in 428 allowed a return to Shining. He conceived of himself during this time as free from official obligations and lived healthily and actively as a result, but the emperor viewed his conduct as defiant. Eventually, Lingyun fell afoul of conflicts among the local gentry. In serious danger, he begged Wendi’s forgiveness, and for a time the emperor protected him while he helped translate major sutras of Mahāyāna Buddhism into Chinese. Even his translations, however, were offensive to sectarians; the emperor found him a liability, and he was exiled to the wilds of Jiangxi Province. There Lingyun once again courted disaster by engaging in defiant conduct. Falsely implicated in a rebellious plot, he was called to Nanhai in 433 c.e. Philosophical, courageous, and aristocratic to the end, he was publicly executed the same year; he was buried in Guiji, among the mountains he loved.

Significance

Of the thousands of Xie Lingyun’s writings and poems, relatively few survive. Those extant clearly confirm his repute as China’s greatest nature poet. Nature poetry—descriptive, mystical, impressionistic, and simultaneously reflective and mood-stimulating—in Lingyun’s hands, was a disciplined, highly developed art form, particularly the five-word poem and the yuefu. Along with Ban Zhao (Pan Chao) and Tao Yunming (T’ao Yün-ming), he was in his own time—and has continued to be—recognized as one of the greatest poets in a uniquely Chinese genre.

As the most learned Buddhist layman of his day, Xie Lingyun exerted a major influence—through his poetry, calligraphy, essays, translations, associations, and later anchorite lifestyle—in the Sinicization of Buddhism. His profound understanding of Buddhism, always melded subtly with his Confucianism and Daoism, allowed him to translate and reinterpret main tenets of the religion for a distinctive Chinese context. Only a quintessential Chinese could have accomplished this task.

Bibliography

Bingham, Woodbridge. The Founding of the T’ang Dynasty. New York: Octagon Press, 1970. Good background on the fall of the Sui Dynasty and early Tang, with observations on contributions of the Song. Lacks critical balance, but is accessible and gives the reader an accurate sense of the importance of the period. Limited bibliography; useful appendices.

Frodsham, J. D. The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433), Duke of K’ang-Lo. 2 vols. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967. Definitive scholarly study; eminently readable. Volume 1 is largely biographical; volume 2 translates and examines Lingyun’s poetry extensively. Helpful footnotes throughout. Adequate appendices and index.

Fung Yu-Lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Translated by Derk Bodde. 2 vols. 1973. Reprint. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. Chapter 7 of the second volume of this excellent scholarly work carefully examines various aspects of Buddhism and Xie Lingyun’s role and influence in its interpretations. Splendid comparative chronological tables of the period of classical learning; informative notes throughout; superb bibliography; fine index.

Xie, Lingyun. The Mountain Poems of Hsieh Ling-Yün. Translated by David Hinton. New York: New Directions, 2001. A translation that includes introduction, notes, a map, a list of key terms intended to outline the poet’s worldview, and a bibliography. The poems are divided into three sections, from his first exile, his time in Shining, and his final exile.