ABSTRACTS: Highly original and controversial, Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792-1841) is a seminal Chinese poet and even considered by some scholars a pioneer of modern Chinese poetry. While his poetry has often been interpreted politically, the prevalent Buddhist elements in it have rarely drawn much academic attention. They were regarded as backward and "un-modern" or treated in a generalizing way that neglects the nuances of Gong's developing religiosity. This paper argues for the opposite. It delineates Gong's spiritual journey from Chan to Tiantai Buddhism and demonstrates how the latter – especially its understanding of human nature and doctrines of "Three Truths" – liberated Gong's creativity and shaped his unique style in his most influential, autobiographical poem collection Miscellaneous Poems of the Jihai Year ( Jihai zashi , 己亥雜詩). The highly textual and individualistic version of Tiantai Buddhism advocated in this collection also showcases a kind of literati Buddhism at the end of the Chinese imperial period before the Western invasion. This paper analyzes the collection from three perspectives: that is, how Buddhism is related to literary creativity (in other words, poetry-writing itself), to the literati's migration, and to erotic desires.
Lang Chen (Sat,) studied this question.