A Study On The Friendship Between Monks And Scholars

During the Dali Period of the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism became thriving and poetry was flourishing. There emerged the Poet-Monk group. They walked out of the temples and built relationships with the intellectuals. Poetry was the link between monks and intellectuals. By the poetry they express emotions, discuss the philosophy and exchange the comments on the poetry. The contacts between Dali Monks and intellectuals reflected the ambivalence of the monks who were willing to be an officer of the government while still cannot abandon the freedom of being a monk. Their contacts also reflected the mood of the intellectuals at that time. The most important thing is that the contact of the Poet-Monk group and the intellectuals had a profound impact on the creation of poetry.Structure of the thesis is as follows:Chapter one focuses on the foundation of the contacts between Dali monk and the intellectuals. The paper traces back the history of the contacts between the monks and the intellectuals, and then takes a macroscopic description of Buddism in Tang Dynasty, during which period the Buddism became popularized. Among these, the rise and prosperity of Nanzongchan broke the boundary of the monk and common people, futhermore, promote the connection between the monks and intellectuals.Chapter two summarized the overall style of the contacts between Dali Monks and the intellectuals. And we describe the life and main contacts of the representative monks such as Lingyi, Huguo, Qingjiang, Fazhen, Jiaoran and Lingche. And we divide their contacts into three types:by the poetry they express emotions, discuss the philosophy and exchange the comments on the poetry.Chapter three describes the main style and feature of the contacts between the Poet-Monk Group and the intellectuals. The southern region of the Yangtze River is the main place where they had their communications. The monks had the ambivalence during the contacts, at the same time, the intellectuals had spiritual appeals, which was their main emotion feature.Chapter four analyzes the interaction of the Dali Monk and the intellectuals. We concentrate on the poetry that are mainly about interations between the two groups so that reveal the tendency of intellectualization of the Dali Monks and the tendency of being affected by Zen Buddism of the intellectuals. More specifically, we analyze the monks’ acception of the Qi and Liang poetry style and their willing to show some feeling of being intellectuals. Meanwhile, we analyze the images of some Buddism in the poetry of the intellectuals’, furthermore, their realm of an combination of the poetry and Zen Buddism.