Buddhist poetry is a genre of literature that
forms a part of Buddhist discourse.
== Origins ==
The first examples of Buddhist poetry can
be found in traditional scriptures such as
the Dhammapada, according to which, Siddhārtha
Gautama (the founder of Buddhism), upon his
reaching enlightenment, proclaimed:
== Form ==
Traditionally, most Buddhist sutras have a
prose component supplemented by verses (known
as gatha) that reiterate and poetically summarize
the themes of preceding prose passages. Gatha
functions as a mnemonic device helping the
Buddhist practitioner commit to memory a certain
doctrinal maxim. And in fact, the earliest
extant forms of Buddhist discourse appear
in verse, which is hardly surprising, considering
that the texts were not originally written,
but memorized. Linguistic analysis shows that
the prose component of the sutras is likely
to have been modified by later editing, while
the poems often contain earlier forms of language.
This view is confirmed by Japanese Buddhist
scholar Hajime Nakamura, who states that the
verse components of the Pali Canon actually
predate the prose components, the former being
a way of facilitating memorization, as the
Pali Canon was transmitted orally for the
first 300 or so years.
Current Buddhology generally maintains that
even the liturgical scriptures are products
of literary composition. Hence, the study
of Buddhist text in general and Buddhist poetry
in particular cannot be disengaged from the
literary field. But for the sake of classification
it is useful to distinguish between
Buddhist poetry that is attributed to the
Buddha himself, which forms a part of "Buddha
Speech" (Sk. Buddhavacana), and
Buddhist poetry written by Buddhists, which
is not included in the sutras.
== Buddhist poetry in Sanskrit ==
A significant number of Buddhist poets composed
their works in Sanskrit. One of the first
and best known is Aśvaghoṣa, of whom two
complete "Great Poems" (mahākāvya) survive,
i.e. the "Acts of the Buddha" (Buddhacarita.)
and "Handsome Nanda" (Saundarananda ). The
first tells the life-story of Śākyamuni
Buddha, while the second tells the story of
Nanda, the Buddha's handsome cousin, who was
guided towards liberation by turning his greatest
weakness - desire - into a motivating factor
for practice. Fragments of a drama called
Śāriputraprakaraṇa () are also extant,
and these may be some of the oldest, perhaps
even the oldest example of Sanskrit drama.
Aśvaghoṣa's verses are often simple yet
very suggestive, casting key Buddhist teachings,
such as impermanence, in evocatively paced
similes:
vihagānāṁ yathā sāyaṁ
tatra tatra samāgamaḥ |
jātau jātau tathāśleṣo
janasya svajanasya ca ||
Like birds in the evening
May meet here or there,
So too from birth to birth
One embraces one’s kin.
Other verses of Aśvaghoṣa capture in vivid
images human indecision, uncertainty and sorrow.
The following verse describes Nanda at the
door of his house, torn between the wish to
remain with his beloved wife and the sense
of respect that prompts him to leave and meet
the Buddha to make amends for neglecting the
Buddha's alms-round in front of his house:
taṅ gauravaṃ buddhagataṃ cakarṣa
bhāryānurāgaḥ punar ācakarṣa |
sa 'niścayān nāpi yayau na tasthau
turaṃs taraṅgeṣv iva rājahaṃsaḥ
||
Respect for the Buddha pulled him away
love for his wife pulled him back;
undecided, neither he went nor he stayed
like a swan-king pressed between waves.
Sanskrit poetry is subdivided into three types:
verse works (padya) prose works (gadya) and
mixed works (campū); nowhere in the Indic
tradition is versification taken as the distinguishing
feature of literary diction, as all sorts
of works, whether philosophical, medical,
etc., were composed in verse, for ease of
memorization. Several Buddhist authors specialized
in mixed verse-prose compositions, often re-telling
traditional stories about the Buddha's previous
births (jātaka). Among the authors writing
on the basis of the Jātakas, most prominent
is perhaps Āryaśūra , , , , ; other beautiful
collections of literary Jātakas are those
of Haribhaṭṭa and Gopadatta. Haribhaṭṭa's
collection includes a concise version of the
life story of Śākyamunibuddha; he describes
Māra's dejection after understanding the
Buddha's victory and superiority in the following
verse:
evam ukte 'tha śākyendre
'dhomukhaḥ kusumāyudhaḥ |
hato 'ham iti kāṣṭhena
viṣasāda mahīṃ likhan ||
After the Lord of the Śākyas had said this,
the Flower-Arrows god, face downcast,
thinking "I am undone", sank down,
writing on the earth with a stick.
This is reminiscent of a famous verse from
Kālidāsa's Kumārasaṁbhava , and the (probably
intended) contrast between the two verses
is itself suggestive.
evaṃ vādini devarṣau pārśve pitur adhomukhī
|
līlākamalapatrāṇi gaṇayām āsa pārvatī
||
While the divine Sage was thus speaking,
at the side of her father, face downcast,
Pārvatī counted the lotus petals of her
play.
Kālidāsa celebrates the budding presence
of the God of Love in Pārvatī’s mind,
as she is thrilled to hear a discussion about
her future husband; Haribhaṭṭa describes
the Love God’s defeat at the time of the
Buddha’s Awakening. Pārvatī is holding
lotus-petals; Māra is holding a wooden stick.
Another important type of mixed verse/prose
works is Sanskrit drama (nāṭaka), and here
king Harṣadeva deserves special mention.
The patron of the great Chinese monk Xuanzang
composed the Nāgānanda , an outstanding
drama based on the traditional story of Jīmūtavāhana,
prince of the Vidyādharas. While perfectly
at ease within the conventions of court poetry,
including the depiction of love and attraction,
Harṣadeva's Nāgānanda is suffused with
Buddhist reflections on compassion and on
the futility of hatred, and on impermanence
and the inevitability of death. The following
words are spoken by a brave Nāga boy to his
mother, who is suffering from extreme sorrow
as her child will soon be sacrificed to the
voracious bird Garuḍa:
kroḍīkaroti prathamaṃ
yadā jātam anityatā |
dhātrīva jananī paścāt
tadā śokasya kaḥ kramaḥ ||
Impermanence embraces the new-born,
like a midwife, first,
and the mother, afterwards:
what proper place is there for sorrow?
Another genre where Buddhist poets excelled
is the "good-sayings" (subhāṣita), collections
of proverb-like verses often dealing with
universally applicable principles not so specific
to the Buddhist tradition. One such collection
of verses is attributed to the Buddha himself,
and preserved in different versions as the
Udānavarga (Sanskrit) , Dhammapada (Pāli),
Dharmapada (Prākr̥t and Gāndhārī). This
collection often uses similes (upamā) to
exemplify key Buddhist teachings:
nāsti kāmasamo hy ogho
nāsti doṣasamo grahaḥ |
nāsti mohasamaṁ jālaṁ
nāsti tṛṣṇāsamā nadī ||
There is no flood like desire,
There is no possession like hatred,
There is no net like delusion,
There is no river like craving.
Other significant collections are Ravigupta's
Āryakośa, Vararuci's Gāthāśataka, Ratnamati's
Prakaraṇa , and several others. One of the
largest anthologies of good sayings extant
in Sanskrit is by a Buddhist abbot, i.e. Vidyākara's
Subhāṣitaratnakośa . The Subhāṣita
genre became also well-established in Tibet,
one of the greatest examples being Sakya Paṇḍita,
an early and influential master of the Sakyapa
school, known to have been fluent in Sanskrit
from an early age.
Ārya Śāntideva's "Entrance into the practice
of the Bodhisattvas" (Bodhicaryāvatāra)
partly resembles a collection of good sayings,
yet in many ways defies classification. It
is written in a number of rather different
literary registers, resembling court poetry
in places, while being very dramatic in others;
some verses are indeed "good-sayings", in
both content and style, while an entire chapter
is written in the confident and terse tone
of a Madhyamaka philosophical text, with the
usual alternation of objections and rebuttals.
The work is a compendium of Mahāyāna practice,
covering the six perfections (pāramitā)
which may be said to function as its main
structural guideline. The "Compendium of Perfections"
by Āryaśūra is another such guide, containing
numerous excellent verses and organized even
more systematically in terms of the six perfections.
Other guides to Buddhist practices were written
in the form of versified letters; among these,
the "Letter to a Friend" (Suhr̥llekhā) and
the "Garland of Gems" (Ratnāvalī ) of Nāgārjuna
deserve special mention, not just for their
content and style, but also for being very
influential in India and Tibet; another remarkable
epistle extant in Sanskrit is Candragomin's
"Letter to a disciple" (śiṣyalekhā ), also
outlining the Buddhist path for a disciple.
These letters exemplify the friendly and respectful
relationship between Buddhist masters and
their patrons, who received advice on a number
of different topics, both worldly and supramundane.
Buddhist poets wrote very many praises of
the Buddha, Dharma and Saṅgha, and of Bodhisattvas
and meditational deities . The One Hundred
and Fifty Verses of Mātr̥ceṭa seem to
have been particularly popular; Nandipriya's
extensive commentary on this work still survives
in the Tibetan Tangyur (Śatapañcaśatkanāmastotraṭīkā,
Brgya lṅa bcu pa źes bya ba’i bstod pa’i
’grel pa, Tg bstod tshogs ka 116a5-178a1.).
Mātr̥ceṭa's verses use accessible language,
with strong echoes from different types of
Buddhist literature, and transmit a sense
of great devotion all the more highlighted
by the poet's restrained and measured diction:
samyaksaṃbodhibījasya
cittaratnasya tasya te |
tvam eva vīra sārajño
dūre tasyetaro janaḥ ||
Seed of perfect awakening,
gem of your mind:
you, hero, know its essence,
others - are far.
Buddhist praises often have didactic purposes;
some of them (like Nāgārjuna's Catuḥstava)
expound philosophical ideas of specific schools,
while praises of Bodhisattvas and meditational
deities often facilitate readers/listeners
in acquiring familiarity with important features
that become the focus of recollection and
or formal meditative contemplation.
Buddhist authors also wrote on prosody (chandas),
offering their own poetic examples for different
types of Sanskrit meter. Two notable works
on Sanskrit poetry are the Chandoratnākara
of Ratnākaraśānti and the Vr̥ttamālāstuti
of Jñānaśrīmitra , by two great contemporary
Vikramaśīla masters who were active on several
intellectual fronts and well-known exponents
of Yogācāra thought. The Vr̥ttamālāstuti
is particularly striking: it consists in verses
of praise of the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Mañjuśrī,
which at the same time offer information about
the verse that is being exemplified, such
as its name and the position of the caesura
(yati). A simple example, for the śaraṇa
meter:
prasīda bhagavan
vilokaya manāk |
jaḍaṁ janam imam
tvadekaśaraṇam ||
Be well-disposed, Bhagavat!
Look a bit at this dull person,
whose only refuge is you.
Pāli poetry follows very similar patters
as Sanskrit poetry, in terms of prosody, vocabulary,
genres, and poetic conventions; indeed several
Pāli authors were well conversant with Sanskrit
and even composed works in that language (such
as, for example, the Anuruddhaśataka). Sanskrit
meters and poetic conventions were more broadly
very influential throughout South-East Asia
even in respect to vernacular languages (Thai,
Burmese, etc.), also thanks to the popularity
of literary aesthetic ideas from the tradition
of Alaṁkāraśāstra ("The science of ornaments")
regarding the purposes and nature of literature.
While discussing praises, literary praises
of meditational deities have been briefly
mentioned; this brings us into the fold of
Buddhist Tantric poetry, which is esoteric
in character and thus often laden with evocative
symbols meant to be understood only thanks
to one's relationship with a living master.
Notable are the "Songs of Practice" (Caryāgīti
), written in Apabhraṁśa rather than Sanskrit,
and including among their authors the "Great
Accomplished Ones" (mahāsiddha), such as
Saraha, Śāntipā, and many others.
== Buddhist poetry in Asia ==
Buddhist poetry – like the bulk of the scriptures
produced by Buddhists – is not limited to
compositions in Pali and Sanskrit; it has
flourished in practically every language that
Buddhists speak.
Notable examples in the Tibetan tradition
are works of Milarepa.
Chinese Buddhist Tradition is particularly
rich in poetic expression. In the poetry of
Bai Juyi, for instance,we see a tension between
the secular and Buddhist poetic expression:
many Buddhists considered poetry as an attachment
and advocated against it, despite the fact
that the scriptures revered by them were abundant
in poetic forms. Bai is credited with the
coinage of the expression kyōgen kigo (狂言綺語,
lit. "deranged words and embellished language"),
which, to his view, referred to futility of
poetic expression in comparison to Buddhist
practice. Perhaps, the most successful Chinese
Buddhist poet to resolve this paradox was
Jiao Ran 皎然 (730-799), who proposed treatment
of poetry as an intellectual instrument of
Buddhist practice. Chan Buddhism (Ch. Chan;
Jap. Zen) provided a rich ground for Buddhist
poetry. Chan Buddhists created a complex language
in which indirection, suggestion, ambiguity,
paradox, and metaphor are prized over straightforward
explanation. This complex language of Chan
literature is also applied in Chan poetry.
Chan Buddhists asserted that though enlightenment
cannot be explained in ordinary terms, poetry,
as a special language, can point the way.
As the Chan monk Juefan Huihong (1071–1128)
wrote, “The subtleties of the mind cannot
be transmitted in words, but can be seen in
words.” In Chan poetry, images as simple
as the moon, clouds, boats, reflections in
water, plum and lotus, bamboo and pine took
on complex connotations based in Chan ideas,
famous verbal exchanges, and Chan and Buddhist
texts.To exemplify the use of specialized
Buddhist metaphor, this well-known poem by
Hanshan (Tang Dynasty) will suffice:
Korean poets wrote mostly in Classical Chinese.
Japanese poets also contributed to Buddhist
poetic tradition in classical Chinese (e.g.
the poetic genius of Kūkai inspired many
poets of later generations.) Kūkai, in turn
was influenced by Jiao Ran's Shi shi 詩式,
as the latter is included in Kūkai's magnum
opus of poetics, the Bunkyō hifuron 文鏡秘府論.In
medieval Japan, Buddhist poetry was accorded
a special status of a separate genre within
the corpus of the waka collections.
== Japanese Buddhist Poetry ==
1. The earliest extant collection of the Japanese
poetry, the Man'yōshū, contains a preface
(Jp. jo 序 or daishi 題詞) to two poems
on the love of parents towards their children:
"Sakyamuni expounds truthfully from his golden
mouth, 'I love all things equally, the way
I love my child, Rahula.' He also teaches
that 'no love is greater than the love for
ones child.' Even the greatest of saints cherishes
his child. Who, then, among the living creatures
of this world could fail to love children
claimed as one's own?" There are several prefaces
and poems in the Man'yōshū that mention
the name of Buddha Śākyamuni (Jp. Shaka
Nyorai 釋迦如来 /an honorific title of
Siddhārtha Gautama), Buddhist temples (Jp.
tera 寺), monks and nuns.2. Among the treasures
of Yakushi-ji Temple in Nara there are stone
blocks dating from the Nara period modeled
as "the footsteps" of the Buddha (Jp. Bussokuseki
佛足石). These blocks contain poems in
man'yōgana that may be considered the oldest
Buddhist waka (Japanese language poems) known
to date.　These poems are usually referred
to as bussokusekika (lit. "poems on stone
imprints of Buddha's feet": 仏足石歌).
Consider the following example:
Both examples above have one trait in common.
Namely, the focus on the physical characteristics
of the Buddha is prominent: "the golden mouth"
of the Buddha in the Man'yoshu and the "feet
of the Buddha" in the stone inscriptions relate
to the marks of perfection of the Buddha's
body / speech (Skt. mahāpuruṣa, lit. [signs
of] "a great person").In the Heian period,
Buddhist poetry began to be anthologized in
the Imperial Anthologies (Jp. chokusenshū
勅選集. Among the 21 Imperial Anthologies,
19 contain Buddhist tanka (lit. short waka)
starting with the Shūi Wakashū, compiled
between 1005 and 1007 C.E.
The first Imperial Anthology to treat Buddhist
tanka as a separate genre, i.e. shakkyōka
（lit. "Poems of Śākyamuni's Teaching":
釈教歌）, is the Senzai Wakashū, which
has an exclusive section dedicated to the
Buddhist Poems in Volume 19 (第十九巻).
Among the most famous poets who wrote shakkyōka
are:
Saigyō;
Jakuren;
Kamo no Chōmei;
Fujiwara no Shunzei;
Jien;
Nōin;
Dōgen, Ton'a, etc. Many of the so-called
"Thirty-six Poetry Immortals" wrote Buddhist
poetry.
Shakkyōka can be subdivided according to
the ten following motifs:
Buddhas and bodhisattvas;
Eminent monks / nuns;
A passage from a sutra;
A passage from commentatorial corpus of the
Buddhist canon;
Buddhist Experience (meditative / devotional
states);
Mental states, such as delusion, passion,
anger, etc. that are important in the Buddhist
discourse;
Religious deeds;
Related to temples and shrines;
Buddhist views of Nature;
Natural phenomena alluding to Buddhist themes
(e.g. transience of flowers blooming)These
motifs are not mutually exclusive and are
very often combined within a given poem.
One of the most famous collections of Japanese
tanka of the Kamakura period, the Hyakunin
Isshu contains several shakkyōka, for instance
Poem 95, by Jien (also anthologized in the
Senzai Wakashū: 巻十七, 雑中, No. 1137):
In later periods, as tanka was slowly being
overshadowed by renga and haiku – the two
poetic forms that derived from tanka – such
famous poets as "the seven worthies of renga",
(Jp. renga shichiken 連歌七賢) of the
Muromachi period, Sōgi, and still later,
Matsuo Bashō, Kobayashi Issa, among many
others, carried on the tradition of Buddhist
poetry with their compositions.
The nostalgic feeling of the ancient capital,
Nara – interspersed with the scent of chrysanthemums
(symbol of Japanese monarchy) and the old
Buddha statues – captures well the aesthetic
ideals of sabi and yūgen in this famous haiku.
Although these three lines appear to be a
mere utterance of almost prosaic quality,
the imagery invoked is far from simplistic.
Buddhas, emperors, passage of time, the ethereal
beauty of flowers that presents itself obliquely,
i.e., appealing to scent rather than sight
– all suggest that the poet sought to use
language as a medium of condensed imagery
to map an immediate experience, whose richness
can only be read in the blanks.
Here the poet uses the image of evanescence
of our world, the dewdrop – one of the classical
allegories of the Buddhist teaching – to
express grief caused by the death of his daughter.
In theory, Buddhism teaches its followers
to regard all the vicissitudes of life as
transitory and ephemeral, akin to magic apparitions
without substance or dewdrops soon to evaporate
under the sun. Yet, a father's loss of his
child is more than reason can counter.
== Buddhist poetry and modernity ==
As Japan reached the era of industrialized
modernity, many of the poets of the Meiji
period started to experiment with the European
styles of poetic composition. Some poets,
notably Miyazawa Kenji—a devout Buddhist
who expressed his convictions in his poetry
and fiction—often composed poems with Buddhist
overtones. His Ame ni mo Makezu (雨ニモマケズ),
known to practically every Japanese today,
takes its theme (Chapter 14: Peaceful and
Joyous Deeds / Jp. Anrakugyō 安楽行) from
the Lotus Sutra 妙法蓮華經, which Kenji
revered.Another Buddhist poem that remains
well known today, but for non-religious reasons,
is the Iroha poem from the Heian period. Originally
written in man'yōgana and attributed to Kūkai,
this Buddhist poem contains every kana precisely
once, and is learned in Japanese primary schools
mainly for this reason. Many old-style Japanese
dictionaries adhere to the Iroha order.
A modern Indian Sanskrit poet, Vanikavi Dr.
Manomohan Acharya, wrote Sri Gautama Buddha
Panchakam in simple and lucid Sanskrit through
lyrical style.
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Japan : The Works of the Poet-Priest Kamo
No Chomei. Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese
Studies. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese
Studies, University of Michigan, 1998. ISBN
978-0-939512-86-7
N. Sakaki. Inch by Inch: 45 Haiku by Issa.
Albuquerque: La Alameda Press, 1999 ISBN 978-1-888809-13-8
E.U. Ramirez-Christensen and Shinkei. Heart's
Flower : The Life and Poetry of Shinkei. Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994. ISBN
978-0-8047-2253-7
A. Skilton, "How the 
Nagas Were Pleased by Harsha and The Shattered
Thighs by Bhasa". New York: New York University
Press, 2009
D. Smith, "The Birth of Kumāra". New York:
New York University Press, 2005.
J.S. Speyer, tr. "The Jātakamālā or Garland
of Birth-Stories by Ārya-śūra." London:
Oxford University Press, 1895.
P.L. Vaidya, ed., and Āryaśūra. "Jātakamālā".
Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1959.
B. Watson, tr. Po Chü-i : selected poems.
New York : Columbia University Press, 2000.
ISBN 978-0-231-11839-2
B. Watson, "Buddhism in the Poetry of Po Chü-I."
Eastern Buddhist 21, no. 1 (1988): 1-22.
Egan, Charles, and Charles Chu. "Clouds Thick,
Whereabouts Unknown : Poems by Zen Monks of
China." New York: Columbia University Press,
2010. ISBN 978-0-231-15038-5
== References ==
== External links ==
Buddhist Poetry Reader's Guide from Shambhala
Publications
A Sketch of Buddha's Life: contains many of
the early Pali poems.
The Dhammapada, e.g Buddha's Enlightenment
poem: 153-154.
The Senzaishu in Japanese, cf. Vol 19, 釈教.
Selected translations and an Introduction
to Waka.
Search Engine of the Man'yoshu in Japanese.
A fan website on Miyazawa Kenji with translations
of works.
A Buddhist poetry fan site.
Sacred Poetry from Around the World.
jeromes niece A collection of poetry Dharma
submitted by readers.
Buddhist Poetry Review
