Coral Grove (Shānhú Lín 珊瑚林) by Yuan Hongdao 袁宏道 (1568-1610): Religion and Salon Culture in the Late Ming Dynasty

Coral Grove (Shānhú Lín 珊瑚林) by Yuan Hongdao 袁宏道 (1568-1610): Religion and Salon Culture in the Late Ming Dynasty

A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Baltimore, Maryland, November 25, 2013

Charles B. Jones, Ph.D.

School of Theology and Religious Studies

The Catholic University of America

Abstract:

Yuan Hongdao袁宏道(1568-1610) and the Three Teachings Movement of the late Ming dynasty come together in his book Coral Grove (Shānhú Lín 珊瑚林), a work containing over 300 short extracts of conversations Yuan had over the years with his friends and associates. Read solely for its ostensive meaning, the book provides a window into the ways in which late Ming gentry thought about the three religions vis-à-vis their own lives and concerns. In this presentation I wish to explore the text from another direction, and place it within what I will call “salon culture” in the late Ming period. I will show that this text served as a model for refined conversation, a function more important than the actual religious ideas it presents. In this way, the presentation will help contextualize the religious revival of the late Ming and early Qing within gentry cultural and status concerns.

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Hsieh Lang said to Yü Ho, “Everybody’s coming to your place this evening for conversation; you’d better strengthen your walls and ramparts!” Yü replied, “If Wang T’an-chih is coming, we’ll wait for him ‘with a single division.’ But if Han Po is coming, we’d better ‘cross the River and burn our boats behind us’!”

I. Introduction

Yuan Hongdao袁宏道 (1568-1610) appears to have enjoyed the ideal life of a literatus of the late Ming dynasty. The son of a minor gentry family in Gong’an County (Gōng'ān xiàn公安縣), Huguang Province (Húguǎng shěng 湖廣省), he and his two brothers Zongdao 宗道 (1560-1600) and Zhongdao 中道 (1570-1624) all earned the “presented scholar” (jìnshì 進士) degree (Zongdao and Hongdao while still very young, Zhongdao in middle age), and went on to government careers and the local élite status that the degree brought. On his way to examination success, Yuan Hongdao engaged in many of the kinds of activities culturally valued by the gentry class: he helped organize literary societies, met with others to exchange poetry, and discussed Buddhist, Daoist, and Neo-Confucian philosophy. His participation in the imperial examination system enabled him to form a network with influential and well-placed peers; during his first attempt at the metropolitan examination in 1589, he made the acquaintances of fellow examinees Jiao Hong 焦竑 (1541-1620), Tao Wangling 陶望齡 (1562-1609), and Huang Hui 黃輝 (1559-1621), all of whom were to become well-known lay Buddhists later on. In 1591, Yuan struck up a ten-year friendship with the famous essayist and iconoclast Li Zhi. 李贄 (1527-1602), staying with him for three months of intensive conversation. On his second examination attempt in 1592, he earned the jinshi degree at the young age of 24. Thus, Yuan came out of the examination system not only with the credential necessary for success, but also well-connected and well-informed.

Afterward, Yuan Hongdao spent a short time as magistrate of Wu County (Wú xiàn lìng 吳縣令, 1594-1597), Unhappy in this post and struggling through a bout of malaria, he immediately began to petition for relief, which was granted in 1597. After that he traveled, taught, and continued to meet with friends for literary gatherings, founding the Grape Society (Putao she 葡萄社) in 1598 for that purpose. During the middle period of his life, he served the central government in the capital, studied, and developed more of an appreciation for classical poetry and literature. In 1599 he spent two months researching Pure Land teachings and composed his major statement on that topic, the Comprehensive Treatise on the West (Xifang helun 西方合論, T.1976). He also distanced himself from Li Zhi and his so-called “crazy Chan” (kuang chan 狂禪).

His elder brother’s sudden death in 1600 shook Yuan, and he retired from office and spent the next six years at home in Gong’an County in a hermitage he called “Willow Wave” (Liǔlàng 柳浪) because of the profusion of weeping willow trees whose leaves undulated like ocean waves in the wind. He took vegetarian vows and lived in leisure and contemplation, spending his days writing, boating, meeting friends, conversing with monks about Buddhism, and traveling to view landscapes and mountains. In 1606, Yuan grew restless and returned to public life, holding offices in the Board of Rites and the Department of Personnel, and later serving as chief examiner for the Shanxi provincial examinations. This was to be his last contribution to public life. In 1610, he became increasingly ill, and died at the age of 42, possibly of blackwater fever.

This brief synopsis of Yuan Hongdao’s life should suffice to demonstrate his position at the center of political, literary, and cultural circles. This will help us in evaluating the Shanhu Lin (珊瑚林, hereafter Coral Grove); it will make clear that it was written by someone closely in touch with the élite cultural trends of his time, including the Buddhist revival and the Three Teachings movement, and allow us to assess its genre and function.

II. The Coral Grove: Audience and Genre

Compiled and published by Chen Jiru in 1604, Coral Grove is a collection of 349 very brief essays drawn from Yuan Hongdao’s conversations. Two questions that I would like to raise in this section are: (1) what sort of book culture predominated among the gentry when the Coral Grove was published? (2) What kind of book is it?

IIa. Late Ming Dynasty Book Culture and Yuan’s Audience. During much of Chinese history, even after the invention of printing, most books circulated in manuscript form, and even when a viable publishing industry existed, many of the literati complained of difficulty in locating and acquiring books and resorted to hand-copying. While publishing had flourished during the Song dynasty, in the early Ming there was a decline in publishing, in addition to which there was a cultural consensus among the gentry that a household did not need to have many books on hand. Thus, there was little profit to be made in authoring an original work and little incentive to write, and the publishing industry (mostly run through government printing houses) stuck to known sellers such as the Classics and the Histories.

However, right around the time Yuan Hongdao was born, things changed drastically for numerous reasons. Here are a few: The rise of vernacular fiction made a space in the market for works that were entertaining and easy for both literati and non-literati readerships to enjoy. The first experimental publication of successful examination essays in 1480 demonstrated that one could create a bestseller and turn a profit, motivating more authors to take up their writing brushes. The invention of a simplified font called “Song style” (sòngtǐzì 宋體字) or “craftsman style” (jiàngsòngtǐzì 匠體字) reduced the cost of woodblock carving; coupled with a drop in the price of paper, this made books more affordable. This in turn made publishers more willing to take a chance on a new work, since less investment was needed for the initial print run. By Yuan’s lifetime, book collecting became an esteemed gentry avocation, and large libraries such as the famed Tianyi Pavillion (Tiānyī gé 天一閣) in Ningbo arose. If a literatus were going to achieve (or exceed) the old dream of the “library of 10,000 juan 卷,” then he needed to have many books available on the market for purchase at a good price.

Yuan Hongdao came onto the scene as all of these trends were gathering speed, and to a certain extent one may see them reflected in the Coral Grove. The original published copy of which I have a facsimile is indeed carved in the “craftsman’s style” font. It touches on issues of concern to the kind of gentry who were likely to want to collect books: explanations of the Four Books that might help a student write distinctive examination essays, popular Buddhist topics and scriptures, “Three Teachings” thought (sānjiǎo héyī 三教合一), and so on. We may assume that Yuan expected some return on the time he invested in writing and publishing this work.

IIb. The genre of the Coral Grove. We shall next consider the matter of the Coral Grove’s, genre, since settling that question will help us later as we inquire into the book’s purpose. At first glance, it seems to be a book of “short essays” or “familiar essays” (xiǎopǐnwén 小品文) popular at the time. This term, which originally meant an abridgment of a Buddhist sūtra when first used in the Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語 of Liú Yìqìng 劉義慶 (403-444), had shifted its meaning by the late Ming to indicate an essay written in a very casual and familiar style. The Coral Grove displays both brevity and informality. The entries are all very short, some only one or two sentences in length, and the style is informal, making use of much vernacular, e.g., the conversational méiyǒu 沒有 instead of the classical wú 無, or wǒ 我 rather than wú 吾. However, I would not place the Coral Grove in the “familiar essay” category. Yuan certainly did write several short, familiar essays (examples in English translation appear in Jonathan Chaves’ Pilgrim of the Clouds ), but not in the work under discussion.

What, then, is it? We may approach this question by looking at an earlier document that provided the inspiration and much of the source material for the Coral Grove. Chen Jiru 陳繼儒 (1558-1639), who sponsored the printing of the Coral Grove, states in the preface that it was an expansion of a work published by Yuan Hongdao himself called “Summer Conversations at Deshan” (Déshān shǔ tán 德山暑譚). He goes on to say, “Nowadays, with “fish-eyes” (yújī 魚璣) filling the markets, who can recognize the bright pearl?”, indicating that he wished to raise the cultural awareness of his intended audience by giving them examples of high-level discourse worthy of the gentry class. Thus, this is not a book of essays but a record of conversations. What would be the purpose of such a book, and what appeal would it hold for its readers? I suggest that we would get the most traction on these questions if we leave aside the question of genre for a while and pause to examine the status and class anxieties of the gentry (shìdàfū 士大夫); this will allow us to gauge the kind of book that might appeal to them. We will follow this with some comparisons of the Coral Grove with other Chinese records of conversation and with the rise of the “commonplace book” in Europe. After these considerations, we should be in a good position to assess the nature of Yuan’s book.

III. The Lives of the Gentry

IIIa. The Importance of the Civil Service Examinations. The Coral Grove is a book by the gentry and for the gentry, and as such it speaks to their concerns. Among these, the awareness that gentry status was ephemeral, that it had to be earned and could be lost, loomed large. Unlike the feudal aristocracy of older days, whose grant of land and title was permanent and heritable, one joined the gentry by passing the lower-level examinations, and gentry status could be revoked by a displeased monarch. This means, as Craig Clunas points out, that to be “gentry” was to enjoy a status and not to be a member of a class. The three Yuan brothers enjoyed this status by virtue of their examination success, but neither they nor their associates could be sure of holding it to the ends of their lives, and they could not pass it to their sons; their sons would have to study and pass the examinations on their own. Since the civil service examination was such a crucial factor in gaining gentry status, it obviously was a point of great concern to the gentry as well. As John Dardess put it,

The civil service examination system, endured by so many and successfully negotiated by so few, was unquestionably the central shaping mechanism, in many ways, the driving mechanism, behind the formation , generation after generation, of the educated elite of Ming China.

One may see this concern reflected in essays within the Coral Grove that discuss the Four Books from a Buddhist perspective. For example, in essay number four we find the following:

“If for a single day [one] subdues the self and returns to propriety, then all under Heaven will ascribe humaneness [to one].” Now, there being no “self” (jǐ 己), then there are no “[other] people” (rén 人). There being no “people,” then there is no “under Heaven” (tiānxià 天下). The myriad things harmoniously (húnrán 渾然) [[[form]]] one body, and thus it is said they “return to humaneness.” In Yan Yuan’s way of thinking, one’s self (wúshēn 吾身) depends solely upon seeing, hearing, speaking, and acting. If now, [however], having overcome and eliminated (qù 去) the self, then how is this [[[self]] that] lacks seeing, hearing, speaking, and moving going to do any practice (gōngfu 工夫)? This is why he asks [[[Confucius]]] about the eyes. The great master (fūzǐ 夫子) answers, “Do not look with your eyes; look only with the eyes of the principles of Heaven (tiānzé 天則). Do not hear with your ears; hear only with the ears of the principles of Heaven. Ears and eyes are the self; the self is contrary to propriety. This is the true place to “subdue the self by means of propriety.” Master Yan (yánzi 顏子) [at first] thought, “Even though this is difficult, I will still do it now.” Reading to [the passage], “having exhausted my abilities”: [this means that] he had abandoned even the most subtle (xiānháo 纖毫) views and discriminating thoughts. After that [he continues], “… [[[Confucius]]] sets up some lofty [[[teaching]]], and though I wish to follow it, I find that I cannot!” This is not just to have failed to span an interval. The body/essence of the Dao (dàotǐ 道體) is originally unattainable by engaging it with one’s strength in this way. The Diamond Sutra’s question “How should one abide? How should one control one’s mind?” is the same as Yan Yuan’s question about humaneness. That “in which one abides” and that “by which one controls one’s mind” is precisely “considering humaneness as subduing the self and returning to propriety.” “Not abiding in the form of almsgiving, not abiding in the sound, odor, taste, etc. of almsgiving” is the same as “Do not see, hear, speak, or act in a way that is contrary to propriety.”

In this passage, Yuan reframes Analects 12:1 in terms of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self and equates Yan Yuan’s questions to Confucius with the question that Subhūti asks the Buddha, thus prompting the preaching of the Diamond Sūtra. In the moment of utterance, this might elicit interest as a creative reading of the Confucian text. As a published remark circulating among a wider audience, it might also serve as a model for an ambitious young man seeking a way to make his essays stand out from the other thousands of essays that the examiners would have to read. In this way, the Coral Grove would speak directly to the anxieties of younger men caught in “examination hell.”

IIIb. The Gentry’s Sense of Self. Such gambits as that described above might pave the way for entry into gentry status in the eyes of the government, but at the level of local society and a nationwide network of gentry, one’s status still had to be consolidated in various ways. By the late Ming the gentry had to share their élite status with other groups of people, notably newly-rich merchants who made fortunes by capitalizing on the improved transportation infrastructure and the influx of Mexican silver. There was a need for the gentry to compete with these nouveau-riche families, who were not infrequently more wealthy and influential than they were. One way of doing this was through connoisseurship: the rich merchant might be able to afford old paintings, antique furniture, many finely-printed books, or the works of famous calligraphers, but it was the gentry with their superior education and heritage who could display them appropriately and talk about them knowledgably. More importantly for us, depth in religious and philosophical sophistication provided another means by which the gentry could separate themselves from the tyros and justify their élite status. In other words, cultural superiority provided a means for the gentry to assure themselves that their status meant something tangible and valuable. However, this superiority had to be asserted without becoming crass or overbearing; one had to command, not demand, respect.

The gentry then based a good part of their sense of self and worth on their education, refined tastes, and cultural pursuits. For these strategies to work, a wider non-gentry public had to be persuaded that these indeed constituted criteria of superiority and status, and so the gentry had to police the group image that they projected. This meant that, even with some level of examination success under his belt, a newly-arrived candidate needed to make friends and hold his own within the give-and-take of gentry association. This entailed, among other things, an ability to participate in what I shall call “salon culture.” By “salon,” I intend venues of social interchange in which conversation mattered and could have consequences for one’s standing. One might have a casual conversation on the street, but when one was invited to a banquet, a tea tasting, or a session of drinking wine under the moon in an outdoor pavilion, one needed to hold one’s own, create a good impression, and integrate into gentry culture. As the epigram at the head of this study indicates, conversation could be serious business. In the context of “salon culture,” conversational gatherings in moon-gazing pavilions over tea or wine, Coral Grove modeled the way a gentleman conducted himself and provided talking points that could at least provide a simulacrum of erudition and wit, or in the terms invoked by Graham Sanders, sprezzatura and mediocrità. In a situation where one’s performance in conversation could have real consequences on one’s social standing and influence, such helps were eagerly sought.

Coral Grove contains a snippet of conversation in which Yuan Hongdao recalls the first time he achieved this. Essay number two reads as follows:

Question: What did Miaoxi妙喜 (i.e., Dahui Zonggao 大慧宗杲, 1089-1163) mean when he said “All gentlemen (zhūgōng 諸公) know only about the ‘investigation of things’ (géwù 格物); they do not know about ‘things investigate’ (wù gé物格).”

Answer: “Investigation of things” and “things investigating [me]” are similar [in meaning] to the proverb (yàn 諺) which says “I hit others, and others hit back.” People today use up an entire life’s thought pursuing external things to the limit, and get pursued to their limit in return. How would this not be “things investigate [one]? This is why [Zong]gao quoted the story of “slashing the picture and the head falling off.”

One can almost feel the elation that a young Yuan Hongdao felt when, introduced into gentry society by his older brother, he had his first insight into the Chan teachings of Dahui Zonggao 大慧宗杲 that not only opened his mind to greater things, but also allowed him to contribute to the conversation. Master Dahui’s thought was an eminently acceptable topic among late Ming gentry who pursued Chan thought, and by his insight, Yuan inserted himself successfully into the conversation.

Later, as an older and more influential member of the gentry, Yuan’s thoughts on other such cultural matters would be of interest to younger readers. For example, in essay 85 Yuan responds to a question concerning a Chan critique of the poetry of Su Shi (蘇軾, 1036-1101):

Question: There is a certain Chan master who dismisses Master [Dong]po’s verses saying, “In the midst of ‘sound and form’ one wishes to penetrate the [[[dharma]]-] body, while the absence of mountains and waters make people anxious.” What does this mean?

Answer: When Master Yunman (Yúnmén 雲門) said he wanted to strike Śākyamuni dead, what did that mean? From antiquity Chan masters have all been latter-day people (hòumiàn rén 後面人) looking back on former-day people (qiánmiàn rén 前面人). How could one pick out the long and short of Master Su from one or two sayings?

While from a scholarly viewpoint this may not be a particularly deep or well-researched answer, in its social context it allows Yuan to set some parameters for literary discourse. Su Shi was one of the greatest literary voices of the Song dynasty and greatly revered by late Ming literati; the Chan monk who “dismissed” him is not named, but we must presume he was someone the gentry listened to. In salon conversation, it would be difficult for a younger man to know whether to agree with the Chan monk and risk being considered unappreciative of Su’s poetry or to criticize the Chan monk and risk offending an important potential contact who might be within that monk’s circle. Either opinion risks a faux pas. Yuan Hongdao helpfully provides a way out by indicating that one may only understand the Chan monk’s criticism of Su with more context, so one may suspend judgment on the matter and sidestep the risk. A young reader of this essay could both learn something about Chan and literary history and see a way to evade a sticky conversational situation.

Taking all this into account, then, we might reasonably suppose that the audience for the Coral Grove consisted of gentry men who worried over their examination prospects, needed to justify their élite status through their sophistication in matters religious (if not in other arenas), and wanted to know how to fit into gentry culture through cultivated conversational skills. A book that recorded the conversations of a man who had made it into the highest levels of career success and gentry acceptance could do this by providing them with examples of refined interaction and intelligent discourse while at the same time enlightening them on matters of religion, philosophy and possible avenues of approach to examination essays. In the remainder of this article, I will contend that this is precisely what we find in the recorded conversations of the Coral Grove.

IV. A Question of Genre Redux

Now that we have examined the lives and needs of the Coral Grove’s intended audience, we can return to the question of genre and get a better sense of the kind of book it is and the kinds of purposes it served.

I have already described it as a set of recorded conversations, and so it is. However, when one compares it to other books of recorded conversations, such as the Shishuo xinyu 世說新語 to which I have already alluded, a difference emerges. The Shishuo xinyu consists of actual dialogues in which different characters engage in conversational give-and-take. While a few of the essays in the Coral Grove display these kinds of exchanges (e.g., number 83, in which Yuan’s younger brother Zhongdao speaks ), most are not really conversations at all, but consist solely of Yuan’s remarks on this or that subject, occasionally responding to a question posed to him by an unnamed interlocutor. It is a collection of things Yuan Hongdao said in conversation, but it is not a record of conversations as such. In this way the Coral Grove is less like the Shisuo xinyu and more like a work in the Chan “Recorded Sayings” (yǔlù 語錄) genre.

However, there is another comparison that we might make that, while casting further afield, sheds an interesting light on this work. I am referring to the “commonplace book” which became popular in Europe around the same time that the Coral Grove saw print, and which seem to serve some of the same purposes.

The commonplace book was a private notebook in which members of the educated class in Europe jotted down summaries of books, poems, apt quotations, and other miscellaneous notes. Unlike a notebook, however, the commonplace book was distinguished by its systematicity. Several authors, most notably John Locke, devised systems of indexing the contents of these books so that any given item could be quickly and easily retrieved as needed; this was the practice of “commonplacing.”

According to Lucia Dacome and Ann Blair, the practice of commonplacing arose in response to a publishing boom and the concomitant explosion of knowledge. Prior to the early 17th century, the European élites, like their counterparts in China, gained knowledge through the diligent study and memorization of a small set of classic texts which, once mastered, could be retrieved from memory as occasion demanded. However, as in mid-Ming China, a rapid expansion of publication led to a steep increase in available knowledge, and “hard study” no longer served to provide the mastery needed to present oneself as educated. As people sought out shortcuts to mastery and memorization as a way to demonstrate erudition, the commonplace arose as a way of keeping one’s knowledge in an ordered and accessible format for easy reference and ease of memorization.

Not only was commonplacing a means of managing a burgeoning body of texts and knowledge, but it also served the purpose of preparing one for polite conversation. As Ducome puts it, “The practice of commonplacing … came to be regarded as capable of bringing together the order of learning and the methodizing of one’s thoughts, the pursuit of self-improvement, and the fashioning of the polite individual.” Along with self-help books dealing with personal hygiene, good taste, and public conduct, books that taught the art of commonplacing assisted ambitious young men with “the social demands associated with polite ideals of intellectual conduct.”

The parallels with the time and circumstances surrounding the publication of the Coral Grove are many and striking. Both it and the method of commonplacing arose at a time when the publishing industry had just taken wings and intellectual élites were developing the need to amass large libraries. Both came into being as the number of texts with which one needed to be familiar in order to be considered educated escalated, creating a need for shortcuts to mastery. Both appear to have served as ways of organizing knowledge for ready retrieval and of preparing for the gauntlet of polite conversation; by reading the Coral Grove and by commonplacing, a young man could know what the current topics of refined conversation were and have a number of ways to contribute to it at his fingertips. As such topics and trends might change in very short order, such a book need not be published in a deluxe format; the inexpensive binding and use of “craftsman’s style” font in extant copies mark it as an ephemeral work, one suited to the needs of the day and its fashions. It is, in short, an adjunct to “salon culture.”

However, there are also differences. The Coral Grove, while arranged topically, is not constituted around a complex method of indexing. While it covers a range of acceptable topics for gentry interchange, it is not as miscellaneous as a commonplace book could be. While a commonplace book might contain anything the compiler fancied or thought useful, the Coral Grove consists entirely of Yuan Hongdao’s comments on a circumscribed set of subjects. Nevertheless, I would contend that these are merely differences of formatting, and that the purposes served by commonplace books can illuminate for us the purpose of the Coral Grove.

V. Conclusions

When Chen Jiru 陳繼儒 of Huating 華亭, the literatus, calligrapher, and artist published the Coral Grove in 1604, he clearly thought it had an audience and that it would serve one or more of their needs. We may summarize these needs now as follows, based on our analysis of the text’s genre.

1. For a group of young men anxious about their next examination session, it provided talking points that might make their essays distinctive and bring them to the examiners’ notice, particularly if they knew ahead of time that the examiner was sympathetic toward Buddhist and “three teachings” thought.

2. For literati living in a time of rapidly expanding knowledge and whose libraries were growing rapidly, it provided a shortcut. If one did not have time to read the Recorded Sayings of Dahui Zonggao, the Lotus Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, the Śūraṃgama Sūtra, and a myriad of other treasured texts, one could at least see what Yuan had to say about them and enjoy the feeling of being in the know.

3. If one was a young member of the gentry seeking entrée into the gatherings where salon culture flourished, the Coral Grove could serve as a model for polite conversation, providing one with examples both of witty repartee and background knowledge. Having read it, one could accept an invitation to drink tea or gaze at the moon with enhanced confidence.

In sum, the Coral Grove is something of a cross between the Chan “Recorded Sayings” literature and the European commonplace book. It was an aid to knowledge and a tool for the fashioning of the polite public self, ready to integrate into gentry culture and assume élite status.

 

Appendix: The Shanhu lin’s Contents

The Shanhu lin consists of 349 brief pieces arranged topically. To give an example from the essays that I have translated so far, the organization runs:

1-17: Essays on the Four Books and Five Classics
18-24: Essays on the three teachings
25-30: Essays on the Huayan Sutra 華嚴經
31-35: Essays on the Lotus Sutra 法華經
36-53: Essays on the Śūraṃgama Sūtra (Shǒu lèngyán jīng 首楞嚴經). This is the longest set of essays on any topic.
54-58: Essays on the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment (Yuánjué jīng 圓覺經)
59-64: Essays on the Diamond Sutra (Jīngāng jīng 金剛經)
65-68: Essays on the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (various translations under different Chinese titles)
69-74: Essays on the Vimalakīrti-Nirdeśa-Sūtra (Wéimójié suǒshuō jīng 維摩詰所說經)
75- 83: Essays on various Chan topics
84-86: Essays on the poetry of Su Shi (蘇軾, 1036-1101)

(I will continue to expand this analytic list of topics as the translation proceeds.)


 


WORKS CITED

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