The Poetics of Daoist Cultivation

Religious writers in premodern China, well-disposed to socio-cultural norms that foregrounded literary production and the importance of poetry, composed reams of verse in varied forms for different aims. The significance of poetic production cut across the boundaries of religious traditions in premodern China. Yet, whereas scholars of Chinese Buddhist poetry have been attentive to developments, features, forms, and other related issues within Chinese Buddhist poetic materials, the wealth of Daoist verse is relatively understudied. Daoist sources contain abundant poetic material, from the more well-known Supreme Purity (Shangqing) scriptures to the profusion of Complete Perfection (Quanzhen) verse to later poetry produced through spirit-writing. In Daoist contexts, verse functioned in various ways (e.g revelation, ritual invocation, instruction, devotion, etc.) Moreover, literati writers, who observed and participated in Daoist rites, wrote poems on the ubiquitous presence of Daoist ritual, priests, practices, sites, and texts for centuries of Chinese history. Despite the foundational work by Edward Schafer, Paul Kroll, and Stephen Bokenkamp on the intersection of Daoism and the Chinese poetic tradition, as well as key contributions by others such as Jia Jinhua and Jan De Meyer, much remains to be explored. 

         The panel and its papers explore the category of Daoist poetry, but more specifically the intersection of poetry and cultivation practices. This panel poses questions such as: What are some of the defining features and conventions of poetry on Daoist cultivation? How does poetry give meaning and significance to the processes of cultivation? How does poetic language shape understandings of Daoist cultivation? But Daoist cultivation and poetic conventions were certainly not static; thus, the panel’s consideration of Daoist verse from disparate time periods from the fourth century to the nineteenth, also helps to illuminate how socio-historical conditions and conventions shaped such poetry. More broadly, the panel seeks to demonstrate how the study of Daoist poetry can inform conversations in the study of religious poetry. The papers’ collective focus on the body, a theme central to Daoist poetry, suggests that producing and reciting poetry was not merely an intellectual act, premised on the exposition and consumption of knowledge and belief. These acts were embodied experiences meant to physically transform, or, at the very least, inspire others to partake in the same acts of cultivation by depicting how one should undertake cultivation, as well as the magnificent results of such practices.

  The papers proceed in chronological order, beginning with Jonathan Pettit’s paper “Poetics of Immortality in Medieval Daoist Verse,” which investigates a poem received by the Daoist spirit medium Yang Xi during a fourth-century CE séance. Attributed to the imagined poet Guo Sichao who lived three centuries earlier, the poem functions as an elaborate metaphor for Daoist bodily cultivation that leads to celestial transfiguration. Through a careful reading of the poem’s language and imagery, Pettit offers an interpretation of the poem, but also uses such an analysis to offer a critique of recent scholarship on poetry and religion. He turns to work by Kevin Hart to help draw our attention to the conceptions of how Daoist practice was carried out; however, as Pettit argues, Daoist poems on bodily cultivation are not just interested in manifesting sacred presence (though they may do so), but also demonstrate how humans could transcend their bodies to become gods themselves. This particular aspect of poetry challenges assumptions about what Hart and others consider to be the underlying purpose behind poetry in a religious context. 

Tyler Feezell’s paper, “Cultivation, Ecstatic Ascension, and the Dao: ‘Pacing the Void’ Verse by Wei Qumou (749–801) and Wu Yun (d. 778),” compares two lengthy ‘Pacing the Void’ (buxu) poems composed in the mid- to late-8th century. This style of poetry, taking its name from a ritual hymn of the Numinous Treasure (Lingbao) Daoist tradition of the fifth century, was especially popular during the Tang dynasty (608–917). This paper explores how the authors addressed the connections between cultivation practices and celestial ascension. While both celebrate the process and wonders of the heavens, they offer quite different visions of Daoist cultivation and experience. Through an analysis and comparison of the structure, narrative, language, and imagery, Feezell suggests that their verse reveals a key distinction in Daoist poetry, that is, between ecstatic and mystical visions of Daoist practice.

In her paper “Landscape Reimagined: The Poetic Reworking of ‘Pacing the Void’ Lyrics in the Song Dynasty (960–1279), Wanmeng Li considers two thirteenth-century buxu iterations, composed by two related literati, Chen Xunzhi and Zhao Rushi. Both poets draw inspiration from the Lingbao buxu hymn, but connect scriptural mountain imagery to the external landscape they inhabited, the Grand Cleanse Mountain. In addition, they allude to another critical Daoist text of cultivation, the Scripture of the Yellow Court. Employing the scriptural lagnuage allowed both poets to merge images of the body, inner alchemical practices, and the landscape. Through their creative melding of language, imagery, and somatic imagination, they represented the landscape as a Daoist body and their movements as alchemical practice. As Li argues, these two pieces epitomize a new form of buxu lyric reworked by the Song literati under the influence of multiple Daoist lineages and the Jiangxi Poetry School. 

The final paper by Yanning Wang, “Women’s Youxian Poetry in the Qing Dynasty,” turns our attention to two women writers, Wang Duan (1793–1839) and Baibao Youlan (ca. 1800–1861). Both belonged to powerful Qing (1644–1911) gentry families and wrote a number of youxian poems. Wang Duan composed at least thirty-four youxian poems, exploring Daoist themes, challenging youxian ideas, and elaborating on traditional Daoist hagiographies. Baibao’s fifteen youxian poems, drawing on images of female immortalsd, celebrate the poet’s extensive travel experiences and the complex emotions these journeys provoked. Wang finds that the use of imagery in their writing was almost always a hybrid, syncretic combination of the three teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism). From their writing, it becomes clear that many Daoist images, including those related to cultivation, had been absorbed into the broader lexicon of Chinese poetry and the literary tradition.