Yuán Hóngdào 袁宏道 (1568–1610)
The pre-eminent late-Míng poet, essayist, and lay Buddhist of the Gōngān school 公安派 of Chinese literature. Zì Zhōngláng 中郎 (whence the school’s alternative name Yuán Zhōngláng); hào Shígōng 石公 and (later, as a lay Buddhist) Liùxiū Jūshì 六休居士. Born in Gōngān 公安 (modern Húběi 湖北) into a literati family of the lower Yángzǐ region; the second of the famous Three Yuán Brothers (袁氏三兄弟) — eldest Yuán Zōngdào 袁宗道 (1560–1600), middle Yuán Hóngdào, youngest Yuán Zhōngdào 袁中道 (1570–1623) — who together founded the Gōngān school of late-Míng xìnglíng 性靈 (“spontaneous self-expression”) aesthetics. He passed the jìnshì exam in 1592 (Wànlì 20) and held a succession of provincial and central appointments (Wúxiàn magistrate, Education Intendant of Shǎnxī, Vice-Director in the Ministry of Personnel), with periods of withdrawal and travel.
In his thirties he turned increasingly to Buddhist study under the influence of 李贄 Lǐ Zhì (1527–1602) — the radical late-Míng heterodox thinker — and the eminent monk 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng (1535–1615), the principal late-Míng Pure Land master. His 《西方合論》 Xīfāng hélùn KR6p0057 (T1976, 10 juǎn), composed around 萬曆 27 (1599), is one of the principal late-Míng lay-Buddhist Pure Land treatises and the most ambitious doctrinal-systematic Pure Land work by a Chinese literatus of the period. Yuán Hóngdào’s literary fame is principally as a poet and essayist of the xìnglíng aesthetic — opposing the antique-imitation orthodoxy of the Former and Latter Seven Masters (前後七子) — but the Hélùn establishes him as a serious Pure Land doctrinalist as well. He died young, in 萬曆 38 (1610), aged 43.
CBDB id 35222.