The poetry literature, which was popular in Song Dynasty, is the reflection of transplantation from Chan recorded sayings to the literature domain. Two major types of poetry literature, poetry literature of anecdotes and poetry of reasoning, represented by “Liuyi’s Notes on Poetry” and “Notes on Poetry by Canglang” respectively, adequately show the different influences upon the literature from Buddhism. The former displays a free and spontaneous style of Chan recorded sayings, while the latter a different style of obsession with the tradition and discipline, characterized by its critical thinking. In the poetry literature in Song Dynasty, any piece of anecdote is supposed to embody a deep Buddhist truth. Moreover, the Buddhist truth is often closely related to the poem, which indicates an obvious influence on the poetry literature from the spirit of Zen Buddhism.
