Clerics › Religious Figure
Zhi Nan
Southern Song poet-monk whose quatrain about mooring a small boat beneath old trees appears in the Qianjia Shi and was admired by Zhu Xi.
In a temple courtyard at dusk, a great bronze bell hangs at the right and incense smoke rises from a bronze urn; monks in orange robes and plainly dressed visitors walk toward a lamplit hall, lotus flowers bloom in a stone basin, and a gold prayer wheel stands at the left.
Also known as Monk Zhi Nan · Zhi An (variant name)
Zhi Nan, also written Zhi An, was a poet-monk of the Southern Song. His seven-character quatrain beginning 'Moored beneath old trees, my little boat', which describes a staff, a bridge, apricot blossom and fine spring rain, is included in the Qianjia Shi, and Zhu Ziqing quoted a line of it in his essay 'Spring'. Zhu Xi judged the poem delicate and elegant, free of the 'vegetable-and-bamboo-shoot' flavour typical of monks' verse, and said he loved it. No reliable record of his dates or temple survives.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; Southern Song poet-monk, a contemporary of Zhu Xi (1130–1200)