The same
consciousness
of and pride in his own genius.
Like-Water-or-Clouds-The-Tang-Dynasty
It is always ungraspable.
Could we travel into the past, and so get back to a previous configuration? By that would we mean that all processes would continuously backtrack, undo and reverse themselves to a previous e? Nowi? and e? Herei? ? Then we would still perceive that reversal appearing in order in forward time. The film that is run backward still runs in our forward flow of time, even if what it shows is a reversing process. Each reversed
153
? moment of the physical past, would be a new e? Nowi? from which a forward future would insist on unfolding. So our perceived time would still run in the one direction. The future is not of the same kind as the past. The future is always possible. The past is always consumed. Every new configuration is the next moment. Every past configuration is no longer a moment.
How could the processes be reversed? The universe has no intention, no will to initiate such a reversal, and no universal information about the totality of its past configurations. We perceive processes that achieve disorder from order, irretrievably dissipating energy in the process. We perceive other processes that achieve order from disorder requiring energy in the process. Disorder stays disordered unless energy is added to create order. One type of process is reversed by the other type of process. Even if the mathematical model looks the same e? with a reverse of signi? , losing energy is not the same as adding energy. We can feel that deep in
154
? ourselves. Order is not merely disorder reversing. Order e? decaysi? into disorder but is e? createdi? from disorder.
And if the e? Nowi? did in some sense reverse to a previous state there would be no way of knowing it had done so completely since complete description of the e? Nowi? is denied us by quantum uncertainty and e? infinitei? complexity. If the universe must contain microcosmic events that are random and unique then reverse processes must also contain events that are random and unique. Each process is ultimately unknowable in precise, deterministic terms. If we attempted to reverse the process we could not achieve an exact reversal. The process of reversal would itself introduce new and unique random events into the unknowable local universe.
By travel into the past could we mean that a previous configuration of the universe or the total information about it might exist e? somewherei? unchanging in a e? parallel (that is
155
? orthogonal) universei? so allowing us to enter it and participate in it? But that past would then not be past but a e? parallel Nowi? , frozen e? alongsidei? this Universe. There would be an infinite number of parallel e? Nowsi? . What could it mean to say that a frozen universe exists in another e? Nowi? alongside this Universe? Nothing is frozen, everything unfolds. If the Universe has infinite dimensions then all e? Nowsi? are within it. And for the observer there can only be one local e? Herei? and e? Nowi? .
There is no e? memoryi? , in the energies outside us, of the past configurations of even this Universe. The Universe is without mind. We are the minds. There is no universal Will that might control. The Universe is neutral. The Tao of Energy is e? without possession, without demands, without authority. i? e? The moon does not intend to create its reflection in the water, the water does not intend to reveal the reflection of the moon. i? And neither of them has any mind to be observed by us.
156
? The Universe and the Tao are ultimately unknowable, in the West as in the East. Who observes is crucial. Partial and local e? observationsi? of events are available to us, and available more or less precisely, but absolute and universal observation of e? alli? events with deterministic precision is ? 397? 38? . ,? ? ? impossible. The position of e? the observeri? and the observed is crucial in the relativistic universe because the measured e? realityi? depends on relative location and velocity, and the presence of gravitational fields. The intervention of the e? observeri? is crucial in the quantum universe because measurement e? disturbsi? and in a sense e? createsi? the e? realityi? that is measured, while the uncertainty principle denies complete knowledge. The perspective of the e? observeri? is crucial in the chaotic universe because different levels of the fractal infinities within finite e? realityi? are visible dependent on scale. And the e? observeri? si? unconscious processes are crucial in events within the mind because they are the
157
? invisible substratum that is part of e? thinkingi? . Without the observer there is no reality. And each reality is local, uncertain, partial, and scaleable. The spacetime of modern science is not smooth but coarse. The surface is e? reallyi? a sea of waves and ripples, swirls and vortices, foam and spume. Instead of a continuum there is a labyrinthine network of cavities and folds, surfaces and holes. The deepest insight is to e? seei? that in the quantum universe every part is connected to every other part in a vast, indivisible Vortex, that is a Void without reality until we separate observations from it, creating e? names and formsi? . Science makes theoretical models of great empirical power that are still models and not the reality. Heisenberg said that the mathematics describes what we know of the universei? s behaviour not the behaviour itself. Bohr said that science concerns what we can say about Nature not what it is. Sub-atomic entities have no meaningful existence or properties except as we perceive them in observation.
158
? The e? reali? mirror is empty. The universe that exists beneath, beside, beyond our observations and our names is visible to us as, at best, a shadow, or a brilliance. Within it there are no names and no forms. e? At root there are no things. i? That is why the universal Tao is nameless, and the eternal Way cannot be told. The Tao is the unknowable matrix of energies. It creates the Vortex of the visible and named. It is the Void of the invisible and unnamed. The reality is that we cannot escape the e? observeri? , cannot escape ourselves. In order to live with the e? observeri? , live with ourselves, we can only attempt to know the unknowable, be in harmony with the non-existent. That means that we must embrace the non-analytic, non-verbal emptiness, and vanish into the Vortex. What cannot be understood, what cannot be measured, what cannot be analysed, what cannot be grasped, can still be lived. The Universe does not understand the mathematical equations of its own existence. e? Entering the wildi? says a Master about the
159
? enlightened ones e? the grass does not move. Entering the river, the water is not stirred. i?
160
? ? ? ? ! 4
Li Po the elusive and fascinating. Li who is like Mozart. The precocious talent, the deeply serious artist, the effortless creator, the romanticist in perfect control blended with the effervescent personality of a Taoist e? childi? . There is the same social e? irresponsibilityi? combined with intense artistic responsibility, spontaneity and creative perfection. There is the same need for freedom, resentment of authority, disdain for accepted forms and constraints. The same enchantment with magical rituals (The Magic Flute, and Freemasonry parallel esoteric Taoism and Buddhism) and the colours of what is most alive. There is the same deep sensitivity and aesthetic subtlety combined with tensile strength and sexual vigour. There is the same ability to play every note of the scale, from the powerful and masculine to the tender and feminine. There is the same susceptibility to
161
? ? ? drink, e? entertainmenti? and pretty women as a means to release creative tension, escape constraint, and achieve spontaneity. The same inability to hold an official post for long. The same generosity, or carelessness about money, so that it flows through his fingers. The same roaming between cities, and wandering between lodgings.
The same consciousness of and pride in his own genius. Underlying everything the same deep humanity. The same fluidity, the same enigmatic invisibility behind, or rather transparency in front of, his creations.
Sometimes he appears to be nothing more than his creations. That is the achievement of harmony. Not through meditation, but through being. Li does not seek or require e? approvali? . Social commitment and integration are irrelevant to the Tao. Equally humanity, empathy, sensitivity are deep components of his Taoist awareness. Li is the essentially lovable, gifted human being who challenges the leaden conventionality of society, and in some respects
162
? is punished for it, by a self-created isolation, through the inability of the world to understand inspiration or achieve the artisti? s paradise of a continuous and genuinely creative endeavour.
Like a child, like Mozart, he can betray a childi? s faults and a childi? s emotional and behavioural extremism. He could be hostile and then overly generous, proud, boastful and then subdued, irresponsible and then deeply serious, rude and then sensitive. It is easy to condemn such a personality as immature or over-sensitive, as egocentric or rebellious. It is equally easy for the artist to react with irony or indifference, pride or disdain, to devalue others efforts, to attack as a means of defence, to ignore as a means of self-protection, to be e? irresponsiblei? to hide deep hurt. Like Mozart, he is in his art both romantic and classical, concerned with form but aspiring to a world that is more than this world, more satisfying, more beautiful, and more harmonious.
163
? If the pliant, bowing and modest bamboo represents Confucianism, and the scented solitary ancient pine-tree represents meditative Buddhism, it is the plum-branch that represents Taoism. It is the tree of winter whose blossoms burst from the branch, whose sexual essence is the life and sadness of the transient world, whose flowering is spontaneous and free, whose roots are deep and resilient, but whose beauty is evanescent and delicate. Li is the sparkle on the water, the moonlight on the leaf, the flashes of light that contemporaries claimed to see in his eyes, the wild, unkempt, energised lightnings of nature.
Li was born in the west of China, possibly over the border in Turkestan. Family traditions claimed descent from Li Kao who created his local dynasty centred on Tun-huang the gate to the Silk Road. The Ti? ang Emperors claimed the same line of descent and that enabled Li to address the Imperial family as though they were distant cousins. Li Kao was himself a descendant
164
? of General Li Kuang (d. 119BC). Ssu-ma- Chi? ien, the great Han Dynasty biographer, brilliantly relates Li Kuangi? s story in his $? ? ? ? . ? ? , or Records of the Grand Historian. Li Kuang is an archetype of the honest, unassuming, courageous, but unlucky military man. He was named the e? Flying Generali? by the Huns, the Hsiung-nu, and fought more than seventy actions against them, his successes and failures sadly cancelling each other out, so that he never achieved high honours. Though judged too old he fought a last campaign, taking the blame for a failure to carry out the questionable orders of his superior Wei Chi? ing. Committing suicide, he was mourned throughout the Empire for his integrity, his courage and the sincerity of his intentions. A famous archer with the crossbow, Li Kuang gave rise to a Zenist anecdote illustrating the power of Taoist spontaneity and harmony. Mistaking a rock in the long grass for a tiger he was said to have pierced it effortlessly
165
? with an arrow. Trying to repeat the feat consciously he failed.
Li Poi? s e? Turkishi? ancestry provided an exotic element to the self-image that appears in his poetry, and perhaps made him particularly receptive to the Persian and Central Asian influences on Chinese culture. The family history suggests that a later ancestor was in fact banished to the far west around Lop Nor, and drifted further west still. Li Poi? s father returned to China when Li was a small child, and he was brought up in the southwest, in Szechwan, some distance from the local capital Chi? I? ng-tu. He was precocious. e? Already, at fourteen, I was reading strange books and writing verse to rival the masters. i? e? Already I was seeking the favour of great men. i?
As a young man he lived for a time as a Taoist recluse, with a Master, somewhere in the western mountains. e? For several years I never went near a town, and the wild birds ate from my hand without fear. The Kuang-han governor
166
? came to see us, offering to send us to the capital as persons of unusual ability but we refused. i? It is the image of the adolescent Yeats climbing up to his cave above the sea, or sleeping among the rhododendrons and rocks, playing at being a sage, wizard or poet. It is a young Alastor-like Shelley meditating among the ruins of Rome or making poetry by the Italian seashore. And Li became a ? 8? 0? ? a swordsman, one of those commissioned to seek revenge on behalf of people who could not gain redress. He wandered away from Szechwan and then across eastern China, perhaps supported by relatives, many of them wealthy officials. He certainly scattered money freely.
He also met the great Taoist Master Ssu-ma Chi? I? ng-cheng, and the desire is visible, that imbues many of his later poems, for spirit journeys into the realms of the Immortals. It aligns him with the shamanistic traditions of ancient China, and with the poetry of the dream- state in East and West. Dream, drink, meditation,
167
? immersion in natural beauty, and aesthetic sensitivity were all ways to free the mind and e? flyi? through the inner space-time of the creative imagination. Li was capable of composing poetry as Mozart composed music, fluently and spontaneously, with a speed and facility that amazed his contemporaries. Genius can manifest itself as an almost magical flow, an innate harmony with the Tao. Lii? s qualities were said to be the spontaneity (9? :? ? ,3) of natural forces and energies, and the life-breath (. ? ? ? ) of the deep psyche.
When he was about twenty-five Li made the first of his four marriages to a granddaughter of a former Chief Minister. He lived in Hankow at his wifei? s family home, seeking recommendations, now and then, for official employment but basically unemployed and remote from the capital. At this time he studied Ch'an Buddhism, practising Dhyana (meditation) 'with a white-eyebrowed monk' at Ju-ning not far from his wife's home, achieving the stage of
168
? enlightenment of 'The Wind Wheel Samadhi' where the mind can wander through space. To Li this was no doubt an analogue of the Taoist shamanistic spirit journey that was a determinant of his creative imagination.
He made friends with MI? ng Hao-jan who also knew Wang Wei. MI? ng was a much- admired poet, with a Taoist indifference to office, and a sensitive love of the elusive e? dreami? world reached through drink or natural beauty. Lii? s poem to him celebrates MI? ngi? s fragrant closeness to the Tao, and Wang Weii? s wistful tribute nevertheless points up the Buddhist void that Mengi? s poetry touched on. One of his poems that influenced Lii? s poem e? Winei? shows a subtle parallelism and a sensitivity to the free energies and transient forms of the Tao, in storm winds, e? randomi? birdsong, the chance patterns of fallen blossom, and in the contrasts of sound and silence. The Vortex is all these things. Life is a dream whose contents evade us. Time past scatters round us
169
? the results of our dreaming. e? In Spring asleep, lost to morning. i? he writes e? wake, hearing, everywhere, birds singing. Through Nighti? s deeps what storm winds sounded. Now, petals, who knows how many, grounded. i?
Li already exhibits characteristics of the Taoist attitude. Though Confucian values influence him, he is an individual rather than a social conformist. He respects personal friendship before community. He recognises the ephemeral and transient rather than the permanent. He is for sensitivity not power, beauty not dominance. He is fascinated by the magical though he is conscious of the mundane. He loves personal freedom rather than artificial constraint. He inhabits the elusiveness, and purity of Nature. His mind responds to the deep and the feminine. He loses himself in the dream and the song. Bash? , the great Japanese ? ,? ? : poet talks about those who have achieved excellence in art being in harmony with nature. e? Whatever they see is a flower, and whatever
170
? they dream is the moon. Only a mind without sensibility cannot see the flower. Only a mind without refinement does not dream the moon. i?
The flavour of Lii? s life in his thirties is captured in e? The Exilei? s Letteri? that finds him travelling to, and living in, the north perhaps soon after his first wifei? s early death. He drifted to Shantung where he knew three scholars who lived as recluses by the Bamboo Stream. In 738 he was in Yangchow. In 742, aged forty-one he climbed Ti? ai-shan the sacred mountain of eastern China. He described ascending it, also, in imagination, riding a white deer, and meeting the faery maidens who smiled and stretched their hands out to him, offering him liquid mist that he was not adept enough to accept. He received writings he could not read, in bird-track script, falling from Immortals concealed in the clouds. And he was mocked, by a child, dressed in green, because of his age and lack of Tao. It is Li growing older, conscious of a yearning he has not satisfied.
171
? ? At this time he befriended Wu Y ? n the Taoist and writer who was at the Court early in 743 as Taoism gained Imperial favour. Either Wu or the Emperori? s sister Y ? -chI? n recommended Li Po for a post, and so Li in his forties joined the Han- lin Academicians as a Court poet. Belatedly he had arrived in Chi? ang-an, where he felt he belonged. Yet he had never deigned to enter for the Civil Service examinations, as Wan Wei, Tu Fu and MI? ng Hao-jan had. Had he feared failure, resented conformity, felt himself a e? free spiriti? or a genius making his own rules, or did he perhaps know he could never fit in to the sober rigidity of the Civil Service? He remained a e? person in plain dressi? as a result, and never achieved high social status. But then neither did Mozart who also longed for a Court post, remuneration, and social recognition. Li stayed as a e? Lost Immortali? , a stray genius banished to and confined on earth, one of those creative minds that are loved and recognised in their own domain, but looked askance at in worldly terms.
172
? The drunken, e?
Could we travel into the past, and so get back to a previous configuration? By that would we mean that all processes would continuously backtrack, undo and reverse themselves to a previous e? Nowi? and e? Herei? ? Then we would still perceive that reversal appearing in order in forward time. The film that is run backward still runs in our forward flow of time, even if what it shows is a reversing process. Each reversed
153
? moment of the physical past, would be a new e? Nowi? from which a forward future would insist on unfolding. So our perceived time would still run in the one direction. The future is not of the same kind as the past. The future is always possible. The past is always consumed. Every new configuration is the next moment. Every past configuration is no longer a moment.
How could the processes be reversed? The universe has no intention, no will to initiate such a reversal, and no universal information about the totality of its past configurations. We perceive processes that achieve disorder from order, irretrievably dissipating energy in the process. We perceive other processes that achieve order from disorder requiring energy in the process. Disorder stays disordered unless energy is added to create order. One type of process is reversed by the other type of process. Even if the mathematical model looks the same e? with a reverse of signi? , losing energy is not the same as adding energy. We can feel that deep in
154
? ourselves. Order is not merely disorder reversing. Order e? decaysi? into disorder but is e? createdi? from disorder.
And if the e? Nowi? did in some sense reverse to a previous state there would be no way of knowing it had done so completely since complete description of the e? Nowi? is denied us by quantum uncertainty and e? infinitei? complexity. If the universe must contain microcosmic events that are random and unique then reverse processes must also contain events that are random and unique. Each process is ultimately unknowable in precise, deterministic terms. If we attempted to reverse the process we could not achieve an exact reversal. The process of reversal would itself introduce new and unique random events into the unknowable local universe.
By travel into the past could we mean that a previous configuration of the universe or the total information about it might exist e? somewherei? unchanging in a e? parallel (that is
155
? orthogonal) universei? so allowing us to enter it and participate in it? But that past would then not be past but a e? parallel Nowi? , frozen e? alongsidei? this Universe. There would be an infinite number of parallel e? Nowsi? . What could it mean to say that a frozen universe exists in another e? Nowi? alongside this Universe? Nothing is frozen, everything unfolds. If the Universe has infinite dimensions then all e? Nowsi? are within it. And for the observer there can only be one local e? Herei? and e? Nowi? .
There is no e? memoryi? , in the energies outside us, of the past configurations of even this Universe. The Universe is without mind. We are the minds. There is no universal Will that might control. The Universe is neutral. The Tao of Energy is e? without possession, without demands, without authority. i? e? The moon does not intend to create its reflection in the water, the water does not intend to reveal the reflection of the moon. i? And neither of them has any mind to be observed by us.
156
? The Universe and the Tao are ultimately unknowable, in the West as in the East. Who observes is crucial. Partial and local e? observationsi? of events are available to us, and available more or less precisely, but absolute and universal observation of e? alli? events with deterministic precision is ? 397? 38? . ,? ? ? impossible. The position of e? the observeri? and the observed is crucial in the relativistic universe because the measured e? realityi? depends on relative location and velocity, and the presence of gravitational fields. The intervention of the e? observeri? is crucial in the quantum universe because measurement e? disturbsi? and in a sense e? createsi? the e? realityi? that is measured, while the uncertainty principle denies complete knowledge. The perspective of the e? observeri? is crucial in the chaotic universe because different levels of the fractal infinities within finite e? realityi? are visible dependent on scale. And the e? observeri? si? unconscious processes are crucial in events within the mind because they are the
157
? invisible substratum that is part of e? thinkingi? . Without the observer there is no reality. And each reality is local, uncertain, partial, and scaleable. The spacetime of modern science is not smooth but coarse. The surface is e? reallyi? a sea of waves and ripples, swirls and vortices, foam and spume. Instead of a continuum there is a labyrinthine network of cavities and folds, surfaces and holes. The deepest insight is to e? seei? that in the quantum universe every part is connected to every other part in a vast, indivisible Vortex, that is a Void without reality until we separate observations from it, creating e? names and formsi? . Science makes theoretical models of great empirical power that are still models and not the reality. Heisenberg said that the mathematics describes what we know of the universei? s behaviour not the behaviour itself. Bohr said that science concerns what we can say about Nature not what it is. Sub-atomic entities have no meaningful existence or properties except as we perceive them in observation.
158
? The e? reali? mirror is empty. The universe that exists beneath, beside, beyond our observations and our names is visible to us as, at best, a shadow, or a brilliance. Within it there are no names and no forms. e? At root there are no things. i? That is why the universal Tao is nameless, and the eternal Way cannot be told. The Tao is the unknowable matrix of energies. It creates the Vortex of the visible and named. It is the Void of the invisible and unnamed. The reality is that we cannot escape the e? observeri? , cannot escape ourselves. In order to live with the e? observeri? , live with ourselves, we can only attempt to know the unknowable, be in harmony with the non-existent. That means that we must embrace the non-analytic, non-verbal emptiness, and vanish into the Vortex. What cannot be understood, what cannot be measured, what cannot be analysed, what cannot be grasped, can still be lived. The Universe does not understand the mathematical equations of its own existence. e? Entering the wildi? says a Master about the
159
? enlightened ones e? the grass does not move. Entering the river, the water is not stirred. i?
160
? ? ? ? ! 4
Li Po the elusive and fascinating. Li who is like Mozart. The precocious talent, the deeply serious artist, the effortless creator, the romanticist in perfect control blended with the effervescent personality of a Taoist e? childi? . There is the same social e? irresponsibilityi? combined with intense artistic responsibility, spontaneity and creative perfection. There is the same need for freedom, resentment of authority, disdain for accepted forms and constraints. The same enchantment with magical rituals (The Magic Flute, and Freemasonry parallel esoteric Taoism and Buddhism) and the colours of what is most alive. There is the same deep sensitivity and aesthetic subtlety combined with tensile strength and sexual vigour. There is the same ability to play every note of the scale, from the powerful and masculine to the tender and feminine. There is the same susceptibility to
161
? ? ? drink, e? entertainmenti? and pretty women as a means to release creative tension, escape constraint, and achieve spontaneity. The same inability to hold an official post for long. The same generosity, or carelessness about money, so that it flows through his fingers. The same roaming between cities, and wandering between lodgings.
The same consciousness of and pride in his own genius. Underlying everything the same deep humanity. The same fluidity, the same enigmatic invisibility behind, or rather transparency in front of, his creations.
Sometimes he appears to be nothing more than his creations. That is the achievement of harmony. Not through meditation, but through being. Li does not seek or require e? approvali? . Social commitment and integration are irrelevant to the Tao. Equally humanity, empathy, sensitivity are deep components of his Taoist awareness. Li is the essentially lovable, gifted human being who challenges the leaden conventionality of society, and in some respects
162
? is punished for it, by a self-created isolation, through the inability of the world to understand inspiration or achieve the artisti? s paradise of a continuous and genuinely creative endeavour.
Like a child, like Mozart, he can betray a childi? s faults and a childi? s emotional and behavioural extremism. He could be hostile and then overly generous, proud, boastful and then subdued, irresponsible and then deeply serious, rude and then sensitive. It is easy to condemn such a personality as immature or over-sensitive, as egocentric or rebellious. It is equally easy for the artist to react with irony or indifference, pride or disdain, to devalue others efforts, to attack as a means of defence, to ignore as a means of self-protection, to be e? irresponsiblei? to hide deep hurt. Like Mozart, he is in his art both romantic and classical, concerned with form but aspiring to a world that is more than this world, more satisfying, more beautiful, and more harmonious.
163
? If the pliant, bowing and modest bamboo represents Confucianism, and the scented solitary ancient pine-tree represents meditative Buddhism, it is the plum-branch that represents Taoism. It is the tree of winter whose blossoms burst from the branch, whose sexual essence is the life and sadness of the transient world, whose flowering is spontaneous and free, whose roots are deep and resilient, but whose beauty is evanescent and delicate. Li is the sparkle on the water, the moonlight on the leaf, the flashes of light that contemporaries claimed to see in his eyes, the wild, unkempt, energised lightnings of nature.
Li was born in the west of China, possibly over the border in Turkestan. Family traditions claimed descent from Li Kao who created his local dynasty centred on Tun-huang the gate to the Silk Road. The Ti? ang Emperors claimed the same line of descent and that enabled Li to address the Imperial family as though they were distant cousins. Li Kao was himself a descendant
164
? of General Li Kuang (d. 119BC). Ssu-ma- Chi? ien, the great Han Dynasty biographer, brilliantly relates Li Kuangi? s story in his $? ? ? ? . ? ? , or Records of the Grand Historian. Li Kuang is an archetype of the honest, unassuming, courageous, but unlucky military man. He was named the e? Flying Generali? by the Huns, the Hsiung-nu, and fought more than seventy actions against them, his successes and failures sadly cancelling each other out, so that he never achieved high honours. Though judged too old he fought a last campaign, taking the blame for a failure to carry out the questionable orders of his superior Wei Chi? ing. Committing suicide, he was mourned throughout the Empire for his integrity, his courage and the sincerity of his intentions. A famous archer with the crossbow, Li Kuang gave rise to a Zenist anecdote illustrating the power of Taoist spontaneity and harmony. Mistaking a rock in the long grass for a tiger he was said to have pierced it effortlessly
165
? with an arrow. Trying to repeat the feat consciously he failed.
Li Poi? s e? Turkishi? ancestry provided an exotic element to the self-image that appears in his poetry, and perhaps made him particularly receptive to the Persian and Central Asian influences on Chinese culture. The family history suggests that a later ancestor was in fact banished to the far west around Lop Nor, and drifted further west still. Li Poi? s father returned to China when Li was a small child, and he was brought up in the southwest, in Szechwan, some distance from the local capital Chi? I? ng-tu. He was precocious. e? Already, at fourteen, I was reading strange books and writing verse to rival the masters. i? e? Already I was seeking the favour of great men. i?
As a young man he lived for a time as a Taoist recluse, with a Master, somewhere in the western mountains. e? For several years I never went near a town, and the wild birds ate from my hand without fear. The Kuang-han governor
166
? came to see us, offering to send us to the capital as persons of unusual ability but we refused. i? It is the image of the adolescent Yeats climbing up to his cave above the sea, or sleeping among the rhododendrons and rocks, playing at being a sage, wizard or poet. It is a young Alastor-like Shelley meditating among the ruins of Rome or making poetry by the Italian seashore. And Li became a ? 8? 0? ? a swordsman, one of those commissioned to seek revenge on behalf of people who could not gain redress. He wandered away from Szechwan and then across eastern China, perhaps supported by relatives, many of them wealthy officials. He certainly scattered money freely.
He also met the great Taoist Master Ssu-ma Chi? I? ng-cheng, and the desire is visible, that imbues many of his later poems, for spirit journeys into the realms of the Immortals. It aligns him with the shamanistic traditions of ancient China, and with the poetry of the dream- state in East and West. Dream, drink, meditation,
167
? immersion in natural beauty, and aesthetic sensitivity were all ways to free the mind and e? flyi? through the inner space-time of the creative imagination. Li was capable of composing poetry as Mozart composed music, fluently and spontaneously, with a speed and facility that amazed his contemporaries. Genius can manifest itself as an almost magical flow, an innate harmony with the Tao. Lii? s qualities were said to be the spontaneity (9? :? ? ,3) of natural forces and energies, and the life-breath (. ? ? ? ) of the deep psyche.
When he was about twenty-five Li made the first of his four marriages to a granddaughter of a former Chief Minister. He lived in Hankow at his wifei? s family home, seeking recommendations, now and then, for official employment but basically unemployed and remote from the capital. At this time he studied Ch'an Buddhism, practising Dhyana (meditation) 'with a white-eyebrowed monk' at Ju-ning not far from his wife's home, achieving the stage of
168
? enlightenment of 'The Wind Wheel Samadhi' where the mind can wander through space. To Li this was no doubt an analogue of the Taoist shamanistic spirit journey that was a determinant of his creative imagination.
He made friends with MI? ng Hao-jan who also knew Wang Wei. MI? ng was a much- admired poet, with a Taoist indifference to office, and a sensitive love of the elusive e? dreami? world reached through drink or natural beauty. Lii? s poem to him celebrates MI? ngi? s fragrant closeness to the Tao, and Wang Weii? s wistful tribute nevertheless points up the Buddhist void that Mengi? s poetry touched on. One of his poems that influenced Lii? s poem e? Winei? shows a subtle parallelism and a sensitivity to the free energies and transient forms of the Tao, in storm winds, e? randomi? birdsong, the chance patterns of fallen blossom, and in the contrasts of sound and silence. The Vortex is all these things. Life is a dream whose contents evade us. Time past scatters round us
169
? the results of our dreaming. e? In Spring asleep, lost to morning. i? he writes e? wake, hearing, everywhere, birds singing. Through Nighti? s deeps what storm winds sounded. Now, petals, who knows how many, grounded. i?
Li already exhibits characteristics of the Taoist attitude. Though Confucian values influence him, he is an individual rather than a social conformist. He respects personal friendship before community. He recognises the ephemeral and transient rather than the permanent. He is for sensitivity not power, beauty not dominance. He is fascinated by the magical though he is conscious of the mundane. He loves personal freedom rather than artificial constraint. He inhabits the elusiveness, and purity of Nature. His mind responds to the deep and the feminine. He loses himself in the dream and the song. Bash? , the great Japanese ? ,? ? : poet talks about those who have achieved excellence in art being in harmony with nature. e? Whatever they see is a flower, and whatever
170
? they dream is the moon. Only a mind without sensibility cannot see the flower. Only a mind without refinement does not dream the moon. i?
The flavour of Lii? s life in his thirties is captured in e? The Exilei? s Letteri? that finds him travelling to, and living in, the north perhaps soon after his first wifei? s early death. He drifted to Shantung where he knew three scholars who lived as recluses by the Bamboo Stream. In 738 he was in Yangchow. In 742, aged forty-one he climbed Ti? ai-shan the sacred mountain of eastern China. He described ascending it, also, in imagination, riding a white deer, and meeting the faery maidens who smiled and stretched their hands out to him, offering him liquid mist that he was not adept enough to accept. He received writings he could not read, in bird-track script, falling from Immortals concealed in the clouds. And he was mocked, by a child, dressed in green, because of his age and lack of Tao. It is Li growing older, conscious of a yearning he has not satisfied.
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? ? At this time he befriended Wu Y ? n the Taoist and writer who was at the Court early in 743 as Taoism gained Imperial favour. Either Wu or the Emperori? s sister Y ? -chI? n recommended Li Po for a post, and so Li in his forties joined the Han- lin Academicians as a Court poet. Belatedly he had arrived in Chi? ang-an, where he felt he belonged. Yet he had never deigned to enter for the Civil Service examinations, as Wan Wei, Tu Fu and MI? ng Hao-jan had. Had he feared failure, resented conformity, felt himself a e? free spiriti? or a genius making his own rules, or did he perhaps know he could never fit in to the sober rigidity of the Civil Service? He remained a e? person in plain dressi? as a result, and never achieved high social status. But then neither did Mozart who also longed for a Court post, remuneration, and social recognition. Li stayed as a e? Lost Immortali? , a stray genius banished to and confined on earth, one of those creative minds that are loved and recognised in their own domain, but looked askance at in worldly terms.
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? The drunken, e?
