A cockerel crows from the top of the
mulberry
tree.
Like-Water-or-Clouds-The-Tang-Dynasty
Wang Wei, destroyed again and again by loss, by the death of others, cannot reach the silence he yearns for, can only recreate the Now in ink, on silk, in the mind, again and again, as artist, in intensity.
Li Po is possessed by transience. Li, the restless, who is the wanderer, and the searcher after immortality. He traverses China from Szechwan to Shantung, from Peking to the Yangtze Delta. Li who can compose in a flash, in a lightning stroke. Who drinks to lose time, to
219
? make time vanish, to escape reality in stupor, and consciousness in sleep. Li who can almost touch and feel the tranquility and stillness of others, but rarely his own. Li who is so far below the hills that the adepts seem to climb, who is dizzied by height, who has to descend the mountains, and abandon the hills. Li who is e? knee-deep in a thousand fallen flowersi? . Li whose emblems are the Moon and the mirror. Li who dreams he is the butterfly, who is e? helplessi? in the deep garden. Li who is the transience of colours, and the beauty of sunsets, lost notes of music, lost poems fluttering, lost hours, girls, wine-cups, lost emotions. Li whose inner movement is the spirit journey, the ? 8? 03i? s flight through the night, through the Heavens. Li, who is the shaman from the East, the lone magician of Asia, who can ride through the air, unaided. Li who can visit the timeless Paradises of the West, the Magic Islands of the East, and return, as Keatsi? s knight returns, to a world of time that is inadequate to his senses and his aspirations. Li
220
? ? who longs for the alchemy that will transcend time, that will e? transmute his bones to goldi? , to that fused silver moon and golden sun of the Taoist Eternal Child. Li who like Baudelaire in e? The Voyagei? is always ready to set sail one more time, to move on, into the unknown, to find the new.
Tu Fu is the eye that sees the Moment. He is the self-awareness of the intellect, the perception of form and its intricacies, the observer of time as History being made, History as it defines the human and the inhuman, as it enters into memory, as it remains in the present through its creations and its transformations. Tu is the lone element of being, wandering on the surface of the real, driven by the wind, or caught in the walls of the whirlpool. He is the observer of the neutrality of the universe, and the neutrality of the vortex of historical events, of the twin sets of forces that emerge from them to touch the individual. He is the inhabitant of a universe
221
? ? which is neither benevolent as his Confucianism taught, nor in any way malevolent.
The universe is not indifferent, hostile, alien, or malign, since these are all words that imply sentience, feeling or attitude. It is insensible, without mind, an ocean of energies. Tu is the eye behind the crystal blind, the eye that gazes and is filled with sympathy, energy, delight or tears. He sees those things that are embedded in time, arts and ethics, laws and rituals. He is a Confucian in his humanity, his humility, his warmth, his power to endure and to create within the world. He knows the pain of fitting human nature to a social order, and the pain of seeing order descend into human chaos. He counters pain with feeling, sensibility, creativity, strength of mind, compassion and good will. He knows the human world is subject to time, and therefore to loss, regret, irretrievable error. He knows that turmoil of politics where as the old song of Chi? u says e? loyalty brings disasteri? . He also sees within the strands of event, natural beauty and natural
222
? affection, transient but deep, ephemeral but consoling. In the natural, in his personal Taoist depths, Tu Fu is calm, simple, tranquil.
The Tao is the matrix of time, and it creates the forms of time. Attempting to understand what lies behind the e? howi? of the universe Chuang-tzu says e? Things appear to us, but we do not understand where they come from. They emerge into the world, but no one sees the portal. We value what is known, but do not know how to use the unknown. i? In western terms we produce a scientific description of how events succeed each other, what changes we expect to see, and the appearance of the e? surfacesi? of our experience. But we delude ourselves if we believe that we grasp the e? inner naturei? of energy, or change, of e? being herei? and e? changing intoi? .
The whole thrust of critical sceptical philosophy, of epistemology, in the West, since
223
? Hume and Kant, has been to mark out empirically, through observation and meditation the limits of human understanding in thought and language. The Tao is not deity. It does not produce by intentional design. It is unknown and unknowing. The vortex of its events produces space and time. It is the waves, the oscillations, the regular vibrations, we use to measure the succession of events we call time. And it is the contiguities that we use to measure immediate space, and therefore the speed of light and by deduction the distances of the remote universe.
The Tao exists in itself and not for itself. Taoism attempts to loosen the bonds that bind us, to free us from time. Its aspiration is not to understand nature, but to -0? nature. e? The wise put Self last, and it comes firsti? says the Tao Te Ching. Its method is to work e? without actioni? , ? :? ? 0? , that is without self-conscious intent, without striving or stress, without endless words. Its tenor is calmness, to be the water surface that reflects light without intention, that accepts
224
? images without grasping and retains them without possessing. Its appearance is an uncultivated innocence e? sorrowful like a baby that has lost its mother, stupid like one who has lost the wayi? as Chuang-tzu says, tongue in cheek. If the natural world cannot be trusted in its lack of intent, what can? If simplicity will not get us there, how will complexity achieve it?
Being never quite at ease, that is the dangerous road for the mind. To be, on the other hand, a creative source, to make the difficult happen as if spontaneously, to concentrate the mind on the object until the self vanishes, without being aware that it has vanished, is the Way. In this our greatest enemy is our sense of time. We find beauty in the timeless, virtue in the selfless, truth in the uncarved and unadorned. Though we, through natural selection, are nothing if not the creatures of time, the result of event, the products of the sieve of generations, the stability that preserves mutation, we are also that which contemplates time, reflects on
225
? process, inhabits the Now. Not to be lost in language games is the Way, not to believe, not to follow, not to own. Death does not exist for the self, only dying. Dying is the vanishing of self- consciousness. To be aware and conscious but without self-consciousness is to have vanished, as a smile vanishes or a thought.
Liberation from time is achieved by destroying the grasping, the desire that links us to time. e? How can I free myself? i? asks the pupil. e? Who is imprisoning you? i? says the Master. e? No onei? replies the pupil. e? Then why do you seek to be free? i? Not to contemplate, or to concentrate, to strain at awareness, or to restrain the body, but to eliminate thought is the Way. To abandon learning and embrace the natural.
In it there is nothing special. There is no mystical concept to be grasped, no higher essence to be striven for. It is difficult because it is so simple, so contrary to the idea of e? progressi? and e? culturei? , to the ways of power or science, e? truthi? or religion, self-conscious morality or
226
? social planning. The world is simply there. We are simply beings. What we strive after in time is only achievable through the timeless. What we yearn for is already there, unchanged by our yearning. e? Mount Lu in mist and rain, the River Che in flood. Before I saw them, to see them - endless longing. I went there and came back. There was nothing special. Mount Lu in mist and rain, the River Che in flood. i?
Time is not the sky and the river. Time is the mind conscious of change. To escape from time is not to e? enteri? a realm called the timeless, or to e? falli? into the Void. There is nowhere to fall to out of this world. There is no place to be in that is not in time, because both world and time are in this mind. Then why is living so difficult for us?
Time in the mind is memory. Memory feeds regret and anticipation, hope and disillusionment. We store mind in objects and in language, in mathematics and in scientific theory, in buildings and in events, in the
227
? processes and the things we create, even in our affections, even in our love. The object, the words, the notation, the history, the love, may be preserved even when the transient human body dies, and in turn they may create thought and feeling in a living mind. Everything we make and do tells what we are. e? Where can a man hide? Where can a man hide? i? Memory is mindi? s magic and its fate. Memory is mindi? s hurt and its delight. Our whole past lives that are present in the living Now, are nothing but memory. The poetry and the history of the Ti? ang Dynasty are still here. The pictures are in the poems, even though the Ti? ang Dynasty itself is gone, like water or clouds.
228
? %? ,4? ? ? ? ? 03 ( 365-427 AD) Returning to Live in the Country
Young, I was always free of common feeling.
It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.
Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap. Waking up, thirty years had gone.
The caged bird wants the old trees and air. Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.
I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor. Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden. My place is hardly more than a few fields.
My house has eight or nine small rooms.
Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.
Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.
Misted, misted the distant village.
Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.
Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.
A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree. No heat and dust behind my closed doors.
229
? ? ? My bare rooms are filled with space and silence. Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,
Now I can get back again to Nature.
230
? Returning to Live in the Country II
I always loved to walk the woods and mountains, Pleased myself, lost in fields and marshes.
Now I go out with nephews, nieces,
In the wilds, parting hazel branches,
Back and forth through the mounds and hollows, All around us signs of ancient peoples,
Remnants of their broken hearths and well-heads, Mulberry and bamboo groves neglected.
Stop and ask the simple woodsman,
e? Where have all these people gone now? i?
Turning he looks quietly and tells me,
e? Nothingi? s left of them, theyi? re finished. i?
One world. Though the lives we lead are different, In courts of power or labouring in the market, These I know are more than empty words:
Our lifei? s a play of light and shade,
Returning at last to the Void.
? 231
? Reading the Classic of Hills and Seas
In the summer grass and trees have grown. Over my roof the branches meet.
Birds settle in the leaves.
I enjoy my humble place.
Ploughingi? s done, the ground is sown, Time to sit and read my book.
The narrow deeply-rutted lane
Means my friends forget to call. Content, I pour the new Spring wine, Go out and gather food Ii? ve grown.
A light rain from the East,
Blows in on a pleasant breeze.
I read the story of King Mu,
See pictures of the Hills and Seas.
One glance finds all of heaven and earth. What pleasures can compare with these?
? 490? ? ? ? 3? ? ? :? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 41? 9? 0? ? ? 4:? ? ? 3,89? ? /? 30/? ? ? 9? ? 9? 0? ":003? 41? 9? 0? ? 22479,? 8? ? $? ? ? ,3? ? ? :? ? ? 3? 9? 0? ? 089073? ! ,7,/? 80? ? ,243? ? 9? 0? ? :3 ? ? :3? 24:39,? 38? 41? %? -09? ? ? %? 070? 8? 0? 903/0/? 9? 0? ? ,7/03?
232
? ? ? ? 070? 9? 0? 50,. ? ? 9700? ? 70? ? 9? ,9? 8:554790/? 9? 0? &3? ;0780? ? ? 07? ! ,7,/? 80? ? ,8? 9? ,9? 41? 0? ,? 90/? 5:7? 9? ? ? 9? 0? ? ,/0? 47? 50,7? ? 24:39,? 3? ? 039070/? 9? 74:? ? ? ,? ? 4? /03? /447? ? %? 0? 50,. ? 08? . 43107 70/? ? 22479,? ? 9? ? ? $? 0?
Li Po is possessed by transience. Li, the restless, who is the wanderer, and the searcher after immortality. He traverses China from Szechwan to Shantung, from Peking to the Yangtze Delta. Li who can compose in a flash, in a lightning stroke. Who drinks to lose time, to
219
? make time vanish, to escape reality in stupor, and consciousness in sleep. Li who can almost touch and feel the tranquility and stillness of others, but rarely his own. Li who is so far below the hills that the adepts seem to climb, who is dizzied by height, who has to descend the mountains, and abandon the hills. Li who is e? knee-deep in a thousand fallen flowersi? . Li whose emblems are the Moon and the mirror. Li who dreams he is the butterfly, who is e? helplessi? in the deep garden. Li who is the transience of colours, and the beauty of sunsets, lost notes of music, lost poems fluttering, lost hours, girls, wine-cups, lost emotions. Li whose inner movement is the spirit journey, the ? 8? 03i? s flight through the night, through the Heavens. Li, who is the shaman from the East, the lone magician of Asia, who can ride through the air, unaided. Li who can visit the timeless Paradises of the West, the Magic Islands of the East, and return, as Keatsi? s knight returns, to a world of time that is inadequate to his senses and his aspirations. Li
220
? ? who longs for the alchemy that will transcend time, that will e? transmute his bones to goldi? , to that fused silver moon and golden sun of the Taoist Eternal Child. Li who like Baudelaire in e? The Voyagei? is always ready to set sail one more time, to move on, into the unknown, to find the new.
Tu Fu is the eye that sees the Moment. He is the self-awareness of the intellect, the perception of form and its intricacies, the observer of time as History being made, History as it defines the human and the inhuman, as it enters into memory, as it remains in the present through its creations and its transformations. Tu is the lone element of being, wandering on the surface of the real, driven by the wind, or caught in the walls of the whirlpool. He is the observer of the neutrality of the universe, and the neutrality of the vortex of historical events, of the twin sets of forces that emerge from them to touch the individual. He is the inhabitant of a universe
221
? ? which is neither benevolent as his Confucianism taught, nor in any way malevolent.
The universe is not indifferent, hostile, alien, or malign, since these are all words that imply sentience, feeling or attitude. It is insensible, without mind, an ocean of energies. Tu is the eye behind the crystal blind, the eye that gazes and is filled with sympathy, energy, delight or tears. He sees those things that are embedded in time, arts and ethics, laws and rituals. He is a Confucian in his humanity, his humility, his warmth, his power to endure and to create within the world. He knows the pain of fitting human nature to a social order, and the pain of seeing order descend into human chaos. He counters pain with feeling, sensibility, creativity, strength of mind, compassion and good will. He knows the human world is subject to time, and therefore to loss, regret, irretrievable error. He knows that turmoil of politics where as the old song of Chi? u says e? loyalty brings disasteri? . He also sees within the strands of event, natural beauty and natural
222
? affection, transient but deep, ephemeral but consoling. In the natural, in his personal Taoist depths, Tu Fu is calm, simple, tranquil.
The Tao is the matrix of time, and it creates the forms of time. Attempting to understand what lies behind the e? howi? of the universe Chuang-tzu says e? Things appear to us, but we do not understand where they come from. They emerge into the world, but no one sees the portal. We value what is known, but do not know how to use the unknown. i? In western terms we produce a scientific description of how events succeed each other, what changes we expect to see, and the appearance of the e? surfacesi? of our experience. But we delude ourselves if we believe that we grasp the e? inner naturei? of energy, or change, of e? being herei? and e? changing intoi? .
The whole thrust of critical sceptical philosophy, of epistemology, in the West, since
223
? Hume and Kant, has been to mark out empirically, through observation and meditation the limits of human understanding in thought and language. The Tao is not deity. It does not produce by intentional design. It is unknown and unknowing. The vortex of its events produces space and time. It is the waves, the oscillations, the regular vibrations, we use to measure the succession of events we call time. And it is the contiguities that we use to measure immediate space, and therefore the speed of light and by deduction the distances of the remote universe.
The Tao exists in itself and not for itself. Taoism attempts to loosen the bonds that bind us, to free us from time. Its aspiration is not to understand nature, but to -0? nature. e? The wise put Self last, and it comes firsti? says the Tao Te Ching. Its method is to work e? without actioni? , ? :? ? 0? , that is without self-conscious intent, without striving or stress, without endless words. Its tenor is calmness, to be the water surface that reflects light without intention, that accepts
224
? images without grasping and retains them without possessing. Its appearance is an uncultivated innocence e? sorrowful like a baby that has lost its mother, stupid like one who has lost the wayi? as Chuang-tzu says, tongue in cheek. If the natural world cannot be trusted in its lack of intent, what can? If simplicity will not get us there, how will complexity achieve it?
Being never quite at ease, that is the dangerous road for the mind. To be, on the other hand, a creative source, to make the difficult happen as if spontaneously, to concentrate the mind on the object until the self vanishes, without being aware that it has vanished, is the Way. In this our greatest enemy is our sense of time. We find beauty in the timeless, virtue in the selfless, truth in the uncarved and unadorned. Though we, through natural selection, are nothing if not the creatures of time, the result of event, the products of the sieve of generations, the stability that preserves mutation, we are also that which contemplates time, reflects on
225
? process, inhabits the Now. Not to be lost in language games is the Way, not to believe, not to follow, not to own. Death does not exist for the self, only dying. Dying is the vanishing of self- consciousness. To be aware and conscious but without self-consciousness is to have vanished, as a smile vanishes or a thought.
Liberation from time is achieved by destroying the grasping, the desire that links us to time. e? How can I free myself? i? asks the pupil. e? Who is imprisoning you? i? says the Master. e? No onei? replies the pupil. e? Then why do you seek to be free? i? Not to contemplate, or to concentrate, to strain at awareness, or to restrain the body, but to eliminate thought is the Way. To abandon learning and embrace the natural.
In it there is nothing special. There is no mystical concept to be grasped, no higher essence to be striven for. It is difficult because it is so simple, so contrary to the idea of e? progressi? and e? culturei? , to the ways of power or science, e? truthi? or religion, self-conscious morality or
226
? social planning. The world is simply there. We are simply beings. What we strive after in time is only achievable through the timeless. What we yearn for is already there, unchanged by our yearning. e? Mount Lu in mist and rain, the River Che in flood. Before I saw them, to see them - endless longing. I went there and came back. There was nothing special. Mount Lu in mist and rain, the River Che in flood. i?
Time is not the sky and the river. Time is the mind conscious of change. To escape from time is not to e? enteri? a realm called the timeless, or to e? falli? into the Void. There is nowhere to fall to out of this world. There is no place to be in that is not in time, because both world and time are in this mind. Then why is living so difficult for us?
Time in the mind is memory. Memory feeds regret and anticipation, hope and disillusionment. We store mind in objects and in language, in mathematics and in scientific theory, in buildings and in events, in the
227
? processes and the things we create, even in our affections, even in our love. The object, the words, the notation, the history, the love, may be preserved even when the transient human body dies, and in turn they may create thought and feeling in a living mind. Everything we make and do tells what we are. e? Where can a man hide? Where can a man hide? i? Memory is mindi? s magic and its fate. Memory is mindi? s hurt and its delight. Our whole past lives that are present in the living Now, are nothing but memory. The poetry and the history of the Ti? ang Dynasty are still here. The pictures are in the poems, even though the Ti? ang Dynasty itself is gone, like water or clouds.
228
? %? ,4? ? ? ? ? 03 ( 365-427 AD) Returning to Live in the Country
Young, I was always free of common feeling.
It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.
Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap. Waking up, thirty years had gone.
The caged bird wants the old trees and air. Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.
I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor. Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden. My place is hardly more than a few fields.
My house has eight or nine small rooms.
Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.
Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.
Misted, misted the distant village.
Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.
Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.
A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree. No heat and dust behind my closed doors.
229
? ? ? My bare rooms are filled with space and silence. Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,
Now I can get back again to Nature.
230
? Returning to Live in the Country II
I always loved to walk the woods and mountains, Pleased myself, lost in fields and marshes.
Now I go out with nephews, nieces,
In the wilds, parting hazel branches,
Back and forth through the mounds and hollows, All around us signs of ancient peoples,
Remnants of their broken hearths and well-heads, Mulberry and bamboo groves neglected.
Stop and ask the simple woodsman,
e? Where have all these people gone now? i?
Turning he looks quietly and tells me,
e? Nothingi? s left of them, theyi? re finished. i?
One world. Though the lives we lead are different, In courts of power or labouring in the market, These I know are more than empty words:
Our lifei? s a play of light and shade,
Returning at last to the Void.
? 231
? Reading the Classic of Hills and Seas
In the summer grass and trees have grown. Over my roof the branches meet.
Birds settle in the leaves.
I enjoy my humble place.
Ploughingi? s done, the ground is sown, Time to sit and read my book.
The narrow deeply-rutted lane
Means my friends forget to call. Content, I pour the new Spring wine, Go out and gather food Ii? ve grown.
A light rain from the East,
Blows in on a pleasant breeze.
I read the story of King Mu,
See pictures of the Hills and Seas.
One glance finds all of heaven and earth. What pleasures can compare with these?
? 490? ? ? ? 3? ? ? :? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 41? 9? 0? ? ? 4:? ? ? 3,89? ? /? 30/? ? ? 9? ? 9? 0? ":003? 41? 9? 0? ? 22479,? 8? ? $? ? ? ,3? ? ? :? ? ? 3? 9? 0? ? 089073? ! ,7,/? 80? ? ,243? ? 9? 0? ? :3 ? ? :3? 24:39,? 38? 41? %? -09? ? ? %? 070? 8? 0? 903/0/? 9? 0? ? ,7/03?
232
? ? ? ? 070? 9? 0? 50,. ? ? 9700? ? 70? ? 9? ,9? 8:554790/? 9? 0? &3? ;0780? ? ? 07? ! ,7,/? 80? ? ,8? 9? ,9? 41? 0? ,? 90/? 5:7? 9? ? ? 9? 0? ? ,/0? 47? 50,7? ? 24:39,? 3? ? 039070/? 9? 74:? ? ? ,? ? 4? /03? /447? ? %? 0? 50,. ? 08? . 43107 70/? ? 22479,? ? 9? ? ? $? 0?
