No More Learning

The stream of Buddhism, Theravada (The Way of the elders), which attempted to stay close to the pure teachings flourished in Burma, Thailand and Shri Lanka. Its hymn is e? Gata, gata, paragata, parasangata, bodhi, swahai? , e? Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, Oh, what an awakening, all hail. i?
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? Theravada is the Way of the single one, of renunciation and ultimate extinction of the self in the Void. In its pure form it creates and satisfies a longing for stillness and release, and Nirvana is interpreted as a state of mind empty of all content, ideas, sensations and feelings. It can be achieved through intense concentration causing all craving and attachment to cease. Mindful of Buddhai? s own teaching there is an inherent paradox in trying to use striving to end striving, and in eliminating the mental world that is the flux and vortex of the only reality. Theravada can be seen as a world-denying doctrine.
The Buddhism that dominated in China and Japan was the Mayahana (Greater Vehicle) school which stressed the incompleteness of that salvation for the self that excluded others, and whose key concept is the Bodhisattva, that is the Buddha who from the verge of Nirvana turns back to save humankind. Mahayana in China, particularly in the form of the Pure Land School
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? with its Bodhisattva, Amitabha (Amida in Japan), taught a casteless doctrine of non- violence, compassion and loving concern. Alongside it the Chi? an (Zen) or Meditation school developed out of the convergence of Taoism and Buddhism and remained closer to the Theravada doctrine relying on personal enlightenment and illuminating insight. These three strands of Theravada world-denial, Mahayana compassion, and Chi? an illumination of the Vortex as the Void, all contributed to the complexity of Chinese practice.
The ceaseless flow of the Vortex, that is the Tao, is for Chi? an Buddhism the Void whose perception and naming by the mind generates the illusion (2,? ,) of a reality, a sea, of discrete entities and events (8,28,7,)? Reality is beyond concept, and beyond words, and available truly only by a direct pointing, or a moment of illumination. The world in Taoism and Buddhism is essentially ungraspable, elusive, and shadowy. The attempt to grasp, to realise
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? self, is self-defeating. Both ways of thought see morality in terms of equality, compassion, non- violence, and integrity, arising from the innate understanding of the enlightened human being. Though Buddhism codifies its practices in a way that Taoism rejects as unnatural, both discard the inessential that includes all forms of grasping and excessive attachment. They thereby discard what a moral code would regard as crime, immorality, sin, and evil action, as not conducive to achieving the goal.
The Taoisti? s aim is to relinquish analysis and classification in achieving harmony, spontaneity, tranquility, simplicity, and elimination of inessential action and thereby realise the Tao. The Buddhisti? s goal of meditation is to realise a similar non-analytic state that defeats 2,? ,? ? the illusion of the myriad creatures, and rests in the Void. It is achieved by the relinquishment of craving, thereby eliminating the self from the cycles of existence.
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? There is a world-rejection in Theravada Buddhism that is alien to Taoism. Buddhism goes beyond the natural world. Taoism seeks to be in harmony with it. Buddhism sees suffering and the Wheel of Rebirth. Taoism sees a natural path without suffering within the world, and never anticipates rebirth. Both ways of thought have however played many variations on the theme generating a popular Taoism intoxicated with the search for immortality, often through sexual practices or sympathetic magic, and a popular Buddhism of worship of the Bodhisattvas. But the pure forms of Buddhism and Taoism that search for individual enlightenment overlap in their concept of the unnameability of reality, an approach to it through the rejection of analysis and naming, and a realised state of mind, or attitude, that results, before death, in inner harmony.
Wang Wei often seems to be yearning for a peace and stillness offered by Buddhism that is beyond the harmony with Nature. If the Peach
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? Blossom Spring is his expression of the hearti? s desire for the Taoist paradisial state of spontaneity and simplicity, the White Clouds that appear as a motif in many of his poems are the Buddhist Gateway to the extinction of the hearti? s pain. The deaths of his wife and beloved mother lead to long periods of mourning and retreat from the world. Wang may have known of that Chi? an doctrine that identifies the Wheel of Rebirth with the moment to moment existence of the body and mind, so that rebirth continues as long as there is the identity of a Self that renews in every instant. Nirvana is then the cessation of the circling of the mind, the turning about of the spirit, the moving waves of analytical thought, and the disturbances of the body. Nirvana has then the same goal as Yoga.
Wang Weii? s yearning was for the realisation of this state, the cessation from all forms of pain, through the abandonment of craving. He would try to e? reign in the dragoni? of desire as in his poem e? Visiting the Templei? . His poem e? Going to
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? ? ? the Templei? describes the ten stages of perception, the progression towards Nirvana. His poems e? Meditationi? , e? The Reclusei? and e? From the Mountaini? clearly show his affiliation to the Chi? an School of meditation rather than to the Pure Land School of the Bodhisattvas but both aspects probably claimed his allegiance. The poem e? How Finei? blends both Taoist and Buddhist perception. Taoism is the harmonious beauty of nature and spontaneous art, outside worldly commitment. Buddhism is the e? emptyi? Refuge beyond the visible world.
It is clear that Wang Weii? s spiritually serious temperament struggled in attempting to relinquish those deep feelings that are obvious in his poems, and that overwhelmed him at the time of his wifei? s and motheri? s deaths. As a Confucian trained official he felt a duty to exercise his great talents on behalf of the State, and always returned to State service, though he never occupied the very highest offices. As a Taoist artist he used his Wang River retreat to
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? ? ? ? ? ? ? reconcile himself to Nature, and his poetry, painting and music as a means of cultivating the spirit of concordance with the Vortex. But as he grew older his deepest yearnings may have been for release from the pain and burden of existence. If being in the world is like a hand grasping, and craving like a fist formed by desire and greed, then Nirvana is the opening of the hand, the vanishing of the fist, the disappearance of e? names and formsi? .
Chi? an and Taoist thinking merged. In the late Ti? ang Chinese commentators on the Dharmadatu, the culmination of Indian Mahayana thinking, expressed the view that harmony is achieved when everything is left to be freely and spontaneously itself. There is no conflict or obstruction (? :? ,? ) between things and events (8? ? ? ), or between them and their underlying reality(? ? ). This Buddhist concept is clearly a restatement of the Tao and the Myriad Creatures, the Vortex, and the continuity of flow. The Vortex is thus also the Void, and Samsara
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? and Nirvana, reality and its extinction, are one when naming and analysis ceases. Again the Six Precepts of Tilopa declare: e? Without mind, without meditation, without analysis, without practice, without the will, let it all be so. i? This is the Taoist 9? :? ? ,3, the e? naturali? or e? spontaneousi? inner meaning of things and events.
Chi? an Buddhism is e? Beyond any doctrine: apart from all tradition: not based on words or scriptures: a direct pointing at the human mind - seeing into our nature, achieving Nirvana. i? Hui- neng (637-713AD) the Sixth and greatest Patriarch of the Chi? an School expressed that sudden pointing that is the awakening (8,947? ? ? of Zen. A humble man he became the successor to Hung-jan the Fifth Patriarch through answering a poem written on the wall by Shen-hsiu.
e? The body is the Bodhi Tree, the mind is a bright mirror. i? Shen-hsiui? s poem ran, e? Clean the mirror, and allow no dust to cling. i? Hui-nengi? s reply pointed instead to the illusion of 2,? , and the error of seeing the world as e? names and
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? formsi? . e? There is no Bodhi Tree. There is no shining mirror. At root no things exist. How can the dust cling? i?
His attitude was to abandon useless meditation, to remove the barriers, to avoid stirring the thoughts. e? Carry water, chop woodi? . That was all that e? sitting in meditationi? required, involving neither sitting nor meditation. And the Great Void for Hui-neng is the Taoist nameless space-time of sun, moon, earth and stars. The mind is this Void where thoughts and feelings pass like the birds in the sky without leaving a trace.
Energies, particles, within their probability waves, leap, randomly, out of the seething ocean of quantum reality only when they are observed. The Void shines. The Vortex pours. Unobserved reality allows only the potentiality of discrete entities at the quantum level. Particles are neither here nor there. They are everywhere, with some probability or possibility of being. The torrent of energies is also the cloud of particles. ? :3? 8? :? ,
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? cloud and water, is a common term for the student of Zen Buddhism, who must wander like a cloud, and flow like water. e? What is the Tao? i? asked the Governor of Lang, of Yao-shan. Yao- shan pointed up to the sky, and then down at a dish of water. Asked what he meant, he replied e? Cloud in the sky, water in the dish. i?
In Wang Wei, Buddhist and Taoist quietism and the deep love of nature converge. His poems exist in the Void and the Vortex. They point at human life within Nature but without analysis. Their luminous stillness refrains from describing. It declares and evokes. They require a slow attention from the reader. They avoid the demonstrative. They have neither the mature worldly engagement of Tu Fu, nor the brightly lit flickering movement of Li Po. They are Yin to Lii? s Yang. They are inwardness to match Tui? s outwardness. There is a gentle sadness perceptible in his work, so delicately poised that it never becomes negativity.
He is the darkness (hs ? an) of the Tao, as he portrays himself in a
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? poem e? From the Wang River Scrolli? , playing his music in the bamboo grove hidden from all except the Moon. e? There is a thing that holds up the heavens and supports the earth. i? says Ti? ung- shan, e? It is black like lacquer, and it moves continually. i?
As the poem e? White Hairsi? says, Wang Wei knew what it was to be e? hurt by lifei? . He was a man of profound feelings who was able to enter into and use solitude, as he would have used the unpainted silk of the empty background in his paintings. e? Understanding the depths of landscapei? , he says in e? Pa Passi? e? even here I am never lonely. i? Cold, cloud, thin rain, shadows, water, evening, soft breezes, deep woods, pale light, cool air, peach blossoms and moonlight. This is Wang Wei.
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Emperor Hs ? an-tsung came to the Imperial Ti? ang throne in 712 AD, the year of Tu Fui? s birth, and his Court was soon the focal point for a high culture. The early years of his reign saw him exercise a tight grip on government. The power of his imperial relatives who had gained from the influence of the Empress Wu was curbed. He ordered a new census, and reformed the equal field system designed to share out the land, a State resource, between families, in order to increase the tax revenues. The aim, when the system had been initiated by the Northern Wei government in 486AD, was to bring all land into cultivation, to provide stability, to prevent monopoly ownership by the rich and powerful, and to ensure that as many families as possible were brought into the taxation system. Taxes were levied in grain and cloth.
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? ? The Emperor set up an outer ring of military provinces along the western and northern borders with substantial devolved authority being given to the commanders. Within the strengthened frontiers economic development was rapid, particularly in the south. River transport enabled the tea trade for example to spread throughout the country, turning tea from a medicinal herb to an everyday drink. The southern ports grew to support the extensive sea trade across South-East Asia and along the coastlines. By the middle of the eighth century the previously lightly populated south had as many people living in it as the north.
The Emperor encouraged the codification of State ritual and had a broad-minded interest in philosophy and religion. Teachers of various systems including Buddhism, Taoism, and even the esoteric Tantric Buddhism were welcome at his Court. Elite families still dominated Court circles but leavened with officials who had entered service through the examination system.
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? Educated men understood Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, were drawn to the arts and scholarship, and had the leisure to practice them. Ancient texts were collected and treasured. Poetry was an accomplishment of a gentleman, and every civilised man could turn out a suitable poem on a friendi? s departure for a journey. While travel was still time-consuming and arduous, and communications difficult, the improved road and canal system, with its established post stations, and the massive volume of river traffic, allowed movement in relative safety. Leisure trips and official duties encouraged a criss-crossing of the vast country.
The political stability of the first thirty years of the reign with war limited to the northern and western borders, peace within the inner Empire, a strengthened code of laws, and rapid economic growth stimulated a brief golden age.
It was a Renaissance in the sense of re- creating the unified vigorous Empire of the Han Dynasty, though a great deal of cultural
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? development had continued in the fragmented Period of Division. Buddhism, Taoism, poetry and painting had all flourished since the Han, and the Ti? ang was a recipient of this. The Ti? ang Renaissance could look back towards an earlier Classic civilisation and its great men, and could blend together the three streams of moral and spiritual thought represented by Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. There is a flavour of the Florentine Renaissancei? s stimulus at the re- awakening knowledge of Greece and Rome, and its parallel blending of Christianity, and Classicism with Secular and Pagan cultural streams.
As in the West an emphasis on the golden age can lead to a wrong belief that other periods were times of total cultural darkness. Decentralised fragmentation gave a freedom and variety that was a stimulus to complex development. Just as the intellectual life of the Middle Ages already presaged the Italian, French and English Renaissances, so the periods
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? either side of the Ti? ang were fruitful in less spectacular ways. Nevertheless Ti? ang China was a high point. Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese culture benefited from the contact with China. Heian Japan modelled parts of its Court culture on the Chinese example. Chinese poetry, paintings and history were admired and studied. There is a parallel with the adoption of French culture within nineteenth century Russian aristocratic circles.
To promote and sponsor new poetry and calligraphy and provide the Court with a Ti? ang literature, Hs ? an-tsung set up the Han-lin Academy, the e? Forest of Writing Brushesi? . The Academy was responsible for example for drafting significant State documents. Distinguished poets joined the Court and celebrated Imperial life in their verses. Li Po arrived in Chi? ang-an in 742 at the age of forty- one to become a member of the group. e? I rode a horse from the Emperori? s stables, with silvered stirrups and a jade-studded saddle. I slept in an
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? ivory bed, sat on a mat of silk, ate from golden dishes. People who had once ignored me now came humbly to pay their respects. i? Classed amongst the professional men and therefore of relatively lowly status, Li wrote occasional pieces, private poems of drinking and farewell, public poems celebrating the beauty of the Imperial parks, and the ladies of the Court. The e? Three Poems on Winei? are from this time.
Music and dance, song and mime, were also Court arts. There were dance schools in the Spring Gardens and in the Pear Garden inside the Imperial Palace. Tu Fu writes nostalgically about the greatest dancer of the eighth century Lady Kung-sun performing mime and dance steps originating west of the Yangtze. The Taoist ideals of spontaneity, natural flow, concentration of the attuned spirit, and controlled impulsiveness run through the arts. Her fluid and dynamic dance style for example influenced the calligraphic writing of large hanging inscriptions, which demanded similar initial
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? ? pent-up concentration, fluid style, brilliant attack, and physical agility, its flowing continuity suddenly brought to rest, as Tu Fu says e? like the cold light on a frozen riveri? . Such calligraphy was compared to whales arching from the sea: snakes winding through tall grass: lashing rain or silk threads blown by the wind: giant creepers hanging from vast cliffs brushing the autumn pools: or black dragons ascending from a darkened ocean into the winding immensities of night.
Sometime in the late 730i? s after the death of a favourite concubine, which at first left him inconsolable, Hs ? an-tsung, who had many consorts, became infatuated with Yang Y ? -huan. She was the young wife of one of his sons, beautiful and skilled in music. Now and later he was obsessed, by her and her memory. She became the Favourite Concubine, Yang Kuei-fei. Before her formal entry into the Palace as consort in 745AD she was installed as a Taoist nun in a convent in the Palace grounds.
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? The Emperori? s obsession with her brought her family and favourites power. The Chief Minister Li Lin-fu exercised almost absolute control from now till his death in 752 and the Emperor relinquished government, spending his time in entertainment and extravagance with his beloved concubine, indulging in esoteric and erotic practices that promised immortality, or promoting military campaigns designed to win glory. Li Lin-fu, an uneducated man ran an oppressive regime, his opponents condemned on flimsy charges and done to death by roving executioners. Li Yung a friend of Tu Fu and Li Po was killed in this way through implication in a supposed plot to dethrone the Emperor. Li Po writing of a melancholy visit to Li Yungi? s former house says e? Even the trees he planted in his life have entered Nirvana, untouched by spring. '
The tenor of the reign had altered from controlled excellence and even austerity to reckless extravagance and political corruption.
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? Increased taxation to fill the revenues and fund the military expeditions was combined with self- serving officials who used influence alone to gain wealth and power. The Confucian ideals were becoming lost. It is not too fanciful to find echoes of Tudor England not only in the cultural Renaissance but also here in the troubled, distracted and oppressive atmosphere at the end of Elizabethi? s reign. The Military build-up on the borders, combined with devolved authority vested in non-Chinese generals supposedly without political affiliation, created a dangerous alternative power-base. Equally the costly wars of attrition did not go well. In 751 China suffered two great defeats one in Y ? nnan to the north and one in distant Turkestan at the battle of the Talas River. In Y ? nnan the untrained soldiers of the levy were e? frightened human beings not fighting meni? and died of malaria like flies. At the Talas River the army was caught between Turkish and Arabic forces and most of the men were lost. The pain of military disaster and wari? s
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? inhumanity is present in the poetry, in Li Poi? s e? We Fought for - South of The Wallsi? , in Tu Fui? s e? Ballad of the War Wagonsi? and e? The Homecomingi? . Discontent at the Talas River defeat simmered amongst the generals and in the country at large. Later events, driven partly by this defeat, led to the Chinese abandonment of Central Asia for centuries.
One of these generals was a court favourite. An Lu-shan (703-757AD) had built up considerable forces around the Peking area as Li Po witnessed in 744, perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand troops, and had also established a power base at Court through Yang Kuei-fei. He was a soldier of fortune from Sogdiana descended from a family of Iranian soldiers on his fatheri? s side, and with a Turkish mother. Yang Kuei-fei adopted him and made him wealthy, gifting him increased military commands and providing him with horses from the Imperial stables, such that by 744 he had potential control of north eastern China.
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? ? ? ? ? After Li Lin-fui? s death in 752 ministerial power passed to a distant cousin of Yang Kuei- fei, Yang Kuo-chung. The reign was increasingly unpopular. There was a series of economic disasters in the early 750i? s including spring droughts, loss of a grain-transport fleet, typhoons that destroyed shipping at Yangkow, severe autumn rains and flooding, and the effects of hurricanes. Food prices rose and the Government released grain at reduced prices but in inadequate quantities. The influence of Yang Kuei-fei, her sisters and her power base on the Emperor and the Empire lead to many poetic references to Han and other precedents. The beautiful concubine who became a consort with undue influence was always a likely consequence of the Imperial system, and there were plenty of examples. Li Poi? s e? The Roosting Crowsi? hints at the Taoist sexual practices, aimed at gaining immortality, practised by King Wu and Hsi Shih. Tu Fui? s e? By the Waters of Weii? pictures Yang Kuei-fei and her sisters in
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? analogy with Flying Swallow and her Maids of Honour of the Han Dynasty. Cruelty, malice, mockery and danger flicker behind the smiling faces in the South Gardens.
Yang Kuo-chungi? s government was increasingly resented. Tu Fu describes his journey to his wife and children in late 755, as events moved towards crisis. He left Chi? ang-an on a freezing cold night and passed the hot springs where the Imperial war banners blocked the sky, and where Yang Kuei-fei and the Emperor were warm while everyone else froze. e? From the vermilion gate rose the smell of food and wine, in the road were the corpses of men who froze to death. i? Arriving home he found that his little son had died in the harshest of circumstances from lack of food.
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