No More Learning

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
114
? 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.
? ? ? 115
? ? 250747? ? 8Q,3? 98:3?
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.
116
? ? 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.
117
? 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
118
? 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
119
? 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
120
? 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
121
? ? 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.
122
? 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.
123
? 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
124
? 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.
125
? ? ? ? ? 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
126
? 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.
127
? %? 0? $0,7. ? ? 147? ? 22479,? ? 9?
The search for Immortality occupied the thoughts of many followers of Taoist practices not least the Chinese Emperors. At one extreme it displayed itself as an illusory, even debased, pursuit of endless life by physical and sexual means. At the other extreme it was a method of pure meditation designed through breathing and inner concentration to achieve states of e? immortalityi? akin to the Buddhist mental state of Nirvana. As a desire for immortality in the sense of endless life it was the exact opposite of the Buddhist desire for release from the Wheel of Rebirths and thereby for escape from life and death. As a meditative technique akin to the Yogic method it allowed a convergence of Taoist and Buddhist ideals which illuminated the Chi? an (Zen) schools of Buddhism, though the sixth patriarch Hui-neng specifically warned
128
? ? against substituting the e? ritualsi? of formal meditation for humble awareness.
The force of the Tao, manifests itself in the Vortex, in the e? forms and namesi? of Heaven and Earth. There its currents and energies take on masculine (Yang) and feminine (Yin) embodiments. The Emperor, as a divine representative of the Tao on earth, as Man positioned between Heaven and Earth, was responsible for regulating the Cosmic process. He must perform the rituals and practise the disciplines that would create the union of Yang and Yin, the union of Earth and Heaven, and so bring himself and his people into harmony with the Tao. He was the intermediary between Heaven and Earth, who could co-ordinate and balance the forces of Heaven, as they worked in the Earth, and reconcile the claims of both. His Court was therefore a magnet for Taoist diviners, astrologers, magicians, doctors, healers and observers who could assist the process. He was aided by surrounding himself with anything in
129
? the environment that could create a conducive and symbolic atmosphere, in which to achieve harmony, whether landscape, music, painting, food, perfumes, clothes, or movement and gesture.
The arts therefore reflected the underlying sexual polarity of the universe. Yang, the masculine polarity, has the attributes of sharpness, brightness, dryness, and clarity. It is active, hot, and positive. It is represented by the Feng or phoenix bird, by the dragon, fire, jade, the summer, the south, vertical lines, waterfalls, tall cliffs, straight pine trees, phallic shaped rocks and forms. The feminine Yin has the attributes of depth, emptiness, wetness, and darkness. It is passive, cool, and negative. It is represented by hollow forms, like vases or open peony flowers, by the wetness of lakes rivers and pools, and by the cloud shapes of smoke fungi and coral. It is shown in landscape by cloud- shaped wintry mountains and by misty valleys, by horizontal planes and lines. It is symbolised
130
? by the tortoise and intertwined snake of winter, night and the north. The Yin is vulva-shaped, peach-shaped, has the mouth of the open chrysanthemum, is the hollow of bronze vessels, and resides in the beauty of young girls.
The Emperori? s task was to create the union of Yin and Yang for which the obvious physical correlative is sexual union, and to bring about the union of Heaven and Earth. Within Chinese art there is great concern to symbolise the marriage of Yin and Yang by bringing their representative elements together. Yang mountains meet Yin valleys. Yin mist can be created from empty white silk by painting Yang cliffs. Dragons and Feng birds fly down to gardens with young girls, open flowerheads, fungi and mosses. Waterfalls dive vertically into horizontal pools. Streams flow among tall pines. And there are paintings of men and women in sexual acts, caring and mutually pleasant, to emphasise harmony and the equality of the sexual polarities in the personal sphere.
131
? The union of Heaven and Earth is symbolised, by the jade Tsung (a square tube representing Earth) and Pi (a holed disc representing Heaven), like the Yoni and Lingam of India. It is shown in ceramics as the gourd- shaped vase, two swollen curves with a narrow waist. There are the carved stands of wood and jade, showing twisted roots (Earth) with random holes and hollows (Heaven), or jade clouds and wooden waves. There is the sign of the Great Ultimate (9? ,? ? . ? ? ), the interlocking tear-shaped Yin and Yang symbols inside a circular disc, within which smaller discs can be drawn along the diameter in an infinitely deep pattern whose serpent-like inner lines converge on the diameter itself. And there is a complex colour symbolism where the gold, blue, green and black of Heaven are juxtaposed with the silver, crimson, purple and white of Earth. Red is used with blue or green, white with blue or black, gold with silver, giving for example the ubiquitous blue and white or green and white porcelains. Or the colours of
132
? Heaven and Earth are intermingled and harmonised in the glazes of Celadon wares. Seasons, colours, trigrams of the e? I Chingi? , forms and shapes, were all combined to express and aid harmony, union and mediation.
The Cosmic spirit of the Tao charges the forms and processes of Heaven and Earth. It is air with its currents of movement in smoke and clouds, its billows and swirls, or water with its flow, its strands and coils of energy. The Taoist practices that used physical means aimed to gather and enhance personal vital energies in order to achieve e? external immortalityi? that is indefinitely extended life. These vital energies could in turn be used to fuel meditative practices whose end was the condensing of cosmic energy internally within the furnace of the body through an inner alchemy to create the final elixir. This would allow the achievement of e? internal immortalityi? , through an ultimate tranquility, in harmony with the Cosmic Tao.
133
? One way to start this process, once the environment itself had been made harmonious through the arts of living, was to gather vital energy through a diet of drugs and essences. These are the substances searched for and ingested by the true Immortals, the ? 8? 03 (sennin). These legendary magicians travel through the skies to the Western Paradise, like shamans, on the backs of storks or cranes. They live deep in the woods, or in caves in the mountains, have mastered the Yin and Yang energies, and are reincarnated at the end of each e? lifei? or are found never to have died at all. The substances they eat include pine juices angelica, certain roots and fungi, and cinnabar. Cinnabar, sulphide of mercury, can be fired in the inner cauldron, when eaten, to condense the Yang and Yin essences and release the elixir of immortality, just as heating the reddish purple crystalline rock releases the silver flow of mercury. Eating pounded cinnabar crystals, counter-productively however, shortened the
134
? lives of many of the Emperors through mercury poisoning.
A second stage of gathering vital energy was to tap into the Yin and Yang energies of the natural world. The Tao gives life to nature and humankind, and cosmic energies are condensed and exhaled in natural process. The rising energies can be portrayed in art in the crackled lacquer panels, in marbled ceramics, wood and stone, in the e? dragon veinsi? of rock strata and the lines of landscape, and in esoteric calligraphy, cloud, bird, constellation and grass scripts, notations for music and even perfumes. The Yin energies of the earth are breathed out as vapour, mist and cloud, or exuded as moss and fungi. The Yin mists and clouds fall to earth again as Yang rain. On the tops of mountains the adept can absorb Yang energy from the bright Heavens, or drink the dew that falls from the moon. Rain and dew are fluids born of the intercourse of Heaven and Earth, charged with cosmic energy. Emperor Wu of Han built bronze
135
? pillars with Yin bowls on their tops to collect the dew condensing from the sky for his elixirs. Cloud fungi are female effluvia from this cosmic intercourse.
The ultimate physical absorption of sexual energy is from the human sexual act itself, and the Taoist adept might employ erotic skills with a partner, mutually absorbing the sexual fluids and juices, to build vital energy. The wealthy man could use concubinage and polygamy to cultivate his sexual activities. The symbolism of sexuality therefore pervades Chinese Imperial art.
The vase or bronze vessel is a symbolic vulva, as is the peach, the peony blossom, the golden lotus, the artemisia leaf, pink shell, or vermilion gate. The male organ has all the conventional phallic representations, but is also alluded to by the horned and whiskered dragon and by the plum branch. The sexual fluids may be symbolised by plum blossom falling onto the green moss, dragoni? s semen congealed as jade,
136
? white dew covering jade steps. The fluids may be caught in vulva shaped Yin cups, made of deer or rhino horn, decorated with dragon shapes. Sexual orgasm is the bursting of clouds and rain, the showering of plum blossom, the dragon swirling among clouds. Si Wang Mu, the Western Goddess, the greatest of sexual adepts, came to King Huai in a dream. Giving herself to him she said e? At dawn I am the morning clouds, at evening the falling rain. i?
If exercised caringly and with seriousness, tenderness, and skill these practices were potentially mutually satisfying. However the whole attitude easily led in men to a desire for intercourse exclusively with young girls in the belief that absorbing the fluids from their orgasms would give the greatest sexual energy. Confucians and Buddhists disapproved strongly of the abuse of such women, who were then left to grow old and lonely in household service, or were rejected and abandoned. Equally the meditative Taoists pointed out the potential
137
? dangers of self-delusion in taking such a route, particularly since the whole craving for immortality by these means could easily destroy rather than enhance the tranquility and harmony of the mind and spirit.
It can appear that these men were merely preying on young girls. This is the feeling a Westerner gets from reading about Genjii? s relationship with the child Murasaki, tender though it is, she who e? is like the wild carnation wet with the fresh dewi? . It becomes easy to understand however the attraction of the elderly Emperor, Hs ? an-tsung, to the young Yang Kuei- fei. A clever woman could easily manipulate such a situation. A further dimension was the practice of the man avoiding orgasm in order to conserve the sexual fluids while encouraging orgasm in the partner that could equally lead to an unnatural one-sided and inharmonious relationship.
To the meditative Taoist much of this was irrelevant. The adept began instead by sitting
138
? contemplatively in harmonious surroundings, looking quietly at paintings of mist and mountains, or gazing at a garden full of convoluted rocks and green mosses. Or contemplating a carved stone object, say a mountain scene with hermits, trees, and deer, made from lapis lazuli, turquoise or jade. The adept then moved on to breathing exercises similar to Tantric Yoga, aimed at arousing the e? subtle bodyi? of meditative energies. The goal was to harness the stored energies of the mind and body, and combine them ultimately with the cosmic energies to achieve harmony and e? immortalityi? .
The energies are conceived as circulating between three centres one above the other in the body. The lowest centre is below the navel, the middle centre is behind the solar plexus, and the higher centre is behind the eyes. The fundamental energy, stored by sexual practise or abstinence or otherwise, in the lower centre, the vital energy of the middle centre, and the
139
? spiritual energy of the upper centre, are transformed, as cinnabar is transformed in the furnace, to generate the elixir.
The adept initiates regular breathing to arouse the subtle fire of energy that will circulate between the centres. A meditative thought track conceives of the e? subtle bodyi? as a flow from the base of the spine up the back to the head, and down again through the front of the body to the sexual organ and back to the base of the spine. When the breath, the continuous flow of the thought-path, and the energy become one, the spine becomes an ascending track of energies that rise as Yang to fall again as Yin.
The e? inner alchemyi? moves and combines the three energies in a series of e? firingsi? and circulations until the combined energy rises up to the head to join with cosmic energies to create a luminous Sun and Moon of radiance. An essence gathers in the mouth that must be swallowed. This may echo the swallowing of the tongue in Indian practices. The essence congeals
140
? to form a seed in the lowest centre. While external breathing ceases, internal breathing continues, the radiance enters the seed and creates the Taoist foetus that breathes cosmically. It becomes a Taoist child that rises to the head and merges with the cosmic energies of the Tao. The Immortal is then e? re-borni? from the top of the head. There are resonances with Western alchemy in the radiant marriage of the Sun and Moon, and in the transforming energies within the e? cruciblei? .
The Taoist adept becomes an Immortal, and flies on a stork or crane, or rides a dragon or tiger. The Immortals play in the form of children in the green-gold Western Paradise, eat pine- seeds and fungus, drink rain and dew, and are at one with the cosmic energies of the universe. The Emperor who achieves this becomes the divine mediator between Heaven and Earth, Emperor on Earth and Immortal in Heaven, while remaining in human form between the two realms.
141
? Hs ? an-tsung and Yang Kuei-fei may have practised some or all of the sexual techniques, and the ageing Emperor may have eaten the drugs and essences, and sat and meditated in his attempts to become an Immortal. He withdrew increasingly from government into the private realm, perhaps concentrating exclusively on these esoteric methods. It is impossible not to feel a gulf between the intricacies of these difficult and artificial e? ritualsi? and the great humanity and natural life of the poets. Going back into the world of the Ti? ang poems and later Sung landscapes is like going back into the woods and mountains, clouds and rivers, into the fresh air and subtle colours, out of the constraining darkness of the Imperial palaces and corridors.
Wang Wei merges his Buddhist quietism with real appreciation of nature and escapes into it as a refuge. Tu Fu is moved by landscape as it illuminates the Confucian predicament, the man of integrity floating free in a world of error and
142
? confusion. Li Po is also a poet of freedom, in his case of total freedom, but strangely perhaps Li went closest to following the ritualistic practices of the Taoist adepts, fitfully and erratically, alongside his attempts at meditation through the study of Chi? an Buddhism. He was attracted to esoteric Taoism by its magical aspects, by its promise of immortality and Paradise, and by its charm and enchantments. Perversely Li, the least dedicated to public life and also the least conformist of the three poets, might best have understood the position of the ageing Emperor. The representative of Heaven on Earth practised the rites, and chased Immortality, in order to fulfil his role for his people. He who, like Genji, e? held such a position in life that freedom of action was not allowed him. i?
143
? %?