One of China's thirty-three happy moments:
"I am sitting alone in an empty room and I am getting annoyed at a mouse at the head of my bed, and wondering what that little rustling sound signifies - what article of mine he is biting or what volume of my books he is eating up. While I am in this state of mind, and don't know what to do, I suddenly see a ferocious-looking cat, wagging its tail and staring with wide open eyes, as of it were looking at something. I hold my breath and wait a moment, keeping perfectly still, and suddenly with a little sound the mouse disappears like a whiff of wind. Ah, is this not happiness?"
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※The constant care of the Chinese artists is: Leave something for the imagination!"
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If one goes to look into mentality cords of one individual Chinese native in China, one would find out astonishing Taoist intellectual sinews throughout, so thorough that the individual himself may not even have awareness of it, that he 每 if who prefers to modernism apparently, for example 每 would immediately tend to cut off the identification of it...
Yet, there is a voice, ※In the re-creation of an ancient civilisation as a modern, forward-looking and dynamic economy,§ as though what is deeply rooted were uprooted and its foundation ever shakened off.
In Mao＊s time, was it ever made weakened? No; it was rather fortified: for Mao himself was intensely featured by Taoism as his spiritual essence as one can see many a volatile of it from his poems. Meanwhile, I suppose: whilst the Chinese language character was changed and Confucianism decidedly wiped out and Chinese Buddhism was tottered down, Taoism stood out consequently more astonishingly than ever.
Chinese civilization, which may look apparently not difficult to get in, is actually very, very hard to get through.
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"Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are busy about can be busy about what the people of the world take leisurely."
- CHANG CH'AO
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"I have seen a few examples of European Buddhists monks, who talk altogether too loudly and too vehemently to conceal the tumultuous passions in their souls. In particular, I have seen one who, in his energetic denunciation of the West, is willing to call down fire and brimstone from heaven to burn up all Europe. When Europeans put on Buddhist gowns and try to look calm and passive, they merely look ridiculous."
每 Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"A book about China, worthy to be about China, can be none of these things. It must be frank and unashamed, because the real Chinese have always been a proud people, proud enough to be frank and unashamed of themselves and their ways. It must be wise and penetrative in its understanding, for the Chinese have been above all peoples wise and penetrative in their understanding of the human heart. It must be humorous, because humor is an essential part of Chinese nature, deep, mellow, kindly humor, founded upon the tragic knowledge and acceptance of life. It must be expressed in flowing, exact, beautiful words, because the Chinese have always valued the beauty of the exact and the exquisite. None but a Chinese could write such a book, and I had begun to think that as yet even no Chinese could write it, because it seemed impossible to find a modern English writing Chinese who was not so detached from his own people as to be alien to them, and yet detached enough to comprehend their meaning, the meaning of their age and the meaning of their youth."
- Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)
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Being aroused by something in me, I set aside my hat and, in preoccupation, I slipped into my look-and-look activity.
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※Sometimes I would squat by a broken, earthen wall, or by a little bush on a raised flower-bed, with my eyes on the same level as the flower-bed itself, and there I would look and look, transforming in my mind the little plot of grass into a forest and the ants and insect into wild animals.§ |
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Laozi, the author of Tao Te Ching, widely accepted of the authorship.
A scroll of Tao Te Ching, the first chapter.
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I wish to have opened a Judeo-Christian eye to look into the very heart of a Taoist monk in the interpreting as follows of the above image. Moreover, I assume that the former is typically of the West and the latter China.
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Lo, what＊s in the hand is not an Aaron＊s rod, but a twig. No guns in his belt. He does not need as usual to have a one, and he＊s usually undressed. ※Why should I use sewed fig leaves to cover, or garments of skins to cleanse? For I＊ve never eaten of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden. Nor have I ever touched it.§ He might have said so. Mounted not on a donkey but on a water buffalo 每 its tail haphazardly in swing as in patting its back, he is carefree 每 as carefree as it can be 每 and in his dreamland, seeing miles and miles away a red light in the sky, about the size of a big basket, bobbing up and down upon the high sea, and the horizon reddened as if illuminated by a great fire. He does not and would not have a humble image, for ※humble§ is what＊s used for the sake of another world, not his; nor has he to put the stiff-necked under his feet. He is merely and simply carefree. He sees no need to triumph, either, but the whole scene is aromatic, thus triumphing the most, irresistible. This is an image of a perfect Taoist monk in the spirit.
- Interpreting the Eden in September, 2009 |
Domineering the state of mind of every individual Chinese is the Taoist spirit, throughout the whole history, till present-day China. One shall bear in mind the fact that it triumphs over Buddhism: when Buddhism came to China in Tang Dynasty (618-907) its doctrine had to be translated into Chinese, and it is the phraseology of Taoism that was used to conduct the translation, that the religion originally from India is henceforward called Chinese Buddhism.
※In the re-creation of an ancient civilisation as a modern, forward-looking and dynamic economy,§ as it is so commented upon most recently, and when one recalls the conceptualized term, ※the New Order,§ commented conclusively and prophetically by John King Fairbank in 1948 in his famous the United States & China, one shall not say that Taoism is not largely included in the Order 每 a connotation that, like Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism, Taoism is wiped out at large, likewise. Rather as actually it is the core of it. While witnessing this changing world China in the re-creation, I have witnessed ramifications of Taoism everywhere, numerous indeed! From the most casual and vernacular utterance to the most carefully conceived presentation 每 self-consciously, sub-consciously, or unconsciously, there isn＊t anything 每 so far as it is related to the mentality 每 that is not imbued by and imbibed in it.
Sometimes I wonder if one should think that its impact upon China is deeper and wider than that of the Christianity upon the Occidental world, for, taking the first chapter of Tao Te Ching as an example, the word in it is also unfathomable, meanwhile it is not exclusive.
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Chinese puzzle: 1: an intricate or ingenious puzzle. 2: something intricate and obscure.
Chinese wall: a strong barrier, especially: a serious obstacle to understanding.
- From Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition) |
What is it that dispels the mystique of Chinese puzzle and pulls down Chinese wall?
Ideological involvement as an effort that I've made:
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Heading for the Australian Pavilion Expo 2010 Shanghai
Ideas
Ideas that are used as some reflection of the West
and are supposed to touch subtlety of the Far-East
involve understanding of both.
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My memoirs between the West and China. Click on it to see it.
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