Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey 9781472513069, 9781472548030, 9781472514219

Citation preview

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Also available from Bloomsbury Classical Chinese Philosophy, Manyul Im Confucius, Charlene Tan Confucius: A Guide for the Perplexed, Yong Huang Daoism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Louis Komjathy Understanding Asian Philosophy, Alexus McLeod

Landscape and Travelling East and West A Philosophical Journey Edited by Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Hans-Georg Moeller, Andrew K. Whitehead and Contributors 2014 Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the Editors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-4725-1421-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Landscape and travelling east and west : a philosophical journey / edited by Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4725-1306-9 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4725-0923-9 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-47251421-9 (epdf) 1. East Asia--Religion. 2. Aesthetics. 3. Travel. I. Moeller, Hans-Georg, 1964editor of compilation. BL1055.L36 2014 111’.85095--dc23 2013031413 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents List of Contributors Introduction (Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead)

vii 1

Part 1  Contemporary Paths 1

Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel (Mario Wenning)

9

2

Wandering and/or Being at Home (Franklin Perkins)

23

3

Locality and Journeying in Migration (Andrea Martinez)

35

4

On the Way: Foolish Notes of an Old Nomadic Poet-Philosopher (Günter Wohlfart)

45

Part 2  Strolls and Scrolls 5

Travelling with Laozi and Plato (May Sim)

53

6

Yinyang Landscape: Fengshui Design and Shanshui Painting (Robin R. Wang)

71

Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape (Ouyang Xiao)

81

Landscape as an Aesthetic Person: On the Conceptual World of German Romanticism (Rolf Trauzettel)

95

7 8

Part 3  Buddhist Journeys 9 A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart (John C. Maraldo)

111

10 Hōben as Pedagogical Landscape (Andrew K. Whitehead)

127

11 Poets and Pilgrims: From Saigyō to Shikoku (John Harding)

137

vi Contents

12 Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet (Snježana Zorić)

149

Part 4  Confucian and Daoist Ways 13 Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations (Henry Rosemont Jr.)

169

14 Travelling Together with Gravitas: The Intergenerational Transmission of Confucian Culture (Roger T. Ames)

183

15 Going Along – a Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics (Paul D’Ambrosio) 197 16 Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question’ (Chris Fraser)

211

17 The Moving Subject: Transcendence and Reification in the Philosophy of Tang Junyi (Ady Van den Stock)

225

Index

237

List of Contributors Roger T. Ames, University of Hawai’i, USA Paul D’Ambrosio, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China Chris Fraser, University of Hong Kong John Harding, University of Lethbridge, Canada John C. Maraldo, University of North Florida, Emeritus, USA Andrea Martinez, University College Cork, Ireland Hans-Georg Moeller, University College Cork, Ireland Franklin Perkins, DePaul University, USA Henry Rosemont Jr., Brown University, USA May Sim, College of the Holy Cross, USA Rolf Trauzettel, Bonn University, Germany Ady Van den Stock, University of Ghent, Belgium Robin R. Wang, Loyola Marymount University, USA Mario Wenning, University of Macau, Macau Andrew K. Whitehead, Kennesaw State University, USA Günter Wohlfart, University of Wuppertal, Germany Ouyang Xiao, University College Cork, Ireland Snježana Zorić, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea

Introduction Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead

Despite the eminence of landscape and nature, inhabiting and home, and journeying and crossings in virtually all of the major philosophical traditions, surprisingly little has been published on the topic academically. There is, of course, a great deal of scholarship concerning landscape and travelling in literature and art, but the philosophical and religious dimensions of these themes have not yet been adequately appreciated. It may thus be a timely endeavour to address this topic and, given its intrinsic connection with ‘trans-locality’, to do so from an inter-cultural perspective. The lacuna of philosophical studies on landscape and travelling is all the more surprising given the features of contemporary academic life. Like their colleagues in other disciplines, contemporary professional philosophers tend to be constantly on the move: they attend conferences all over the world, present lectures in various countries, and, of course, travel intellectually to different places and times on a regular basis. They expose themselves to different landscapes, both literally and figuratively. Perhaps it is in order to reflect on such an essential aspect of their mode of being in the world, of interacting with others, and of doing their job. The itinerant life is nothing new for philosophers. Travelling through diverse landscapes has been an important aspect of living the philosophical life in many historical and cultural settings. Confucius travelled from state to state for years; legend has it that Laozi wrote the Daodejing at a border crossing on his journey to the Western mountains, and that the Buddha experienced his spiritual conversion sitting underneath a tree. Ancient Greek philosophers, like Socrates, often talked and thought out in the open; the man considered the founder of modern Western philosophy, René Descartes, travelled through numerous European countries and cities; and for Martin Heidegger, the place he called home was relevant in quite complex ways. The essays in this volume look at these philosophical protagonists and others, trying to explore what travelling, landscape and related notions meant for them as thinkers and writers – as an

2

Landscape and Travelling East and West

aspect of their lived experience, as well as one of the central metaphors shaping their thoughts and texts. The essays of the first section of this volume approach landscape and travelling as contemporary philosophical issues that raise existential, political, ethical and methodological questions. To conceive of oneself as ‘on the way’ or, conversely, ‘at home’, can be of great significance for how we see our place in the world and our relationships with others. Mario Wenning looks at travelling as a form of ‘leaving behind the everyday’ and of ‘breaking with established norms’. Travelling thus means the crossing of boundaries. On the one hand, travelling can thereby be understood as a form of liberation, ‘as a model of the exercise of freedom’, but it also comes with a predicament: How can one hope to do well at what one is not used to doing? Specifically, Wenning refers to the Daoist notion of you (‘roaming’, ‘rambling’, ‘wandering’) and the poetry of Bashō, the seventeenth-century Japanese poetphilosopher, as expressions of an existential engagement in the art of being and moving in a realm beyond conventional limits. Franklin Perkins also notices a certain ‘liberating’ aspect of travelling. When on a journey, we have fewer obligations; there is ‘no one who can legitimately make demands on us, unlike when we are at home’. This ‘freedom’, however, also implies ‘a kind of superficiality’. When we are merely passing through, we tend to move on the surface. Turning to Descartes and Heidegger, Perkins contrasts the notion of being away with its implied counterpart, the return to home. Through its contrast with the ‘foreign’, the home becomes more authentic and real. For Descartes, the home thereby signifies the ‘community of rational beings’, whereas for Heidegger it indicates historical and cultural roots. As a counterpart to such a dialectics of return, Perkins finally points to the Zhuangzi and the contemporary philosopher Alphonso Lingis as representatives of a ‘radical wandering’ that allows for the establishment of a ‘community without commonality’. Andrea Martinez, too, discusses Heidegger’s understanding of being at home and the related notion of ‘dwelling’. She uses Heidegger’s terminology for different purposes, however, relating it to a contemporary – but also historically important – issue: migration. The migrant is, by definition, someone who has left his or her home behind. Rather than merely conceiving of this situation as a lack, and accordingly, of the migrant as a victim in need of help, Martinez points to the creative potentials involved in migration, making room for the reinvention of home and for new forms of dwelling that incorporate the unfamiliar into the familiar and vice versa.

Introduction

3

Günter Wohlfart’s chapter asks a question of method: How to arrive on the way? Referring to Zhuangzi, Bashō, Nietzsche and others, Wohlfart answers this question by returning to a notion that was central to his earlier philosophical work and predates his own ‘Daoist turn’, namely the Augenblick, or, in English, the ‘instantaneous moment’. To arrive on a way such as, for instance, a poetic or philosophical way, points to a form of existence or practice that allows for the experience of suchness in an instantaneous moment. Philosophy and poetry emerge from ‘frozen moments in the flow of time’, which may open up on a journey sans sujet. The second section of chapters presents historical vistas. Landscape and travelling have been ‘classical’ subjects of philosophers in the East and in the West. Over time, and in both geographical and cultural regions, these subjects manifested themselves in works of art, particularly in painting, giving rise to a highly dynamic interchange between aesthetic philosophy and artistic practice. May Sim compares the attitudes towards landscape and travelling in the works of Plato and in the Daodejing. She pays specific attention to core metaphorics in both philosophical projects. While Plato’s depiction of Socrates is not quite that of a traveller, the quest for truth is nevertheless repeatedly described in terms of a journey. In the Daodejing, according to Sim, one is not encouraged to travel geographically, but still supposed to travel the ‘way’ (dao) towards death and even beyond. Despite all the philosophical differences between Plato’s works and the Daodejing, the natural landscape can serve in both as an indicator of beauty. Robin R. Wang investigates the relation between the human and the natural world in Chinese philosophy, and, in particular, how it is reflected in the practices of Fengshui, or geomancy, and Shanshui, or landscape painting. She shows, with the help of a wide range of source materials, how the natural world was conceived as an extension of human life and, conversely, the human body and its ‘heart-mind’ (xin) as an internal landscape. This conjunction gave rise to the elaborate arts of identifying and constructing an auspicious environment for the dwelling places of both the living and the dead, and of producing images embodying human emotions in the shape of a landscape. Ouyang Xiao reacts to ‘an awkward predicament in comparative philosophical studies’, namely the fact that while it is considered appropriate, for instance, to ‘comment on Confucianism using Western philosophical concepts, e.g. “Aristotelian” or “Platonic”’, the same method is not usually adopted when speaking about Western sources. Against this convention, Ouyang ventures to interpret the landscape paintings by Caspar David Friedrich from a (albeit not

4

Landscape and Travelling East and West

exclusively) Chinese perspective. He discovers certain points of convergence with the Chinese tradition of landscape painting regarding composition, motifs, and, in particular, the human experience of nature. Rolf Trauzettel’s contribution also discusses paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. Trauzettel identifies a direct link between German Romanticist art and the philosophy of nature in the German Idealism of the same period, specifically that of Schelling. While Schelling and others imbue nature with reason, resulting in something close to a modern return of animism, the painters and poets of the time adorn nature with at least quasi-subjective attributes. In this way, landscape appears in the form of an ‘aesthetic person’ and attains a form of personhood and identity not unlike that of today’s non-human ‘legal persons’. The third section includes chapters dealing with landscape and travelling in Buddhist contexts. The Buddhist tradition, comprising its often-inseparable philosophical and religious aspects, has itself travelled. It left its former home in India and moved eastwards to China, Japan, and then even further on to America and Europe. At the same time it has emerged as a destination for many who feel no longer at home in their old-European religious or philosophical edifices. John C. Maraldo’s chapter can be read as a surprisingly reversed mirror image of Rolf Trauzettel’s analysis of the landscape painting, poetry and philosophy of German Romanticism. While Trauzettel found that the German Romanticists constructed the landscape as an aesthetic person, Maraldo describes how Japanese Zen Buddhist poets (as well as some native Americans and Australians) construct the person as an aesthetic landscape. In the Japanese Buddhist context, the human person and its subjectivity are, by means of poetry, aesthetically dissolved into their non-human and impersonal environment. Andrew K. Whitehead describes Buddhist religious and philosophical instruction practices, the methods of ‘skilful means’ (hōben in Japanese), in terms of an emergence of a pedagogical landscape. Several major Chinese and Japanese Buddhists, including Linji and Ikkyū, are cited as examples for the contextualisation of Buddhist teachings in diverse circumstances. Whitehead points out how in each case ‘shared landscapes’ are established which allow the teaching to ‘hit home’. Buddhist practice thereby proves capable of adopting itself to whatever particular setting or ‘conventional reality’ it may find itself in. John Harding explores the roles of travelling and landscape in another form of Buddhist practice: in pilgrimage and in the poetry produced at its occasion or as its description. While, along with changes in scenery, the modes of travelling have changed since the times of the twelfth-century monk Saigyō,

Introduction

5

both pilgrimage and poetry remain important aspects of religious life in Japan. Visiting sacred spaces, being on the way towards them, and, in particular, poetically relating to them, continue to shape the concrete experience of Buddhists even today. Snježana Zorić reflects on problems of Tibetan religious and political identity arising from the multiplicity of Tibetan communities in Tibet and in exile. Based in part on her anthropological field studies of the Tibetan Buddhist diaspora in India, Zorić presents a Tibet of ‘doubles’ in the form of copied religious spaces and personae and of parallel communities, resulting from several dis- and relocations. She presents a picture of a somewhat paradoxical struggle to construct an essential or authentic ‘Tibetanness’ that may be difficult to reconcile with Buddhist notions of impermanence and non-substantiality. The last section of the present volume continues the perennial ConfucianDaoist dialogue about the ‘way’, or dao, in a contemporary form. Some established and some not yet established Western philosophers express their understandings of Confucianism and Daoism in relation to the central vocabulary and imagery of spatial and temporal paths and realms that is shared by the two traditions. Henry Rosemont Jr., understands dao as ‘the governing metaphor’ of Confucianism and paraphrases it as ‘making one’s way’. Rosemont emphasises the difference between this Confucian ‘way-making’ and certain Western, specifically US-American, individualist conceptions of life that envision the person as ultimately distinct and isolated from others. ‘Like it or not,’ Rosemont says, ‘we belong to a family, and moreover, a family with a history.’ He thereby embraces a conception of personhood and one’s ‘way’ that is irreducibly based on an inclusion into social and temporal landscapes. Roger T. Ames interprets dao as ‘forging our way together in the world’. Using the title of a relatively recent album by Bob Dylan, his picture of Confucian practice could be called a journey ‘together through life’. This journey through time not only encompasses one’s individual life period, but also connects generations. The Confucian community establishes ‘a shared cultural landscape’ within which one assumes one’s identity by the roles one develops in relation to one’s fellow travellers. Ames points in particular to the social lineages emerging from cultural transmission that can establish communities, for instance, of literati and landscape painters over the course of several centuries. Paul D’Ambrosio agrees with Ames’ and Rosemont’s reading of Confucianism as ‘role ethics’. That we are shaped through the social roles we assume in our life, D’Ambrosio suggests, is something that Daoism can equally affirm. However,

6

Landscape and Travelling East and West

from a Daoist perspective, we are free to play these roles and become what he calls ‘genuine pretenders’. The genuine pretender can, as was said about the ancient Daoist Liezi, ‘ride the winds’ and develop an ability ‘to go along with common practices’ – perhaps even truly excel at them while remaining uncommitted to them in an essentially or existentially binding way. Chris Fraser’s chapter, similar to D’Ambrosio’s, considers what the Daoist form of ‘making one’s way’ may be in contrast with, but not contrary to, Confucian ‘way-making’. Fraser identifies you (‘roaming’, ‘rambling’, ‘wandering’) as ‘an ideal mode’ of Daoist agency. Looking at related notions such as de (virtuosity) and xing (path, to walk) and their connotations of the motion of water and movement through channels, he concludes that the cultivation of Daoist agency aims at identifying, embarking on, and navigating ‘courses through the “landscape” of our circumstances’. For Fraser, such virtuosity in navigating through all fields of our activity can also serve as an answer to Thomas Nagel’s ‘cosmic question’ about how to connect with the whole of reality and make sense ‘of everything’. Ady Van den Stock complements our Confucian-Daoist dialogue by examining the oeuvre of the twentieth-century Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi. In his works, Tang combines a vision of journeying as ‘free, self-sufficient movement not oriented towards any preestablished goal’ with the advocacy of a ‘teleological’ historical and cultural movement towards a ‘fixed trajectory’ by ‘a Hegelian meta-subject’. One such historical ‘meta-subject’, for Tang, is the ‘“spirit” (jingshen) of Chinese culture’. Tang’s philosophy thus represents a not entirely resolved synthesis of contemporary Confucian (historically purposeful) and Daoist (free and self-sufficient) perspectives on ‘way-making’. The editors would like to thank all of those who have helped make this volume possible. In particular, we would like to thank Dean Feeney, Leticia Nemeth, Jason O’Donnell and Alan Quinn for their invaluable assistance in preparing the final versions of the text. We would also like to thank Andrew Wardell of Bloomsbury Publishing for his patience and support.

Part One

Contemporary Paths

1

Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel Mario Wenning

Humans are travelling animals. Characterised, and at times driven, by wanderlust, they follow an unquenchable thirst to embark into the blue. Few activities embody leaving the known for the unknown as well as that of travelling. Travelling consists of the crossing and transcending of boundaries: external boundaries such as physical demarcations including doorsteps, rivers, mountain ranges, or political borders; but also internal boundaries like deeply seated convictions and the limits of the space of known experience. When people travel, they are motivated by a desire to leave behind the everyday. The allure of travel thus lies in breaking with established norms, patterns of behaviour and modes of thinking and acting and to (re)discover or invent new norms, behaviours, thoughts and practices, even if just for a little while. In spite of its importance to human lives, travelling is not commonly considered to be a topic of philosophical reflection. Travel guidebooks tell us where to go and what to see there. Yet, as Alain de Botton highlights in The Art of Travel, rarely are the questions pursued of why and how to travel, at least not in an explicitly philosophical register (de Botton, 2003, p. 9). There is a distinct need to take up the question concerning the motivation for and the modalities in which travelling is not just done, but should be done well. Philosophical Daoism is a noteworthy exception to the notorious omission of philosophical reflections on the whys and hows of travel. This chapter focuses on the role of travel as overstepping boundaries, as it has been developed in the proto-Daoist text Zhuangzi and by the Haiku poet Bashō, who was significantly influenced by Zhuangzi. I shall interpret these philosopher-poet-wanderers as pursuing the question of what human beings do when they cross a boundary well.

10

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Zhuangzi Daoists are known to be travellers and border crossers. The legendary sage Laozi is said to have crossed the Western border gate where he wrote the Daodejing to bribe the guard to let him leave the politically rotten middle kingdom. This act of border crossing documents the birth of Daoism out of the spirit of travel. Not only were Daoists travelling sages who, to use Ernst Bloch’s phrase, ‘appear by way of disappearing’ (Bloch, 1973, p. 1444), they also reflected upon the whys and hows of entering the ‘swinging gateway of the manifold mysteries’ (Laozi, chapter 1). Travel was not unconditionally affirmed in the Daoist tradition though. Laozi already characterises himself as a restless and solitary wanderer who has nowhere to go and is incapable of bonding with the masses (Laozi, chapter 20). He issues a warning against those who step outside of their door. Sages, Laozi claims, ‘know without going anywhere’ (Laozi, chapter 47). The wisdom of sages, on this account, crucially depends on not going too far but to see the world they always already inhabit in more attentive ways. Those who go for long marches and follow distant goals easily lose sight of what is in front of their eyes. As a self-confessed stayer, the Daoist sage, as Laozi perceives him or her, does not suffer from itchy feet. He or she is not torn by going after distant goals. In short, the wise person refrains from embarking on journeys and rests content with being attentive to the here and now. This valorisation of staying as opposed to leaving is extended to the level of the community. Chapter 80 of the Daodejing depicts a utopian village in which the inhabitants live in great proximity to their neighbours and yet feel no need to visit or even talk to them. Zhuangzi, too, establishes a connection between travelling and practical wisdom, but in radically different terms. In marked contrast to Laozi’s warning against the dangers of crossing one’s doorstep, Zhuangzi presents an invitation to, depending on how one translates the title of the first chapter ‘xiaoyao you’, ‘wander at ease’ (Roger Ames), engage in ‘free and easy wandering’ (Burton Watson), or ‘ramble without destination’ (A. C. Graham). Perhaps most fitting for our present context is Steve Coutinho’s translation, ‘wandering beyond’, since it preserves the sense of distance and reaching across the limits of the here and now that is implied by the Chinese character yao. Despite Laozi’s warning against travelling beyond, Zhuangzi focuses on what it means to engage in transgressing boundaries. What interests Zhuangzi is the question of what a wanderer does when he takes a step outside and ventures beyond a limit. Coutinho aptly explicates what is involved in wandering beyond:



Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel

11

We need at the very least to undo preconceptions that prevent us from seeing things and events in new ways; we need to see how we can structure and restructure the boundaries of things. But we can only do so when we ourselves have ‘wandered beyond’ the boundaries of the familiar. It is only by freeing our imaginations to reconceive ourselves, and our worlds, and the things with which we interact, that we may begin to understand the deeper tendencies of the natural transformations by which we are all affected, and of which we are all constituted. (Coutinho, 2004)

As Coutinho describes it, in the Zhuangzi, travelling is a symbol for renegotiating the boundaries of things as well as the boundaries of our experience in light of our observation of natural transformational processes. Travelling well means to react to processes of transformation in an attentive and spontaneous manner with a heightened state of consciousness. As A. C. Graham remarks, the word for travelling or wandering used in the Zhuangzi, you, is ‘used rather like the “trip” of psychedelic slang in the 1960s’ (Graham, 2001, p. 8). Embarking on a trip, tripping, and coming down from a trip are forms of art, since they can be learned and cultivated. Rather than requiring drugs or other external stimuli, however, Daoist trips are triggered by processes of unlearning rigidified habits of dwelling with established norms and patterns of thinking and acting. Zhuangzian trips emerge from fostering a play-like attitude, enabling one to ‘walk without touching the ground’ (Crandel, 1983, p. 120) in never resting content with one given way of drawing boundaries. Travelling is thereby presented as a model of the exercise of freedom. Freedom for the one who knows how to wander beyond means to effortlessly resist the gravitational pull of conventional norms and ideals, such as striving for fame and recognition or aiming for perfectly secure knowledge. Zhuangzian travellers move without resistance through the air, since they are not hindered by the desires for such questionable and fleeting goods and see their surrounding as an opportunity for adventure. Their environment is the medium of experience rather than an obstacle in need of transformation according to prefabricated plans and ideals. There is no need for discovering Archimedean grounds from which one could launch one’s trips. By embodying the principle of dynamic interaction with their environing pathways, wandering sages complete or accomplish their Dao not by abstractly knowing, but by way of walking it (Zhuangzi, chapter 2). Their way-making is a form of knowing. Thus, the strolling Zhuangzi can dismiss Huizi’s scepticism concerning the justification of Zhuangzi’s certainty of the happiness of fish by simply pointing out: ‘I know it [the happiness of fish] by standing here beside the Hao’ (Zhuangzi,

12

Landscape and Travelling East and West

chapter 17). The strolling and day-dreaming Zhuangzi does not play the all-tooserious game of responding to the sceptic, but changes the nature of the game by effortlessly wandering on. Just as the fishes happily swim without being aware of what they do, the wanderer observes and creatively adjusts to the various adventures along the way without looking to ground these observations and reactions in absolute justifications. To explore the whys and hows of Daoist travel in the context of East– West encounters poses a challenge. Compared to their Chinese counterparts, European reflections on travel in the tradition of travel narratives take on a different form. For Dante, for example, life is symbolised by a ‘peregrinatio vitae’ – a pilgrimage of life following a perfectionist, teleological and linear logic. The Divine Comedy depicts the journey of a middle-aged lost soul towards God. It is structured according to a clearly delineated beginning (hell), a middle (purgatory), and an end (heaven). In the travel literature of the European canon, especially that of the Romantic tradition, this trope of successive stages of deliverance and salvation has been transformed. The medieval goal of finding God was gradually superseded by the modern goal of finding oneself. In both cases, however, the journey of life is depicted as a linear process of human (self or God) discovery. The travelling protagonist starts off from a perspective of a loss of self and gradually recovers, or, for the first time, finds his or her true and authentic self and personal vocation. What is characteristic of European travel narratives is a promise of progress and ultimate arrival. The three features of linearity, teleology and progress, which we find in the background of Western accounts of travel, are not present in Daoism. Arthur Danto captures this East– West difference centred on different conceptions of what counts as a way and what as the art of wandering: Taoist literature and art is full of wanderers: but the road they are on leads nowhere particularly. It is not la diritta via that Dante lost in middle life and found again. It is simply a thread through space […] Bashō is not a man with a destination. He is no Dante, puffing up an arduous path through a hierarchical universe to a permanent lodging in Paradise. The Way has no vector. One cannot get lost. The Way is everywhere. With Dante, and the road he emblemized, the price of being lost is momentous, and men need a guide if not a savior to find their way. (Danto, 1987, p. 105)

For Daoist travellers, wandering – and, through wandering, cultivating a sense of tripping beyond – does not follow a teleological pattern of self-discovery after a feeling of loss, since there is no one correct Dao one could lose, find, or fail to



Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel

13

find. If there is not one right route and measure to evaluate whether one travels this route correctly and in the right direction, we are faced with a radically distinct conception of freedom and fulfilment from that common in the West. For the Daoist, in contrast to the European traveller, freedom is not the freedom towards a given goal (say God or self-discovery). However, it is also not simply the freedom from somebody else’s authority or the freedom from being led astray either. Rather than discovering his or her authentic self or overcoming mistakes, the wandering sage possessed by the spirit of crossing boundaries engages in a freedom in the very act of travelling. The travelling sage possesses knowledge of how to wallow in the midst of things without being disturbed by ulterior goals or rationalisations; he knows how to change without being the victim or master of transformation processes. Being on the road means to engage in practices of transformation by way of performativity; unlearning the obsession with progress and directedness. A traveller who knows how to travel well is a virtuoso (de) in the art of transformation without beginning or end. Zhuangzi does not deny that the journey of life does have limits: Life has a point from which it springs, death has a point to which it returns. Beginning and end succeed each other without obvious turning points, and no one knows what possible limits they may have. If it is not an ongoing process like this, then who runs this whole shebang? (Zhuangzi, chapter 21)

Life is framed by birth and death, but the nature of these limits remains opaque to the one who knows how to wander beyond, since he understands that there is no one, including himself, deciding over the nature or exact arrival of these limits. The wandering sage takes the limits as they come. Because the origin of these limits remains unknown, there is not much use in searching for their roots or absolute demarcations. Human beings find themselves necessarily in the middle of a labyrinth of intersecting, crisscrossing and overlapping life-paths with their own respective contents and boundaries. They are not characterised by an absolute natality, nor are they running towards death. Rather they are being born and are dying at any moment of their journey. As liminal travellers, they are constantly changing as the environment they traverse is subject to changes. Life itself is understood as a process of wayfaring and, by extension, the art of wandering is not just an episode, but is the art of living understood as a cultivation in boundary-crossing competences. The dual transience of a wandering person with specific, albeit changing limits and of the limitless Dao creates a dynamic web of relationships. Limits are thus never absolute limits,

14

Landscape and Travelling East and West

but demarcate provisional fields of experience that change as the wanderer or the landscape traversed changes. It is tedious to construct a fixed metaphysics of limits, as Kant has done in a European context. To claim that there are no metaphysically fixed limits does not mean that there are no limits to every given journey. Every journey begins with a departure and ends with an arrival. In addition to its temporal limits, journeys are also framed by the landscape travelled, by the places one has seen, the people one has encountered along the way and the distance travelled. The fact that one embarks on specific journeys with specific limits also implies that these journeys leave certain sights unseen and passages untravelled. The person who sets or even acknowledges the necessary existence of these limits has already halfway overstepped them. He implicitly accepts that there is another side to the limit. To draw a line means to already have crossed it, at least in thought. Zhuangzi is sometimes read as suggesting that the task of setting up limits in terms of fixed categories or moral standards is self-contradictory and should, therefore, be abandoned (Kohn, 2009, p. 43). Delineating thinking is, on this reading, replaced by ‘seeing things as equal’. According to this interpretation, the message of Zhuangzi consists in teaching us to refrain from setting up limits through determinative judgement. Indeed we do find the seemingly straightforward advice: ‘[F]orget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home’ (Zhuangzi, chapter 2). The paradox of setting up limits as both demarcating an insight from an outside and overstepping this demarcation hardly justifies inferring that the sage should refrain from judging. Even though ‘the Way has never known boundaries’ (Zhuangzi, chapter 2), human wayfaring brings about boundaries. Apart from the reason that judging and thereby making distinctions is an integral feature of conscious life, there is ample evidence that Zhuangzi promoted certain forms of delineating judgements and, in particular, delineating and even dissecting actions. The famous story of butcher Ding, for example, illustrates how to cut reality – here symbolised by the ox – into pieces in a way that makes use of the naturally existing empty spaces between the bones. Rather than engaging in the impossible task of refraining from delineation, Daoists refrain from resting content with setting up any absolute limit, judgement or perspective. David Wong writes: ‘Zhuangzi undermines the assumption that our own perspectives are uniquely correct not by discrediting them but by undermining their claim to have exhausted what there is to see, and this involves opening our eyes to perspectives other than our own’ (Wong, 2006, p. 235). The Daoist sage who judges does not regard a particular judgement



Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel

15

or value as being without alternatives. The person seeing the particularity and contingency of any limit remains committed to his or her momentary perspective, but remains aware of its outside and thus of the limitations of this very perspective. He knows about the existence of a plurality of different and possibly equally justified standpoints and crosses over to these perspectives when seen to be appropriate. Although Wong rightly emphasises the significance of the insight into the pluralism of perspectives in Zhuangzi, he fails to highlight the moral significance of the invocation to wander beyond limits. Wandering beyond is born out of the insight into the necessity of both acknowledging existing boundaries and, at the same time and ever again, leaping beyond these boundaries. Zhuangzi, for example, acknowledges the butterfly domain of experience as well as the human domain while travelling back and forth between these domains in his dream. There is no linear continuity and no progression in switching from the butterfly to the philosopher episode. The limits between butterfly and human form remain intact, and yet there is a natural and spontaneous change from the one into the other. What is of philosophical significance is that the act of crossing calls into question the seemingly natural and clear cut demarcation between what is taken to be a dream and what reality. Hans-Georg Moeller has argued that the butterfly allegory does not suggest the transcending of barriers, but their acknowledgement and acceptance. According to his interpretation, the famous allegory suggests that one should rest content with one’s natural limits. It hinges not on an act of recovery of self through memory or the overcoming of existential doubt, but rather an act of self-contentment through forgetfulness: Because the butterfly does not know about Zhou, it is ‘self-content.’ Because Zhou does not remember his dream he is ‘fully and completely Zhou’ – and without doubts! Since Zhou and the butterfly do not remember each other, because the barrier between them is not crossed, the change between them is seamless, spontaneous and natural! (Moeller, 2004, p. 48)

If we regard the story from the perspective of the narrator who ‘does not identify with either Zhuang Zhou or the butterfly, but who affirms both equally’ (Moeller, 2004, p. 53), we gain an insight into the nature of the transition or boundary crossing from one side to the other side. What does it mean to transcend a limit in a way that is ‘seamless, spontaneous and natural’? Such acts of transcending are not the same as passing through sequences of experience in a linear learning process with the goal of (re)discovering one’s authentic self. Spontaneous travel beyond limits in a mode

16

Landscape and Travelling East and West

that is different from travelling from A to B requires an attitude of effortlessly passing back and forth through porous boundaries and calls into question claims of exclusive validity raised on either side of those boundaries. This process takes place without thereby denying that there are different domains demarcated through their experiential limits. At least for the moment, butterflies cannot wander, just as philosophers cannot fly. Yet, philosophers can travel beyond the tendency of fixing one field of experience by refraining from absolutising their contingent perspective and postulating it as certainty. We lack a richer vocabulary for characterising the act of travelling understood as such moving beyond a limit in seamless, spontaneous and natural ways. Let us turn to Bashō’s adaptation and transformation of Zhuangzi’s idea of acknowledging and overstepping limits in search of such a vocabulary.

Bashō Matsuo Kinsaku was born in 1644 in the Japanese town of Ueno and named Bashō after a tree in his garden that inspired a number of his haiku poems. Bashō took the Daoist philosophy of wandering to heart and repeatedly hit the road. He left five travel diaries in which he jotted down his reflections of his journeys. Bashō continued the Daoist tradition of philosophical travel. Deeply influenced by Daoism, and the Zhuangzi in particular, Bashō transforms stories such as that of the dream of the butterfly. Following Zhuangzi, Bashō was particularly intrigued by transformation through travel and focused on the crossing of borders, gates and experiential boundaries. The literary form of Haikai and its eccentric mode of juxtaposing opposites would not have been possible without drawing on Zhuangzi. Peipei Qiu comments on the importance of Zhuangzi for Bashō: they (the haikai) ‘imbue the travel journal with enlightening humour and deliberate eccentricity that characteristically reflects the shoyoyu (xiaoyao you) spirit, re-envisioning and redefining the poetic landscape through the haikai imagination’ (Qiu, 2005, p. 60). Bashō not only wandered, he brought the movement of wandering across boundaries to language. This is mirrored by the form of the haiku in which moments of travel are juxtaposed to mark and accentuate their respective limit and conjure up a poetic space in which this limit is being renegotiated and crossed without fixing a final resting position. The first moment of travel happens before the journey begins. Every traveller knows the joy of anticipation. Triggered by the promise of leaving the everyday routine in favour of entering adventurous lands, the haikai imagination seems



Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel

17

to know no fixed bounds. Bashō characterises his state of mind when leaving his house as one of ‘sheer ecstasy’ (Bashō, 1966, p. 30). Yet, leaving dear friends and places also leaves him in a state of melancholy. Overstepping the limit between home and beyond, he writes: ‘I stood at the crossway of parting in this dreamlike existence and wept in tears’ (Bashō, 1966, p. 23). The playful and joyous tone of Zhuangzi is transformed into a mélange of joy and melancholy in which dream and reality are not clearly demarcated as their boundary is being crossed. Bashō engages in travel in order to nourish a relationship to the creative processes infusing the cosmos. The opening passage of The Narrow Road to the Deep North highlights Bashō’s motivation to hit the road: Days and months are travelers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives traveling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind – filled with a strong desire to wander. (Bashō, 1966, p. 97)

This passage illustrates the cosmic, the non-teleological, and the process character of travel. Reminiscent of the characterisation of the Dao in Zhuangzi, Bashō highlights the infinity of travel. This opening is significant for at least three reasons. First, travelling is interpreted not as a phenomenon, which is distinctive to human, animal or even organic life. Units of time such as days, months and years are characterised as ‘travellers of eternity’ and the ‘cloudmoving wind’ is a recurrent moving and motivating force. Secondly, human beings, when they travel like exemplary ancient travellers knew how to travel, are capable of mirroring these journeying spirals of time by living a life on the road. Thirdly, Bashō attests to the idea that true roaming does not lead anywhere in particular, even though the wanderer might encounter significant stops on the road. Bashō does not condemn the fact that many of the previous poets he admires died on the road. Neither does he idealise death during travel. To him the death of travellers is neither tragic nor is it a happy end. Compared with the eternal journeying of days, months and years, the limited field of experience of human travelled time seems rather small when compared to world time. It is a limit characteristic of the human condition of being travelling animals to be incapable to roam eternally. In Bashō’s melancholy we witness a decisive difference to the playful attitude we find in Zhuangzi’s philosophy of travel. While the emotions of the traveller in Zhuangzi range from playfulness to indifference, they rarely touch sadness and

18

Landscape and Travelling East and West

mourning. Bashō’s sketches, on the other hand, are full of extreme outpourings of mourning. Part of the motivation to engage in the journey seems to have been a desire for mourning. Bashō’s travels are rituals that, in a paradoxical manner, bring about spontaneous outcries of mourning. The task of the traveller is not to reach happiness or even to be free, but to intensify his capacity to mourn. In a tone of bittersweet agony, Bashō visits monuments and gravestones to observe: ‘one need not go as far as China to find a gravestone that induces such tears’ (Bashō, 1966, p. 59). Rather than being unaffected by the world, the traveller becomes a medium through which strong emotions travel whenever he successfully lets himself be moved freely through the landscapes travelled. The emotions encountered and poetically conjured up are resonances of the landscapes crossed. Haruo Shirane identifies the poetic longing as a longing to re-establish the poet’s relationship to the creative cosmic forces as they are embodied in the external landscape and infuse the internal poetic landscape: ‘The poet who follows or “returns to the Creative” implicitly engages in a process of spiritual cultivation that allows the zoka (landscape) within to join the zoka of the cosmos. Bashō here drew on Taoism, especially the chapter in the Chuang-tzu entitled “All Things are Equal”. ’ (Shirane, 1998, p. 261)

Just like the landscapes passed through, one emotion can quickly change to its opposite when the internal and the external landscape become synchronised and the challenges of the journey are forgotten by moving on: ‘I forgot the weariness of my journey and was moved to tears by my joy’ (Bashō, 1966, p. 75). Bashō’s wanderlust is not a desire to reach a specific location, but emanates from the intention to cross limits. The experience of drifting, of being between locations, is a rediscovery of the carefree attitude of a nomad in post-nomadic times. The journeys set out from the centres of civilisation and enter the distant zones. The process of wandering is the process of becoming ex-centric: by leaving what is familiar, the wanderer exposes himself to the unexpected and unfamiliar. Yet, in contrast to Zhuangzian journeys, in Bashō’s journeys this exposure was relatively confined and ritualised, thus not calling into question the fundamental significance of the centre, in his case the authority of past poets and the civilisational core to which Bashō always returns. What characterises Bashō’s life on the road is a focus on becoming attentive to what is proximate, especially changes in emotion: I bent my steps in whatever direction I wished, having no itinerary to follow. My only mundane concerns were whether I would be able to find a suitable place to sleep at night and whether the straw sandals were the right size for my feet.



Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel

19

Every turn of the road brought me new thoughts and every sunrise gave me fresh emotions. (Bashō, 1966, p. 85)

This sense of engagement with what is near is only shattered when Bashō thinks of far-away goals and destinations: I felt uneasy over my illness, recalling how far away our destination was, but I reasoned with myself that when I started out on this journey to remote parts of the country it was with an awareness that I was risking my life. Even if I should die on the road, this would be the will of Heaven. These thoughts somewhat restored my spirits, and walking now with greater assurance, I passed by the great Gate of Date. (Bashō, 1966, p. 63)

Reading these records, we have to imagine Bashō not simply travelling and experiencing the landscape, but taking notes and writing poetry. Real and poetic travels are not opposites, but mutually support and infuse each other. Apart from wanderlust and an urge to cross the limit of the everyday, what drives Bashō is the desire for poetic inspiration. Subjective travel experience was expanded and intensified through episodes that spontaneously inspired him during his travels. The experiences were enhanced not only by being reflected upon by means of writing poetry, but also by experiencing the landscape through the eyes of other poets who travelled and interpreted the same changing landscape before Bashō. In contrast to the solitary and detached Daoist traveller, Bashō often travels with companions, at least for parts of the journey. Many haikus are dialogical in nature. They are the product of collaborative work as well as gifts presented by fellow travellers along the way, which have been included in the travel journal. The limits of experience are expanded through crossing limits in the poetic imagination and sharing the poetic realm opened up by poets who are crossing the limits of their poetic imaginations. Crossing limits is by no means intended to be restricted to overcoming symbolic limits. At decisive moments of his journey, Bashō crosses actual boundaries in the form of gates and barriers. The spirit in which he oversteps these boundaries is reminiscent of the Daoist spirit of crossing mystical gates and passing through openings: Day after day had passed in vague uneasiness, but as we approached the Barrier of Shirakawa I felt myself settling into the spirit of travel. I understood now why the poet had sought means to ‘tell people in the capital somehow his feelings on crossing the barrier.’ (Bashō, 1966, p. 47)

It is not travelling itself which is significant, but the process of passing through

20

Landscape and Travelling East and West

these symbolic and real gates; of overstepping the limit and crossing from the inside to the outside. This act of stepping over is integrated by relating it back to the poet’s inside. Crossing the boundaries from the inside to the outside and then from the outside to the inside captures the distinct travel spirit understood as a rite of self-transformation by leaving the illusion of a fixed self behind. The overstepping of thresholds brings about a fusion of distinct poetic imaginations. Not only do the imaginative fields of two poets interact, but also the observation of natural beauty has become more intensive through this fusion. The person who has crossed the barrier does not eradicate it. His realm of experience is fused with that of those who have consciously crossed the barrier before. The act of overstepping the barrier changes the nature of what was formerly on either side. The here becomes the beyond, while the beyond is changed into a new and transformed here. Crossing boundaries is thus a process of de-familiarising the familiar, and familiarising the unfamiliar. When stepping over the threshold of his home upon his return, Bashō was greeted by his friends, who were cheering ‘as if they had encountered someone returned from the dead’ (Bashō, 1996, p. 175). Bashō, having undergone the transformation process of travelling, returned as a different person, as if having died and being reborn through his journey. We have seen that, in contrast to the assumption that Zhuangzi and Bashō suggest the overcoming of limits by refraining from drawing them, their travellers cross and engage these limits and thereby take part in un-finalisable processes of self- and boundary-transformation. Daoism introduced a form of liminal travel, which accounts for these limits and flows through them in a natural, spontaneous and seamless way. Liminal travel, while still possessing the moments of anticipation, departure, being on the move and returning, is not structured in a teleological manner. While the traveller might pursue destinations, these do not overshadow more proximate concerns. They do not cloud his experiential field, but transform it in opening him up to the here and now in which the inner and the outer landscapes merge. Destinations are provisional, and are not linked to a narrative of progress leading to one ultimate end. The wanderer arrives at lodgings. He enters through various gates on the way. There are provisional signposts on the way, signalling turns, breaches, dead-end streets, opportunities for pause, or invitations to embark on the next trip. His meandering movements do not follow one determinate direction. They reveal a directedness rather than a direction in the sense in which moving clouds perform an ordered directedness without having goals and destinations in mind.



Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel

21

This changed view of non-teleological directedness is radically distinct from travel in the European canon and its tendency to sharply delineate the moments associated with travel. These individual moments infuse Bashō’s entire journey. Anticipation and departure are already infused with a sense of melancholy, just as being on the move means to be dwelling and each arrival signals a fresh departure. In this spirit Bashō ends his journey just like he started it, yet in a transformed way: ‘Shed of everything else,’ he writes, ‘I still have some lice I picked up on the road – crawling on my summer robes’ (Bashō, 1966, p. 64). This final haiku documents his arrival at his hut where he sits down next to the tree that provided him with his name. Bashō returns to his home and did not die on the road after all. Even though he freed himself from the burdening weight of the baggage of clearly defined goals and unnecessary attachments while on the road, he did bring back new, dragging companions. The lice he picked up are now travelling over his body. They found a provisional dwelling place in his summer clothes. The resting Bashō has thus been transformed into the living Dao of travelling lice. Their bites keep the memory of the journey alive. As nagging companions they remind their host that wanderlust cannot be fully quenched and the next boundary is waiting to be crossed.

References Bloch, E. (1973), Das Prinzip Hoffnung (vol. 3). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Bashō, M. (1966), The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. London: Penguin. —(1996), The Narrow Road to Oku. D. Keene (trans.). Tokyo: Kodansha International. Coutinho, S. (2004), Entry: ‘Zhuangzi’, in: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. available online at http://www.iep.utm.edu/zhuangzi/print/ Crandell, M. M. (1983), ‘On walking without touching the ground. Play in the inner chapters of the Chuang-tzu’, in V. H. Mair (ed.), Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 101–24. Danto, A. C. (1987), Mysticism and Morality. New York: Columbia University Press. Graham, A. C. (2001), Chuang-Tzu. The Inner Chapters. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kohn, L. (2009), Introducing Daoism. New York: Routledge. Laozi (2003), Daodejing. Making this Life Significant. R. T. Ames and D. L. Hall (trans.). New York: Ballentine. Moeller, H. G. (2004), Daoism Explained. Chicago: Open Court.

22

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Qiu, P. (2005), Bashō and the Dao. The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Shirane, H. (1998), Traces of Dreams. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wong, D. (2006), Natural Moralities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zhuangzi (1968), The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. B. Watson (trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.

2

Wandering and/or Being at Home Franklin Perkins

Academic philosophy has a way of making you miss the nose on your face, which explains why, despite being a relentless wanderer (writing this now in Singapore, far from home), it is difficult to know what to say philosophically about travel. Part of the challenge is that only a few philosophers have seriously reflected on travel, leaving something of a blank slate on which to begin. This chapter will attempt to fill this blank space with some initial problems, drawing on an odd assortment of philosophers East and West. The main line of tension I will explore is the relationship between travel and being at home. There is clearly some antagonism between the two. Our home binds us. We are held there by unconscious customs, habits and ways of thought. Their grip derives partly from their going unrecognised: we see them as the way to live, rather than as our way of living. Travel reveals this unconscious level and lets us evaluate it. This is the liberatory function of travel. Our home also binds us with duties. Some of these are official, like those connected with work, but most are unofficial. We feel a duty to vote and thus be politically aware, to consider how our actions affect the environment, and so on. When travelling, we are mostly free of this – we are just visitors, just passing through. Even in relation to other people, when travelling we have almost no one we must respond to. There is no one who can legitimately make demands on us, unlike when we are at home. The escape that travel provides is fine as a brief ‘vacation’ (coming from the Latin root vacatio, meaning ‘to be free of ’), but becomes more problematic when considered a way of life. The relationship between travel and community is not only negative, however, insofar as there is a kind of sociality in travel. If we stay in a new place long enough, we can merge into a new community, no longer being a traveller at all. For a community in travel itself, we can consider the kind of brief encounters travellers tend to have. Without using this chapter as an excuse to tell travel

24

Landscape and Travelling East and West

stories, let me briefly give a couple of simple concrete examples. Once I was on a 48-hour ‘hard seat’ trip toward Xinjiang and the guy next to me, with whom I could not communicate at all, shared his breakfast of dried fish and sweet bread. I ate it and we smiled at each other, content. Another time, I was wandering through the hills with a guy from Iceland I had just met and we came across a group of Tibetan women picking flowers. They put wreaths of flowers on our heads, laughed at us a lot, and then walked off, making us promise to wear the flowers back into town. A more involved example was when I rented a room in Dubrovnik and immediately got drunk with the owner of the apartment while eating figs just picked by his wife. Before I left for the airport, she insisted on cooking me a big dinner. There is a kind of magic in such moments, and they are one of the things that make travel most worthwhile. But there is also something worrisome. Such encounters are highly transitory. They have a kind of superficiality, working on the level of surface curiosity. There is also an element of exoticism, which is why seeing a punk band in Beijing or Singapore seems so much cooler than seeing the same band in Chicago. Such encounters lack the complex mix of responsibility, commitment and need that constitute relationships at home (some of them, at least). One can always walk away into the next encounter. In this chapter, I want to reflect on these issues, beginning with one of the philosophers who most incorporated travel into his methodology and life – René Descartes. Descartes was born in France and received a top Jesuit education, but he famously abandoned his studies: [A]s soon as I was old enough to emerge from the control of my teachers, I entirely abandoned the study of letters. Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth traveling, visiting courts and armies, mixing with people of diverse temperaments and ranks, gathering various experiences, testing myself in the situations which fortune offered me, and at all times reflecting upon whatever came my way so as to derive some profit from it. (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 115; AT VI.9)

Descartes became a mercenary, fighting in places across central Europe. While stationed near Ulm, Germany, he had a series of strange dreams that determined him to build his knowledge from scratch around a unified method. That eventually led to the Discourse on Method, but it immediately led to a renewed decision to travel. Descartes returned to France and sold all of his property, wandering for eight years through Bohemia, Hungary, Germany and Holland.



Wandering and/or Being at Home

25

Eventually, he moved to Holland, where he stayed for 20 years, but with one exception, he stayed in no town for more than two years in a row. One might even say Descartes was killed by travelling – he died of pneumonia at age 54, six months after moving to Sweden to become a tutor to Queen Christina. This life of wandering was not accidental to Descartes’ development as a philosopher. The Discourse on Method is filled with metaphors of paths and travels, and Descartes says that the text itself is nothing but a record of the paths (les chemins) he has followed (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 112; AT VI.4). Custom is compared to the windy mountain path that everyone follows because it is more convenient than finding a direct route on one’s own (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 118; AT VI.14). In contrast, Descartes’ method of doubt forces him to become his own guide (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 119; AT IV.16). While in this position of uncertainty, he says he will act like a traveller lost in a forest, who should continue as far as possible in one direction, even if unsure which direction is best (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 119; AT VI.17). Descartes has several inspirational statements on why travel is necessary for philosophy. For example: I have recognized through my travels that those with views quite contrary to ours are not on that account barbarians or savages, but that many of them make use of reason as much or more than we do. I thought, too, how the same man, with the same mind, if brought up from infancy among the French or Germans, develops otherwise than he would if he had always lived among the Chinese or cannibals […] Thus it is custom and example that persuade us, rather than any certain knowledge. (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 119; AT VI.16)

Descartes nicely describes the thing that still distinguishes those who have travelled from those who have not. The non-traveller accepts the customs and norms of their community as obviously right, so much so that those who do things differently must be defective or abnormal – they are barbarians and savages. Travel leads Descartes to realise that the grip of home comes not from knowledge or truth but from habit and conformity. With this realisation, our home becomes something we evaluate rather than something which defines us. While the abstract method of doubt described in the Meditations is most famous, Descartes thinks such a method is impossible or at least extremely difficult if it remains purely theoretical. Only travel can actually throw our cultural norms into question. In travel, however, we do not replace our original community with another. The evaluative distance opened up between us and our home is the starting point when we enter the home of another. As Descartes says after his awakening in Germany: ‘Throughout the following nine years I

26

Landscape and Travelling East and West

did nothing but roam (rouler) about in the world, trying to be a spectator rather than an actor in all the comedies played out there’ (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 125; AT IV.28). His wandering was not a search for better customs or a new home but rather a constant process of, as he says, ‘uprooting’ errors from his mind. For Descartes, travel serves a negative function, and if he had stayed on that path, he might have become Zhuangzi, or at least Montaigne. But Descartes wanted positive truth, and he notes that any traveller must ultimately return home (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 114; AT VI.6). What is striking is that his return home is not a return to France, or to family or friends, but rather to another form of travel. He went to Holland: Living here, amidst this great mass of busy people who are more concerned with their own affairs than curious about those of others, I have been able to lead a life as solitary and withdrawn as if I were in the most remote desert, while lacking none of the comforts found in the most populous cities. (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 126; AT VI.31)

Although Descartes describes this as a turn toward finding the truth within himself, it would be a mistake to see the move to Holland as an absolute rejection of community. Descartes does return home – not to any particular concrete community, but rather to the community of rational human beings.1 In describing the cultural differences revealed by travel, Descartes emphasises over and over again that all human beings share the same rationality. He starts the Discourse with this view: [T]he power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false – which is what we properly call ‘good sense’ or ‘reason’ – is naturally equal in all men, and consequently the diversity of our opinions does not arise because some of us are more reasonable than others but solely because we direct our thoughts along different paths and do not attend to the same things. (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 111; AT VI.2)

We differ only by the paths we happen to end up on. For the non-traveller, that path is entirely set by our home. The crucial point is that for Descartes, reason itself can be a path (we might note that method derives from the Greek hodos, a path or way; meta-hodos). The initial function of travel is to throw all conventional paths into question, but the ultimate goal is to allow us to make our own path, not based on personal taste or contingent choice but on human reason itself. When travel strips away the bonds of a particular community, it leaves behind our universal humanity. As Descartes says: ‘I gradually freed



Wandering and/or Being at Home

27

myself from many errors which may obscure our natural light and make us less capable of heeding reason’ (Stoothoff, 1994, p. 116; AT VI.10). That leaves a kind of community, a common view which we also see expressed in Leibniz’s famous letter to Peter the Great: ‘I am not one of those impassioned patriots of one country alone, but I work for the well-being of the whole of mankind, for I consider heaven as my country and cultivated men as my compatriots’ (Wiener, 1951, p. 596–7; de Coreil, 1854, VII.506–15). Travel played a key role in early modern cosmopolitanism, an abstract cosmopolitanism not based on becoming bi-cultural or multicultural but rather on escaping the grips of any culture.2 There is a great deal of truth in Descartes’ account of travel, but the strength is on the negative side, in his descriptions of how travel gives rise to a kind of homelessness. Descartes’ supposed return to a community of rational beings is more problematic. We now recognise how culturally specific this ‘community of rational beings’ really was. In considering human nature, we are more likely to agree with Clifford Geertz that human beings without culture ‘would be unworkable monstrosities with very few useful instincts, fewer recognizable sentiments, and no intellect: mental basket cases’ (Geertz, 1973, p. 49). But if we agree only with the negative function of travel, then travel raises a fundamental problem for community. Does wandering make us more and more like Geertz’s ‘unworkable monstrosities’, or are the effects of travel illusory, making us superficially ‘worldly’ while reinforcing the views of our own home? (Which is likely how we would see Descartes now.) The problem is how to think the disruptive and liberating function of travel in relation to the fundamental role of the home in constituting our being as human, or, how to think of travel in relation to the inevitable historicity of human experience. We can approach this relationship through Martin Heidegger, whose 1942 lecture course on Hölderlin’s ‘Der Ister’ examines the relationship between the home and the foreign. In a way, Heidegger gives an account analogous to that of Descartes. To be authentically at home, we must pass through the foreign. Heidegger explains: This coming to be at home in one’s own in itself entails that human beings are initially, and for a long time, and sometimes forever, not at home. And this in turn entails that human beings fail to recognize, that they deny, and perhaps even have to deny and flee what belongs to the home. Coming to be at home is thus a passage through the foreign. (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 49; Heidegger, 1993, p. 60)3

As with Descartes, it is this journey through the foreign that throws our home into question. We might say that without going somewhere else, it is almost

28

Landscape and Travelling East and West

impossible to free ourselves from the conventions established by das Man, the ‘they’. This disruption is necessary because, on the most fundamental level, the home itself is a question, or as Heidegger puts it, the home itself is a journey: ‘The essence of the locale, in which becoming at-home (heimisch) finds its point of departure and its point of entry, is such that it journeys’ (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 35; Heidegger, 1993, p. 42). To blindly follow the norms of where one lives is to not be truly at home there. The home itself involves a necessary element of un-at-homeness. This is the tragic paradox underlying the human condition: we can neither simply be at home nor simply leave home. We exist in the very tension between these two movements. In Heidegger’s terms, ‘humankind emerges from uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit) and remains within it – looms out of it and stirs within it’ (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 72; Heidegger, 1993, p. 89). Neither Descartes nor Heidegger accept the perpetual traveller who never comes home, but while for Descartes the return is to a community of rational human beings, for Heidegger one can only come home to a concrete historical locale. Heidegger is forthright in saying that – unlike Descartes – he is not discussing human beings as such: When we speak of ‘human beings’ here and throughout these remarks, we always mean the essence of the historical human beings of that history to which we ourselves belong: the essence of Western humankind. ‘Human beings’ means neither ‘human beings in general,’ ‘the universal humanity,’ nor indeed mere ‘individual’ human beings, nor even some form or other in which several or many human beings are united. (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 43; Heidegger, 1993, p. 51)

Our historicity defines home and even restricts what can effectively count as the foreign – for Germans, the foreign can only be the Greeks (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 54; Heidegger, 1993, p. 67). This is not merely Eurocentrism. Given how the historicities of peoples vary, some degrees of difference are so great that an encounter can only be superficial, occurring on the level of idle curiosity but not as a true encounter with difference that would effectively throw our own home into question.4 Where does this leave the wanderer? Heidegger criticises the wanderer as the ‘adventurer’, who takes ‘pleasure and satisfaction in a mere travelling around’ (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 73; Heidegger, 1993, pp. 89–90). In this context, Heidegger contrasts the ‘foreign’ with the ‘alien and exotic’ sought by the adventurer (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 131; Heidegger, 1993, p. 164). He explains:



Wandering and/or Being at Home

29

The one who is properly un-at-home (unheimisch) relates back precisely to being at-home (heimisch), and to this alone, yet does so in the manner of not attaining it. The adventurer, by contrast, finds being at-home precisely in what is constantly and merely un-at-home, in the foreign taken in itself. To put it more precisely: For the heart that seeks adventure, the distinction between the at-home and the un-at-home is altogether lost. The wilderness becomes the absolute itself and counts as the ‘fullness of being.’ And to ascribe romantically a particular toughness to the adventurer would be to forget that where danger is posited as the absolute, danger has lost its entire dangerousness. (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 75; Heidegger, 1993, p. 91)

One who prizes risk above all actually has nothing to risk. More fundamentally, one who has no home gives nothing up and places nothing at risk in leaving. That is why, while the adventurer may be ‘strange and interesting’ they can never attain to being uncanny, unheimlich, deinon (McNeill et al., 1996, p. 73; Heidegger, 1993, p. 89). Heidegger’s analysis helps illuminate the tension between community (the home) and travel. His analysis of the adventurer sets up two possibilities for understanding the traveller or wanderer. On one level, travellers are superficial, constantly losing themselves in the flow of the alien and exotic, taking themselves to be true cosmopolitans while evading their own historicity. Heidegger’s concern is inauthenticity, but one could make the same point by saying the adventurer is an Orientalist. Heidegger, however, also seems to allow for a more radical wanderer, one who does not deny his or her home but really has no home at all. This leaves us without a root, driven about amidst the things of the world without any source of constancy. With these negative characterisations of the traveller in place, we can turn cautiously to suggest a few routes through which one might offer a defence of the adventurer or wanderer. One route would be to turn back to the inescapability of culture and historicity, to say that the idea of a wanderer with no home is a fiction. Rootlessness is impossible. This does not mean we always remain in our own tradition, in-authentically appearing to go native while remaining blind to our own historicity. Heidegger clearly over-essentialises his own culture and overestimates the separations between cultures. The wanderer never becomes cultureless or homeless but becomes a cultural hybrid. Jason Hill turns such an orientation toward a moral vision of cosmopolitanism. He explains: Hybridization is a moral goal because it destabilizes zones of purity and privilege. Cosmopolitanism entreats one to reach for a self beyond what one is now. Moral cosmopolitans are creatures constituted in part by culture. Agreed.

30

Landscape and Travelling East and West But the cosmopolitan who embraces moral becoming and forgetting realizes also that we are projects in process. (Hill, 2000, p. 7)

This is not a cosmopolitanism based on reducing ourselves to a-cultural rational agents, but rather a cosmopolitanism of travel. It is a cultivated ability to immerse oneself in another place, to put oneself into question and risk becoming like the other. Hill elaborates: Morality sometimes demands that we give up old selves and commit ourselves to the goal of fashioning new moral identities. This is often accomplished by inviting the other in, letting go of the seriousness of one’s identity, and allowing oneself to be remade by taking the other into oneself. (Hill, 2000, p. 2)

Louis Marin calls this transformative space the ‘utopian moment and space of the travel’. He contrasts this with the ‘ideology of the travel’, which claims that one returns home enriched but essentially unchanged (Marin, 1993, p. 415). This approach is attractive, but has limits. As we transform ourselves through different settings, we gain the ability to be a little at home in more places and with more people, but we lose the ability to be completely at home anywhere. It leaves us without a community in the traditional sense, although it may prompt us to rethink community in terms of overlapping connections and disjunctions. A deeper problem is that in picking and choosing as we go, we may lose the beneficial ways in which community challenges and obliges us. When the going gets rough in one area, we have no need to respond or fight back, because we move on to another. On a cultural level, we can incorporate the things that please us, while giving up those that make us feel uncomfortable. So, for example, unlike someone at home in East Asia, we can embrace Confucianism without its difficulties: the submission to authority, the narrow conception of the family, and so on. The wanderer starts to resemble the model consumer, looking for the best deal. A second approach would be to bite the bullet, so to speak, to admit the opposition between travel and community and side with travel. After all, community can be a heavy burden. Setting aside Heidegger’s romantic nostalgia and nationalist rhetoric, it is not clear why the rootless adventurer is bad. As Heidegger says, such people free themselves from risk and they escape from the tragic condition. That sounds a lot like the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi. Heidegger’s claim that the adventurer takes the ‘wilderness’ as the fullness of being is not far from Zhuangzi’s suggestion that we ‘hide the world in the world’, and thereby free ourselves from the possibility of loss (Guo, 1978, p. 243; Mair, 1994, p. 55). The Zhuangzi even gives us the best



Wandering and/or Being at Home

31

term for such radical wandering – you. You means to wander or travel, but also has a broader sense of being at ease or at play. We see this best when Cloud General comes across a sage named Vast Ignorance, who is hopping around like a bird and slapping his butt. When asked what he is doing, Vast Ignorance says you (Guo, 1978, pp.  385–6; Mair, 1994, p. 97). We can read the ‘inner chapters’ of the Zhuangzi as providing multiple strategies for escaping the grip of custom and community norms. These strategies play a role analogous to Descartes’ years of travel, but are more radical in revealing even the conventionality of reason and morality. It is not that customs are rejected or transcended, but that any specific claim or custom becomes optional, the object of play. Obviously, breaking off from the grip of culture does not leave us as pure rational agents. It may, in fact, turn us into Geertz’s ‘unworkable monstrosities’, a perfect term to describe useless misfits with names like Splay-Limb Shu (Guo, 1978, p. 180; Mair, 1994, p. 40) and Lipless Crooked-Sixth-Toe Limbs-Apart (Guo, 1978, pp. 216–17; Mair, 1994, p. 48). More accurately, this process leaves us empty, which then allows us to live within the singularities of any particular moment. That all sounds fun, but it highlights the worrying aspects of travel mentioned earlier. Zhuangzi gives up any idea of political responsibility. Not only do none of the sagely characters appear to work for their food, some passages explicitly advocate living off of society without making any contribution to it. That is largely what wanderers do. Moreover, there does seem to be something superficial about the life Zhuangzi recommends. At least that is how many of my students react to the ease with which he accepts the death of his wife (Guo, 1978, p. 615; Mair, 1994, p. 169). The third approach would be to again link travel to a community based on our shared humanity. That could no longer be rooted in pure rationality, but would rely on our commonality as embodied beings, as beings that seek pleasure, and as beings that are fragile and needy. What makes the sociality of travel so magical, I think, is the way in which such commonality comes into play when there is no obligation, nor any of the structures that make us into a community.5 Alphonso Lingis, the contemporary philosopher to have most incorporated travel into his thought and life, beautifully labels this ‘the community of those who have nothing in common’. Lingis explains: This other community forms not in work, but in the interruption of work and enterprises. It is not realized in having or in producing something in common but in exposing oneself to the one with whom one has nothing in common: the

32

Landscape and Travelling East and West Aztec, the nomad, the guerrilla, the enemy. The other community forms when one recognizes, in the face of the other, an imperative. (Lingis, 1994, p. 10)

We see this ungrounded community appear most clearly when we are a foreigner in need. Lingis tells a particularly extreme story, taking place in southern India. He was delirious from an infection that had paralysed his arms and seemed to be moving to his chest. Someone he did not know and with whom he had no common language found him, put him in a canoe, and paddled 65 miles along the sea until he reached the nearest city (Madras). He got him on the way to the hospital and then left (Lingis, 1994, pp. 158–9). Fortunately, few of us have experienced such a desperate situation, but anyone who travels much has felt the power of acts of kindness that were given without any ground beyond that of being fellow human beings. This community need not appear only in times of need – we see it when the guys getting drunk at a nearby table invite us to join them for a drinking game, or we sit next to someone on the top of a mountain and smile at the scenery together in silence. I think we see this kind of community without commonality in the Zhuangzi as well. Consider the four friends who gather together while one of them dies (Guo, 1978, p. 260; Mair, 1994, p. 58). They don’t mourn or take death seriously, but they are still there, by their friend’s side. The freedom from cultural conceptions and norms is precisely what enables the Zhuangzi to affirm characters that would otherwise be social outcasts and misfits, excluded from the order of proper community. Lingis refers to such people as the psychotics, pariahs, and mystics (Lingis, 1994, p. 140); they are Descartes’ ‘barbarians and savages’. The Zhuangzi even allows a kind of community with fish, as Huizi and Zhuangzi wander (you) onto a bridge and look down on the fish who you there, knowing their joy. I have tried to bring out the tensions between travel and community by taking travel literally and examining it in its more extreme forms. The relevance of this analysis, however, goes beyond such extreme cases. Heidegger’s vision of a common German home whose historical origins lie only in the Greeks is now almost as outdated as Laozi’s vision of small communities which remain isolated even though they are close enough to hear the barks of each other’s dogs (Daodejing 80).6 Even if one never leaves home, travellers and wanderers inevitably come. While these others are often seen as barbarians and misfits who must be ‘assimilated’ in order to keep the home intact, it might be more fruitful to consider ourselves all as travellers, and consider the kinds of community that travellers can (and cannot) form.



Wandering and/or Being at Home

33

Notes 1

Alphonso Lingis writes: ‘The rational form of knowledge produces a common discourse that is integrally one and a new kind of community, a community, in principle, unlimited’ (Lingis, 1994, p. 1). 2 For the role of travel in early modern thought, see van den Abbeele, 1992. 3 Translation modified from McNeill et al., 1996. McNeill and Davis translate heimisch as ‘homely’ (and unheimisch as ‘unhomely’), which parallels the German (where the -ly parallels the -isch). The meaning of ‘homely’ in English, though, as plain or unattractive, makes this misleading. I have translated it instead as ‘at-home’ or ‘un-at-home’. 4 This is a simplification, because the issue is not just degrees of difference. For Heidegger, the foreign must link to the origin of one’s own historicity, which is why Germans must go back to the Greeks. This may entail that the foreign can only be found in the past, which would make the significance of actual travel disappear entirely. 5 Lingis writes: ‘Community is usually conceived as constituted by a number of individuals having something in common – a common language, a common conceptual framework – and building something in common: a nation, a polis, and institution’ (Lingis, 1994, p. ix). All of these commonalities are missing in travel. 6 The Daodejing is cited by chapter number, based on the text in Liu, 2006.

References van den Abbeele, G. Y. (1992), Travel as Metaphor: From Montaigne to Rousseau. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Adam, C. and Tannery, P. (1964–76), Oeuvres de Descartes (revised edn). Paris: Vrin. de Coreil, A. F. (ed.) (1854), Leibniz: Lettres et opusculesinédits. Paris: Ladrange. Geertz, C. (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Guo Q. (1978), Zhuangzijishi. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Heidegger, M. (1993), Gesamtausgabe, Abt. II, Bd. 53. Frankfurt: Klostermann. Hill, J. (2000), Becoming a Cosmopolitan: What it Means to be a Human Being in the New Millenium. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Lingis, A. (1994), The Community of Those who have Nothing in Common. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Liu, X. (2006), Laozi Gujin. Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe. Mair, V. (1994), Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parable of Chuang Tzu. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Marin, L. (1993), ‘Frontiers of utopia: past and present’, Critical Inquiry, 19.3, 397–420.

34

Landscape and Travelling East and West

McNeill, W. and Davis, J. (trans.) (1996), Hölderlin’s Hymn ‘The Ister’. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stoothoff, R. (trans.) (1994), ’Discourse on method’, in J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch (eds), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Vol 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 109–75. Wiener, P. (1951), Leibniz Selections. New York: Simon and Schuster.

3

Locality and Journeying in Migration Andrea Martinez

The theme of migration has been broadly studied in the social sciences. I specifically refer to those theories that attempt to understand the experience of migration, the themes that surface as a result of this experience, and the implications in terms of social identity. Authors such as James Clifford (1997) and Avtar Brah (1996), representing the research on migration and identity, as well as developing a theoretical explanation of both, have highlighted the importance of the position that migrants find themselves in, in relation to the host nation. Specifically, they generalise migrants as a marginalised population in need of finding ways to ‘resist’ social oppression. These ways of resistance tend to exaggerate certain aspects of identity, of the experience of migration itself, or the creation of new terms to represent those who have migrated. Although I consider these revisions of identity useful for certain individuals, I do not see them as an accurate portrayal of the experience of migration, but instead as a recipe to feel good about it. In order to provide an alternative view of the migrant experience, I have made use of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. Heidegger not only offers a view of human existence as always necessarily contextualised, but also an understanding of the significance of that context and the meaningful nature of Being. In this particular case, I will be speaking of Heidegger’s later philosophy, referring to the ideas of home and journeying. Social studies have signalled that the concept of home becomes a symbol for those who migrate, a symbol which has a meaning that changes and becomes questioned typically once migration has already taken place. I find Heidegger’s interpretation of the concept of home and of the related unheimlich (unhomely) as possibly enriching the topic of migration, not only because he saw this concept as essential to human existence, but also because his insights might provide a deeper understanding of why this concept surfaces as relevant in migration.

36

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Heidegger’s analysis of the Home (die Heimat) consists of a network of concepts that he laid out in some of his later texts: Building, Dwelling, Thinking (1951), The Ister (his lectures on the poetry of Hölderlin from 1942, published in 1984), and Poetry, Language, Thought (1975). Such a constellation of concepts includes but is not limited to: the home (die Heimat), dwelling, unheimlich, the river, journeying and locality.

Die Heimat Feeling at home is primordial for us: finding a place where we feel safe, where we feel we can rest, or that we feel we belong to. Heidegger affirms that our first human abode is the earth; it constitutes our first relation to where we dwell (Young, 2002, p. 20). Heidegger tends to distinguish between the physical or particular aspects of existence (which he calls ontic) from the ontological ones. Die Heimat, the home, necessarily has physicality to it, a specific location, but it also represents the place where we return to our being. In The Ister he says: What is characteristic of human abode is grounded in the fact that Being […] has opened itself to humans and is this very open. As such, it receives human beings into itself, and so determines them to be in a site. (Heidegger, 1996, p. 91)

It is because we have Being that we can ‘be at home’, and simultaneously, Being is what allows us to ‘be’. Being ‘receives’ our grounding in it as well as it ‘gives’ us Being. Furthermore, in the home we also find the intersection of temporality, between the past, what we remember of how the home came to be such, and the future possibilities of ourselves in or outside of it (Young, 1999, p. 84). As beings are historical, the home also holds temporality as a structural element, including a projection towards the future, by being the place where plans are sketched out while also being the place where memories and important past events are remembered.

Dwelling, homecoming and unheimlich For Heidegger, one of the most important human activities is dwelling; one primarily dwells at home. Dwelling is a kind of ‘rest’, where one is ‘in the inviolability of one’s essence’. Dwelling is ‘to be at peace […] to be protected from harm and threat, safeguarded […] that is, cared for and protected. Hence,



Locality and Journeying in Migration

37

the fundamental character of dwelling […] is this caring for and protection’ (Heidegger, 1975, p. 149). Since Being and Time, Heidegger established care (Sorge) as a fundamental structure of our being. To be Dasein, to exist as a human, is to care for one’s being, to care for the being of other beings, to make Being an issue for ourselves. In dwelling, there is a sense of safety and protection that simultaneously allows for the possibility of protecting and providing safety for others. Dwelling is also always necessarily contextualised, here, wherever we happen to be in the specific ways in which we exist. Heidegger drew a relation between his concept of dwelling (Buan) and building (Bauen), illustrating the connection between the physicality of the home and the existential importance of dwelling. For Heidegger, dwelling is building, and building is dwelling (Heidegger, 1975). The home is built as a process or a journey towards a dwelling place. Similarly, dwelling does not only occur at a physical location, but it is historical; it represents the movement of the journey (Moreira, 2008, p. 2). To be human is to be ‘a staring’ at such things one has built through one’s dwelling but it is also the looking ahead at such future creations that can also be dwelling places (Edwards, 2002, p. 120). However, Heidegger further elaborates the concept of dwelling by stating that: ‘To be a human being means to be on earth as a mortal. It means to dwell’ (Heidegger, 1975, p. 147). To dwell as a mortal is to be aware of the contingency of the circumstances, the unavoidable presence of finality, and so, as one builds, that which one builds reveals the conditionality of the dwelling that produced it (Edwards, 2002, p. 127). To dwell as a mortal indicates not only the nearness of death, but the vulnerability that holds life together. In Poetically … Man Dwells, Heidegger clarifies: ‘Only man dies, and indeed, continually, so long as he stays on this earth, so long as he dwells’ (1975, p. 222). For Heidegger, we naturally search for experiences that provide a sense of safety and homeliness and these emotions necessarily take place in specific locations. However, for Heidegger, we must first experience homelessness before we can feel at home, where the former is necessary to understand the experience of the latter. In The Ister, Heidegger writes ‘Because human beings are not “of themselves” […] to dwell in what is one’s own is what comes last and is seldom successful and always remains what is most difficult’ (Heidegger, 1975, p.21). In the same text, Heidegger asserts that human beings are, for the most part, ‘not at home’, and this is partly the reason for the constant search for the experience of the homely. Julian Young explains homelessness as a fundamental

38

Landscape and Travelling East and West

way of being in the world, and as our existence being permeated by a radical insecurity (Young, 2000, p.189). Heidegger describes this ‘ontological’ insecurity and ‘anxiety’ in his earlier text Being and Time as a structural element of our being. The insecurity arises from the encounter with the inevitability of death, even though as for the most part, our lives seem stable and continuous. Our homelessness comes from turning away from our finitude and comforting ourselves in the illusion of stability. As we face the inevitable, we feel anxious and at times, afraid, even though such finality is a fundamental structure of our nature. However, we are not necessarily aware of this turning away from our nature, and therefore, we do not necessarily understand what it means to be at home in it. For Heidegger, the journey towards the homely entails a passage through the foreign. In order to understand what it means to be at home, we must experience the contrast between homely and homelessness. Hence, the foreign and the return to home are inseparable, as the foreign contains in itself the promise of the return. For only where the foreign is known and acknowledged in its essential oppositional character does there exist the possibility of a genuine relationship, that is, of a uniting that is not a confused mixing but a conjoining in distinction. (Heidegger, 1996, p. 54)

Turning towards that which is unfamiliar pushes us to inquire and attempt to understand what we are. For Heidegger, this radical unfamiliarity is the ground of human beings. He calls it the ‘uncanny’, that which is fearful because of its strangeness. Therefore, a passage through the ‘unhomely’ can be also uncanny. The alien, the unknown can give rise to anxiety and fear, and it can also be found within that which is homely. Similarly, we can find the homely in that which isn’t, for instance, a place that was strange and fearful before can become our home over time. Heidegger thinks that even when both homely and unhomely are structural parts of our being, it takes a passage through both in order to understand the difference. The homely/unhomely distinction is therefore a process. The passage through the foreign is not a simple outcome of ‘wandering around’ or of purposefully searching for the ‘unhomely’. Heidegger states the opposite, that ‘[b]eing unhomely […] is a seeking and searching out the homely, a seeking that a time does not know itself ’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 74). It can be said that from a call of our own Being, a felt need for the understanding of the nature of our being, we venture out into the foreign. At times it might not be clear that it is the ‘homely’



Locality and Journeying in Migration

39

that we are in search of, but as we wander out of a familiar zone, we encounter the strangeness that can bring about the understanding of the distinction, and maybe the understanding of the search itself. Heidegger explains: ‘The one who is unhomely always relates back to the homely, and can only do so by not attaining the homely’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 75). Venturing out of the homely requires a turning away from it. However, it also implies a constant relating back to it. It is ‘a forgetting as well as it is a remembering’ (Young, 1999, p. 91). Relating back to the source is what makes up our history as beings. Nevertheless, Heidegger does not see the relation to the source as a return to a metaphysical origin, but as the search for the homely, for satisfying one of our fundamental ontological desires. Heidegger calls this relating back to the source ‘thoughtful remembrance’, or the acknowledging that one belongs or belonged to a certain ‘elsewhere’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 115). Heidegger speaks of boldness as a type of courage to experience the foreign or the unhomely, and it is that boldness to venture out which allows us to ‘appropriate one’s own’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 21). Quoting Hölderlin, he says that the ‘yet untraveled spirit fails to be fully at home in the Heimat’ (Young, 1999, p. 89). Again, this is about acquiring the understanding of what it is like to be at home or to be unhomely. The entire point of the journey is to ‘learn from the foreign for the sake of what is one’s own’ (Young, 1999, p. 98). However, being unhomely always remains a potential, as a reunderstanding or recontextualisation of what we experience as homely. Just as what was once alien can give rise to a homely environment, our experience and understanding of what is homely might change over time. That is, the venturing out towards the foreign can also be a cyclical process that reveals the ambiguity between both poles, homely and unhomely. As Heidegger says, ‘Becoming homely makes manifest the essential ambiguity of being unhomely’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 115). Directly related to this dialectical travel between the homely and the unhomely, Heidegger speaks of ‘poetic dwelling’. Not only do we search for dwelling places and strive for a homecoming, but for Heidegger the fact that we dwell, the experience of the homely, arises from ‘the poetic’ (Young, 1999, p. 86). Dwelling, as opposed to simple existing, can only occur in a sacred place, a place of poets. The sacred, for Heidegger, entails the experience of the sublime, or the ability to find our worldly existence sacred in, for instance, awe inspiring moments brought by the presence of nature, or another human being, and so on. In Poetically … Man Dwells, Heidegger defines poetry as that which first makes man belong to earth, that which brings him into his own dwelling. It is the capacity to find the sublime in existence that is poetic for Heidegger, it is

40

Landscape and Travelling East and West

that which allows man to build beyond the moment, which throws him towards the future. To dwell poetically, Heidegger says, is also to ‘include the alien in the sight of the familiar’ (Heidegger, 1975, p. 226). It is to admit the strangeness, or to recognise the unavoidable passage through the foreign in order to return, in order to, as Heidegger states, ‘proclaim unfaltering nearness’ (1975, p. 226).

The river and the locality of journeying or the journeying of the locale Heidegger draws from Hölderlin’s poetry, specifically that on rivers, in order to illustrate his thoughts on dwelling. The river is directly related to dwelling through its journey. Julian Young (2002) explains how Heidegger’s use of the river as the journey symbolises the process of homecoming. The river is a representation of the locality of dwelling of human beings, and its journeying is related to our historical essence. The river is then both locality and journeying. The river gives rise to a place of dwelling, or as Hölderlin’s poem says: ‘Here, however, we wish to build, for rivers make arable the land’ (Young, 1999, p. 83). The river then becomes the rising and the building of the home. Although in flux, it is also a locale, a sequence of points in flux. The river, for Heidegger, serves as a physical reference with essential existential meaning. ‘The river “is” the locality that pervades the abode of human beings upon the earth, determines them to where they belong and where they are homely (heimisch)’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 21). Again, Heidegger emphasises the always already contextualised situation that we find ourselves in, the locale, but also refers to a historical trace, as the river is also a journeying. Hence, the river represents the unity of locality and journeying, a unity of origin. However, rivers are also temporal. The rivers provide an insight into the historical past, indicating the rising of the dwelling place, as well as the upcoming journey, both intrinsic to the flux of the river. The interaction between the foreign and the homely, the process of homecoming, constitutes the historicity of man. Heidegger explains: ‘The rivers themselves, in their flowing, are oriented in a twofold direction. As vanishing, the river is underway into what has been. As full of intimation, it proceeds into what is coming’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 29). Hence the river, through its temporality, is also a journey. The river prevails through its journeying, while through its course it makes ‘grounds’ for the homely. The river represents the journey of becoming homely, and it is this journeying that is its very nature.



Locality and Journeying in Migration

41

‘The river dwells,’ Heidegger states, in order to point out the intrinsic element of the locale to the river (Heidegger, 1996, p. 36). Our becoming homely can be traced to an ‘over there’, to a point of departure, and also to a point of arrival. ‘The river is in the state of wandering’; however, such wandering is not aimless (Pattison, 2000, p. 178). The river retains the connection to its source as it shapes the landscape. ‘The river makes paths on the previously pathless earth’, and it is that state of wandering which allows to make oneself ‘at home on earth’ (Pattison, 2000, p. 179). Then, the river ‘journeys’ between locales, between the point of departure and the point of arrival, and it is that journeying which allows both locales to exist and to be connected to one another. Heidegger explains: ‘The river determines the journey, and the relation grounded therein, the relation of those locales that have been brought about in journeying and thus themselves journey’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 36). It is the sequence of moments, of ‘now points’, that Heidegger calls the flow of the river. The river is the representation of becoming in-the-midst-of-flux (Pattison, 2000). The stream is the context, but it is also the poetic, as grounding, dwelling and wandering (Sallis, 1993, p. 384). It is the in between, a demigod, between the vision of the sublime, the arising of the poetic, and the dwelling places of mortals, sketching out where they are built. The river ‘reveals and offers what is near and far’ through its journeying (Sallis, 1993, p. 385).

Migrating towards the homely Julian Young states that the experiences of travellers are always ‘thoughtfully related back to the homely’ (Young, 1999, p. 90). Heidegger does not refer to the process of homecoming as being specific to travellers, but as a part of human existence, travelled or untravelled, travellers and migrants reveal such experiences of homeliness and unhomeliness through their physical journeying. Studies on migration offer regional ontologies on the relations with the home, and yet, the depth of such journeying speaks of Heidegger’s existential analysis of our relation to our very nature. However, Heidegger never forgets the contextualised structure of our existence. In his concepts of dwelling, homecoming, journeying, he goes back and forth between the existential significance of what we encounter physically. In the experience of migration, these themes surface unavoidably. The past experience of the place of origin permeates and defines the experience of every migrant through a ‘presencing in the manner of absencing’ (Young,

42

Landscape and Travelling East and West

1999, p. 92). The original meaning of the home is transformed when faced with the new society, out of the necessity of learning to dwell within the foreign. It is possible that the sense of the uncanny and the unfamiliar never truly goes away, and so finding comfort within the foreign becomes a prerequisite through daily existence. As a result, the idea of home as the place where we feel safe and protected, where we ‘return to our own being’, becomes less fixed. It allows, for example, for a multiplicity of homes, none of which provide a full sense of safety and protection. The ‘presencing in the manner of absencing’ is the memory of the original source, of the point of departure of the journey. The home left behind in order to look for a better lifestyle or merely just something different is intrinsically related with the idea of the return home, the mirror where one might or might not find oneself again. Migration allows for the building of dwelling places, of familiarity within the unfamiliar, for emulating the feeling of comfort through the memory of it. Migration, through its journeying, makes room for places where we can dwell. Through migration, the flux becomes the locale, the journeying is necessarily a dwelling place while it is also a becoming. It is a reinvented home, while it is also the promise of the return to the home. Such experience allows for the surfacing of what Heidegger considers foundational aspects of our being. It speaks of a deeper meaning, which although always potentially accessible, at times remains forgotten. Migration is an expression of a call which entices us to understand our very nature.

References Brah, A. (1996), Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge. Clifford, J. (1997), Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edwards, J. C. (2002), ‘Poetic dwelling on earth as a mortal’, in H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds), Heidegger Reexamined: Art, Poetry and Technology. London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1962), Being and Time. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (trans.). London: SCM Press. —(1996), Hölderlin’s Hymn ‘The Ister’. W. McNeill and J. Davis (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1975), Poetry, Language, Thought. A. Hoftstader (trans.). New York: Harper Colophon Books. Moreiras, A. (2008), ‘Harassed Unrest. Notes on Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling



Locality and Journeying in Migration

43

Thinking”’. Online at: www.abdn.ac.uk/spanish/basque/documents/albertomoreiras. doc Pattison, G. (2000), The Later Heidegger. London: Routledge. Sallis, J. (1993), Reading Heidegger: Commemorations. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Young, J. (1999), ‘Poets and rivers: Heidegger on Hölderlin’s “Der Ister”’. Dialogue, XXXVIII, 391–416. —(2000), ‘What is dwelling? The homelessness of modernity and the worlding of world’, in J. Malpas and M. Wrathall (eds), Heidegger, Authenticity and Modernity: Essays in Honour of Hubert Dreyfus. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 187–200. —(2002), Heidegger’s Later Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4

On the Way: Foolish Notes of an Old Nomadic Poet-Philosopher Günter Wohlfart

Preface The poetic travel-diary Oku no hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Interior) of the great Japanese Haiku-Master Bashō (1644–94) begins with the words ‘Sun and moon, days and months stay only for a short time as guests of aeons of time’ – a reference to the great Chinese poet Li Bo (Li Bai) (701?–62).1 At the beginning of his Preface for the Poetry from a Spring Evening Party for my Cousins in a Peach Blossom Garden, Li Bo says: ‘Heaven and earth are the guesthouse for the thousand things, where light and darkness pass by as guests through aeons of time. Life in this transitional world is like a dream. Who knows how often we will laugh again?’ (Minford and Lau, 2000, p. 723).

Departure: How to arrive on the way Zuo wang: Sit (and) forget Why set out on the way? In the Zhuangzi, we find an answer: dao ji xu (‘on the way you can gather emptiness’) (Zhuangzi yinde, 1986, 9/4/28). What does xu (‘emptiness’) mean? Xu means xin zhai (‘fasting of the heart-mind’). After fifty years full of philosophy (full of German Idealism nonetheless!), I have come to appreciate what I am tempted to call a ‘Daoist imperative’: xu er yi (‘be empty, that’s all!’). Only if you empty your heart-mind, if you fast spiritually, can you ‘use your heart-mind as a mirror’ (xin ruo jing). Only then can you ‘respond’

46

Landscape and Travelling East and West

(ying). And this is exactly what the ‘arrived’ Daoist has to do – and the poet, too, but we will come back to this in a minute. First, to conclude my discussion on Zhuangzi, I wish to address an expression occurring in the first part of the Xiao Yao You chapter: zhi ren wu ji (Zhuangzi yinde, 1986, 2/1/21). Feng Youlan correctly considers these words to be at the core of Zhuangzi’s thought. It is usually translated along the lines of: ‘The ultimate human (zhi ren)– or the “perfect” human – has no ego.’ However, I prefer my own ‘freestyle’ translation: ‘The man who arrives (on the way) is without an ego.’ Zhi can not only mean ‘ultimate’ but also ‘to reach, to arrive’. And, this human who arrives on the way is empty. This human uses the heart-mind like a mirror. However, as a – to use Peter Sloterdijk’s swearword – Euro-Daoist, I must make a confession: I regard my work as a poet-philosopher as a work in progress on the myth of the Ego, or – as I have been known to say – on the myth of the Egod. I reformulate the myth because, in modern times, our big Ego seems to be the resurrection of our Christian God, who passed away long ago. Thank God I am an atheist! When I sit and forget (zuo wang) my Egod, sometimes, at rare instants, I have the feeling that I am arriving … Fortunately, I do know of a man who arrived on the way, and I like to believe I am limping along in his footsteps. His name is Bashō – the Haiku-poet. Like me, he admired Zhuangzi. One of Bashō’s disciples records: The master said ‘Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.’ What he meant was that a poet should detach the mind from his own personal self. Nevertheless some poets interpret the word ‘learn’ in their own ways and never really learn. For ‘learn’ means to enter into the object, perceive its delicate life and feel its feelings, whereupon a poem forms itself. A lucid description of the object is not enough: unless the poem contains feelings which have spontaneously emerged from the object, it will show the object and the poet’s self as two separate entities, making it impossible to attain a true poetic sentiment. The poem will be artificial for it is composed by the poet’s personal self. (Ueda, 1970, p. 167)

The poet who arrives on the way of writing is without an ego. His or her poem is sans sujet, as the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (Derrida, 1990, p. 11) says (the French word sujet has the double meaning of ‘subject’ and ‘object’, and, therefore, we must understand the poem as without either subject or object). The poet does not look at the bamboo as an object, but instead looks as the bamboo. It is a case of unio poetica of subject and object. The poet’s heart-mind is empty like a mirror and reflects like a mirror; but it responds (resonates) like an echo – if the poet arrives on the way.



On the Way: Foolish Notes of an Old Nomadic Poet-Philosopher

47

But how to arrive on the way? Is one to practice hard? Yes and no. The only thing we have to do (without doing!), and this only after a long way, is to realise that we are already arriving. What we are looking for is already here and now, in this very Augen-Blick (instant, moment). It is already right in front of our eyes. Et ecce est ante nos, said St Augustine: Open your eyes stupid, nothing is hidden! Ludwig Wittgenstein, a ‘West-Zen-Master’ without knowing it, put it this way in section 129 of the Philosophical Investigations: ‘The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something – because it is always before one’s eyes.)’ (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 50). He says as much in other words in section 89: ‘We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand’ (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 42). Do not bother looking behind you, do not search beyond or underneath – you stupid meta-physician – it is all hidden on the surface. In this way, the journey of the poet is a wonderful journey into the here and now. The ‘way’ is here under your feet, and what you search for is right here and now in this Augen-Blick, right before your eyes.

Der Augen-Blick: On the way to silence ‘Wir leben nur Augenblicke und sehn den Tod umher.’ (‘We live only instants and see death around.’) (Hölderlin, Hyperion) For forty years, the Augenblick has been the Leitmotiv of my work. Der Augenblick was the title of my first book, and Augenblicke is the title of my latest book.2 Allow me to summarise my ideas about these ‘fulfilled’ Augenblicke to which Hölderlin refers. First, how are we to translate Augenblick? Is the meaning best captured using ‘moment’, from the Latin momentum, and therefore indicative of a movement; or is it best captured using ‘instant’, from the Latin stare, literally ‘to stand’, indicating a standstill? I think the answer is neither and both: these fulfilled Augenblicke seem to be something like ‘instantaneous moments’, and therefore represent a contradiction. Allow me to explain. Sometimes it may happen that we, in waking up from a sort of butterflydream, and still half-dreaming, stare into the landscape in front of us and, for one Augen-Blick, at a glance, we all of a sudden realise something: whether it be a mossy stone, or an old roof-tile in the setting sun, or something else. At a glance, the mossy stone seems to transubstantiate itself into – itself. What is it

48

Landscape and Travelling East and West

that happens? For a moment, the constant movement in the flow of time seems to stand still. This moment is an instant; it is a ‘standing now’, a nunc stans, where time seems to stand still in no time. Nietzsche called this fulfilled kairos ‘sudden eternity’, Walter Benjamin spoke of a ‘profane epiphany’, and Robert Musil talked about ‘daylight mysticism’. In my own rendering, I would say that these Augen-Blicke are time-crystals: bright crystals in the stream of time that are frozen moments in the flow of time. These bright crystals are beaming with the sudden clarity of suchness. They are, in keeping with Hölderlin, the lightning of life in the night of death. What has the Augen-Blick to do with poetry? Well, the fulfilled Augen-Blick is significant, to the extent that the poet tries to mirror the beams of these significant instants. The poet tries to respond to these significant instants by giving signs – in these cases through words. Think of Bashō – in particular think of the verbal minimalism of the Japanese Haiku. The poet does not use many words; no, he or she does not use words at all: xi yan ziran (‘sparing words self-so-ing’), as it says in the Laozi in chapter 23. The Haiku mirrors the spirit of the Augen-Blick. It responds to the signs given by the ten thousand things. It responds with ‘wordless words’ (yan bu yan). The Haiku-poet uses words to let us forget words. The poet’s words are like index fingers, pointing at the moon. Do not stare at the finger, stupid! The poet’s words are erasers. They erase themselves. They are arriving on the way to silence. They show the ten thousand things in their ineffable individuality and uniqueness. The poet – like the sage – lets us forget words and ideas. His or her sapientia is to let us taste the sapor, the ‘taste’ of things, and smell the fragrance of such-ness. The Chinese poet Yang Wanli (1127–1206) applied Zhuangzi’s simile of the fish-trap and the rabbit-snare to poetry: How is poetry made? – One may cherish the words, this should be the essential! – Or rather, the good poet may get rid of words and cherish ideas (yi). – Or rather, the good poet may get rid of ideas! – But when both words and ideas are gotten rid of, where’s poetry then? Well, poetry is just there where words and ideas are gotten rid of. (Moeller, 2004, p. 62)

Return – Homecoming ‘Reversal (fan) is the movement of the dao, as Hans-Georg Moeller translates the beginning of chapter 40 of the Laozi’ (Moeller, 2007, p. 97). In the first



On the Way: Foolish Notes of an Old Nomadic Poet-Philosopher

49

sentence of chapter 13 of the Zhuangzi, we are reminded that the dao of heaven revolves ceaselessly and thus in the same way as the way of the sage – and the poet-philosopher. Their heart-minds (xin) are empty (xu), and can thus mirror heaven and earth and respond (ying) like an echo. The silent picture of the poet mirrors the white clouds, coming and going, self-so-ing (following Roger Ames I translate ziran literally as ‘self-so-ing’). For the great old nature-poet Tao Yuanming (365–427), ‘the life of man is like a shadow-play / which must in the end return to nothingness’ (Minford and Lau, 2000, p. 501). In his ‘Rhapsody’ The Return, he says: To get out of this and go back home! My fields and garden will be overgrown with weeds – I must go back … The clouds aimlessly rise from the peaks, The birds, weary of flying, know it is time to come home … So I manage to accept my lot until the ultimate homecoming. Rejoicing in Heaven’s command, what is there to doubt? (Minford and Lau, 2000, pp. 518–19)

Enough poetical words. Some years ago I read a paper on Daoism in Hong Kong. Chad Hansen was the reader of a subsequent paper. Afterwards he said to me: ‘Günter, you are a Dao-Romantic.’ I think he was right.

Notes 1

2

The translation is mine, based on the German rendition by G. S. Dombrady (Bashō, 1985, p. 42). I use the old pre-Socratic term aeon (see Heraclitus, B 52) to translate the Chinese bai dai, which literally means ‘hundred dynasties’ or ‘generations’, and thus indicates a long period of time. Aeon, normally translated as ‘eternity’, originally meant the circular, periodical (re)generation of life. Besides chronos and kairos it was the third – meanwhile nearly forgotten – concept of time in Ancient Greece. It reminds me of the Daoist concept of time, occurring for example in the Zhuangzi in chapter 13, where it says: ‘The way of heaven revolves ceaselessly … The way of the emperors revolves ceaselessly … The way of the sages revolves ceaselessly …’ (Mair, 1999, p. 119). The crucial Chinese character here is yun, meaning ‘to revolve’ and indicating a circuit or a period of time. Published on the internet: www.guenter-wohlfart.de

50

Landscape and Travelling East and West

References Bashō (1985), Auf schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland. G. S. Dombrady (trans.). Mainz: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Derrida, J. (1990), Qu’est-ce que la poésie. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose. Mair, V. H. (1994), Wandering on the Way. Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Minford, J. and Lau, J. S. M. (2000), Classical Chinese Literature, Volume 1. New York and Hong Kong: Columbian University Press and Chinese University Press. Moeller, H.-G. (2004), Daoism Explained. From the Dream of the Butterfly to the Fishnet Allegory. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court. —(2007), Daodejing (Laozi). A Complete Translation and Commentary. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court. Ueda, M. (1970). Matsuo Bashō. Tokyo, New York and London: Kodansha International. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Zhuangzi yinde (1986). Shanghai: Guji Chubanshe.

Part Two

Strolls and Scrolls

5

Travelling with Laozi and Plato May Sim

Conventional travel is often associated with leisure. Leisure is bound up with pleasure, and pleasure is often linked to activities that involve beauty – for instance, the pleasure of pursuing beautiful sights and sounds. When travelling, people choose places with beautiful sights and sounds. Consider the breathtaking landscapes that the Grand Canyon, Shenandoah and Sequoia National Parks have to offer, not to mention the beaches around the world that soothe our senses of smell, touch and taste. If this is how travelling and landscapes are related, then why should we travel with Laozi and Plato, two thinkers who don’t seem to be fans of travelling or landscapes at all? Laozi, author of the classic text (jing) about the way (dao), would seem to have something to offer travellers, since they need to know which way to go to keep from getting lost. Almost everyone knows that getting lost is one of the least desirable experiences in travelling. Conventional travellers, however, would look in vain to Laozi or his sage for guidance concerning the way to beautiful landscapes. His view is that we can know the whole world without exiting the door; we can see the way of Heaven without looking out the window (Ivanhoe, 2002, chapter 47). Moreover, Laozi asserts, ‘the farther one goes, the less one knows, [thus] sages know without going abroad’ (Ivanhoe, 2002, chapter 47).1 Even if sages were to travel, Laozi says that they ‘travel all day without leaving their baggage wagons. No matter how magnificent the view or lovely the place, they remain aloof and unaffected’ (Ivanhoe, 2002, chapter 26). According to Laozi, not only is travelling unnecessary, it actually hinders knowledge. By the same token, in Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates is known for not having travelled abroad, and for not having set foot beyond the city walls (Plato, 1995, p. 230d1–2). Like Laozi’s sage who can know the whole world and the way of Heaven without travelling, Socrates is credited with knowledge of the nature of the whole world because he understands the nature of the soul.2 Knowledge

54

Landscape and Travelling East and West

of the nature of the whole world is bound up with the nature of the soul for Socrates, because knowing the truth of something involves the soul’s knowing if it is good or bad, and knowing the respects in which it is similar to or different from something else. Only by knowing how things are similar and dissimilar to one another can one avoid deception. Socrates asks: ‘And is it really possible for someone who doesn’t know what each thing truly is to detect a similarity – whether large or small – between something he doesn’t know and anything else?’ (Plato, 1995, p. 262a10–12). Socrates goes on to say that if someone doesn’t know what something is, he will not only be deceived, but he will also lack the rhetorical art to lead another incrementally, by similarities, to a proper conclusion. Since the soul is the knower of truth, it must not only know itself, but also all truths, including the nature of the world.3 Socrates finds knowledge of the nature of the soul to be bound up with knowledge of the nature of the world, so that the individual and the world are interconnected through knowledge. Laozi also maintains that there is a certain relation between the individual and the world with respect to knowledge. Laozi holds that someone who acts for the world with the same honour and love as he has for his own body can be trusted with the custody of the world (Ivanhoe, 2002, chapter 13). For Laozi, both the body and the world are natural and come from the same source, namely, the way (dao), for the way is said to be the mother of heaven and earth.4 Not only does everything (wanwu) originate from the way (dao), but everything returns to its root which is called stillness (jing), a return that is also its destiny (ming) and constancy.5 Again, Laozi says, ‘turning back is how the way moves, everything (wanwu) under heaven is born from existence or being (you), and existence is born from nonexistence or nonbeing (wu).’6 Ultimately, being natural (ziran) is the way or principle of flourishing for everything, including the way itself, for Laozi says that heaven’s law is the way and ‘the law of the way is the natural’ (dao fa ziran) (Laozi, 2003, chapter 25, my translation). Thus, understanding how to accord with nature, even in caring for one’s body, means that one understands how to accord with nature to care for the whole world, especially if one can regard the world in the same way as he regards his body.7 What’s natural in caring for the body, in Laozi’s view, is to fill the belly when it’s hungry instead of pursuing the conventional pleasures of the senses like the eyes, ears and tastes. For Laozi, such pursuits of the five colours, sounds and tastes are unnatural. They limit what they value to a set of extremes while neglecting the opposite extremes of this set of sensible objects.8 Such one-sided pursuits of extremes will not only ruin our five senses but cause our hearts/minds (xin) to be mad (Laozi, 2003, chapter 12), insofar as Laozi



Travelling with Laozi and Plato

55

believes that opposites are naturally interdependent and are to be harmonised rather than be mutually exclusive. More elaborately, one characteristic of being natural is the knowledge (zhi) of harmony (he). As Laozi puts it, ‘Knowledge of harmony is called constancy (chang); knowledge of constancy is called enlightenment (ming)’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 55, my translation). For Laozi, nature consists in a constant harmony or balancing of opposite qualities.9 Here are three examples he uses to illustrate such harmony: even though a new-born’s body is weak, it is coupled with the firmness of its grip; children can cry all day without getting hoarse; finally, old age follows a period of vitality. If the harmony of opposites is the natural way of things, then ‘using the heart-mind (xin) to enable qi (vital force/energy) [which] is called force (qiang)’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 55, my translation)10 is contrary to the way (dao). A harmony of opposite qualities is natural and, ultimately, the natural is the norm of everything.11 As Laozi puts it: There are four great things: the way (dao), heaven (tian), earth, and human beings (ren). And how people live is one: The law (fa) of the people is the earth; the law of the earth is the heaven; the law of heaven is the way; and the law of the way is the natural (ziran). (Laozi, 2003, chapter 25, my translation)

Since the way arises before heaven and earth, and is their mother, it is also the norm of all things. Given that the natural (ziran), is the norm of the way, the natural is in turn the norm of all things. Nothing captures the natural as the norm of the way like un-hewn wood. Just as the constant way is nameless, un-hewn wood is also nameless (Laozi, 2003, chapter 32). Despite the simplicity of un-hewn wood, Laozi maintains ‘no one under heaven can control it. If the princes and kings could preserve it, all things (wanwu) would subject themselves, heaven and earth would unite […] and the people would be just without being commanded’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 32, my translation). Laozi continues by saying: ‘[W]hen actions begin, so do names. And when there are already names, man must also have knowledge to stop. Knowing when to stop, he can avoid danger’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 32, my translation). Koji Tanaka explains the danger of naming, noting that each name has its opposite (Tanaka, 2004, p. 197). Opposites lead to our distinguishing between what is (shi) and what is not (fei), which in turn lead to our preference for one of the opposites over the other in social behaviour. Tanaka says: Given a pair of opposite terms, we distinguish shithis from feinot this and behave accordingly. A pair of opposite terms induces in us a shi-fei discrimination pattern, for example “difficult” and “easy.” The shi-fei pattern is then assigned

56

Landscape and Travelling East and West “preferences” for our social behavior: preference for “easy” over “difficult” for example. Our social behavior is guided by pairs of opposite terms in this way. (Tanaka, 2004, p. 197)

However, Tanaka rightly recognises that, for Laozi, distinctions between opposites like shi and fei, like distinctions between wu (nonbeing) and you (being), can’t be constant, and hence such distinctions are merely conventional and can’t ‘provide a constant guide to a social harmony’ (Tanaka, 2004, p. 198) because ‘every “stuff ” belongs to the you side of the distinction […] it is not possible to draw the constant wu-you boundary. For what there is not cannot be’ (Tanaka, 2004, p. 198). Given the conventional emphasis by the Confucians on the rectification of names (zhengming) in ruling, in addition to Laozi’s belief in the inability of names to capture constant distinctions as well as to guide our actions, Laozi advocates a different way to harmony. Instead of using names, he thinks that the way to harmony is the natural way in which one should ‘assist all things (wan wu) in their being natural (ziran) and not dare to act for the sake of some preconceived purpose (wei)’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 64, my translation), which would interfere with their natural conditions.12 Thus, he holds that if one can exercise the natural way in dealing with one’s body, then one can also use this understanding for the world. Like Plato, Laozi holds that an individual’s knowledge is intimately bound up with knowledge of the world. According to Plato, to know an individual soul is to know the whole world. Similarly, according to Laozi, to know what’s natural for an individual body is to know the way of the world. Both agree that such knowledge is not achieved by travelling the world and stimulating our five senses with beautiful landscapes. Nevertheless, differences between the two regarding the individual’s knowledge and the nature of the world are also rife. Knowledge of the soul’s nature is indispensable for Plato, whilst Laozi prizes knowledge of the body’s nature. Knowing the nature of the world allows the Platonic soul to make distinctions between things that are similar and those that are different so that one can use names correctly, use speech properly, and direct the soul to truth through speech. He offers the example of knowing the differences between a donkey and a horse, emphasising the importance of not mistaking a donkey for a horse and employing it for military expeditions (Plato, 1995, pp. 260b1–261b). In contrast to Plato’s penchant for distinguishing things, naming them and then speaking about them, Laozi favours the indistinct (chapter 25) and vague (chapter 21), the nameless, and being sparing with



Travelling with Laozi and Plato

57

words (chapter 23). Even though the sensible things of the visible world are mere objects of change for Plato (and therefore seem akin to those things that aren’t fixed and thus can’t be named for Laozi), to the extent that these sensible things are copies or images of the Forms themselves (so that even these visible things are governed by mathematical proportion, number, measurement and scientific knowledge)13, they are ultimately different from the things of Laozi’s world, which aren’t distinct enough for either science or maths, let alone caused by invariable truths like the Forms which can only be accessed by reason, independently of the body and the visible world.14 Whereas Plato is interested in directing the soul to truth through speech, Laozi recommends the way of noninterference (wuwei) toward the body and the world – allowing nature to direct their existence instead. Nonaction (wuwei) doesn’t mean not acting for Laozi.15 Rather, he advocates actions without engaging in activities (wushi) (chapter 63). Engaging in activities is bound up with trying (chapter 48) to achieve certain results; activities and striving are not only meddlesome but hinder the natural conditions of things. Laozi says: ‘The more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people […] The more clear the laws and edicts, the more thieves and robbers’ (Ivanhoe, 2002, chapter 57). Laozi’s recommendation that we act by supporting things in their natural conditions contrasts with Plato’s focus on knowing the soul and the world without advocating any action to assist the whole world. Whereas Laozi’s knowledge of the way is practical and adapts to the changing circumstances so as to assist things in their natural existence,16 Plato’s knowledge of the truth seems strictly restricted to contemplating the fixed and unchanging nature of the soul and truths.17 Nevertheless, Laozi and Plato share the view that knowledge isn’t gained by a conventional understanding of travelling. Despite the fact that travelling the way is not a travelling drawn to landscapes, we can still detect, upon closer inspection, a direction or path of life, no matter how vague or elusive, that we should travel. One characteristic of the way is that whatever direction we offer is not the constant way; whatever name we tender is not the constant name. As discussed above, whatever way or name offered can never capture the constant changes that pervade things in their natural states. One must always be on the lookout for the opposite path as well, since giving into one path can limit us from realising the natural way. How about Plato? Is there any sense of travelling, any direction for travelling or towards landscapes beyond his initial answer of ‘no’, if we take travelling in the conventional sense?

58

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Delving deeper, it seems that travelling is an essential activity of the soul for gaining knowledge. Like travelling the way for Laozi, travelling to the truth for Plato is not achieved by traversing miles and gratifying our five senses. Laozi’s way (dao) can be trodden by someone’s having a certain regard for his own body, and by comporting himself toward the world in the same way as he comports himself toward his body. Consider how natural it is for our bodies to be constantly changing from being hungry to being full, being thirsty to being quenched, and being tired to being rested. For Laozi, if someone could regard the world in the same way as he would tend to his constant bodily changes, he would be better able to assist the world in its natural condition than if he were to adhere to a fixed perspective of dealing with it.18 In contrast, Plato’s journey to the truth is accomplished by an individual soul’s activity rather than the body’s activity. Moreover, Plato would advocate adhering to the eternal and unchanging invisible truth that only the soul can access, rather than the shifting changes of our bodily appearances.19 More specifically, Socrates claims that a soul is by nature immortal because it is always in motion (Plato, 1995, p. 245c6-e10). He takes refuge in a simile to say what a soul is like instead of explaining what it is, claiming that the latter is too long and only accessible to the divine. Likening the soul to a charioteer and two winged horses, Socrates explains that the winged horses enable the soul’s charioteer to steer the soul to the outer rim of heaven to view the truths beyond heaven. The truth is ‘without color […] shape and […] solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman’ (Plato, 1995, p. 247c7–9). A god’s soul is like the human being’s, nourished by seeing the truth in the unchanging Forms of Justice, Temperance, Knowledge and Beauty (Plato, 1995, p. 247d1-e2, p. 250c3–4). It is composed of two good horses and a good charioteer, whereas a human soul is composed of a charioteer, a good white horse and a disobedient black horse. The white horse is modest, temperate, honour-loving and obedient to verbal commands. The black horse is boastful, intemperate and barely obeys even when whipped. The god’s soul not only travels easily to the Forms, but can remain with them without struggling because the goodness of all three parts unite and cooperate in his journey to truth. But a human soul needs to struggle because his three parts don’t act in unison. The disobedient black horse in a human soul represents man’s desires and appetites, which are drawn naturally to the bodily pleasures of sex, food and drink. In contrast, the white horse represents man’s honour-loving, spirited part which readily obeys the charioteer’s commands. The charioteer, as we’ve seen, represents man’s intellect or rational



Travelling with Laozi and Plato

59

soul. Consequently, a human soul’s journey to the Forms is wrought with struggles to control the two horses that pull in opposite directions. Instead of viewing the Forms that pass by as one is brought around by the heaven’s circular motion like the gods, the human soul is distracted by the horses’ struggles. Consequently, human souls only catch glimpses of reality if at all; their horses trample and strike one another in their struggles to reach the outer rim of heaven, breaking their wings. Unable to sustain flight because of their broken wings, they fall to earth. Because the Forms are ‘the right food for the best part of the soul’ (Plato, 1995, p. 248c1), seeing them is the condition for remaining with the gods until the next life. Breaking one’s wings and falling to earth would result in a variety of incarnations in proportion to how much reality one has seen and can recall. The first type of incarnation includes the lovers of wisdom, beauty, or of those prone to erotic love; the second type includes a lawful king or military commander; the third a statesman, the fourth a trainer or a doctor, and so forth, ending with the ninth who is a tyrant. Having seen the significance of travelling to the truth for Plato, let’s compare his journey with Laozi’s way. Whereas Laozi preaches being on the way, harmonising opposite qualities, supporting all things in their natural conditions instead of interfering with them, and being content rather than contending (Laozi, 2003, chapter 46), Plato’s journey of the human soul is characterised by the battle between the opposites of the good horse and the bad horse, interrupting the natural desires of the body for sex, food and drink, contending with, rather than supporting other human beings, and aims to reach an end in immortality, to reside with the gods. While journeying to this goal, there’s no harmony of opposites for Plato. For instance, whereas Laozi thinks that the opposites of nonexistence (wu) and existence (you) are to be harmonised and value accorded to both and not only to existence, since existence has nonexistence as its source, Plato would never advocate that the bad horse should sometimes lead and be valued. Instead of feeding the natural condition of human desires, they are beaten into submission.20 Nor are we obligated to assist others in their natural conditions while journeying to reality. Contention with other human souls, trampling upon and striking them, rather than finding contentment and supporting them in their natural conditions, is the trademark of a Platonic trip to the Forms. Despite these differences, there are similarities between Laozi’s way (dao) and Plato’s Forms. Both Laozi’s way and Plato’s Forms are the causes and norms of all things in the world. Just as the way causes the nature of things and prescribes adhering to the natural condition of things, each of Plato’s Forms

60

Landscape and Travelling East and West

causes things to have the specific qualities they have and provides the norms for each of these qualities. Both Laozi’s way and Plato’s Forms are unchanging and constant,21 invisible22 and simple.23 Thus, these sources are not accessible to our physical senses. For instance, Socrates says that the Forms are only visible to our intellect, and Laozi says that we can look for the way but it can’t be seen (chapter 35). Travelling the way for Laozi, like journeying to the Forms for Plato, is a returning to the source since the way gives rise to everything and the Forms cause everything to be what it is. At this point, we might notice a difference regarding the source for Plato and Laozi if we focused on the multiplicity of Forms for Plato and the singularity of the way for Laozi. Moreover, whereas Plato’s Forms exist most fully, Laozi’s ultimate source is the nonexistent (wu). Nevertheless, their views are not so different if we consider that the Form of the Good in The Republic is Plato’s ultimate source. Even though the Form of the Good is the cause of all reality, truth and knowledge, the Good itself is neither an object of knowledge nor is it simply reality or truth.24 Rather the Good itself is beyond reality. As such, Plato’s Good is like Laozi’s ultimate source as the nonexistent (wu), since the wu is also not any particular object of knowledge nor is it a reality or truth, but beyond the ten thousand things (wan wu). Upon arrival at the source for each of these authors, their differences are rife. Whereas one should continue to travel the way until one dies and is naturally on the way beyond death for Laozi, one stops travelling after one returns to the Forms or knows them for three consecutive reincarnations for Plato. Instead of dying (naturally, after a long life), as is the case for Laozi, and still being on the way upon death (since nonbeing is also the way’s way), the human soul, for Plato, achieves immortality when it reaches the Forms, and stops travelling upon arriving at this destination. This difference between living and dying in Plato and Laozi, respectively, stems from their metaphysics. Laozi’s way is vague, elusive, indistinct, nameless (chapter 21, chapter 25, chapter 32) and nonbeing (chapter 40) – in the sense that it’s not any particular thing, it can’t be mastered (chapter 32), and one must always therefore be on the way. Plato’s Forms, on the contrary, are definite, distinct, nameable, and, moreover, exist most fully. One can master and have knowledge of the Forms, and stop travelling once this is accomplished. Laozi’s classic text of the way is also a text about virtue (de). So far, most of what has been said about travelling the way also applies to virtue. For instance, his remarks that one who has the highest virtue (shang de) doesn’t strive (bu de) to have it, and that one would act with nonaction (wuwei) and hence act without trying to achieve a specific outcome (wu yi wei), are all consistent



Travelling with Laozi and Plato

61

with his characterisation of the sage who exemplifies knowledge of the way. Namely, the sage would abide by the way of noninterference, and let nature direct the existence of things. This means that he is attuned to and supportive of the spontaneous changes of things in their natural conditions, rather than striving to achieve certain preconceived results. Just as he advocates being active without engaging in activities (wushi), acting with nonaction (wuwei) so that one doesn’t try to rule the people with more prohibitions and laws which only result in more robbers, Laozi thinks that talk of virtues is really a sign of their absence. For Laozi, it is ‘after the way is lost that virtue arises, after virtue is lost that humaneness (ren) arises, after humaneness is lost that appropriateness (yi) arises, and after appropriateness is lost that ritual proprieties (li) arise’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 38, my translation). Note that these virtues about which there’s so much talk are different from what Laozi sometimes calls ‘the highest virtue’ (shang de), which operates by not striving for an outcome, acting with nonaction and abiding by nature when one acts. Accordingly, Laozi’s way works hand in glove with virtue. He says: The way (dao) gives birth to them, virtue raises them, things shape them, power completes them. None among the ten thousand things does not honor the way and value virtue […] Producing and not possessing them, acting and not relying on results, raising and not ruling, is called the mysterious virtue. (Ivanhoe, 2002, chapter 51)

Put otherwise, travelling the way is living a life of virtue in which one supports everything in the world produced by the way in their natural conditions (chapter 64) and never puts oneself first in the world (chapter 67). In contrast to Laozi’s unity of the way and virtue, it seems that Plato’s account of the human soul’s journey to reality is not related to virtue when one considers the violence between the souls while struggling to reach the Forms. Unlike Laozi’s view of not putting oneself first in the world, it seems that the Platonic soul prioritises itself on its trip to truth. Even though Plato praises the contemplative life and doesn’t seem to emphasise a life of virtuous actions, the life of virtue is bound up with the journey to truth and goodness for him.25 This is the case for Plato because the way to reach the Forms after one has fallen to earth is by recalling them. Even though all the Forms, such as Justice, Temperance and Wisdom, are not accessible to our senses in this world, the Form of Beauty has the privilege of being most visible and loved (Plato, 1995, p. 250e1–2). Beauty, in the face of one’s beloved, is a way to remind us of the Form of Beauty itself. Instead of succumbing to lust and desire for the beloved, because the Form of

62

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Beauty stands next to Temperance, one’s recollection of Beauty would lead one to be self-controlled. Being inspired by the god to whom someone was once devoted prior to his fall, he would try to train his beloved to become like his god.26 Plato says that lovers would ‘show no envy, no mean-spirited lack of generosity […] but make every possible effort to draw [their beloveds to] being totally like themselves and the god to whom they are devoted’ (Plato, 1995, pp. 253b8–253c1). Consequently, one is not only trying to travel to the Forms to achieve immortality for oneself, but is also exercising the virtues and helping one’s beloved achieve the virtues, journey to the Forms and reach immortality as well. Apart from the virtues exercised toward one’s beloved, Plato also holds that the human soul won’t be reincarnated into a better fate unless it has led its life with justice (Plato, 1995, p. 248e5–6). Thus, one is to exercise the virtues toward other human beings while journeying to reality, and not only restrict them to oneself and one’s beloved.27 Nevertheless, exercising the virtues while journeying to truth is still limited in scope when compared to Laozi, whose more cosmic exercise of the virtues is intertwined with everything, not only human beings. He says: ‘The way gives birth to the ten thousand things (wanwu) and does not resign; it clothes and supports them without lording over them’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 34, my translation). Again: ‘The way of heaven has no close relatives; it is always together with good people’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 79, my translation). Laozi’s way, then, extends to the whole cosmos and entails the right actions from human beings to support the cosmic world. Contrariwise, Plato’s journey to a personal immortality and that of one’s beloved only extends the virtues to other human beings. Finally, what would Laozi and Plato say about landscapes, since neither is keen about travelling? One irony of the Phaedrus is that Socrates was able to lead Phaedrus to a place on their walk – a first trip beyond the city walls for Socrates – which by his own admission was a ‘beautiful resting place’. This place has a shady tree in full bloom filling the fresh air with its fragrance, intermingling with the echoing sweet songs of cicadas, next to a lovely spring with cool water and a grassy slope that’ll cradle their heads when they lie down. Despite this, Socrates says, ‘landscapes and trees have nothing to teach me – only the people in the city can do that’. Socrates admits that he was only willing to leave the city in anticipation of Lysias’ speech about love which Phaedrus has agreed to share. Nevertheless, I do not think that it is fortuitous that Socrates led Phaedrus to a landscape which stimulates all five senses with its beauty. Because of the privileged position beauty has in reminding us of the Form of Beauty itself,



Travelling with Laozi and Plato

63

which in turn would lead us to recall the other Forms, the beautiful landscape foreshadowed and reinforced the significance of beauty in Plato’s view. Thus, I think that Plato presented a Socrates who was able to find the perfect landscape to discuss the human soul’s journey to reality even though he never ventured into nature, to show that his knowledge of the Form of Beauty enables him to practically lead another – in this case, Phaedrus – to a beautiful landscape which will help remind him of the Form of Beauty too. Similarly, even though Laozi is no friend of travelling, given his view that the way is the source of everything and being natural (ziran) is the norm for flourishing, we can infer that so long as a landscape is natural instead of man-made, he can appreciate its beauty. Like un-hewn wood and something that is not striving to be beautiful, a natural landscape exemplifies the presence of the way and human virtue insofar as man has not exploited the natural world in his desire for precious stones and wealth. Ultimately, despite there being more differences than similarities between Laozi and Plato regarding nonconventional and nonspatial travelling, there seems to be a coincidence in their views of landscapes if we consider how they would agree that an attitude of reverence and non-meddling contemplation is most appropriate in our relation to landscapes. Thus, comparing Laozi and Plato on travelling and landscapes illuminates a more significant sense of travelling and enlightens us about the lessons a beautiful landscape can offer.

Notes 1 2

3

Unless otherwise stated, translations are from The Daodejing of Laozi (Ivanhoe, 2002). All chapter references will be provided in parentheses. Plato, 1995, p. 270c1–3. See p. 245c2ff where Socrates offers a proof of the soul’s immortality and continues with an account of the tripartite structure of the soul by offering a simile with a charioteer steering his two winged horses. He also claims to know ‘who’ Phaedrus is and not to have forgotten who he himself is (p. 228a5–6). Knowledge of particular souls, as Socrates tells us later in this dialogue, is one of the requirements for practising the art of rhetoric since speeches need to be tailored to the particular characters in order to be persuasive (pp. 271d1–272b). Another way of looking at this Platonic requirement of knowing one’s soul, which is bound up with knowledge of all truths and the nature of the world, is by looking at Plato’s simile of the line in Republic VI (Plato, 2006). Plato’s divided line explains the various states of the soul (noêsis, dianoia, pistis and eikasia) along with their corresponding objects (Forms, scientific and mathematical truths,

64

Landscape and Travelling East and West

sensible things in the visible world and images), respectively, in such a way that shows how someone who has knowledge of reality or the Forms not only knows with which state of the soul it grasps the truths, but also the other states that grasp truths or images of truths that are more or less removed from the Forms and thus understand the nature of the objects which vary in degrees of truth and clarity. I believe that the same way in which knowledge of the truths and the nature of the world are united with knowledge of one’s soul in the Republic is expressed by the Phaedrus’s insistence that the soul’s knowledge of itself is united with its knowledge of all truths and the nature of the world. I defend this way of reading Plato’s divided line in Sim, 2011a, pp. 109–21. 4 My translations and paraphrases are based on the online Chinese text of the Daodejing (Laozi, 2003 hereafter), chapter 25, http://www.yellowbridge.com/ onlinelit/daodejing25.php 5 Laozi, 2003, ch. 16, my paraphrase and translation. 6 Laozi, 2003, ch. 40, my paraphrase and translation. By nonexistence or nonbeing (wu), Laozi, like other Daoists, doesn’t mean an absolute nothing/nonbeing that is the way (dao) and the source of everything. Laozi tells us that the dao is ‘indistinct and complete, preceding heaven and earth. It is alone and empty, independent and unchanging’ (Laozi, 2003, chapter 25, my translation). Thus, instead of being nothing at all, the dao is called nonbeing because it isn’t any particular thing. As such, the way as the source of all things is distinct from the proximate causes of things. I discuss this distinction, which in my view is also applicable to Laozi, in ‘Being and Unity in the Metaphysics and Ethics of Aristotle and Liezi’ (Sim, 2011b, pp. 304–22); see especially p. 308, notes 6 and 7. As I’ve indicated in these notes, authors like Tang Yi (1983, pp. 397–417), ‘Taoism as a Living Philosophy’, and Zhu Bokun (1998, pp. 13–71), ‘Daoist Patterns of Thought and the Tradition of Chinese Metaphysics’, also offer interpretations that support such a distinction between the dao as the source which isn’t any particular thing, nor is it an absolute nonbeing. 7 As Qingping Liu puts it, ‘Daoism […] takes natural feelings as the first principles of human life in harmony with the natural world’ (Liu, 2011, p. 121). 8 See Laozi, 2003, chapter 2: ‘Being (you) and nonbeing (wu) give rise to each other, the difficult and easy complete each other, the long and the short shape each other, the sound and the voice harmonise each other, beginning and end follow each other. Thus the sage manages affairs according to effortless action (wuwei) and teaches through action (xing) without speech (bu yan)’ (my translation). 9 See note 8. 10 See Laozi, 2003, chapter 76, which associates the firm and strong with death and how soldiers who rely on strength will fail to conquer just as a strong tree will be broken. 11 In emphasising such a harmony of opposites which is natural and the norm



Travelling with Laozi and Plato

65

of all things for Laozi, my position is different from Robert Neville’s view that there isn’t ‘a unified vision of harmony’ in Daoism; instead, the constant ‘shifts in perspectives of value is more important to moral life’ (Neville, 2002, p. 14). Neville believes that regardless of how committed Daoists may be to completing things, ‘they are flighty when it comes to sustained effort’ because they are too attuned to ‘nature’s transformative openings’ (Neville, 2002, p. 17). Although I agree with Neville’s emphasis on the Daoists’ attunement to the constant changes in nature, I disagree with him about how Daoists don’t have a unified view of harmony but are always ‘achieving harmonies and then loosening them to form new harmonies’ (Neville, 2002, p. 12). If my interpretation that Daoism seeks the harmony of opposites which is both the natural and the norm of all things is correct, then there is a particular way of things that is their natural condition, which way any right harmony should reflect. And that norm, way, or harmony, then, is what guides a Daoist’s sustained effort, even though his effort is always carried out effortlessly. 12 I agree with Alex Feldt that Laozi’s ruler ‘is not acting in the purposive, desire based way that is condemned throughout the Laozi. He is not acting from social norms or artificial values. Rather, he simply acts in a manner that allows things to accord more with the dao’ (Feldt, 2010, p. 334). Nevertheless, I disagree with Feldt’s characterisation of the ruler’s enjoyment of political authority and his maintenance of ‘ultimate control’ in a ‘bureaucratic centralized state’ in which he is the administrator of ‘numerous ministers’ who have direct control of the government operations (Feldt, 2010, p. 335). This bureaucratic arrangement strikes me as too artificial for Laozi. 13 I defend this way of reading the relation between the visible things in this world and the intelligible realm of calculative and scientific reasoning on Plato’s divided line in Republic VI in Sim, 2011a, p. 118: The truths that are known by the mathematical section govern all the visible things by making them what they are, where they are, etc. For instance, number is required to make something one, give it size, shape, depth, position, speed of movement and determine how it relates to other things. In short, math makes the visible things the way they are and makes them images of the Forms, providing them with the degree of reality or intelligibility they have. Consequently, it is not an accident that the section of visible things equal the mathematicals.

See also note 14 for my reference to Samuel Wheeler’s emphasis on how the goodness of good actions, insofar as it’s real, is accessible to scientific understanding for Plato. 14 For commentators who hold that reality is to be grasped by rationality alone, see Gerasimos Santas’ ‘Plato on Goodness and Rationality’ in which he says that for

66

15

16

17

18

19 20

Landscape and Travelling East and West Plato, ‘determining whether something is good is totally the function of reason’ (Santas, 1986, p. 105). More elaborately, Santas asserts, ‘The Form of the Good is at once the formal cause of the knowability of all the other Forms and of their being the best objects of their kind, the perfect specimens of goodness of kind. And since the Forms are objects of reason, […] the paradigms of goodness are objects of reason, and the cause of their goodness as pure an object of reason as one could possibly be (Santas, 1986, p. 106). See also the following remark by Samuel C. Wheeler, III: ‘“rational understanding” is always a matter of seeing what is good’ for Plato (Wheeler, 1997, p. 181). Nevertheless, Wheeler also emphasises the affinity between the realm of action and scientific necessity for Plato. He says: ‘Plato takes the goodness of good action to be real and so subject to scientific understanding’ (Wheeler, 1997, p. 182). See my ‘Is the Liezi an Encheiridion?’, note 22, for how wuwei for Liezi doesn’t mean not acting at all, which meaning is also applicable to Laozi (Sim, 2011c, p. 74). Rather, that wuwei means not being partial in a personal or parochial way is clear when Paul Goldin says, ‘wei implies action that is undertaken from a partial or parochial worldview, an intervention in discord with the spontaneously perfect and all-encompassing flow of the dao’ (Goldin, 2005, p. 79). Similarly, Koji Tanaka (2004, p. 199) follows Chad Hansen in translating ‘wei’ as ‘for the sake of ’ or ‘in order to’ (Hansen, 1992, p. 213), inferring that ‘to wei is to act based on socially induced preferences, for Laozi’ (Tanaka, 2004, p. 199). As Robert Neville puts it, ‘Daoism is extremely realistic in its shifting engagements with shifting situations, alert to the rhythm of the dance and the sudden openings for non-being to make something new’ (Neville, 2002, p. 15). Contrast this with Robert Neville’s claim that for the Daoists, ‘No absolutes exist because there are no absolute perspectives from which the achievements of the Dao can be appreciated and assessed’ (Neville, 2002, p. 16). Nevertheless, that there’s a relation between Plato’s eternal truths and the realm of actions, see note 14 (my remark about Wheeler’s view), note 24 (my remark about Ferber’s view) and note 25 (my remark about Reeve’s view). As Robert Neville puts it, ‘Long-term perspectives when planned out in patterns reduce to crude instrumentalisms that cover over real novelty and spontaneous possibility, and often resort to forcing affairs in the direction of predetermined goals’ (Neville, 2002, p. 13). That such a fixed truth for Plato is nonetheless related to the changeable, visible realm, see note 14 above and notes 24 and 25 below. Fred D. Miller, Jr. offers a less authoritarian reading of the relation between the rulers who possess reason and their subjects who are to be compelled to obey reason. He argues that because each of the subjects is also capable of rationality, the rulers can rule by rational persuasion and other means like deception,



21

22 23

24

25

Travelling with Laozi and Plato

67

censorship and coercion rather than by compulsion alone (Miller, 2005, pp. 70–1). Furthermore, he also argues for the distinction between practical wisdom and philosophical wisdom, which means that ‘the capacity for rational deliberation does not need to be limited to a philosophical elite’ (Miller, 2005, p. 71). If Miller’s interpretation of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled were extended to the reasoning part’s relationship with the spirited and appetitive parts of the soul, which extension is Plato’s intent for the analogy between the tripartite city and the tripartite soul, then it could also mean that these parts of the soul may be less contentiously and more harmoniously related. Souls which parts are more harmoniously related then, would exemplify the virtuous whose non-rational parts would follow the lead of reason in performing their own functions rather than try to usurp reason’s practical wisdom regarding the good of the whole soul. Laozi, 2003, chapter 25, chapter 16 and chapter 1. Plato, 1995, p. 250c4 and p. 247d8-e2, when he tells us that the soul has knowledge but not the kind that changes. Laozi, 2003, chapter 35; Plato, 1995, p. 247c7–8, p. 250d5–6. Plato, 1995, p. 250c4; Laozi, 2003, chapter 19, chapter 32. To the extent that I believe that, for Laozi, we can identify such determinate characteristics of his dao, namely, its being unchanging and constant, invisible and simple, just to mention a few, I disagree with Neville’s claim that nothing can be said about the dao as the source except in reference to its creations: ‘The relation is asymmetrical: the unnameable Dao creates and the named dao is created. Nothing can be said of the former except in reference to the latter’ (Neville, 1991, p. 55). For details of why I disagree with Neville on this issue, see Sim, 2011d, pp. 48–9. As R. Ferber puts it: ‘But Plato has also become well aware of the fact that not only no state, but also no character can realize the Idea of the Good in his soul and that the Idea of the Good is not the “human good” or the good for man’ (Ferber, 2003, p. 121). Instead of the Form of the Good which can never be realised, Ferber proposes the ‘appropriate’, saying: ‘But this appropriate does not “imply,” but rather copies (we may assume) – even though inexactly – an exact itself, namely the idea of “the exact itself ” or the good itself ’ (p. 121). Ferber elaborates by saying: ‘[T]he appropriate is neither an idea nor a phenomenon […] [but] is somehow an intermediate between phenomena of the senses and ideas, namely a standard for judging the realization of an idea – here presumably of “the exact itself ” – in the inexact world of the senses’ (p. 121). C. D. C. Reeve remarks about the limitation of theoretical knowledge alone for rhetorical technê in Plato, 1995, pp. 271d7–272a8 of the Phaedrus: ‘But theoretical knowledge of how kinds of souls are affected by kinds of speeches is not enough […] Theoretical knowledge doesn’t make one a rhetorician; one also needs the sort of practical knowledge that comes only with experience gained outside

68

Landscape and Travelling East and West

school’ (Reeve, 2005, p. 32). See also p. 33 for Reeve’s claim that experience is included with knowledge and reason to have good judgement in Republic 9. 26 Plato, 1995, pp. 252c3–5 and 253b1–4: followers of Zeus will be philosophers, of Ares warriors, of Hera guardians of marriage, and of Apollo guardians of music, prophecy, healing and the sun. 27 C. D. C Reeve would maintain that such justice can only be achieved by philosophers who possess ethical technê in the Kallipolis, for he says: ‘With ethical technê to guide his choices, we may infer, the philosopher can get beyond mere hope of personal salvation to salvation itself, and beyond personal salvation to political salvation. But he will do so only if his technê includes both the theoretical component on which (the elenctic) Socrates focused and the experiential one represented by Cephalus and Odysseus’ (Reeve, 2005, p. 38).

References Feldt, A. (2010), ‘Governing through the Dao: a non-anarchistic interpretation of the Laozi’. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 9, 323–37. Ferber, R. (2003), ‘The absolute good and the human goods’. Philosophical Inquiry, 25, 117–26. Goldin, P. (2005), ‘Why Daoism is not environmentalism’. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 32, 75–87. Hansen, C. (1992), A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ivanhoe, P. J. (2002), The Daodejing of Laozi. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Laozi (2003), Daodeing. http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/daodejing.php Liu, Q. (2011), ‘Emotionales in Confucianism and Daoism: a new interpretation’. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 38, 118–33. Miller, F. D. J. (2005), ‘Plato on the rule of reason’. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 43, 50–83. Neville, R. (1991), Behind the Masks of God: An Essay Toward Comparative Theology. Binghamton: SUNY Press. —(2002), ‘Daoist relativism, ethical choice, and normative measure’. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 29, 5–20. Plato (1995), Phaedrus. A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. —(2006), The Republic. New Haven: Yale University Press. Reeve, C. D. C. (2005), ‘Philosophy, craft, and experience in the republic’. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 43, 20–40.



Travelling with Laozi and Plato

69

Santas, G. (1986), ‘Plato on goodness and rationality’. Revue Internationale De Philosophie, 40, 97–114. Sim, M. (2011a), ‘Das Liniengleichnis und die Einheit der Seele in Platons Politeia’ (‘The divided line and the united psychê in Plato’s Republic’), in J. Hardy and G. Rudebusch (eds), Grundlagen der Antiken Ethik (Foundations of Ancient Ethics). Göttingen: V&R Unipress, pp. 109–21. —(2011b), ‘Being and unity in the metaphysics and ethics of Aristotle and Liezi’, in R. A. H. King and D. Schilling (eds), How Should One Live? Comparing Ethics in Ancient China and Greco-Roman Antiquity. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 304–22. —(2011c), ‘Is the Liezi an encheiridion?’, in R. Littlejohn and J. Dippmann (eds), Riding the Wind: New Perspectives on the Daoist Classic. Binghamton: SUNY Press, pp. 51–74. —(2011d), ‘The question of being, non-being, and “creation ex nihilo” in Chinese philosophy’, in J. F. Wippel (ed.), The Ultimate Why Question: Why is There Anything at All Rather Than Nothing Whatsoever? Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, pp. 43–64. Tanaka, K. (2004), ‘The limit of language in Daoism’. Asian Philosophy, 14, 191–205. Tang, Y. (1983), ‘Taoism as a living philosophy’. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 12, 397–417. Wheeler, S. C. III. (1997), ‘Plato’s enlightenment: the good as the sun’. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 14, 171–88. Zhu, B. (1998), ‘Daoist patterns of thought and the tradition of Chinese metaphysics’. Contemporary Chinese Thought, 29, 13–71.

6

Yinyang Landscape: Fengshui Design and Shanshui Painting Robin R. Wang

Daniels and Cosgrove define landscape not in physical terms but as an outward expression of human perception: ‘a landscape is a cultural image, a pictorial way of representing, structuring or symbolising surroundings’ (Cosgrove et al., 1988, p. 12). According to this understanding, landscape can be a raw material with which to study human perceptions and human information processing. Chinese thinkers throughout history have always existed in a multifaceted relationship with landscape and they have used this link in formulating their thoughts, sentiments and way of life. This association is rooted in a fundamental assumption that the universe is itself in many ways an extended human being and that the myriad things are a manifestation of the human heart/mind. In the writings of Confucius we read that ‘wise human beings enjoy mountains, benevolent human beings enjoy water’ (Ames, 1998, p. 105). Human dispositions are connected with natural shan (mountains) and shui (water). Zhuangzi and Mengzi claim that the myriad things are within us. In these contexts, landscape has had both a descriptive and a prescriptive role. This chapter will discuss landscape in the Chinese context as a human construction with an underlying structure and presuppositions. It will focus on an intrinsic connection between internal landscape and external landscape, focusing on how the internal landscape is based on xinshu (the way of the heart/mind). Fengshui design and shanshui painting are two cases that illustrate the basic principle of landscape construction. They demonstrate how yinyang offers a way for connecting and explaining the interplay between external and internal landscapes.

72

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Xinshu (The way of heart/mind): The source of external and internal landscape In the Critique of Judgement Kant states: Bold, overhanging, as it were threatening cliffs, […] a lofty waterfall on a mighty river […] make our capacity to resist into an insignificant trifle in comparison with their power. […] we gladly call these objects sublime because they elevate the strength of our soul above its usual level, and allow us to discover within ourselves a capacity for resistance of quite another kind, which gives us the courage to measure ourselves against the apparent all-powerfulness of nature. (Kant, 1987, p. 149)

Kant is talking about our moral capacity to resist nature and to act instead according to the moral law. This represents the elevating element, recognition of something greater than all the powerful nature within us. Clearly there is an internal source or capacity that enables us to contend with our physical and natural surroundings. The idea of an internal source within human beings is also common in early Chinese texts. The Lüshi Chunqiu (c. 240 bce) claims that sense organs themselves desire sounds, scents, tastes, and so on. However, if one wants to find joy in these, then such desire must originate in the heart/mind (xin) (Knoblock et al., 2000, p. 142). Xin literally refers to the biological human heart. But xin also performs the function of thinking and feeling. There is therefore a way of xin, or xinshu. Xinshu is the real source of joy. To have this joy, the heart/mind must be harmonised or balanced (he). This he is a result of the heart/mind fitting or becoming appropriate (shi) with or for the order or pattern of things (Knoblock et al., 2000, p. 143). Compliance with yinyang as the ordering of things enables one to taste, smell and see things with enjoyment. This is how the heart/mind governs the senses, and how the heart/mind can serve as a possible source of pleasure and joy. This le – delight, joy, pleasure – derives from being one with nature. Being one with heaven and earth and flowing with events efficiently is therefore the source of happiness. The Guanzi, an encyclopedic compilation of Chinese philosophical materials associated with the fourth century bce, has a special chapter on xinshu, which provides a more detailed explanation: The xinshu lies in regulating the apertures through wuwei (nonaction). That is why sage does not do running for a horse nor do flying for a bird. One should not try to preempt the ability of others nor compete with your subordinates. […] The ruler stands in the Yin. The Yin is stillness. It is said if you move you



Yinyang Landscape: Fengshui Design and Shanshui Painting

73

will lose your position. By occupying the Yin, one is able to control the Yang. By being stillness one is able to control movement. That is why if you remain stillness, you will naturally retain it. (Rickett, 1998, p. 75)

In the Guanzi, xinshu is identified with six factors: fullness, sincerity, thickness, extension, measure and reciprocity (Rickett, 1998, p. 75). This xinshu can be the result of external stimuli, but it is the core of the internal landscape that is most closely connected with the proper arrangement of emotions and one’s vision of the world. Zhuangzi’s heavenly joy (tianle) is described thus: ‘One who in living moves according to the movements of heaven and who in dying follows the transformations of the myriad things knows heavenly joy. Stillness is uniting with the de of yin; movement is the synchronizing with the waves of yang. One who knows heavenly joy has no complaints, no troubles’ (Ziporyn, 2009, p. 65). The ‘Classic of Music’ chapter of the Liji says: Now, the people have dispositions of the blood-and-qi and of the mind/heart and knowing, but they do not have constancy in sorrow, joy, pleasure, and anger. They are stimulated and respond when things arise and then they move. Afterward, the xinshu takes form. (Wang, 1981, p. 650)

The Hanshi waizhuan, compiled by Han Yin in the Western Han Dynasty (202 bce–8 ce), makes many of the same connections: One must follow the mandate of heaven, manage the xinshu, coherently order loves and hates, and properly adjust emotions and dispositions, and then managing the Dao will be complete. If one follows the mandate of heaven, then one will not be confused by fortune and misfortune, and if one is not confused by fortune and misfortune, stillness and movement will be cultivated. If one manages the xinshu, then one will not recklessly love and hate, and if one does not recklessly love and hate, then rewards and punishments are not feared. (Zhao, 1938, p. 69)

In both passages, xinshu is associated with external events, and yet it is bound with the proper cultivation of emotions and desires (loves and hates). Xinshu is also a focal point of Xunzi’s practices for self-cultivation, the way of managing qi, the cultivation of the heart/mind, and a necessary part of sagehood: ‘When water reaches the utmost balance, neither side tilts. When the xinshu is like this, it is the image of a sage’ (Chen, 1954, p. 655). From these readings we learn that xinshu is not simply playing a role in managing one’s emotions but is also an important source for one’s perception and vision of the world, especially in artistic creations.

74

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Two cases of the link between internal and external landscape Let us now look into two specific cases, namely those of fengshui (literally wind and water) and shanshui (mountains and water) painting, to show how internal landscape is interrelated with external landscape. The origins of fengshui are in burial practices. The importance of fengshui for burial practices can be traced back to the theory of the division of the soul or life forces into two kinds, hun and po, a distinction that may be as early as the Zhou dynasty. Hun is a kind of qi that belongs to yang; it comes from heaven and will ascend to heaven; po is a kind of qi that belongs to yin, which has a specific form and will go down to earth, the ground. The contemporary Chinese scholar Qian Mu (1895–1990) explains that ‘po refers to human physical form (xingti); hun refers to the human consciousness (jushi) and activities generated from physical form’ (Qian, 2011, p. 65). Hun and po are active in both the human body and consciousness. Qian Mu discusses three important aspects of these two souls. First, hun and po are not two independent entities or substances, existing prior to the existence of the human body. That is, there is no substantial soul before human existence; it is not the case that a soul enters a body and sustains a human life. The human life, as sheng, living or vital, is the qi that animates it. Second, these two souls are generated after the qi-body and yet they represent two different functions and activities of the one body. Hun and po are living forces that form a union with the human body when one is alive. At death, they depart and leave the body, not as two independent substances, but rather as two kinds of qi movements. The Elegies of Chu (Chuci) refers to this as ‘hun and po separating and leaving’ (hunpo lisan). They each have their own fate. The hun-soul as qi moves quickly up to heaven, and the po-soul, as the heavier physical form, moves downward to earth. Therefore, one death ritual, called the fu, attempts to ‘summon the hun and return the po’ (zhaohun fupo). Third, hun and po are inherently connected with xin (heart/mind). In a general comparison with Western culture, Qian Mu states: Chinese culture explores human xin carefully and in detail. We often use xing (disposition, nature) and qing (feeling, emotion) to talk about xin. Speaking of xing is to show that there is a thousand years of continuity to the human xin (heart/mind); speaking of qing is to show there exist broad penetrating interactions between human hearts (xin). The Greeks liked to talk about human reason but this is only one function of human xin. The highest value of Chinese culture



Yinyang Landscape: Fengshui Design and Shanshui Painting

75

is the ability to have a wholeness of xin (human heart/mind) as its basis. (Qian, 2011, p. 143)

He concludes that hunpo refers to xin (Qian, 2011, p. 143). There are many different expressions regarding hun, all of which indicate that hun is the hun of xin (heart/mind). The hun is the function of xin, or the fire of xin. Fire cannot burn on its own, but must rely on something else that is to be burned. Xin relies on po, physical form, to function. A new-born baby already knows hunger and cold. This demonstrates the function of po, that is, a part of human xin. Po is the physical aspect of xin, known as the tipo, so the various expressions used to describe the po are all related to physical conditions. The hun and po, as the human heart/mind and the physical conditions, must be cultivated in order to be strong and well. As the Zuozhuan claims, ‘A strong hun and po can make someone physically healthy and mentally and spiritually illuminated’ (Qian, 2011, p. 67). Keeping the hun and po is essential to staying alive. According to popular belief, hun will come out of a dead body (linghun chuqiao) and ascend to the sky to become a spirit (shen), whereas the bodily po (routi luopo) will enter the ground to become a ghost (gui). A key part of ancestor worship and rituals of reverence was to build a proper tomb for the body and the po soul. Given its associations with po, the earth and darkness, the tomb was called ‘the house of yin’. The methods of searching for and arranging a proper ‘yin house’ gradually developed into a comprehensive architectural system. In the Jin Dynasty, Guo Yi (276–324 ce), the father of this practice, first used the term fengshui to label this method in his Zangjing (Classic for Burials). The Jin Shu (The Book of Jin) has a record of his family and his extraordinary abilities, which included divining to choose a proper burial site, as well as selecting the site for the city of Wenzhou in Fujian Province (He et al., 2007, p. 86). The story of his choice for his mother’s tomb tells us that he selected a burial site that was only one hundred steps from water. People worried that this was too close and that the water would cover it, but he predicted that the water would eventually be gone and the burial site would be surrounded by crops. His prediction turned out to be correct. His Classic for Burials has only about two thousand characters and it covers basic ideas for burial (see He et al., 2007, p. 88). Its main contribution was the first categorisation of what had already been developed through a long history of practice. The text is circulated in Daoist temples by the Daoist Association with no publisher or dates, and its opening line declares: ‘Burying is all about riding along with generating qi.’ In Chapter 2, we read: ‘Qi will disperse when it

76

Landscape and Travelling East and West

meets wind and qi will congregate when it meets with water […] Ancient people gather it to not let it disperse and find a way to stop it. This is called fengshui.’ As we see in these passages, fengshui contains three basic elements: qi, wind (feng) and water (shui). Fengshui is the art of generating qi. The association between wind and water is found in the Yijing in hexagram 59, huan. The huan image is about dispersing (san) and departing (li), however, the point is how to use human effort to keep the qi together. The flow of qi will change when it encounters wind and water. Qi will be dispersed when it meets wind, and qi will gather, be concentrated and reside when it meets water. So in selecting a burial site, one must find a place that avoids wind and generates water. Its ultimate goals are to create a smooth flow of qi, therefore leading to good fortune and averting ill fortune. Fengshui lays the ground for a flourishing life by using patterns of yinyang to locate a specific place or arrangement of one’s physical space for the sake of having qi flow properly. On a broader level, finding the proper place for the living and the dead lies largely in configuring the relationship between heaven, earth and human beings, or making a better arrangement of one’s external landscape. One has to pay close attention to three interrelated aspects, bringing together heavenly timing (tianshi), earthly benefit (dili) and human harmony (renhe). This requires investigations into astrology, terrain, weather, and so on. The discussion of this topic implicitly conveys that the ‘house of yin’ (the tomb) has a proper position (wei), such as south, north, east or west. It also reveals one practical purpose of the burial mounds, which was to help locate the tomb for ritual purposes. Regarding fengshui, one of the main concerns for selecting the location for a tomb would be how qi flows and generates in a particular location. It also requires a concern for the quality of the soil, which should be such that the coffin will not degenerate too quickly. For the yang house of the living, proper geographic location was identified through three phrases: backing mountains (beishan), fronting water (bangshui) and facing the sun (xiangyang). All three are interrelated and embody yinyang principles in organising one’s physical space and landscape. The mountain will give support to the house and stop qi from flowing away. Water will gather the qi and make the qi stay at the house instead of dispersing. Relying on a mountain, one can block the chill from the north in the winter, whereas by facing the sun one can have enough sunlight and warmth. Fronting water can bring a breeze from the south in summer. This configuration recalls Daodejing, chapter 42, which states that everything bears yin on its back and embraces yang in front. Sun and water are the two most important considerations. Aside from these



Yinyang Landscape: Fengshui Design and Shanshui Painting

77

factors, one might point to something vaguer that we could describe as an aesthetic feeling. This aesthetic sentiment arises from many different aspects, such as the interaction of mountain and water, whether a home is open and bright, and how it flourishes as a harmonious part of its surroundings. From an emperor’s palace to the homes of common people, from Daoist temples to Buddhist monasteries, from capital cities to town centres, all take this basic approach to design, constructing an ideal place or position. The external landscape is a cultural image and a human construction. Here is the case of how one’s belief and value shape one’s internal landscape that will be constructed and arranged for one’s external landscape. The internal conviction of qi flow and its effect provide a guidance and blueprint for the design of external environment. Now let us turn to the second example: Chinese paintings. If fengshui is a way of thinking, and this thinking will affect how we perceive and organise the physical landscape, then Chinese painting is a way of feeling that expresses one’s emotions and perceptions through artistic creation. That a painter’s subjective emotion (qing) becomes embodied in objective images is a unique aspect of Chinese painting. The principal aesthetic values and standards manifested in Chinese paintings are based on a group of interrelated pairs of concepts, such as: xu/shi (full/empty); dong/jing (movement/ stillness); biao/li (manifest/hidden); xing/shen (form and sprit). These pairs are all manifestations of a fundamental aesthetic principle: yanggang (strength of yang) and yinrou (softness of yin). The beauty of yang strength and yin softness differs in two main ways from Western aesthetic values of the beautiful and the sublime (Zhang, 2006, p. 73). First, in Chinese landscape paintings, yang strength and yin softness always take up different forms, creating some kind of contrast, and promoting variance and dynamic movement in any given composition. Thus, Chinese paintings always involve some tensions, such as bright and dark; full image and empty space … and so on. Second, yang strength and yin softness are mutual opposites; however, united together they form a dynamic whole. The painting always converges in this oneness. Unlike some European painting traditions, many Chinese landscape paintings did not try to portray an exact likeness or replica of external landscape or reality but rather to accentuate the hidden nature and spirit of the subject. A painting presents a wholeness of all its constituents. Whereas European styles often concentrate more on perspective and shading elements, Chinese landscapes highlight brush strokes, which could be variegated in thickness and tone. These

78

Landscape and Travelling East and West

features reflect yinyang interplay. The Eastern Han artist Cai Yong (132–92) used a yinyang matrix to formulate nine positions (Jiushi) in calligraphy. These positions derive from the movement in calligraphy of up and down, left and right, in and out, vertical and horizontal, head and tail, and beginning and end. Cai Yong writes: ‘My calligraphy is rooted in nature. Yinyang is generated in nature. The positions come from the generation of yinyang’ (Wang et al., 2000, p. 89). One of the most systematic documents linking yinyang to aesthetics is Yinyang Xushilun (On Yinyang Emptiness and Fullness), written in the eighteenth century by the well-known artist Ding Gao (?–1761). Ding Gao makes clear that every aspect of painting – from composition to the use of ink to the relationship between the artist’s mental state and the painting itself – needs to follow the patterns of yinyang. He writes: Everything under heaven is about yinyang. When considering light, bright is yang, dark is yin. When considering a house, outside is yang and inside yin. When considering things, high is yang and low yin. When considering a hill and valley, convex is yang and concave yin. Everything that artists perceive has yin and yang. Therefore painting has emptiness (xu) and fullness (shi). There is yin within yang and yang within yin – such a painting should have fullness in emptiness and emptiness in fullness. Emptiness is moving from having to lacking, that is, diluting (xuanran); fullness is seeing traces and marks, that is, filling (shiran). Emptiness is the exterior of yang and fullness is the interior of yin. Therefore high and low and convex and concave all rely on emptiness and fullness. Yinyang develops from emptiness to fullness as high is the result of low. All flat is pure yang and it is not the method of coloring. There is high then there is coloring (ran); there is low then there is a painting (hua). Although the level area is low, yang makes it bright; although a convex curve is high it must have a background to reveal the highness. (Wang et al., 2000, p. 412)

We can find many of these features in any Chinese landscape painting. The entire composition appears through the interplay of dark and light, which is to say, spaces that are empty or full. These are conceptualised in term of yin softness and yang hardness. This interplay works on the broadest level, in which the fulness of the centre is surrounded by emptiness at the periphery in a swirling pattern that might remind us of the yinyang symbol, which also indicates that within what is full, there is emptiness, and within what is empty, there are marks that are filled in. In the hand and mind of an artist, the landscape is all about the interplay of various yinyang elements. They look for yinyang in reality or construct reality through a yinyang lens. There is nothing beyond yinyang.



Yinyang Landscape: Fengshui Design and Shanshui Painting

79

References Ames, R. (1998), The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (Classics of Ancient China). New York: Ballantine Books. Chen, D. (1954), Xunzi Xueshuo. Taibei: Zhonghua Wenhua Chuban Shiye Weiyuanhui Chubanshe. Cosgrove, D. and Daniels, S. (eds) (1988), The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. He, X. and Luo, J. (2007), History of Chinese Fengshui. Zhuhai: Jiuzhou Press. Kant, I. (1987), Critique of Judgement. W. S. Pluhar (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Knoblock, J. and Reigel, J. (trans.) (2000), The Annals of Lü Buwei: A Complete Translations and Study. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Qian, M. (2011), Soul and Heart/Mind. Beijing: Jiuzhou Press. Rickett, W. A. (trans.) (1998), Guanzi, Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wang, M. (ed.) (1981), Liji, Record of Rituals. Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Press. Wang, Y. and Lu, C. (2000), The Collections of Chinese Classic Aesthetic Concepts. Beijing: Normal University Press. Zhang, Q. (2006), The Meaning Beyond Images: Zhouyi’s Meanings and Images and Chinese Aesthetics of Calligraphy and Paintings. Beijing: Chinese Bookstore. Zhao, Z. S. (ed.) (1938), Hanshi Waizhuan. Beijing: Commercial Press. Ziporyn, B. (trans.) (2009), Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

7

Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape Ouyang Xiao

The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog The lonely traveller stands on the brink of a summit, overlooking the horizon. He is surrounded by the wild and void of nature – the universe as a whole, which to some extent reminds us of the concepts tiandi (heaven and earth) in a Confucian sense or ziran (self-so) in a Daoist sense. Only the walking stick, along with the groomed traveller himself, alludes to a human civilisation far away, sparkling like a weak flame in the strong mountain wind implied by the flowing fog. I am describing a highly cited painting bearing the title: The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (hereafter referred to as Wanderer), by the ‘greatest representative’ (Vaughan, 1994, p. 1) of German painting in the early nineteenth century, the landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. It is, along with most of Friedrich’s other works, often associated with labels such as ‘visionary’, ‘meaningful’, ‘profound’, ‘symbolic’, ‘religious’, ‘spiritual’, and finally, ‘landscape’. Well-garbed city dwellers, like this amateurish mountaineer, presented unrealistically (yet painted in true-life manner) in a wild, fanciful and uninhabitable natural environment, would not have been unprecedented since Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) succeeded in placing his famous reception piece The Embarkation for Cythera (1717) in the French Academy and created the so-called fête galante painting style. In fête galante paintings, human intimacy and leisure in an idealised outdoor setting, wild and mysterious, without any clear clue as to human inhabitation like domestic countryside scenes, has replaced the former religious subject matter and ancient mythological motifs of Renaissance and Baroque paintings. The Rococo period witnessed a change

82

Landscape and Travelling East and West

of ‘protagonists’, placing them in uninhabitable natural settings. Nature, once having served as a backdrop for biblical narratives and dramas derived from ancient mythology and aristocratic worldly festivals, while still depicted by artists, was done so only modestly and without ‘clamouring to be seen on an equal footing’ with the figures (Hofmann, 2000, p. 270). Although the so-called ‘independent landscape paintings’ (where human presence is removed) emerged in the Western tradition in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, it had not yet been established as a genre in itself. Uninhabitable wilds, like mountains, rivers, barren lands and primeval forests and so on, unlike the agreeable and domesticated countryside, hardly appeared in sixteenth-century Flemish landscape paintings or in the canvases of seventeenth-century Dutch artists. Human figures in landscape paintings, in wild natural settings in particular, are deliberately emphasised through perspective, composition and delicate execution. They are usually depicted in a frontal view, occupying the visual centre or the foreground, and are occasionally larger in proportion to the rest of the work. They effectively control the whole of the image’s spatial articulation and expression of meaning, often with exaggerating postures and contrived facial expressions, even if they are ‘staffages’ (accessories) in the manner of Claude Lorrain (1600–82). In this way, an elaborately designed concordance between human figures and the natural background was achieved, but this only at a price: ‘landscape had become too tame and domesticated’ (Clark, 1976, p. 73). This was accomplished largely by suppressing the natural setting as a kind of secondary supplement, or by abstracting it as mere icon. Coincidently, this way of depicting human presence in nature finds counterparts in early Chinese Shanshui, or mountain and water paintings (hereafter referred to as Shanshui painting), the most famous representative of which is probably Luo-shen-fu-tu or Painting of the Goddess of River Luo. In this painting, a number of iconic natural objects, such as mountains, rivers, trees, and so on, are organised in such a way as to represent the wild environment and to form different tableaus for the plots of a fanciful myth. Therefore, when comparing, for example, Giovanni Gellini’s St Jerome in the Wildness (around 1450) with Luo-shen-fu-tu, one will not be surprised to find several similarities. Friedrich’s work participates in and also represents the rise of landscape painting in the early nineteenth century. With the emergence of the genre, all elements of a painting could be considered significant (Hofmann, 2000, p. 269). This is perhaps what the influential methodology for interpreting Friedrich’s painting as a system of hierarchical religious symbols could base itself on. Nature is not merely an agreeable decoration, or a beautifully staged tableau



Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape

83

for a dominant human figure. Although the human figure, the wanderer in Friedrich’s painting Wanderer, who conspicuously occupies the central axis, coloured dark green in a deliberate and strong contrast to the light background and intentionally implied as a visual focus by the silhouettes of the remote mountains, probably draws the viewers’ attention first, he nevertheless appears to fade away quickly under our lingering gaze. Unlike Lorrain’s Virgin Mary on the flight to Egypt or Titian’s Diana in a forest or Watteau’s well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, this solitary and unidentifiable rear-view figure has no intention of attracting our sight through any deliberately exaggerated gesture or expression. In fact, any access from outside the painting seems to be rejected at first, until one projects oneself into the figure of the wanderer in the sense of what Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) meant with ‘reflection’ (Benjamin, 1996, p. 146). The human figure in the painting might then transmit our attention, cast our imagination into the magnificent nature in front of him, and bring us closer to the brink where he stands. However, a predicament simultaneously emerges here, because the centrally placed human figure blocks our sight of a continuously unfolding open view of the mountains. By turning his back to the viewers, he achieves his own ‘negation’, as we can hardly appreciate the human figure in the same way as we used to do in portraits. By occupying the central axis with a deliberate and strong contrast, and by blocking the openness of the view, the human figure also ‘negates’ the landscape, interrupting its depiction as ‘a large area of land’ – a convention cherished by Friedrich’s antecedents and rivals. One finds vivid examples of this, for example, in Friedrich’s master Jens Juel’s (1745–1802) landscape paintings (Hofmann, 2000, p. 254). Further, the elaborately designed concordance between human figure and natural background, common in earlier paintings, has been completely lost in Friedrich’s work. Behind the stillness and solemnity, this painting provides a unique confrontation between the human figure and the wild natural view. Nowadays, after more than one century of ‘changing fortunes’ (Schmied, 1995, pp. 9–20), Friedrich’s uniqueness is no longer doubted. And yet, the common label of ‘the Dresden Landscape Painter’ (or der Dresdner Landschafsmaler) fails to help us further grasp his undeniable historical significance, except as a convenient classification. Friedrich’s uniqueness is beyond the scope of a ‘landscape painter’. Perhaps the uniqueness rightly stems from his violation of the conventions of the genre, which, in turn, helped the evolution of landscape painting into ‘a new art’ of the nineteenth century (Schmied, 1995, p. 20).

84

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Time and individual In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger argues that the essence of the work of art, operating as ‘the strife of lighting and concealing’ (Heidegger, 1978, p. 177), is where truth happens: ‘Truth, as the lighting and concealing of beings, happens in being composed’ (Heidegger, 1978, p. 184). For Heidegger, ‘art is the creative preserving of truth in the work. Art then is the becoming and happening of truth’ (Heidegger, 1978, p. 183). Heidegger’s ‘truth’ raises as many questions as it purports to answer. However, Heidegger’s somewhat obscure interpretation ‘brings forth’ something vital about Friedrich’s Wanderer. A tension (‘strife’) is brought forth from the frame, within the meticulously executed stillness and solemnity. This lines up nicely with the common practice of interpreting Friedrich using the concept of the ‘sublime’, which, according to Kant, in its feeling ‘carries with it, as its character, a mental agitation’ (Kant, 1987, p. 101). In other texts, Kant adds that the feeling of the sublime is a negative pleasure, which arises only indirectly when ‘a momentary inhibition of the vital forces is followed immediately by an outpouring of them that is all the stronger’ (Kant, 1987, p. 98). Both ‘mental agitation’ and ‘momentary inhibition’ seem to illustrate the tension in Friedrich’s Wanderer, and both seem to be compatible with Heidegger’s ‘strife’. On the other hand, combining Friedrich with Kant’s ‘sublime’ is a somewhat convenient and superficial application of both methodologies, and may in fact be misleading, insofar as Kant’s ‘sublime’ is more than a mere category for taste: it is a concept that also bears epistemological and ethical dimensions. Essentially, the sublime in a Kantian sense is not something that can be illustrated by forms, however magnificent they are. Meanwhile, Friedrich’s achievement in Landscape is broader; it embodies more than one aesthetic idea. In order to understand the confrontation in Wanderer, a better position from which to analyse the idea of nature may be necessary. Friedrich Schelling (1775– 1854), in his book Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, has expounded an alternative to Newtonian conceptions of matter and states that ‘matter is an equilibrium of active forces that stand in polar opposition to one another’ (Schelling, 1988, p. x), which implies that nature is ‘a balance of opposed forces of tendencies’ (Schelling, 1988, p. x). If the Dutch landscape paintings of the Golden Age of the seventeenth century, with their elaborately designed and pleasant harmony, depict the idea of inert matter and mechanical nature within a Newtonian world-view, then Friedrich’s scrupulously balanced tensional forms in his Wanderer would probably resonate with those ideas entertained and developed



Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape

85

by Schelling and his followers. Furthermore, oppositional concepts like ‘self ’ and the ‘absolute’, ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’, and so forth, are not only commonplace in the works of German Idealists, but also serve as Friedrich’s coordinates for art (Schmied, 1995, p. 45). It is therefore difficult to argue that Friedrich could have been indifferent to the temperament of German Idealism. At this point, I feel that an investigation into the historical context that underlies Wanderer will be helpful. To this end, we might ask: what was it like for the earliest travellers to climb the summit of a mountain? It is said that Petrarch (1304–74), after a rushed look from the summit of the Alps, opened his copy of St Augustine’s Confessions and started to confess. In China, King Mu (reigned 976–922 bce or 956–918 bce), the most famous early traveller recorded in Pre-Qin history, climbed the mountain Chun, found some evergreen trees amidst the snow and gathered their seeds for his garden. Afterwards he expressed his excitement in a short poem. At another mountain, King Mu found good wild rice and took some home. Both Petrarch and King Mu were occupied with their religious or agricultural interests respectively, and they made no time for the pure enjoyment of the mountain view. In fact, for medieval Western travellers, entertaining pure pleasure from the views of wild nature was inconceivable, because nature ‘as a whole is still disturbing, vast and fearful; and lays open the mind to many dangerous thoughts’ (Clark, 1976, p. 13). This kind of fear of nature is seldom seen in ancient Chinese culture, where even in the Pre-Qin period, powerful and mysterious natural beings (such as mountain spirits) were often depicted as melancholy maidens full of longing, piteously waiting for lovers, rather than as threatening monsters. Following the Enlightenment and the flourishing of modern science, classical physics had largely promoted the reduction of nature to an ordered and machine-like mechanism, which could be fully understood and controlled by the growing human intellect. Consequently, the fear of nature began to subside. However, a new tension between nature and humanity emerged in the Romantic era. This new tension came from a view of nature as both fluid and constantly changing. To some extent, this nature cancelled out the belief in individuality promoted by Romanticism. For example, Novalis claimed that, Nature is the enemy of eternal possessions. According to strict laws she destroys all signs of property and obliterates all distinctive marks of its formation. The earth belongs to all the generations – each one has a rightful claim to everything. The earlier ones may not owe any advantage to this accident of primogeniture. The right of ownership lapses at certain times. (Novalis, 2003, p. 204)

86

Landscape and Travelling East and West

On the one hand, this can be read as a laudation of the legitimacy of innovation, but, on the other hand, it describes an obstacle to the ephemeral flourishing of each generation or every individual. Nothing, it seems, can last forever, except for the constancy of changes constituting nature itself. Friedrich, a contemporary of Novalis, hardly escapes from the climate of the age when ‘the love of nature’ became a common label applied to nearly all of the major writers and artists of the period. The times saw a rising enthusiasm for nature, albeit not always joyful. The meaning of nature had changed. ‘The enthusiasm for nature had a strong mystical element’ (Vaughan, 1994, p. 1), which was viewed as a sign of the mutual interpenetration of religion and nature – the universe in a broader sense. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the influential Romanticist theologist, expresses this by claiming that ‘religion also lives its whole life in nature, but in the infinite nature of totality, the one and all’ (Schleiermacher, 1996, p. 23), and that ‘religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling. It wishes to intuit the universe, wishes devoutly to overhear the universe’s own manifestations and action’ (Schleiermacher, 1996, p. 22). Some sort of transcendence and divinity had been reintroduced into the giant machine of nature via a deeply felt religious sentiment. Quite a few Western art historians have related Friedrich’s work to religious purposes. Indeed, Friedrich talked about ‘God’ and the ‘Divine’ a lot in his writings. However, it is important to keep in mind that his ideas of ‘God’ and the ‘Divine’ reflected a Romanticist reform of theological concepts. Thus, an oversimplified matching of forms from Friedrich’s paintings with the common concepts of Christianity (like the moon as a symbol of Jesus Christ) is problematic. For Schleiermacher, religion’s essence is not thinking but intuition and feeling, while for Friedrich, ‘feeling’ (Hofmann, 2000, pp. 270–1) is vital to his painting, and this more so than any conceptual speculation requiring theoretical reason in the Kantian sense. When Friedrich sets the wanderer at an impasse, the isolated summit of a high mountain above all earthly life, facing the wild void and magnificent natural environment, he seems to present a human confrontation with the universe (in Schleiermacher’s sense), an encounter with the absolute, the infinite of German Idealism (perhaps, even, with Heidegger’s Being). A transcendent and divine dimension has been attributed to nature. Whether this is for religious or philosophical purposes is of no concern. In return, nature gives human beings the opportunity to inquire, reflect and contemplate their own existence and meaning. Interestingly enough, both



Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape

87

of these two processes are united within Friedrich’s frame, and I believe it is this very point that contributes to Friedrich’s historical uniqueness. The painting Wanderer has preserved this historical moment of reunion ever since. Wanderer only represents an aspect of Friedrich’s artistic development. As we know from his later works, this strong tone of confrontation with the wild and untamed nature gradually shifted into a tranquil and serene contemplation with an atmosphere of harmony. Humans were no longer depicted at an impasse, and the obvious traces of human existence in the wild of nature tended to be dissolved in diffuse fog or open ground, as can be seen in The Time of Day (1820–2). Perhaps the artist finally discovered a reconciliation between self and non-self, nature and religion, art and artist, and so on – the themes which had haunted him for years. While Friedrich never turned his figures, allowing them to face their audiences, his figures did start to enjoy a poetic dwelling reminiscent of a Zhuangzian sentiment. The human figure leaning against The Solitary Tree (1822, p. 29), for example, somehow reminds us of Zhuangzi’s metaphor of wu-he-you-zhi-xiang or realm of Nothingwhatever: Now if you have a great tree and think it’s a pity it’s so useless, why not plant it in the realm of Nothingwhatever, in the wilds which spread out into nowhere, and go roaming away to do nothing at its side, ramble around and fall asleep in its shade? (Graham, 2001, p. 47)

Zong Baihua claimed that ‘Chinese people of the Jin dynasty outwardly discovered nature (ziran) and inwardly found a deep sentiment of themselves’ (Zong, 2005, p. 368). In my opinion, this idea also sheds light on the historical existence of people in the Romantic era in the West. History mirrors itself in a meaningful correspondence: debates on the dialectic of ziran and mingjiao, tian and ren, tiandao and rendao, and so on, were largely responsible for the cultivation of the whole zeitgeist of the Wei-Jin dynasty, while concepts like self, non-self, the absolute, nature, religion, universe, individuality and feeling, and so on, shaped nearly all of the intellectual debates in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany. Romanticists felt a strong threat to individuals from the constant changes of nature, while the Chinese in the Wei-Jin period were touched by the uncertainty and vicissitude of politics and personal or family fortune. The flourishing Daoist religious practices added a transcendent dimension to ziran, while Romantic theologists made nature a shrine.

88

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Twilight walker If the zeitgeist, social conditions and other cultural elements prepare the necessary ground for the rise of landscape painting as ‘a new art’ in the West, or of the flourishing of Shanshui painting in China, then ‘travelling’ certainly has something that directly triggers the artists’ innovative creations. Nearly all of the resources, from his friends’ recollections to his own acknowledgements, attest to Friedrich’s predilection for solitary nocturnal walks (Rewald, 2001, p. 14), which no doubt largely inspired his art. Generally speaking, ‘travel’ (specifically, rambling, wandering, roaming, walking, etc.) has greatly shaped Chinese culture throughout its history. As is known, travel plays a vital role in ancient Chinese society; the imperial examination system, the bureaucratic system, military service and the corvée system effected a stable and large migration from a variety of social classes during peacetime, not to mention that refugees, fugitives, fortune seekers, settlers and so on, stimulated by turmoil, wars and special immigration policies, caused bouts of huge migratory waves in specific historical periods. When opening any collection of Chinese poetry from any dynasty, one will be rather impressed by how often travel motifs are mentioned. Chinese philosophy is also largely shaped by travel. Confucius himself is said to have travelled around six kingdoms before settling down. During his later years, he contributed a well-known tenet to his core teaching: ‘stay in the highest good’ or ‘rest in the highest excellence’ (Confucius, 2005, p. 121). Confucian idleness at home, the opposite state of travel, has also been a standard for successive Chinese intellectuals’ self-cultivation in daily life. In Confucianism, it is therefore fair to say that travel aims at an ultimate end of the journey, namely, to stay (in the highest good), which anchors most Confucian practices, either for the sake of self-cultivation or political appeal. Daoism adds another dimension to the Chinese spirit through its construction of the concept of travel itself. Travel is a very common topic in Daoist texts, and plays an important role not merely in anecdotes, but also as a core ‘Weltanschauung.’ It is easy to find Daoist texts comparing the human life and even the evolution of nature with travel. However, for Daoists, travel is an end and purpose itself. The Daoist utopian idea of the ‘realm of Nothing whatever’ is therefore clearly distinguished from the Confucian ‘idleness at home’ or ‘stay[ing] in the highest good’, which require stability and adherence. Daoist travel is an aimless ‘wandering’ and thus an indeterminate and infinite travel.



Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape

89

Interestingly, one of the most important concepts in Chinese philosophy, namely dao, has a crucial connection with travel: its original meaning is ‘the way or road for travel’. The earliest form the character, as found in bronze inscriptions, depicts a human, symbolised simply by a head and a limb, travelling on a way, symbolised by a crossroad. Travel has facilitated not only philosophical reflections but also influenced the spirit of art in China. Legend has it that Shanshui painting was invented when the painter Zong Bing (375–443) ceased to travel. To an extent, it is fair to say that, conversely, Shanshui painting emerged once the artist started to travel. From then on, ‘travel in the mountains’ became a canonical theme in Shanshui paintings. Sophisticated art historians like to point out that the story of Zong Bing confirms the impression that Chinese Shanshui painting lacks realism, insofar as Shanshui painters draw from memory after travelling to mountains. However, this does not mean that they did not make realistic sketches of objects. This point may make Friedrich more understandable through the Chinese tradition, and vice versa. Friedrich once talked about his own artistic experience: ‘Close your physical eyes, so that you see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring what you saw in the dark into the light, so that it may have an effect on others, shining inwards from outside …’ (Hofmann, 2000, p. 270). This method of creating, namely, seeing with spiritual eyes or drawing from imagination, is given vivid testimony by a portrait of Friedrich: Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio (1819), painted by Friedrich’s friend Georg Friedrich Kersting. As detected by careful viewers, ‘only a brief extract is seen of the outside world; for everything else the artist draws upon his imagination, which needs no constant external stimulus’ (Wolf, 2003, p. 7). Correspondingly, when Novalis talks about literature (language), he also stresses the ‘inward ear’ (Novalis, 2003, p. 214). For Romanticists, belief in ‘hidden organs through which Nature speaks to our mind or our mind to Nature’ (Schelling, 1988, p. 41) is philosophically justified and goes beyond a simple zeal for mysticism. What is the typical creation of an ancient Chinese literati painting like? The classic case of the famous painter Wen Tong (1019–79, Su Shi’s cousin) has been recorded by Su Shi (1037–1101), one of the greatest literati of the Song dynasty. The record says that whenever Wen was going to paint bamboo, he already had an image in his heart-mind. While holding his brush, he stared inward for a while, and as soon as he saw the image, he quickly followed and copied it. Like chasing rabbits or birds, the image is gone in the blink of an eye. If we compare Friedrich’s seeing with the spiritual eye and the Chinese literati painter’s inward staring, we may understand why their works were often associated with

90

Landscape and Travelling East and West

spirituality, and this by so many viewers from distinct perspectives and cultural backgrounds. Friedrich’s uniqueness rests on his self-confidence and self-estimation. This ‘historical strangeness’ (Koerner, 2009, p. 22) not only stirs the emotions of his audiences, but also stimulates art historians and aestheticians. Friedrich clearly defined himself as a rebel, defying rules and daring to proclaim his individuality: ‘The spirit of nature reveals itself differently to each of us, and therefore no one should impose his doctrines and rules on another as an infallible law’ (quoted in Hofmann, 2000, p. 269). There is also a testimony from one of his friends, who writes: ‘Friedrich pays little heed to the rules of art […] he knows little, altogether, of what is found in textbooks on painting’ (Hofmann, 2000, p. 265). Perhaps his self-exile from ‘the rules of art’ brought him closer to the borders of another painting tradition. Strictly speaking, Friedrich’s ‘historical strangeness’ consists in his striking emptiness, his remarkable usage of rear-view figures, his break from traditional perspective, his disregard for any canonical spatial articulation, and so on, as well as in his distance from established motifs, his love for barren winter scenes, dead trees, misty mountains, nature in moonlight and twilight. (See, for instance, Rewald, 2001.) However, these same aspects allow him to be appreciated in the light of another tradition, namely, the tradition of Chinese Shanshui painting. Friedrich’s appreciation of severe winter views, with snow and odd trees (trees with broken branches and in dramatic forms), resonate with the works of Ni Zan (1301–74), who represents the so-called literati style of Shanshui painting in the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), a style which would never have Friedrich worry that ‘mist and winter are in the doghouse’ or that ‘art should spread joy’ (Hofmann, 2000, p. 275). Friedrich’s use of ‘unbowed and defiant’ winter trees (Wolf, 2003, p. 23) as metaphors of personality or patriotism would also have been warmly appreciated by Chinese painters at that time, painters who conventionally endowed different plants with such virtues for centuries. The way he ‘envelop[ed] his motif in […] mysterious light’ (Rewald, 2001, p.11) finds suitable companions in the Song dynasty royal painting school. His love of mist would have been warmly welcomed by Chinese Shanshui painters, and his understanding of the benefits of mist and distance would have been highly praised by Guo Xi, who shared a similar view. While Friedrich’s ‘historical strangeness’ has been reiterated again and again by different writers, from an Eastern perspective it turns into a cordial reunion with old friends. Personally, this is how I felt when I first encountered



Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape

91

his paintings in my youth and at the moment when I recognised his work among dozens of other artists’ in the German painting exhibition room in the Louvre. I am not suggesting or assuming that Friedrich’s art ever adopted any Eastern elements or was in any way influenced by Shanshui painting, but I would like to suggest a more constructive comparative study between Western and Eastern art, and between Western and Eastern landscape works in particular. My treatment has nothing to do with any reference to painting technique, but rather aims at a project of mutual understanding and deeper self-reflection. Chinese Shanshui painting, viewed as the highest form of visual art in its culture, has flourished for over 1500 years as an established genre. It has been influenced by human presence in nature ever since, and in return it has nurtured the Chinese understanding of nature, helping to define relations between tian and ren, and generating rich thoughts on art and aesthetics, leaving a vast treasure trove for our generation. Roger Ames has mentioned an awkward predicament in comparative philosophical study, namely that it is feasible to interpret and comment on Confucianism using Western philosophical concepts, for example ‘Aristotelian’, ‘Platonic’, but not vice versa. This predicament seems all the more precarious in art history and aesthetics. In my opinion, Friedrich’s uniqueness and innovation are not reduced by associating him with Shanshui painting, but are instead further clarified, opening up a broader ground upon which to solidly establish his significance, a significance that extends beyond cultural boundaries. For example, when Western aestheticians offer the idea that the fleeting mist in Friedrich’s painting is a symbol of the cycle of nature rather than ‘a metaphor for temptation and distance from God or for melancholy … [or] a symbol of death’ (Wolf, 2003, p. 21), I think they will find themselves at home reading classical Chinese theories of Shanshui painting concerning mist and clouds, which are thought to be shaped by the Daoist philosophical theory of Qi. It won’t be so ‘incredible how Friedrich conjures an atmosphere of painterly solemnity out of monochrome ink’ (Wolf, 2003, p. 18) if we put his much-loved sepia ink next to Shanshui painting. Monochrome ink like black or sepia is very popular in the Shanshui tradition, and creates ‘an atmosphere of painterly solemnity’. Friedrich’s fascinating non-identifiable rear-view figures, often regarded as his innovation, are rendered understandable in the Shanshui tradition, in which the rear-view figures often have a double meaning. First, they serve a compositional function, and secondly, they have a much-discussed philosophical meaning, namely as an illustration of the Chinese understanding of human existence in tiandi or ziran.

92

Landscape and Travelling East and West

In conclusion, I would like to quote the famous poem A View of T’ai-Shan by Du Fu (712–70), which I consider an appropriate tihua-poem (a poem inscribed on a painting) for the Wanderer: What shall I say of the Great Peak? – The ancient dukedoms are everywhere green, Inspired and stirred by the breath of creation, With the Twin Forces balancing day and night. … I bare my breast toward opening clouds, I strain my sight after birds flying home. When shall I reach the top and hold All mountains in a single glance? (Bynner, 1931)

References Benjamin, W. (1996), Selected Writings. Volume 1, 1913–1926. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bynner, W. (1931), The Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology. New York: Knopf. Clark, K. (1976), Landscape into Art. London: John Murray. Confucius (2005), The Teachings of Confucius: The Great learning. J. Legg (trans.) and J. H. Ford (ed.). El Paso: El Paso Norte Press. Graham, A. C. (2001), Chuang-Tzu, The Inner Chapters. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Heidegger, M. (1978), ‘The origin of the work of art’, in D. F. Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, pp. 143–88. Hofmann, W. (2000), Caspar David Friedrich. London: Thames and Hudson. Kant, I. (1987), Critique of Judgment. W. S. Pluhar (ed.). Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. Koerner, J. L. (2009), Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape. London: Reaktion Books. Novalis (2003), ‘From Miscellaneous Remarks (1797)’, in J. M. Bernstein (ed.), Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 203–15. Rewald, S. (2001), Caspar David Friedrich: Moon Watchers. New York: Yale University Press. Schelling, J. (1988), Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schleiermacher, F. (1996), On Religion: Speech to Its Cultured Despisers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmied, W. (1995), Caspar David Friedrich. New York: Harry N. Abrams.



Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape

93

Vaughan, W. (1994), German Romantic Painting. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Wolf, N. (2003), Caspar David Friedrich 1774–1840, The Painter of Stillness. London: Taschen. Zong, B. (2005), Lun Shijie Xinyu he Jinren de Mei. Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Press.

8

Landscape as an Aesthetic Person: On the Conceptual World of German Romanticism1 Rolf Trauzettel

I. The title of this essay may give rise to the impression that it is not meant too seriously, and thus might deter potential readers. As this is not my intention, I had better begin with an explanation. The expression ‘aesthetic person’ is coined in analogy to the way we use the expression ‘legal person’ when referring to a corporation, an association, or an institution such as a state. The concept of the legal person, which was developed in the seventeenth century, and in fact has far older origins than this, indicates a social union of people that can become bearers of rights and duties (Ritter et al., 1980, vol. 4, column 1102). The concept is both highly abstract and of a theoretical nature, but still plays an important role in current legal practice. The aesthetic person appears only in forms of mental experience and artistic representation. In the aesthetic case, as in the juridical, a ‘subjectivization’ takes place: in the legal context, groups of persons are constituted as legal subjects, whereas in the aesthetic context artistic objects emerge as expressions of an amalgamation of nature and the human. The personalisation of landscape in the sense outlined above, that is, personalisation as the ‘subjectivization’ of (natural) objects, is, historically speaking, a limited cultural phenomenon of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Romanticism. Before I discuss this in detail, it is important that I clarify the concept of landscape I will be using here. In my use of landscape I am not referring to the geographical concept of landscape, although specialised definitions can contain psychological elements, as, for instance, that entertained in K. Rosenkranz’s System der Wissenschaften (System of Sciences), which describes

96

Landscape and Travelling East and West

landscape not simply as a ‘system of localities’ (Localsystem), but as having a respectively ‘unique physiognomy’ (Ritter et al., 1980, vol. 5, column 13). Instead, I use landscape as an artistic, aesthetic and philosophical concept. I wish to emphasise that popular sentiments, specifically those regarding ‘home’ (Heimat), can also be significant factors for the personalisation of landscape. Sentiments of belonging to a certain region called home foster, along with corresponding bonds, conceptions of natural beauty that endow landscapes with degrees of familiarity that are usually only attributed to people. Such an emotional attachment, however, will normally arise only if the land is fertile enough to make everyday life sufficiently comfortable to not take on the form of a daily struggle for survival. The development of sentiments of familiarity and affection towards landscape can then also take place among intellectuals, and, arguably, even more intensely so, since it can provide them with relaxation from the anxieties and uncertainties they may face. Before moving on, I wish to point to the wider framework of my reflections: the intellectual foundations of German Romanticism. Here we can find the sources of the ‘spiritual’ dimensions of specific experiences of landscape. These foundations manifest themselves in the Romanticist philosophy of nature, particularly in that of F. W. J. Schelling, and in the psychology of its main representatives (where we may find some ‘typically German’ extravagances, though I prefer not to dwell on those problems related to these). The German Romanticists remain equally tied to the Enlightenment philosophy of Kant and his followers as they are in opposition to it – a contradiction that is already apparent in Hegel’s thought and his success in dialectically combining these conflicting tendencies in the context of the project of a philosophy of subjectivity. Venturing to radically reduce (and thereby running the risk of missing the target) the general trend of German Romanticist philosophy of nature, I suggest characterising it as a return to an archaic type of spirituality, namely animism. A basic tenet of Schelling’s philosophy of nature can be briefly summarised with the help of the following quotation, which, in my reading, emphasises the implicit identity of nature and reason: The basic conception of everything objective in our cognition can be called ‘nature’. The basic conception of everything subjective, on the other hand, is to be called the ‘I’ or the ‘intellect’. These conceptions are opposed to one another. The intellect is primarily conceived as that which merely represents, and nature as that which can merely be represented, the former as that which is conscious, the latter as that which is unconscious. (Schelling, 1856, vol. 3, p. 339)



Landscape as an Aesthetic Person

97

In other words, every cognition combines nature and reason, and thus either the subjective has to become objective or the objective has to be based on the subjective. We are confronted with a sort of transcendental ontology that practically creates a monism, interrelating the two polarities in such a way that no irresolvable contradiction remains, and, in particular, that no contradiction between the inorganic (physical nature) and the organic (covering the whole spectrum from unconscious being to conscious life) remains. Such a conception, as an aside, contains the genealogical traces of Leibniz and Spinoza. The transformation of landscape into personality that I am suggesting here is also grounded in a psychological mechanism that was noticed by Ludwig Wittgenstein and identified as an ‘aspect change’ with respect to the experience of ‘seeing as’ (Wittgenstein, 1984, vol. 7). It indicates the subjective creation of a specific image of ‘something’ added on to mere visual perception. Such an experience is not limited to how we ‘see’ paintings by an artist – even if this case is of special importance – but includes the imaginative perception of nature, and thus the imaginative perception of landscape. This ‘seeing as’ is a genuinely aesthetic vision that can be understood as a form of ‘representational seeing’ insofar as the object of vision is seen as something, and thus meaningfully configured by the subject that sees. Such a process, as a rule, presupposes inter-subjectivity. In his discussions concerning William James’ The Principles of Psychology, Wittgenstein focuses on the process of perception, albeit, unfortunately, only briefly. In this context, Wittgenstein uses the term ‘aspect’ when commenting on the act of seeing in order to designate the object of vision. This is especially true in cases where the actual environment allows alternative perceptions. Here, I will leave the details of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of James aside (which mostly concern James’ ‘reductionism’ regarding the mental processes of perception), stressing instead only how important the notion of ‘aspect change’ is for Wittgenstein’s understanding of vision as a process combining vision and thought: ‘The mystery of seeing-as cannot be resolved by a reduction to either vision or thought, but only by the insight that thought and vision are (always already) related to one another’ (Jantschek, 1997, p. 319). Assuming aesthetical abstractions and theories are not only influenced by the conceptions of nature of a given period, but also by partly explicit and partly implicit conceptions of humankind and the world within a society (or, more precisely, within those groups which shape a culture), it is necessary to at least briefly outline the main characteristics of the ‘cultural physiognomy’ of such a society if one wishes to understand the novel and fashionable cultural

98

Landscape and Travelling East and West

phenomena of a time such as the intensive experience of landscape in German Romanticism. This is particularly relevant for understanding innovations in artistic expression that introduce new sceneries, atmospheres, affects, and so on.

II. One of the most characteristic manifestations of the intellectual culture of German Romanticism towards the end of the eighteenth century is the ‘humanization’ of nature, and, specifically, of landscape. This humanisation culminates, in the form of an emphatic emotional intensification, in a personalisation of landscape that, in the case of some poets, even goes so far as to attribute the most important human trait of language to it. Landscape begins to talk, as can be seen, for example, in a letter by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann that was written on 15 October 1798 while he was travelling in the Sudeten mountains: ‘The consecrated perceives the voice of nature which in wonderful sounds comes from tree, brush, flower, mountain, and stream, speaking about unfathomable mysteries that in his bosom take shape as pious foreboding’ (Reisebriefe, 1979, p. 464). This symbolical thought is expressed more directly by Ludwig Richter in his autobiography Lebenserinnerungen eines deutschen Malers (1862, Memories from the Life of a German Painter): ‘In nature all things express themselves, their spirit, their language, is in every form and colour. A beautiful natural scene awakens a feeling …’ which is so powerful that ‘every allegory seems dry in its presence’ (Richter, 1982, p. 537). This brings to mind Eichendorff ’s famous short poem Wünschelrute (Divining Rod): Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen, Die da träumen fort und fort, Und die Welt hebt an zu singen, Triffst du nur das Zauberwort. There sleeps a song in all things, Dreaming on and on, And the world prepares to sing, If only you can find the magic word.

The possibilities for subjectivising nature implied in these and many other lines are restricted in two ways: first, the comparison of nature’s language with (non-speaking) music, and second, the qualification that such language, just as landscape painting, can only, to quote Ludwig Richter again, ‘express general



Landscape as an Aesthetic Person

99

feelings, but not clearly articulate thoughts’ (Richter, 1982, p. 568). According to Richter, this is so ‘since we lost the key to nature’s language and stepped out of the great harmony of nature’ (Richter, 1982, p. 568), which is also the reason for the melancholy in our contemplations of nature. Thus, on the one hand, Richter seems to presuppose nature’s linguistic capability, while, on the other hand, he presumes that the Überspannung or ‘stress’ (Richter, 1982, p. 537) of modern times (i.e., of Richter’s lifetime, 1803–84) has, like a fever, caused nature to mumble. When describing landscape, the language of the Romanticists often indicates an unproblematic familiarity with nature, suggesting a link to the rural people and their life in proximity to nature. Eichendorff, on the occasion of his journey through the Harz mountain range in 1805, is delighted by ‘the long awaited view of Old Father Brocken’ (Reisebriefe, 1979, p. 194) – the Brocken is the highest peak of the Harz mountains – and when he explores a major cave there, the Baumannshöhle, he enters with ‘pious awe’ and feels a ‘holy shudder’ (Reisebriefe, 1979, p. 195). There are numerous examples of such depictions of nature in human terms or in terms of a human environment. Heinrich von Kleist reports to Wilhelmine von Zenge in his notes about a trip to eastern Saxony in September 1800: ‘Every farm is a landscape’, and says, in another instance, that looking down from a hill the land appears ‘just as a completely enclosed painting’ (Reisebriefe, 1979, pp. 140–1). The word ‘enclosed’ is crucial here. It indicates that what is seen is not simply a random view of natural scenery, but a landscape image that is psychologically perceived as a whole. Such a psychological focus paves the way for a personalisation of landscape, since what is ‘enclosed’ in this sense has become a Gestalt, an individual shape with a specific ‘character’ – and for the Romanticists, landscape is such a Gestalt. The perception of landscape as an enclosed Gestalt seems not to fit very well with a longing for the infinite and the corresponding enthusiasm for the unlimited that was common to many Romanticists. Such sentiments are expressed directly and apodictically by Friedrich Schleiermacher with respect to religion. In his book Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (On Religion. Speeches to the Educated among its Despisers), originally published in 1799, he states: ‘True religion is sense and taste for the infinite’ (Schleiermacher, 1831, p. 46). Earlier on in this treatise, Schleiermacher establishes a distinction between religion and science, and even between religion and ethics. In this context he claims rather ambivalently that ‘contemplation is essential for religion’ (Schleiermacher, 1831, p. 42). Here, he is apparently referring to meditation, because he adds: ‘the contemplation of the pious is

100

Landscape and Travelling East and West

nothing but the immediate consciousness of the general being of everything finite in and through the infinite, of everything temporal in and through the eternal’ (Schleiermacher, 1831, p. 42). The intertwining of the finite and the infinite presented a paradoxical dilemma for the Romanticists that could not simply be resolved with Schleiermacher’s pronouncement that every action would serve as ‘the revelation of the infinite within the finite’ (Schleiermacher, 1831, p. 44). In my view, the Romanticists were incapable of emotionally coping with the polarity of the finite and the infinite, which may well have been the cause of many of their emotional instabilities. Returning to the proper topic of this chapter, it can be noted that the experience of landscape is, psychologically speaking, an experience of something finite and definite. It is definite in the sense of being distinct and delineated. Given this ‘solidity’, it does not come as a surprise that the Romanticists in general, and thus not only Kleist, often make mountains the subject of texts about their travels (consider Dorothea Schlegel, Joseph Görres and Friedrich Gentz, among others). The only other motif treated with comparable intensity is the boat journey on the River Rhine. I think that the mountain subject is so dominant because of the distinctness of mountains and their massive individual appearance, which produce a range of signals open to psychological interpretations. These visual qualities of mountains seem to have led to the stereotypical observation that, in the words of Ludwig Tieck, the scenery appears ‘as the most beautiful painting’ (Reisebriefe, 1979, p. 39). With respect to the topic of this chapter, it is interesting to see how the perception of landscape reflects the features of artistic painting. Goethe speaks of such features in a conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann about a landscape painting by Rubens: ‘The artist wants to speak to the world through a wholeness, but he cannot find this wholeness in nature, it is the fruit of his own spirit’ (Eckermann, 1982, p. 536). In an earlier conversation with Eckermann (on 11 April 1827), Goethe had already stated that nature could not be credited for a perfect image as its ‘pure copy’, but that such an image springs instead from the ‘poetic spirit of the painter’ (Eckermann, 1982, p. 212). Goethe’s remarks bring landscape painting into the focus of my reflections. I cannot present any detailed account of the history of landscape painting in this chapter, but, generally speaking, there was a shift from landscape representations as a background for, for example, depictions of persons, towards landscape itself becoming the proper subject of a painting. In earlier stages, people were painted within a landscape. In Germany, one can turn to Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480–1538) and Lucas Cranach (1472–1553) as examples whose paintings



Landscape as an Aesthetic Person

101

already bear some distinct Romantic traits. In the Netherlands, one can turn to Govert Flinck (1615–60) and Jan van Goyen (1596–1656). In the seventeenth century we find some pure landscape paintings, with Philip Koninck (1619–88) serving as a representative. I would like to also mention one special case, since it may be the first pure landscape painting, and as it is also a unique case, being a painting within a painting: it was painted by Gabriel Mälesskircher (c. 1430–93), is entitled Evangelist Matthäus (Matthew the Evangelist), and can be seen in Madrid in the Museum Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza. Matthew is placed into an austere room lacking any decorations except for a framed landscape painting (a meadow with a few trees whose upper halves are cut off) hanging on the wall. I leave aside the concrete developments of landscape painting that lead up to German Romanticism and the configuration I choose to call the ‘aesthetic person’. However, when conceiving of aesthetic personalisation as subjectivisation, the concurrent and generally overly overt and overstated concern with subjectivity in German philosophy cannot be ignored. At the intersection of these parallel trends of personalization and subjectivisation, we find F. W. J. Schelling’s philosophy of art, which includes a model of the historical development of painting in stages (and nicely supporting the thesis of my chapter). Within the larger framework of the three ontological determinations (‘potencies’) of his philosophy of the identity of the absolute, Schelling classifies art as belonging to the third potency of the ‘indifference of the ideal and the real’, and, in this context, lists painting as the ‘first form of art which represents shapes (Gestalten)’ (Schelling, 1985, vol. 2, p. 346). Painting operates through the correspondence of light and colour, and light is defined as ‘the infinite idea of all difference conceived in real unity’ (Schelling, 1985, vol. 2, p. 335). The light and non-light of objects are combined in colour (Colorit). Colour is the third element of painting. It is a specific form of unity, the other two being ‘design’ (Zeichnung) and brightness/darkness (Helldunkel). Design provides the synthesis of object and space, brightness/darkness allows for the ‘ideal form’, and colour embodies light and merges light and body into ‘truly one’ (Schelling, 1985, vol. 2, p. 367). Thus, painting has ‘true objects’ by representing things that have already become. This means ‘[t]he object here simultaneously indicates the stage of art itself ’ (Schelling, 1985, vol. 2, p. 370), and the specific stage of art is in turn determined by the relation of light to the bodily objects. This relation is categorically divided into two aspects: the first of these is identified as external, immobile and inorganic, while the second is identified as internal, mobile and organic.

102

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Paintings of the first and lower two stages of art contain the still life and, in particular, paintings of flowers and fruits. Paintings of the third stage include those of animals, whereas the fourth stage is reserved for landscape painting. Here, ‘light itself becomes as such the object’ (Schelling, 1985, vol. 2, p. 372). As can be expected, paintings of the human figure represent the highest stage in Schelling’s model. My thesis of the Romanticist conception of the painted landscape as an aesthetic person is confirmed by Schelling’s equal evaluation of the fourth and fifth stage as artistic production of the mobile and living. Interestingly enough, Schelling maintains that, as a unit, the landscape painting depends on the subject and gains reality only in the eyes of the viewer (Schelling, 1985, vol. 2, p. 374). I am thus tempted to complement Schelling’s art theory with a quote from the Romanticist editor Adam Heinrich Müller (1779–1829): ‘Everywhere where man journeys, his eye is adjusted in such a way that he has to grasp the heavenly and the mundane elements with one glimpse: a hint for the soul so that it may always do likewise’ (Müller, 1967, p. 189). That which is close by is perceived clearly and solidly, ‘but when man lifts his eye, all contours become unsteady, softer, and the borders disappear’– which is supposed to touch one emotionally (Müller, 1967, p. 190). The uncertainty in the souls of the Romanticists runs deeper than what is expressed in that quote, and, what is more, it is a contradictory uncertainty. The seemingly minor remark that ‘the borders disappear’ betrays such a complex internal attitude. On the one hand, the Romanticists have generally attested a longing for the infinite, as mentioned above. On the other hand, this longing is contrasted with a desire for home (Heimat) and safety, and for the warm and ‘homely’ comfort provided by a local landscape. In Eichendorff ’s poetry, the local landscape often appears as a refuge and sanctuary, and its magic is derived from its limitedness. Just as the landscape painting appears as a unit composed in a frame, the Romanticists view the landscape as a segment taking on the shape of a unit with which one can enter a communicational relation as with a person. This situation presupposes a highly intensified mood on the part of the subject confronted with it, a subject in a state of tension due to an unconscious compensation – but a compensation of what? The answer may be: a compensation of a suspected and feared threat. At the time of Romanticism, the subject began to fall apart from the inside, and, as a counter-reaction, it increasingly contracted itself internally. Facing an evermore real and imposing cosmic infinity, it attempted, as a Leibnizian monad, to transfer the infinity into itself. This novel self, violently shaping itself, is on the one hand sober enough to remain attached to reality, while, on the other hand, idealistic enough to



Landscape as an Aesthetic Person

103

conceive of itself as infinite. This novel self still manages to experience itself as a totality in states of nature, and in particular in landscape. Combining sensitivity and imagination, this self aesthetically invests landscape with a harmonising personal unity. Thus it is no surprise that the most typical representative of Romanticist painting, Caspar David Friedrich, created his famous painting of the Watzmann mountain (1824/25) purely from imagination – he had never been to any alpine mountain areas and could only rely on the visual impressions of his journeys through the lower mountain ranges of the Harz and Saxony. The internal closure of this painting, emanating an entirely personal atmosphere and displaying an entirely personal character, is then even surpassed by the painting Kreidefelsen auf Rügen (Chalk Cliffs on Rügen), which, based on more or less identical construction sketches, was painted twice by Friedrich. An art critic once commented that its construction reminded him of a mandala (Glaessemer, n.d., p. 20). If one understands the concept of ‘mandala’ not in its Buddhist and religious sense, but in its symbolic meaning as the centre of personality given by psychologists, this becomes a remarkable interpretation. In any case, I intend to interpret the painting in a slightly different way. The painting applies the method of forming a unit by enclosure twice-over: the picture not only appears as a landscape within a frame; in the painting itself the rocks and trees to the left and right and at the top and bottom constitute a frame for the seascape in the centre. In this way, the framing by the rocks and the trees represents the concept of finitude which is then united with the concept of infinity as represented by the central outlook onto the open sea that effects an unbelievable suction into the limitless. This composition brings about a movement into the scenery caused by the scenery itself, whereas many other landscape paintings only achieve the impression of motion by adding in persons who move. How scenery can attain (aspects of) personhood in Romanticist landscape painting can be demonstrated all the more clearly by looking at two paintings by Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1818). Both were painted in 1805, though I unfortunately do not know which was painted first. One of the two, Ruhe auf der Flucht (Rest on the Flight), shows Joseph and Mary along with the Baby Jesus in the foreground. On the left side of the picture squats Joseph, and on the right side, in front of a huge tree, sits Mary, leaning towards the child who is depicted in a lying position in the centre. The arrangement of the three persons forms a hollow that opens up a view of a landscape stretching far into the distance. The second painting, entitled Niltal-Landschaft (Nile Valley Landscape), does not contain any people, but is otherwise extremely similar in composition to Ruhe auf der Flucht. In the place of Joseph, Mary and the Baby Jesus, there is

104

Landscape and Travelling East and West

now nature: on the left, where Joseph was sitting, there is a large oak tree with partly bared roots and a trunk that is cut off midway by the frame and splits into two – like two arms; on the right, where Mary was sitting, a small and steep hill rises; and the centre front is filled by an oval-shaped stretch of earth. Again, the whole front of the picture forms a hollow opening up the view of a landscape stretching out towards some hills at the distant horizon. These two paintings can be interpreted in various ways as to their contents, and Runge himself, who used to comment on his works, may be used as an inspiration. What I find significant about them is what they have in common: the chosen segment of a larger scene, the order of the elements which communicate with one another, the way in which certain parts are highlighted, or, in short, the creation of an individual Gestalt of nature. Here, the ‘orientation towards nature as landscape’ (Ritter, 1974, p. 142), adopted and used since Petrarca, is now inverted with respect to the relation between humans and nature. In earlier times, landscape could ‘naturalise’ human persons, but now, the landscape itself is personalised. Petrarca saw something familiar to him in a landscape, while still perceiving it as clearly distinct from him, distinct as a partner, and yet without alienation. In this way, the question of which of the two may be more real is avoided from the outset – and it is interesting to see that such distinctness also holds for the position of God, who can grant shelter when one is in spiritual need, but this only so that the issue of subjectivity never arises. For the Romanticists, God’s protection also covers nature, and thus no in-depth inspection of it occurs that would easily discover that it also serves as a battleground for survival. Rather, as in several of Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings, the painter emotionally fills the landscape with a striving for harmony. This is, of course, not to say that he would ignore the coldness of nature with which it isolates itself – and thus its form of ‘autonomisation’. The export of human subjectivity into the objectivity of nature testifies to the conscious process of a subjectivising landscape as it emerges from the unconscious. We can once more point to Schelling as having borne witness to this, and as a case in point. His ‘“depotentialization” of the transcendental self does not yet disclose nature as “threatening,” but depicts it instead as a “redemption” for the self and its history’ (Marquard, 1987, p. 157). The horizon of nature includes a world of emotion and a world of reason, but during the era of Romanticism these two sides move surprisingly far away from one another. This is perhaps most obvious with Hölderlin. Although he should by no means be classified as a proper Romanticist, as a contemporary



Landscape as an Aesthetic Person

105

he intensely embodied and sensed the Zeitgeist of the times. His conception of nature seems to be taken from Hegel’s abstractions: nature is something God-like, encompassing and enlightening. In his composition ‘Am Quell der Donau’ (At the Source of the Danube), the river’s source is an organ, emitting a ‘melodic stream’, ‘purely emanating out of inexhaustible pipes’. The poet thereby reveals the universal nature of a landscape that has been transformed into a divine realm. Here, the divine extends itself as divine genius from Asia via Greece and Rome to the West, infused with a mystical and diffuse light that is deemed holy. The diffuse, however, is somehow related to the dark, and thus it is no wonder that homage is also paid to experiences of landscape at night-time. On his journey through the Harz in June 1792, Ludwig Tieck wrote a letter to Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, describing his impressions of a nightly walk where he is immersed in the scent of flowers, and enthused that the water running through a water mill ‘floods like flames under the light of the moon’. His imagination leads him to the past, and he declares that this very night, when he ‘felt some things that previously I did not know, did not feel’, to be one of the most beautiful hours of his life (Wackenroder, 1991, pp. 51–2). The dark of the night provides a space for the productive playfulness of subjective imagination, and, as it were, cedes subjectivity to the natural landscape. In poetic exaltation this results in the hymnal praise that, in Tieck’s novel Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (The Travels of Franz Sternbald), is put into the mouth of the protagonist who switches back and forth between addressing nature and art: ‘How babbling and childlike are your sounds compared with the full and harmonious chant of organs, streaming up from the most inner depths, from mountain and valley, from forest and gleaming stream, in soaring, rising chords!’ (Immer, 2010, p. 167). The landscape offers its rich variety to both poets and painters. This results, particularly in painting, in a confrontation with the classical ideal landscape and, in general, with traditional ideals, while at the same time new ideals become attached to nature. When landscape becomes an individual image and Gestalt, it attains psychological traits that had traditionally been reserved for humans only. As an individualised part of nature visualised in art, a landscape often owes its uniqueness to the personal history of those who paint or compose it. It is a focal point for the memories and imaginations of its creators, and this is the cause for its personalised appearance. The Romanticist background of such personalisation is historically complex, but is also based on a specific cultural situation and context that can be well

106

Landscape and Travelling East and West

defined. We might say that the landscape dreamt itself as a person at the point when it was about to become an object of observation and manipulation for the unfolding natural sciences. A lasting problem then reoccurred, namely the difference between the perceptions of landscape as such and landscape in art. The latter perception became dominant, and intellectuals in particular began to see natural landscape through the lenses of the landscape painters. The perspectives of those who looked at a piece of land with commercial, agricultural or technological interests in mind were neglected. These perspectives represent, so to speak, the ‘working day’ aspects of landscape, whereas the Romanticists took the ‘Sunday view’. A decisive factor for the Romanticist perception of nature and landscape has been identified by Carl Ludwig Fernow (1763–1808) in his remarks ‘Über die Landschaftsmalerei’ (On Landscape Painting). As Johannes Grave has pointed out in an essay, Fernow noticed that the exclusion of all narrative elements from a landscape painting created an aesthetic mood ‘related to the effects of music’ (Grave, 2010, p. 301). My interpretation goes a step further than this and suggests that landscape, as represented by the Romanticists, takes on characteristics of personality and happily combines determinateness and indeterminacy. At the same time, the view of infinity, in its integration into the finitude of the individual, is dominated by emotionality.

Notes 1

Translated by Hans-Georg Moeller, including all quotations.

References Eckermann, J. P. (1982), Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau Verlag. Glaessmer, J. (ed.) (n.d.), Traum und Wahrheit. Deutsche Romantik aus Museen der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje. Grave, J. (2010), ‘Landschaft als Bildkritik. Zur Restitution von Bildlichkeit bei den Nazarenern and Caspar David Friedrich’, in M. Bertsch and R. Wegner (eds), Landschaft am ‘Scheidepunkt’. Evolution einer Gattung in Kunsttheorie, Kunstschaffen und Literatur um 1800. Göttingen: Wallstein, pp. 295–329. Immer, N. (2010), ‘Krisen im Günen? Zum Funktionswandel der Landschaft beim frühen Ludwig Tieck’, in M. Bertsch and R. Wegner (eds), Landschaft am



Landscape as an Aesthetic Person

107

‘Scheidepunkt’. Evolution einer Gattung in Kunsttheorie, Kunstschaffen und Literatur um 1800. Göttingen: Wallstein, pp. 157–72. Jantschek, T. (1997), ‘Bemerkungen zum Begriff des Sehen-als’, in R. Konersmann (ed.), Kritik des Sehens. Leipzig: Reklam, pp. 299–319. Marquard, O. (1987), Transzendentaler Idealismus, Romantische Naturphilosophie, Psychoanalyse. Cologne: Verlag für Philosophie, Dinter. Müller, A. H. (1967), Ästhetische Schriften. Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand. Reisebriefe (no author or editor) (1979), Reisebriefe deutscher Romantiker. Berlin: Rütten und Loenig. Richter, L. (1982), Lebenserinnerungen eines deutschen Malers. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Ritter, J. (1974). Subjektivität. Sechs Aufsätze. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Ritter, J. and Gründer, K. (eds) (1980), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co. Schelling, F. W. J. (1856), Sämtliche Werke. Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta. —(1985), Ausgewählte Schriften. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Schleiermacher, F. (1831), Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern. Berlin: G. Reimer. Wackenroder, W. H. (1991), Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. Wittgenstein, L. (1984), Werkausgabe in 8 Bänden. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.

Part Three

Buddhist Journeys

9

A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart John C. Maraldo

For years I have been fascinated with Zen poems that seem to speak of the mind and of the self in terms of the surrounding environment. Keeping in mind that we take to heart the near homology of the words mind and heart – and self as well – to convey the rather expansive sense of the Sino-Japanese word xin (Chinese) or kokoro (Japanese), we may call these poems simply landscapes of the heart. In this chapter I will take us on a tour of some of these verses and offer some views of them, ranging from descriptions of a scene around someone, to a metaphoric transposition of oneself and one’s surroundings, and finally to one’s complete identification with the environment. This rather selective tour will straddle differences among languages: medieval Chinese and Japanese and modern English, and also between poetic language and philosophical analysis. I like the English word heart to convey the Chinese xin and the Japanese kokoro (both often written using the same character) because it carries a sense of the body as well as the emotions, and suggests an embodied self rather than a detached mind. To view some landscapes of the heart is to view some ways in which embodied self and environment divide, co-mingle, move together and apart, and sometimes lose their separate identities. I think that these texts have something to teach us about current philosophical views of mind – what such views distinguish mind from and what they take for granted. An identification of self and environment is not a feature exclusive to the Chan or Zen tradition alone, however. We find resonances of this identification among Native Americans of the Southwest and among Australian aboriginals, for example. The embodied, en-heartened landscape is not the exclusive property of any one people. To raise the question of the relationship between poet and natural environment, I begin with a story about Fayan Wenyi (in Japanese: Hōgen

112

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Bun’eki, 885–958), founder of the Fayan School of Chan Buddhism. Fayan had heard a story about Jiashan Shanhui (in Japanese: Kassan Zenne, 805–69), who was named after the mountain where he lived. Someone once asked this master, ‘How are things around Jiashan?’, and he replied: ‘Monkeys holding their young in their arms retreat behind the blue ridge, birds holding flowers in their beaks dive in front of the blue cliff.’ Later, Fayan made a remark about this description: ‘For thirty years I mistook this to be a picture of the world around Jiashan.’ Fayan wrote his own verse: With reason exhausted, feelings and deliberations are forgotten. How can it be likened to anything! Right here this frosty night’s moon Sinks serenely into the river valley ahead. Ripened fruit hangs heavy with monkeys. The mountains deepen as if to lead astray. Raising my head, there’s still some light – Originally to the west of my abode.1 (Nishitani, 1974, p. 26)

This verse is included in Case 34 of the Blue Cliff Record (Biyanlu), a famous collection of kōan. Fayan’s verse is his comment on the ‘completely perfected true nature’ (parinispanna svabhāva), an allusion to Yogacara Buddhism that means the mind freed of self-attachments and discrimination. The twentiethcentury Zen philosopher Nishitani Keiji says that, in Fayan’s verse, the moon setting in the river valley on a frosty night, the monkeys coming to pick the fruit, and so forth, all depict features of Fayan’s daily mountain life. Nishitani goes on: All this, however, is no other than ‘perfected real nature’ […] It is, as it is, the mind of Fayan, a man of Zen. We must not understand the features expressed in this verse as a description of a landscape […] the features of Fayan’s mountain life in the verse […] are not just a description of the world around a quiet, secluded place in the mountains. (Nishitani, 1984, pp. 23–4)

Nishitani’s comments elicit a question: if such descriptions of the natural environment are not – or not always – simply a picture of the surrounding world outside oneself, just what do they refer to? I think there are several possible answers to this question, depending upon the particular poet or verse. Sometimes a verse or passage may indeed primarily be a description of a scene around the poet, and often in this context a clear view of the world around one is said to require a calm mind. Sometimes poets may be describing their own state of mind, but using words that can refer to features



A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart

113

of a natural environment rather than using language we would recognise as psychological. And sometimes the poet (and I use the word in a very broad sense here) seems to identify directly with the environment. I want to present a few examples of each of these possibilities. All of them, even the simple description of a landscape, have as their theme an intimate relation between poet and natural environment. Several scholars of Chan and Zen literature have noted this theme. Richard John Lynn translates the view of the influential eleventh-century poet, painter and statesman Su Shi (1037–1101): ‘the poet […] should, indeed must, tap into the well-spring of Nature itself, and the primordial creative force to which he gives himself over should take hold of him, and the poetry which results should be a “natural event”’ (Lynn, 1987, p. 385). This view is shared by scores of other poets through the centuries, in both China and Japan. Joseph Parker examines the connection between Chinese and Japanese poetics and painting and finds numerous instances of the heart-mind as their central theme. Parker notes, for example, Su Shi’s interest ‘in what the art object revealed about the mind or heart (xin) and the innermost thought and character of the painter’, and he quotes Su Shi’s verse that inscribed a landscape painting by Song Di (c. 1015–80): How expansive is your heart, Hills and rivers cool themselves inside … A river village with few houses, A misty hamlet with clusters of old trees. I know you [Song Di] have hidden thoughts. I examine closely to find them.2 (Parker, 1999, pp. 37–8)

David Pollack notes that between 1200 and 1500 the Zen poems of the Five Mountains in Japan were sometimes written merely for aesthetic gratification, but finds their epitome in poems that ‘reveal to the trained eye the Zen state of mind of the poet’ (Pollack, 1985, p. 85). Yet there is an expanse between verses about nature that reveal a state of mind, and verses that dissolve the embodied mind into the natural environment. Let me cite some examples along the way. First, here are two examples of what we may at first take to be purely aesthetic descriptions of a landscape with little or no reference to the mind or self: A branch of bamboo stretched over the wall Rises and falls unpredictably in the wind. While sparrows, trying to perch for the evening, with unsettled hearts Flutter up to it and then away again. (Pollack, 1985, p. 90)

114

Landscape and Travelling East and West

This is a verse by the Five Mountains (Gozan) poet Kisei Reigen (1403–88), and it describes not a scene Reigen is viewing outside, but a painting on a fan. A verse by the Gozan poet Mugan Soō (?–1374) may likewise describe a painted scene. Pollack titles this verse ‘Walking in the Mountains’: Tiring to the feet but refreshing to the eyes, This wandering with a cane through mist and fog; Hard to tell if it’s real or a painting – Against a pale wash of cold woods, the dark ink of crows. (Pollack, 1985, p. 129)

Is the poet seeing a real scene or merely a painted one? I read his indecision as a sign of his absorption into the scene. If there is a difference between the ‘real’ landscape and the landscape depicted in a painting, we may take it as suggestive of the difference between the landscape – whether real or painted – and the heart-mind of the poet. And where there is a blur between ‘real’ and ‘painted’, we can, I think, see an initial step toward the identification, or better still, the non-duality, of inner and outer, heart-mind and environment. On the way to this expression of non-duality we may stop at another overlook, where poets and painters seem to follow the practice of calming the mind to see clearly the world around them, but with a twist. The linked-verse poet Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–88) writes: ‘Facing the flowers of spring and composing poems beneath the autumn moon, clear your mind, dim your nature’, but Nijō immediately follows this with a promise of self-realisation: ‘and you will spontaneously attain enlightenment’ (Parker, 1999, p. 128). The abbot of Tōfukuji in 1410, Kiyō Hōshu, connects the art of landscape painting to self-realisation in a slightly different way. He is commenting on the expression ‘Manifesting the Mountain’ that was the byname of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi (1386–1428). Yoshimochi wanted to know what it meant for him to manifest the mountain, and Hōshu wrote: ‘“Manifesting” is “luminosity” and “mountain” is the image of “bringing to rest” […] inwardly illumine the mind and outwardly bring the objective world to rest […] when the mind and its objects are united into one, then luminosity and bringing to rest will be merged’ (Parker, 1999, p. 124). The couplet ‘illumining’ and ‘bringing to rest’ derives from the opening of the classical Chinese Great Learning (Parker, 1999, p. 125), but note that Hōshu’s advice to the Shogun reverses the order we might expect in Zen landscape painting: calm the mind and illumine the environment. Hōshu writes, instead, of illuminating the mind and calming the world. I think the reversal signals another step toward non-duality. Yet another step is the exhortation to internalise the scene to be depicted



A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart

115

in poem or painting. Su Shi writes: ‘In painting bamboo one must first attain the completed bamboo inside the breast. Then when one grasps the brush and gazes intently, one will see what one wants to paint and rise quickly to follow it […] if one knows the way things should be and cannot do it, inner and outer are not one and mind and hand are not in accord’ (Parker, 1999, p. 140). The Five Mountains artist Taihaku Shingen (1357–1415) takes it a step further, and exhorts the painter or poet to ‘attain [the landscape] in the mind and forget external things’ (Parker, 1999, p. 118). ‘Attaining the landscape’ is a turn on the more usual Zen phrase, ‘attaining the mind’, that alludes to attaining enlightenment. The Japanese Kitayama Five Mountain poets followed Su Shi in seeking to bring the heart-mind (xin) into accord with things in the environment (jing), or even further, seeking to achieve the non-duality of inner and outer. This aspiration echoes the statements of the influential Chan master Huangbo Xiyun (d. 849) that ‘mind and things are one’ and ‘mind and things are both extinguished’ (Parker, 1999, pp. 139–40). It is also possible to glimpse a Buddhist Yogacara philosophy in the background of these descriptions. The term for ‘objects’ or ‘things (in the environment)’ in both Huangbo and the Five Mountain poets was jing (Chinese), or kyō (Japanese), a translation of the Sanskrit visaya, the realm created by deluded ego-consciousness that divides the world from itself and takes it as external object.3 In Yogacara philosophy, as later in Huangbo, inner and outer are constructions of the ego-mind. The Zen monks of the Five Mountains were schooled in this philosophy and most likely incorporated it in their poetics. Let us turn now to instances where at first sight a poet is depicting a landscape that may be viewed as a description of her own heart. Such instances might appear to be merely a variation on the use of metaphor: comparing the inner world of the heart-mind with the visible, external world. We find a rather obvious example in the similes of the nineteenth-century English poet Christina Rossetti’s verse: My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love has come to me. (Rossetti, 1870, p. 37)

116

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Of course, we would need to supply some extra steps to read the Chinese and Japanese poems as this sort of metaphor. For example, the verse I cited previously by Su Shi, ‘How expansive is your heart, Hills and rivers cool themselves inside …’ would need to be read not merely as saying ‘your heart is expansive enough to take in the hills and rivers, river villages and misty hamlets’ but also as saying ‘your heart is as expansive as hills and rivers …’ . Here we would read the poet’s mind in words about the landscape. Translators often interpolate personal pronouns into Chinese poems in a way that makes explicit an implicit reference to one’s inner feelings in a poem about travel or landscape. Beata Grant translates a poem she titles ‘Expressing My Emotions’ by the Buddhist nun Xingche (1606–?): The road through rugged terrain, at times easy, at times obstructed, In leisure I observe the affairs of the world like a river flowing east. I gaze toward the end of the sky, empty of past and present, I walk among the clouds, freely coming and going. I often sit together with a master of stream and boulder And occasionally travel with a wayfarer of the pine flower. At times I manage to come up with a phrase, and whistle as I ride the void, Better even than exchanging poems with the fisherman and woodcutter. (Grant, 2003, p. 1999)

The word ‘I’ and references to the self are the translator’s interpolations, no doubt justified by the context and grammar of the poem, but nonetheless one choice among other possible translations. For example, the opening lines might be rendered more ambiguously this way: The road through rugged terrain, at times easy, at times obstructed, Observing leisurely the affairs of the world like a river flowing east. Gazing toward the end of the sky, empty of past and present, Walking among the clouds, freely coming and going. … and so forth.

Indeed, poems do often seem directly to reveal the poet’s mood or mind, and not always a particularly non-attached mind, as in this verse by the Gozan poet Gidō Shūshin (1325–88): Miserably cold, the temple before dawn, Still and lonely, few monks to be seen: The temple is old, with soot-blackened walls, The pond overgrown, its surface like folds in a robe; Incense before the Buddha has burned, gone out, turned cold,



A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart

117

The sermon over, blossoms fly in the rain; I’ve reached the point of doing away with happiness and sadness – A white board door swinging to and fro in the breeze. (Pollack, 1985, p. 47)

Beyond metaphor, the poem seems to swing to and fro between a description of a landscape and a description of the poet’s mood in viewing it, on the way to something beyond happiness and sadness. A similar verse, the second of two called ‘Living in the Mountains’ by Gozan poet Tesshū Tokusai (?–1366), captures the poet’s landscape this way: Old cedars and ancient cypresses impale rosy mists, Through huge boulders and hanging vines a small path winds; Even monkeys and cranes won’t come to a mountain this desolate – Only the wind-borne cassia pods that fill my thatched hut. (Pollack, 1985, p. 57)

If we read the poet’s heart or mind in these lines about a landscape, I think we apply a hermeneutics different from the Romanticist hermeneutics that would look for the author’s intention or try to relive the poet’s experience. Romanticist hermeneutics was formulated on the assumption that the author’s mind was an interior realm describable in psychological terms, and when words about nature stood in for psychological terms they were considered straightforward metaphors. In contrast, the assumption of the Chinese and Japanese poets and landscape painters was that the seen and depicted world could directly express the artist’s mind when the mind was clear and open enough to accommodate its environs or to identify with them – in some cases for the mind, or rather the embodied self, to become, or extend to, its environs. So when the literati official Ouyang Xiu (1007–72) – himself no friend of Buddhism – said in effect that ‘the reading and writing of poetry centered on the author’s idea [or intention yi] in the literary work as it expressed the mind (xin)’4 (Parker, 1999, p. 33), his language implied that the work could express the poet’s environs and mind at once. The contrast between these two sets of assumptions exposes other matters we tend to take for granted when we describe the mind or heart and its states of being. In philosophical, scientific and popular accounts, we today tend to describe the landscape of the mind in psychological or physiological terms. Satori or enlightenment, for example, is an experience of liberation, an altered state or a peak experience, or – in the popular books by the physician and Zen practitioner James H. Austin – a process in the brain.5 The Japanese satoru, on the other hand, is merely a matter of opening the eyes and realising or coming to understand something. The notion of intentionality in the phenomenological

118

Landscape and Travelling East and West

tradition comes closer because it shifts the focus to the objects of perception and away from an enclosed, inner state of mind. Yet Buddhist philosophies also claim there is a non-intentional consciousness where the mind is fully aware but not directed to anything at all. Such an experience – to use that overrated word – is the philosophical basis of descriptions that refer to what looks like features of a landscape but apply equally well to the mind. Under the Buddhist assumption, today’s psychological terminology and brain-language are not any more realistic as descriptions of the heart-mind. Indeed, if this Sino-Japanese poetics often renders the human heart or mind in terms of nature, it also depicts natural objects in terms of the heart and speaks of their heart (kokoro), mind (xin) or sincerity (makoto). Nishitani Keiji titled one of his books Kaze no kokoro – literally, ‘heart of the wind’.6 According to an old verse ascribed to the legendary figure Bodhidharma, enlightenment opens one’s eyes to see one’s true nature and become buddha; to see as a buddha sees. In Chinese Buddhist extensions of ‘buddha’ there is no essential difference between buddha and the world as it truly is. What we call the environs around us are another perspective of ourselves. This of course is why a depiction of landscape can be a depiction of the heart, and why the features of the natural world and its sounds can be said to be the body and the words of buddha.7 The thirteenth-century Japanese Zen teacher and philosopher Dōgen composed a commentary on Su Shi’s enlightenment verse that begins: The sounds of the valley streams are his long, broad tongue; The forms of the mountains are his pure body. (Cook, 1978, p. 102)

A waka poem by Dōgen reads: The color of the mountain peaks The echo of the valleys All flowing together: Our Shakyamuni’s Voice and form. 8

In another discourse called the Mountains and Waters Sutra, Dōgen goes further than a metaphoric identification of self and environs, and brings us back to the themes of travel and the embodied mind.9 Keep in mind that the expression ‘mountains and waters’ (sansui in Japanese) is a term for landscape or scenery. Dōgen writes of verdant mountains walking, quoting a verse by the Chan master Furong Daokai (1043–1119) or ‘Preceptor Kai’ as he is called. The Preceptor tells his assembly at Mt Dayung: ‘The green mountains are constantly walking.’ Let us take a few steps back to consider this strange view.



A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart

119

In an essay on this saying, the American poet Gary Snyder reminds us that Dōgen walked miles and miles both on Mt Hiei above Kyoto, Japan, when he was a young monk in training there, and later through the mountains in southern China when he sought an authentic teacher (Snyder, 1990, p. 98). When we speak of travel today, we tend to think of riding trains, taking planes, or driving cars. But for millennia the most common mode of travel was walking. As Gary Snyder reminds us, walking follows the pace of the human body and provided the scale some countries still use for distance, no matter how we travel them (a mile is an old Roman measure of a thousand paces). We tend to think of a landscape as the vista we view when we stop our travel and gaze out, from a stationary point or perhaps from a car or a train window. Consider a change in perspective. You may have had this experience: you are sitting in a train that slowly begins to move; you feel the momentum as this enormous train body takes up speed, and then you see that it is the train on the track next to yours that is moving, not the train on which you are actually riding. Or, in a change of scene, you are standing on a bridge over a small river and peer down into the water rushing by, and all of a sudden you feel yourself and the bridge moving instead of the water. Now think of riding a bicycle. Nishitani Keiji once encouraged me to experience myself on the bicycle as not moving at all, but instead to sense the ground moving beneath me. Gary Snyder does not mention the change in perspective when he makes the connection between Dōgen’s practice of walking and his talk of green mountains walking, but we may imagine Dōgen sensing the mountains moving beneath his feet, the whole earth moving as a treadmill moves when you walk on it but remain stationary. Dōgen walked and walked and walked and walked until the mountains were walking under his feet. Ordinarily, when I walk through a landscape I look out at it, and the things and the horizon I see shift as my head turns and I walk along. In my vision, my surroundings are ever-changing with respect to me, to the placement of my body. My body, that is, I myself, am walking and moving, and my awareness stays with this moving body. If ‘I’ am always with my body, if I am my body, then ‘I’ do not move with respect to it. As embodied, I am the unmoving reference point for all else. All else moves with respect to me. This is an ordinary way of seeing things. A slight shift produces another, somewhat out of the ordinary but not uncommon perception: I move my legs but they go nowhere, the mountains are walking by me, the earth turns under my feet. Yet Dōgen is not talking only about such a shift in perspective. He writes: ‘Because [the mountains] have been the self since before form arose […] If you doubt mountains walking you do

120

Landscape and Travelling East and West

not know your own walking.’ The poet-translator Gary Snyder comments: ‘they are what we are and we are what they are’ (Snyder, 1990, p. 103). Dōgen says: ‘Blue mountains are neither sentient nor insentient. You are neither sentient nor insentient. At this moment, you cannot doubt the blue mountains walking’ (Snyder, 1990, p. 105). The mountains not only stand (in) for us, for the self, but the self moves into the mountains. Strangely enough, the shift Dōgen enacts seems to be not a change in perspective but a loss of perspective – the perspective that takes oneself as the centre of the world. It is as if Dōgen answers the question: what would happen if I thoroughly identified with my environs, say, of surrounding mountains? Then mountains could walk. And that is the way mountains practice to be mountains. Dōgen sees it this way: ‘A mountain always practices in every place.’10 I think it is important not to fall into the deep hole where such views look like dark, impenetrable mysticism that has nothing to do with everyday life in our workaday, politically troubled world. The relevance of Dōgen’s view for ecology and political life lies beyond my intention here, but a good place to look is Gary Snyder’s essays and poems that apply the sight of living mountains to bioregionalism, which shifts our view of geo-political territories to sustainable, decentralised areas with natural boundaries and features. To be sure, this natural world includes human abodes and activities as well. Another waka poem by Dōgen asks Attaining the heart Of the sutra, Are not even the sounds Of the bustling marketplace The preaching of the Dharma? (Heine, 1989, p. 88)

Dōgen concludes his presentation of mountains and waters with this reminder: ‘When you investigate mountains thoroughly, this is the work of the mountains. Such mountains and waters of themselves become wise persons and sages.’ And Gary Snyder adds: ‘become sidewalk vendors and noodle-cooks, become marmots, ravens, graylings, carp, rattlesnakes, mosquitos. All beings are “said” by the mountains and waters – even the clanking tread of a Caterpillar tractor, the gleam of the keys of a clarinet’ (Snyder, 1990, pp. 114–15). The bioregional landscape includes the human world but people are not its centre. Let me end this tour with some words that show it is not only the Chan or Zen tradition that has identified self and environment. Out of another era and another place on earth, we find resonances of such identification among Apache



A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart

121

peoples in the American Southwest. Seventy-seven-year-old Annie Peaches puts it this way: ‘The land is always stalking people. The land makes people live right. The land looks after us. The land looks after people’ (Basso, 1996, p. 39). The anthropologist who recorded this observation, Keith Basso, comments: For Indian men and women, the past lies embedded in features of the earth – in canyons and lakes, mountains and arroyos, rocks and vacant fields – which together endow their lands with multiple forms of significance that reach into their lives and shape the ways they think. Knowledge of places is therefore closely linked to knowledge of the self, to grasping one’s position in the larger scheme of things […] and to securing a confident sense of who one is as a person. (Basso, 1996, p. 34)

Basso cites the Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday: ‘The sense of place is paramount. Only in reference to the earth can [the Indian] persist in his identity’ (Basso, 1996, pp. 35, 105). I would take the link between place and selfidentity among the Apaches and other Native Americans a step further. Such self-identification can occur only because one does not understand oneself as separate from one’s environment. The Pueblo Indian writer Leslie Silko suggests as much when she invokes a sense of place that is not apart from self. She notes that language can be misleading if it misses this connection. The English word ‘landscape’, for example, does not capture the sense of place as it is lived by her people; indeed it does not correctly describe the relationship between the human being and his or her surroundings: [‘Landscape’] assumes the viewer is somehow outside or separate from the territory he or she surveys. Viewers are as much a part of the landscape as the boulders they stand on. There is no high mesa edge or mountain peak where one can stand and not immediately be part of all that surrounds. Human identity is linked with all the elements of Creation … (Silko, 1999, p. 32)

I conclude with a word from an Australian aboriginal woman that expresses more explicitly the non-duality of place and self that is intimated among the Native American aborigines: ‘With your vision you see me sitting on a rock, but I am sitting on the body of my ancestor. The earth, his body and my body are identical’ (Lawlor, 1991, p. 42). This woman does not envision the earth as a tremendous landscape she can imagine from the outside, but as the place of a continual creation. Ancestors created specific places by living on them, or perhaps better said, by living or enlivening them – in a primordial time called Dreamtime that bridges past and present. People re-create a place when they visit it and live on it – even if only for an overnight camp.

122

Landscape and Travelling East and West

There is more to be said about such places as landscapes of the heart, and I have said more about the Apache and Aboriginal views in another article.11 For now we may conclude with this poem by Gary Snyder: Green mountain walls in blowing cloud White dots on far slopes, constellations, Slowly changing, not stars, not rocks ‘by the midnight breezes strewn’ cloud tatters, lavender arctic light on sedate wild sheep grazing tundra greens, held in the web of clan and kin by bleats and smells to the slow rotation of their Order living half in the sky – damp wind up from the whole North Slope and a taste of the icepack, the primus roaring now, here, have some tea. (Snyder, 1990, p. 108)

Notes 1 2 3

4 5 6

The translations of Jiashan’s and Fayan’s Chinese verses are my own, using Nishitani Keiji’s reading of the classical Chinese text (Nishitani, 1974, p. 26). Parker, 1999, pp. 37–8, quoting a translation by R. Egan; see Parker, p. 227, Note 63. Karl-Heinz Pohl (2006, pp. 165–6) notes that the transcription jing often renders two distinct but related Chinese concepts: jing, translated here as ‘things (in the environment)’, and jing, meaning ‘scenery’ or ‘landscape’. In Japanese the two sinograms are pronounced differently, kyō and kei respectively, and in some instances were used together in Five Mountain poetry collections; on one occasion the Zenrin gasan that is the source of Parker’s quotations here speaks of the painters ‘not depicting environs [Keikyō] outside the mind’ (Shimada and Iriya, 2007, p. 218). This is Parker’s formulation of Ouyang. See, for example, Austin, 1998. Nishitani, 1980. The philosopher of aesthetics Izutsu Toyo points out that classical uses of kokoro do not necessarily indicate a subjective state or entity at all: Kokoro … is variously translated as either ‘heart’ or ‘mind’. In [Ki no] Tsurayuki’s [868?–945?] version of kokoro a variety of subjective events take place, such as the thinking of thoughts and the feeling of emotions. However, these thoughts



A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart

123

and emotions do not find verbal articulation unless they are ‘entrusted to what a person sees and what a person hears’. In other words, only metaphors can provide the inner self with an exit into the world – metaphors which in the Kokinshū are mainly drawn from nature (‘the voice of the warbler singing among the blossoms, and the voice of the frog dwelling inside the water’). As readers of the Kokinshū immediately realize, were it not for the scanty information we have about the poems included in the collection, it would be impossible to trace the object of poetic expression back to any specific subjectivity. The poet’s calculated attempt to defer expression to a background that is fore-grounded in natural images (scattering cherry blossoms and falling maple leaves) has led Izutsu Toyo to deny that Tsurayuki ever used the word kokoro to indicate any particular state of subjectivity. She argues that only in the poetry of the Shinkokin period (1205), and especially in Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), kokoro became genuine subjectivity transcending the transience of phenomenal experiences. This transformation in the notion of kokoro followed the impact that the philosophy of Tendai Buddhism, especially the concept of the ‘experience of self-illumination’, had on the construction of the subject in medieval Japan. Thus, kokoro became a ‘state of mind’. By stressing the unindividualized state of mind which he called ‘no-mind’, Teika argued that the products of the kokoro originate spontaneously without ever being controlled by any conscious endeavor. Consequently, Teika considered a poetic masterpiece to be the result of a process of spontaneity in which the omoi spontaneously arises from the kokoro and spontaneously flows into words (kotoba). Teika drew many of these insights from his father Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204), whose poetic treatise of 1197, Poetic Styles Past and Present, was deeply infused with ideas coming from the philosophy of Zhiyi’s (538–597) The Great Calm-and-Contemplation. (Marra, 2011, pp. 1168–9) 7

And the buddha-mind, unexcelled, pure and clear, is said to be mountains, rivers and the great sea. Dōgen alludes to the Chinese Buddhist text, The Awakening of Faith, in his recorded talks with monks, the Zuimonki. 8 My translation of the transcribed verse given in Heine, 1989, p. 88. 9 There are numerous English translations of this fascicle of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō. Carl Bielefeldt offers an accurate one with scholarly notes (Dōgen, n.d.). 10 Snyder, 1990, p. 105. With the reminder that many Chan figures were named after mountains (think of the poet Hanshan, Cold Mountain, or the masters Guishan, Yangshan, or Dungshan), translator Hubert Nearman reads Dōgen’s words as straightforward metaphors, where mountains mean accomplished Zen masters, blue or green means alive and ever renewing, and so forth: In this discourse in particular, ‘mountain’ is most often used as a descriptive epithet for one who is sitting in meditation, as still as a mountain among

Landscape and Travelling East and West

124

mountains (that is, one who is training among other members of the Buddhist Sangha), as well as for a wise and saintly person whose path has led him or her to seek a spiritual abode in a mountain, in both a literal and a figurative sense. Hence, the Chinese Zen Masters are referred to as ‘mountains’, and because their training never comes to an end but is ever green, they are referred to as ‘verdant mountains’. And because they are not rigid or static in their practice, they are sometimes referred to as ‘flowing mountains’. (Nearman, 2007, p. 141) 11 Maraldo, 2001.

References Austin, J. H. (1998), Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Basso, K. H. (1996), Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Cook, F. D. (1978), How to Raise An Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Zen Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo. Los Angeles: Center Press. Dōgen (n.d.), Mountains and Waters Discourse (Sansui Kyo). A. Kotler and K. Tanahashi (trans.): http://www.abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/C%20-%20Zen/ Ancestors/Dogen/The%20Mountains%20%20and%20Waters%20Sutra/ Mountains%20and%20Waters%20Sutra.htm —Shōbōgenzō Sansui Kyō (Mountains and Waters Sutra). C. Bielefeldt (trans.) http:// scbs.stanford.edu/sztp3/translations/shobogenzo/translations/sansuikyo/sansuikyo. intro.html Grant, B. (2003), Daughters of Emptiness: Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Heine, S. (1989), A Blade of Grass: Japanese Poetry and Aesthetics in Dōgen Zen. New York: Peter Lang. Lawlor, R. (1991), Voices of the First Day. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Lynn, R. J. (1987), ‘The sudden and the gradual in Chinese poetry criticism: an examination of the Ch’an-poetry analogy’, in P. N. Gregory (ed.), Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 381–427. Maraldo, J. C. (2001), ‘Views from somewhere: local lore and global knowledge’. Dokkyo International Review, 14, 37–50. Marra, M. (2011), ‘Overview of aesthetics’, in J. W. Heisig, T. P. Kasulis and J. C. Maraldo (eds), Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 1167–72. Nearman, H. (2007), ‘Translator’s introduction, Sansuikyō, “On the spiritual discourses of the mountains and the water”’, in Eihei Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō: The Treasure



A Walk through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart

125

House of the Eye of the True Teaching. A Trainee’s Translation of Great Master Dōgen’s Spiritual Masterpiece. Mount Shasta, CA: Shasta Abbey Press. http://www. urbandharma.org/udharma12/shobo.html Nishitani, K. (1974), ‘Zen no tachiba’, in K. Nishitani (ed), Zen no Tachiba (Kōzazen No. 1). Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, pp. 5–28. —(1980), Kaze no Kokoro. Tokyo: Shinchōsha. —(1984), ‘The standpoint of zen’, J. C. Maraldo (trans.). The Eastern Buddhist, 17 (1), 1–26. Parker, J. D. (1999), Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336– 1573). Albany: State University of New York Press. Pohl, K. H. (2006), Ästhetik und Literaturtheorie in China – Von der Tradition bis zur Moderne. Munich: K.G. Saur Verlag. Pollack, D. (1985), Zen Poems of the Five Mountains. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company & Scholars Press. Rossetti, C. G. (1870), Poems. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Shimada, S. and Iriya, Y. (eds) (1987), Zenrin Gasan: Chūsei Suiboku o Yomu. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha. Silko, L. M. (1999), ‘Landscape, history, and the Pueblo imagination’, in D. L. Barnhill (ed.), At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 30–44. Snyder, G. (1990), The Practice of the Wild: Essays by Gary Snyder. New York: North Point Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

10

Hōben as Pedagogical Landscape Andrew K. Whitehead

The following meditation treats the theme of this volume, landscape and travel, in a metaphorical sense, examining the Buddhist idea of skilful means (Sanskrit: upāya; Chinese: fang-bian; Japanese: hōben) as a practice that takes place as an evolving horizon of instruction: hōben as pedagogical landscape. With this in mind, the greater portion of the chapter focuses on drawing out the various modes and themes of instruction in Buddhism as it migrates east from India to Japan, and this with a heavy bias in focus towards Chan and Zen Buddhism. To a lesser extent, I outline my own particular understanding of pedagogical landscapes, and attempt to reconcile this understanding with the traditional Buddhist idea of skilful means. Before pursuing either of these avenues, however, I feel it prudent to first qualify in a brief note how and the extent to which I read this latter idea from a particularly Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhist perspective. The Japanese term hōben is made up of two Chinese characters (fang-bian): hō and ben. Hō is commonly translated as ‘method’, ‘means’, or, in certain specific Buddhist contexts, as ‘dharma’. Ben is commonly translated as ‘expediency’, ‘use’, ‘function’, or ‘skilful’.1 There are certainly subtle differences to be inferred from the various translations of hōben,2 and therefore any number of subtle implications to be gained through a more careful analysis. However, I leave this issue aside for the time being, and instead qualify my use of ‘skilful means’ as more closely aligned to the Japanese fūryū, literally translated as wind-current, but more generally taken to indicate style, appropriateness, suitability, or some such variation. To this extent, my treatment of hōben in this chapter favours something of a Daoist flavouring of Buddhist instruction, highlighting the invisible-made-visible dimensions of stylised contextual pedagogies. In this way, my reading of hōben renders the idea of skilful means an autoethopoiesis3 of instructional capacity and style: an evolving landscape upon which pedagogical horizons are cast and particular discursive means entertained.

128

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Pedagogical landscapes can be understood as relational situations that give way to instructional capacities between a teacher and a student. Pedagogical landscapes are always changing. They are perspectival, relative and immediate in nature. They are not and cannot be exclusively available to the teacher, but arise out of the relation in which both teacher and student find themselves. I believe they are both physical and social in nature. In both of these instances, it is necessary that the landscape be shared. These shared pedagogical landscapes must be flexible, adaptable, and in no way essential. They have to be a familiar landscape, ready-to-hand, entrenched in the day-to-day lives of both teacher and student. Teaching requires skill in means. I offer only a rough outline sketch of the different pedagogical means adopted in different stages of Buddhism. Following a very brief examination of the no-self doctrine of Theravāda Buddhism, I move on to a brief introduction of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India, China and Japan, focusing on examples of skilful means in the records of Vimalakīrti, Bodhidharma, Linji and Ikkyū. My treatment of the shifting pedagogical landscape of Buddhism deals, both directly and indirectly, with four key ideas in early Buddhist texts: skilful means (upāya), compassion (karunā), dukkha (which I leave untranslated) and dependent co-arising (pratītyasamutpāda). The recorded sermons of the Buddha illustrate how he adapted his message to different audiences. Out of compassion for his hearers’ suffering, he aimed to alleviate their ignorance (upon which karma depends) through language and ideas with which they were familiar. Addressing those who held firm to the existence of a self (ātman), the Buddha, by focusing on the jīva (characteristic or conventional self), helped them to understand that there is no self to be found. He makes use of the shared social landscape of his culture and draws on those ideas most readily available for instruction. This point is made all the more clear if we look to the Milindapañha and the encounter between King Milinda and the monk Nāgasena. Here, Nāgasena turns to his immediate physical landscape to engage the King, and is able, using skilful means, to illustrate the non-essential nature of all identities by using the King’s chariot as an example. Drawing on the immediately present, on that which the King takes for granted as an essential existent, Nāgasena dissects the chariot requesting that the King point out where and what makes the chariot a chariot. He asks whether it is the pole, the axle, the wheels, the chariot-body, the banner-staff, the yoke, the reins or the goading-stick that is the chariot; whether it is all of them together that is the chariot; or whether it is something apart from these that is the chariot. To all of these the King must answer no.



Hōben as Pedagogical Landscape

129

The particular form of teaching, or the particular approach for explaining the Buddhist no-self doctrine, is relative. Different teachers are able to extract the same level of understanding on the part of their students using entirely different pedagogical landscapes. This point is heavily reinforced in the Mahāyāna stream of Buddhism, where the use of skilful means becomes a soteriological priority. This is due, in no small part, to a shift in focus towards the ultimate compassion, that of the bodhisattvas, who are often described as chameleonesque beings, adopting whatever appearance and pedagogical tools are necessary for the sake of dispelling ignorance and liberating others from the realm of samsara. One of my preferred texts concerning the bodhisattva and skilful means is The Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, or simply the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. This text outlines the ways in which the layman Vimalakīrti employs skilful means, and explains how he understands the compassionate acts of bodhisattvas as skilful means. He is recorded to have been particularly apt at explaining Buddhism to all walks of life, entering gambling parlours, government offices, places of debate and houses of ill fame to expound the dharma. The Sūtra itself is a skilful means production that outlines the story of how Vimalakīrti, using skilful means, attracts many visitors to his sick bed, and the hesitancy that all of the visitors have in bringing themselves to visit him given their previous encounters with him where, using skilful means, he had tripped them up and made them both look and feel inadequate in their understanding. He contends that because all words are empty, the dharma is empty, the teachings of the dharma are empty, all things are empty. In light of this, there is no one way that a bodhisattva should behave. There is no one way in which a bodhisattva should expound the law. Instead, bodhisattvas must compassionately engage others according to the specific situation in which they find themselves. In the Gandavyūha Sūtra, the hero Sudhana encounters the bodhisattva Vasumitra, a prostitute, who uses embraces and kisses in order to expound the teachings to suffering sentient beings. This is an example of the fact that skilful means knows no bounds. The pedagogical landscape adopted for instruction necessarily adapts for the sake of understanding. A lengthy treatise on classical Indian philosophical concepts would hardly serve the purpose of compassionately enlightening a John at a brothel (well, most Johns, at most brothels). The Vimalakīrti Sūtra tells us that ‘The Buddha preaches the Law with a single voice, but each living being understands it according to his kind’; that ‘The Buddha preaches the Law with a single voice, but each living being understands it in his own way’; that ‘The Buddha preaches the Law with a single voice, but to some it brings fear, to others delight and joy’ (Watson, 1997, pp. 23–4). The understanding sought

130

Landscape and Travelling East and West

after in all compassionate engagements is one and the same, but the means adopted for eliciting this understanding, on the part of the hearers, is necessarily limited to the environment in which their conventional reality is manifested; to their unique situational landscape; and, therefore, to the unique pedagogical landscape made available in the relation wherein teacher and student are found. More often than not, as a result of the teacher–student dynamic, the pedagogical landscape is more heavily influenced and afforded by the student than it is by the teacher. This seems inevitable in light of the fact that the ignorance to be dispelled exists on the part of the student, and it is therefore on their terms that any instruction proves successful. Vimalakīrti instructs disciples who are begging for alms by drawing from their ignorance with regards to begging for alms; he instructs those who are expounding the law to lay believers by drawing from their ignorance with regards to expounding the law to lay believers; and he instructs those who are explaining how to obtain forgiveness by drawing from their ignorance with regards to obtaining forgiveness. In all instances, Vimalakīrti meets his interlocutors on their own terms in order to dispel their ignorance. His instruction adapts to the given situation and he draws from the available pedagogical landscape. This remains the case as Buddhism moves into China as well. The forms of Buddhist instruction shift in order to accommodate the local pedagogical landscape of the time. Buddhism comes to embrace concepts from the Chinese literati, borrowing from classical Chinese texts as well as the traditions of Daoism and Confucianism. While I am not prepared to debate the necessary linguistic reasons for this shift at any length here, I believe that this shift can also be read as a necessary shift of the pedagogical landscape for the sake of accommodating students and expounding the dharma on their own terms. However, the shift is not only illustrated through the social landscape, but extends to the physical landscape as well. This point is reinforced by the account given in Fazang’s Treatise on the Golden Lion, which he devised in order to explain the Avatamsaka Sūtra to Empress Wu in light of the fact that the philosophy was too abstruse for her to comprehend. In order to instruct her, Fazang used the figure of a lion in the palace architecture to illustrate his points. He adopted the immediate physical landscape for pedagogical reasons. In this sense, a teacher’s ability to adjust their instructional capacities is essential for adequate instruction. In Dhyāna Buddhism, later called Chan and then Zen Buddhism, Bodhidharma insists on the importance of a teacher when it comes to aligning oneself with the Way of Buddha-nature. In his Bloodstream Sermon,



Hōben as Pedagogical Landscape

131

he contends that one can never know one’s Buddha-nature without the help of a teacher, and explains that only one person in a million becomes enlightened without proper instruction. One of the main reasons for this is that it is so difficult for a student to move beyond learning towards understanding. It is not sufficient to invoke buddhas, recite sūtras, make offerings, observe precepts, practice devotions, or do good works. One must realise that these are only vehicles, and not the destination of Buddhist practice. Without a teacher, this realisation is extremely difficult. It is similar to memorising mathematical formulas through repetition and insisting that one understands them. A teacher demands understanding over and above blind practice. Bodhidharma teaches that even if one can explain thousands of sūtras and shastras, unless one sees one’s own nature they cannot understand them. And while the texts remain the same for all practitioners, unique pedagogical forms are used to adapt the teachings to the needs of different students. For each student there is a different lesson plan. Bodhidharma teaches that even butchers and lovers can be buddhas if they come to understand their Buddha-nature and free themselves from the attachments involved in their conventional activities.4 He disqualifies criticisms against their lifestyles in and of themselves on the grounds that understanding is not hindered by any phantom entities or realities. The teachings of Buddhism, if not properly understood, are fanatical and only provisional teachings. With this in mind, it should not be surprising that, through proper understanding, one necessarily abandons the teacher–student dynamic. Successful instruction occasions the rejection of the instructor. Bodhidharma tells us that respecting a teacher, a Buddha, a bodhisattva or a dharma relegates one to samsara. This is only another form of attachment. There are even those who would come to insist on including this warning in the introductory remarks of their first lecture. In the opening discourse of the Linji lu, we find precisely that. Linji’s first pronouncement of this opening lecture is: Today, I, this mountain monk, having no choice in the matter, have perforce yielded to customary etiquette and taken this seat. If I were to demonstrate the Great Matter in strict keeping with the teaching of the ancestral school, I simply couldn’t open my mouth. (Sasaki, 2009, p. 3)

His overwhelming zeal for the whole endeavour seems almost too difficult for him to contain. After a series of questions (which the Master presumably allowed only because he had no choice in the matter), Linji concludes his lecture conceding that he fears he is obstructing the councillor and his staff, and

132

Landscape and Travelling East and West

thereby obscuring the Buddha-nature. He then excuses himself and withdraws, telling his audience to take care of themselves. In one of Linji’s famous ‘grouped statements’, known as the ‘four interviews between guest and host’, Linji describes the standard interactions that take place between students and their teacher during a lesson. Introducing the four interviews, Linji notes the following: When host and guest meet they vie with each other in discussion. At times, in response to something, they may manifest a form; at times they may act with their whole body;5 or they may use tricks or devices to appear joyful or angry; or they may reveal half of the body; or again they may ride upon a lion or mount a lordly elephant. (Sasaki, 2009, p. 23)

Roughly summarised, we can understand this introduction as saying that the student–teacher relation takes many forms, sometimes as actions through which one actualises the functioning of essences; sometimes as only partial actualisations of the functioning of essences; sometimes as performative locutions; and sometimes as references to conventional wisdom6 or law.7 There is no universal method for instruction, and skilful means must be used expediently within and for particular situations. With this in mind, Linji explains the first interview: A true student gives a shout, and to start with holds out a sticky lacquer tray. The teacher, not discerning that this is an objective circumstance, goes after it and performs a lot of antics with it. The student again shouts but still the teacher is unwilling to let go. This is a disease of the vitals that no doctoring can cure; it is called ‘the guest examines the host’. (Sasaki, 2009, p. 24)

The sticky lacquer tray is meant to convey a verbal trap or bait, a sticky surface that, once touched, holds fast and impedes freedom. And, while we would all want to deny it, this situation is not uncommon in most instances of instruction. The second interview reads as follows: Sometimes a teacher will offer nothing, but, the moment a student asks a question, grabs it away. The student, his question having been taken from him, resists to the death and will not let go. This is called ‘the host examines the guest’. (Sasaki, 2009, p. 24)

In both of these interviews, an overly zealous attachment to a landscape that is not shared (on the part of either the student or the teacher) prevents instruction from taking place. I believe that these interviews can be read as representative of the intellectual stubbornness born out of any number of interactions in which



Hōben as Pedagogical Landscape

133

the student and the teacher fail to establish a shared pedagogical landscape in which they can both find themselves. The third interview, however, represents the ideal pedagogical interaction, at least for Zen Buddhists. It reads: Sometimes a student comes forth before a teacher in conformity with a state of purity. The teacher, discerning that this is an objective circumstance, seizes it and flings it into a pit. ‘What an excellent teacher!’ exclaims the student, and the teacher replies, ‘Bah! You can’t tell good from bad!’ Thereupon the student makes a deep bow: this is called ‘the host examines the host’. (Sasaki, 2009, p. 24)

This interview represents the ideal pedagogical interaction for Zen Buddhists insofar as the student–teacher dynamic is abandoned in light of understanding. Students, insofar as they exist in a student–teacher dynamic, remain dependent on teachers, confirming Linji’s belief that ‘among all the students from every quarter who are followers of the Way, none has yet come before me without being dependent on something’ (Sasaki, 2009, p. 22). It reiterates Bodhidharma’s claim that successful instruction undermines any need for an instructor, and holds fast to Linji’s claim that ‘“Buddha” and “patriarch” are only names of praise-bondage’ (Sasaki, 2009, p. 23), inevitably leading to the enlightened understanding that ‘on meeting the Buddha [one should] slay the Buddha’ (Sasaki, 2009, p. 22). With regards to this third interview, both student and teacher operate in accordance with a shared pedagogical landscape, that of non-pedagogy, or without-pedagogy. There is no instructor, and therefore there is no student. Linji’s fourth and final interview reads as follows: Or again, a student will appear before a teacher wearing a cangue and bound with chains. The teacher fastens on still more chains and cangues for him. The student is so delighted that he can’t tell what is what; this is called ‘the guest examines the guest’. (Sasaki, 2009, p. 24)

The reference to cangue and chains conveys adherence or attachment to erroneous views. In this last form, while there is a shared pedagogical landscape, in the sense that both parties operate with a shared understanding of the content and form of their interlocution, it is to the detriment of both. Instead of releasing the student from their initial misgivings, the teacher reinforces these incredulous misgivings through his or her own ignorance. These four types of interactions between students and teachers confirm the need for a shared pedagogical landscape and for studying under a competent

134

Landscape and Travelling East and West

teacher. They are also exemplary of the shifting pedagogical landscape of Buddhism insofar as Linji adopts a language (metaphors and references) that is native to China – references that would not work as well (if at all) in another landscape. My intellectual pilgrimage through the pedagogical landscapes of Buddhism comes to an end in Japan. Given that I have not afforded myself sufficient time for a worthy discussion of a number of Zen thinkers, I focus on only one Zen monk, my favourite Zen monk, Ikkyū Sōjun. Ikkyū is most famous as a ‘crazy monk’ of the medieval period, often sojourning in brothels, drinking sake and/ or fondling himself and/or others. In order to instruct the vulgar, and in line with the non-dualist understanding of the bodhisattva, Ikkyū adopts profane themes for his poetry and is depicted as an unruly monk in the hagiographic literature. That being said, his skilful means are also depicted as highly effective. In one of his less intellectual (and seemingly self-serving) poems (pun intended), he writes: Making My Hand Mori’s Hand My hand, how it becomes Mori’s hand. In truth the lady has a masterful style; Ill, her cure makes the jeweled stem sprout. The multitude rejoices amidst our meeting.8

Or, and perhaps slightly more social in nature, he writes in another poem: On a Brothel A beauty’s cloud-rain, love’s a deep river. In the pagoda, a child and an old man meditate silently, singing. Embraced, I find pleasure in the sucking of the proboscis. In the end, neither body nor mind is thrown into the fire.9

We might here understand Ikkyū as embracing a similar approach to that of the bodhisattva Vasumitra the prostitute, using skilful means in order to situate himself in a shared pedagogical landscape with his readers. One of the most important themes in Ikkyū’s writings is the body. The body serves as a reference point that is presumed common to all of his readers, insofar as they all have one. Working through bodily desires, Ikkyū establishes a shared landscape in which his teachings hit home with any and all students. In the hagiographic literature, Ikkyū is depicted cursing at officials and urinating on religious apparitions and



Hōben as Pedagogical Landscape

135

statues. As a criticism of the uncompassionate behaviour on the part of officials with regards to the lower rungs of society, and as a means for instructing the truth of non-dualism and the illusory nature of all titles and positions, Ikkyū strips before a wealthy landlord and offers his sumptuous meal to his own clothes now piled up on the table. Heinrich Dumoulin relays the story as follows: Once when he was begging, dressed in old clothes, he was given a half-penny at the door of a wealthy landlord. He later visited the same house dressed in the violet garb of his office. He was received in an inner room and offered a sumptuous meal. He then rose from the table, took off his robe, and placed it before the food, declaring that the festive meal belonged not to him but only to his robe. (Dumoulin, 2005, p. 196)

In all of these unconventional accounts, Ikkyū succeeds in undermining the rigid conventions that perpetuate the suffering of sentient beings. He compassionately adapts his instruction to his particular audience in order to dispel their ignorance. Indeed, in the case of Ikkyū, skilful means knows no bounds. All of the examples I have provided, ranging across close to two millennia in time, and travelling from India to China and from China to Japan, though seemingly incompatible and even at odds with each other with regards to their intentions, are unique pedagogical means aimed at one and the same learning outcome: liberation from illusory attachments and from the dissatisfaction that comes with them. While it is often argued that there is not one Buddhism, but many Buddhisms, it is important to keep in mind that this refers only to the practices and scriptures entertained in different schools of Buddhism, and not to the goal of Buddhist practice. As Buddhism travelled east (and as it continues to travel east, now on its second passing of Asia having returned from the Americas through Europe) and encountered different cultural and physical landscapes, it gained momentum by shifting its own pedagogical landscape. In constructing itself anew at every turn, the character of Buddhism showed itself through this very constructing, a showing that has served to further its own malleability with regards to instructional capacities in new and foreign landscapes.

Notes 1

For a more exhaustive philological treatment of hōben, I refer the reader to Prye, 2003.

136 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9

Landscape and Travelling East and West As ‘skill in means’, ‘skilful means’, ‘expediency in means’, ‘expedient means’, ‘dharma function’, ‘dharma use’, and so forth. The idea of autoethopoiesis first occurred to me at a meeting of the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle in Shanghai in 2013, while listening to a presentation by Elisabet Yanagisawa Avén on the Japanese aesthetic concept of iki in which she referred to Michel Foucault’s use of the term ethopoiesis. It occurred to me that any ethopoiesis can only make sense to the extent that it is also an autopoiesis, and that any autopoiesis can only make sense to the extent that it is also an ethopoiesis. I am grateful for the opportunity to have discussed some of my preliminary ideas on the topic of autoethopoiesis on such an occasion. See Pine, 1989, pp. 39, 41. An action through which one actualises the functioning of essence. Manjusri (bodhisattva of Intrinsic Wisdom) on his lion. Samantabhadra (bodhisattva of Universal Law) on his elephant. Poem 536 of the Kyounshu, translation my own. Poem 144 of the Kyounshu, translation my own.

References Dumoulin, H. (2005), Zen Buddhism: Volume 2: A History (Japan). Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom. Pine, R. (1989), The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma. New York: North Point Press. Sasaki, R. F. (2009), The Record of Linji. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Prye, M. (2003), Skilful Means: A Concept in Mahayana Buddhism. London: Routledge. Watson, B. (1997), The Vimalakirti Sutra. New York: Columbia University Press.

11

Poets and Pilgrims: From Saigyō to Shikoku John Harding

Departure The volume’s themes of landscape and travelling intersect with Japanese philosophy and religion at multiple crossroads. In the twentieth century, the tree, water and temple-lined route that Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), Japan’s most famous modern philosopher, traversed for daily meditation and dynamic inspiration in Kyoto became known as the Tetsugaku no michi, or Philosopher’s Path. This chapter aligns with such a path in the sense that it surveys travel through Japanese landscape with an emphasis on walking as the ideal mode for a journey that joins wandering and wondering. However, this investigation departs from the Philosopher’s Path in two ways. Here, sojourns leave the city behind in pursuit of poets and pilgrims engaged in longer treks through landscapes including terrain that can be challenging, even treacherous, as well as beautiful. Moreover, the peripatetic ‘philosophers’ for this chapter are more self-consciously religious figures, pilgrims and Buddhist monks prone to reflect on their travels and the landscape through a religious lens. Prompted by perceptions of shared landscape, various Buddhist wanderers have reflected on their connections to prominent figures from earlier eras whose journeys enrich their own travels by association. This chapter will highlight some of these relationships across time en route to Shikoku, Japan’s fourth largest island. It will also examine changes to the religious landscape as well as to the path and mode of travel in Shikoku’s famous multi-site pilgrimage. Rather than leaping ahead to Shikoku and its modern transformations, there are advantages to ambling along the scenic path that connects key figures across time and through shared space. The Buddhist monk Saigyō (1118–90) will guide this journey to Shikoku and back through his poems, which artfully unite interior and exterior landscapes. In addition to exploring changes to religious landscape

138

Landscape and Travelling East and West

in Shikoku, this chapter argues for a partial collapse of time, whereby perceptions of sharing the same landscape links figures from different eras: namely, Bashō, Saigyō and Kūkai as well as Shikoku pilgrims over centuries.

Poets and continuity Bashō (1644–94), the famous peripatetic poet, represented his travels through linked verse and short poems known now as haiku. Although not an ordained monk, Buddhist influence and inspiration is clear in his pilgrimages and verse. Moreover, in other essays in this volume, Günter Wohlfart and Mario Wenning have illuminated Bashō’s resonance with the Daoist wandering of Zhuangzi. For this chapter, Bashō is used not as a destination but as a signpost directing us back to Saigyō, the twelfth-century Buddhist poet, who in turn will lead us further back to Kūkai (774–835) and to Shikoku’s religiously charged landscape. Bashō connects his travels and poetry to Saigyō and retraces the earlier poet-monk’s literary journeys. Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North makes this link clear. As William LaFleur notes, ‘Bashō […] explicitly named Saigyō […] as the poet of the past to whom he was most indebted’ (LaFleur, 2003, p. 1). Moving through the same landscape – visiting, reflecting upon, and writing poetry about the same sites – strengthened this connection across time. They are, nevertheless, importantly different. Saigyō was driven by Buddhist concerns, and the religious dimensions of his travel and engagement with landscape are often explicit. Bashō elicits connections to Daoist wandering and was inevitably shaped by Buddhist influences, but he was clear about not being a Buddhist monk. The label pilgrim might apply in a way. Bashō revelled in resisting reification into conventional categories, but his travels and poetry unambiguously serve as signposts pointing back to Saigyō. Saigyō will take us to Shikoku, but there is no need to rush this journey. There is value in lingering with this especially talented and conflicted Buddhist poet to observe how he invokes, interrogates and connects interior and exterior landscapes. William LaFleur’s skilful translations and the commentary and context he provides in his 2003 book, Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō, can serve as an experienced guide. Saigyō often locates his poems in landscape increasingly distant from the capital where he left his warrior past and insei (retired emperor) court politics behind. He also describes an evolving interior landscape that finds the transition difficult and is



Poets and Pilgrims: From Saigyō to Shikoku

139

candid about attachments, shortcomings and existential concerns. Here are two examples from when he left the hills around the capital to Kurama, a few days journey by foot, in the first poem below and then travelling further still to the Mt Kōya area in the second poem. It was bound to be: my vow to be unattached to seasons and such – I, who by a frozen bamboo pipe Now wait for water, long for spring. (LaFleur, 2003, p. 16) Deep in the mountains – no song of birds close to what we knew at home, just the spine-tingling hoots of owls in the night. (LaFleur, 2003, p. 20)

There are other poems from this time and place prefaced with ‘Deep in the mountains’ (yama fukami). The setting is remote, but the motivation is not simply to get away from the capital. There is also a sense in which Saigyō is drawing closer to Kōbō Daishi, also known as Kūkai (774–835 ce). Kōbō Daishi, the posthumous honorific title used for Kūkai by Saigyō and a millennia of pilgrims to Shikoku and Mt Koya, is arguably the most revered figure of Japanese history. Kōbō Daishi’s appeal includes cultural and religious contributions that extend far beyond the Shingon school of Buddhism he founded in Japan. Saigyō’s ‘meeting’ with Kōbō Daishi in shared Shikoku space yielded poems notable for their reverence, excitement and altered perspective. Here are two, including the prefaces Saigyō provided for each. I was in the province of Sanuki and in the mountains where Kōbō Daishi had once lived. While there, I stayed in a hut I had woven together out of grasses. The moon was especially bright and, looking in the direction of the [Inland] Sea, my vision was unclouded. Cloudfree mountains encircle the sea, which holds the reflected moon: this transforms islands into emptiness holes in a sea of ice. (LaFleur, 2003, p. 36)

140

Landscape and Travelling East and West

As noted by LaFleur, the ‘natural setting undergoes a kind of beatification here’ that connects to the cosmic maps of mandalas and suggests Buddhist metaphysics of ‘emptiness’ through the visual inversion due to the moon’s reflected brilliance seemingly turning the water to ice and in the absence of reflected light transforming the solid, convex islands to concave ‘holes’ (taema) (LaFleur, 2003, pp. 36–7). This interpretation fits well with how the moon’s brightness is often associated with the enlightened mind – by Saigyō and Buddhists before and since his time. Additionally, this poem is suggestive of the famous lines from the Heart Sūtra: ‘Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.’ This short Perfection of Wisdom sūtra is chanted daily by many Buddhist monks and by Shikoku pilgrims, who often have this text written out on their walking staffs. The dynamic and interpenetrating notion of emptiness (śūnyatā) is captured well in this vision of landscape where formless ocean appears as solid form and formed islands seem to be empty voids. The next poem also includes a preface to indicate the extremity of the landscape and difficult passage through it as well as to join Saigyō’s travel to Kōbō Daishi. Saigyō does not always provide such a preface, but it heuristically illuminates the poet’s perspective and the influence of place in forging a link across time. The climb up to Mandala Temple in order to carry out the activities proper for a pilgrim there was an unusually difficult one. The climber must make what seems like an almost perpendicular ascent. On the peak are buried sacred sutras that Kōbō Daishi copied out with his own hand. Outside the priest’s quarters [at the top] is a ten-foot-square dais. It is said that Kōbō Daishi climbed up on to this every day in order to perform austerities. In order for others to perform devotional activities on it [without risk of falling off], a double enclosure has been constructed. Nevertheless, the dangers one faces in making a climb up to this place are truly extraordinary. I, for one, made my way to the top by crawling along on all fours. Amazing to have made it here to this point where holy ones convened; pledges are best when made on precipices above it all. (LaFleur, 2003, pp. 37–8)

Saigyō has arrived at the ‘convention of holy ones’ – a specific space and place that links him to Kōbō Daishi. This idea is common to pilgrimage and especially Shikoku pilgrimage, where encountering Kōbō Daishi is a



Poets and Pilgrims: From Saigyō to Shikoku

141

common trope right up to the present. The link to Kūkai is often especially keenly felt near Zentsūji (temple #75) in the area where he grew up. The precarious high point in the poem above is near this site and linked to legends of Kūkai as a boy (Statler, 1983, p. 114). Despite the long gaps in time from Kūkai’s childhood to Saigyō’s travels to pilgrims in recent centuries, there is a recurring sense of relationship prompted by reflections about experiencing the same place. There is continuity and a parallel structure in the interconnections through travel that link Bashō to Saigyō and then Saigyō to Kōbō Daishi. Bashō looked to Saigyō as motivation and model for his own peripatetic poetry. Saigyō’s pilgrimage to Shikoku sites traversed by Kōbō Daishi reveal a similar dynamic. In both cases, figures separated by approximately four centuries partially collapse their distance in time by occupying the same space, travelling the same path and witnessing the same (or what is perceived to be the same) landscape.

Pilgrims and change The apparent sameness can be misleading. Saigyō’s view from ‘precipices above it all’ may be closely linked to Kōbō Daishi’s experience, but the landscape of Shikoku’s multi-site pilgrimage is not static. The changes are often masked by accounts that exaggerate continuity by emphasising assumed connections between Kōbō Daishi and many of the sites. Both poetry written at shared sites and travel accounts of pilgrims can construct parallel literary and religious journeys. These reinforce the above idea of a partial collapse or conflation of time through shared space – experiencing the apparently same sacred landscape through one’s travels. However, these literary forms mistakenly suggest a too-fixed image of a landscape anchoring the flux of time. Naturally (though nature has help on this front) the landscape itself is also changing, as is the means by which the landscape is experienced. To explore this aspect of transformation, case studies and close attention to historical context can reveal important disjunctions. Seemingly timeless, ‘traditional’ pilgrimage changes through human intervention as a result of a host of political, economic, religious, social and historical reasons. For example, the landscape of Shikoku pilgrimage – in particular certain cultural markers along the 88-temple route – has been altered since the onset of the Meiji era. In addition to this change in the landscape and route, except for the small minority of aruki henro (walking pilgrims) there is also a partial collapse of space – saving time – on this

142

Landscape and Travelling East and West

pilgrimage route as illustrated by mini-pilgrimage and by the use of modern modes of transportation. It is clear that modern modes of travel alter the experience of travel and of landscape. Increased speed and ease of travel diminishes the time required and thereby can give the impression of a related diminishment of distance. However, techniques to abbreviate multi-site pilgrimage are older than the modern modes of conveyance that can speed pilgrims along. The same large temple complex of Zentsūji (temple #75) incorporates an interesting example of mini-pilgrimage as well as various links to Kūkai’s birth and childhood. In the case of this minipilgrimage, the distance of the 88-site pilgrimage is dramatically collapsed down to dozens of paces. There are various sites in Japan that map famous pilgrimage routes onto different landscapes – often in miniature. The mini-pilgrimage associated with the Zentsūji temple complex (#75) can be found at the smaller temple, Kanchi-in. Kōbō Daishi is reported to have built this temple in 807. The macrocosmic whole of Shikoku pilgrimage is mapped onto the microcosmic mini-pilgrimage here by transplanting soil from each of the 88 temples to this sacred site beneath 88 statues. These statues encircle an image of Kōbō Daishi, which was constructed in 1934 to mark the 1,100th anniversary of his death. Circumambulating the perimeter of the 88 statues represents a journey around the sacred land and cultural markers of Shikoku pilgrimage all at this one site. In addition to mini-pilgrimage, modern modes of travel also alter the space, time required and landscape of pilgrimage. Ian Reader’s 2005 book, Making Pilgrimage: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku, offers detailed analysis of the rise of buses as a preferred mode of pilgrimage beginning in the middle of the twentieth century and the related reduction of aruki henro, the iconic walking pilgrim, to approximately 1 per cent of the contemporary henro population. Travel by bus and other motor vehicles create a different experience of time (shorter gap between sites), pilgrims’ sense of communitas (a sense of community with fellow pilgrims remains, but the interaction is altered by the mode of transportation), landscape (highways rather than trails) and pilgrimage focus (the bus pilgrims tend to focus more on each temple site rather than the journey between sites). Reader notes that ‘pilgrimage is a moving landscape whose route has constantly changed over the ages – and continues to do so as […] new modes of conveyance […] appear’; moreover, ‘those on foot tend to see the route as their focus, with temples as reference points on it’, whereas ‘those on buses find their main focus to be on the temples themselves’ (Reader, 2005, pp. 20, 189–90). In addition to the transformations wrought by modern modes of transportation, it is important to note change to the landscape for political, historical,



Poets and Pilgrims: From Saigyō to Shikoku

143

ideological and religious reasons. Much of the remainder of this section draws on pages 88–91 in the author’s ‘Shifting signposts in Shikoku pilgrimage’ (in his 2012 edited volume, Studying Buddhism in Practice), which sketches a case study of pilgrimage and persecution that reshapes Shikoku’s landscape. Here shifting cultural markers signal contested identities and unintended consequences of Meiji policies. The resulting dynamics continued to shape Shikoku pilgrimage up to the present, albeit in ways not envisioned during the brief Meiji persecution of Buddhism. The following observations are based on collaborative fieldwork conducted with Hiroshi Shimazaki, whose studies of Shikoku pilgrimage for several decades, including perspectives on the management and geography of this pilgrimage, complemented the author’s training in religious studies with research interests in Meiji era Buddhism. A brief introduction to the Shikoku pilgrimage and the Meiji persecution of Buddhism that influenced its development in the past 145 years may provide some useful context. The origins and popularity of pilgrimage to the 88 temples on Shikoku Island rely on the ancient association with the already mentioned Shikoku native and founder of Shingon Buddhism, Kūkai/Kōbō Daishi. There is significant Shingon influence evident throughout Shikoku, but the pilgrimage has attracted a wide spectrum of Buddhists for approximately one millennium. In fact, it has drawn many pilgrims whose religious practice may not differentiate strongly between Buddhism and Shinto, and numerous sites reflected this joint interest. However, a modern intervention altered the landscape of this pilgrimage at the beginning of the Meiji era (1868–1911). The restoration of the Meiji Emperor followed growing sentiment among Native Studies (kokugaku) scholars, such as Hirata Atsutane, to reconceptualise Shinto as superior to foreign religions and complete without them. The call to revive Shinto was joined by attempts to forcibly remove Buddhist elements where the religions were intermingled. This attempt to separate Buddhism from Shinto was destructive and rather disingenuous both in casting Buddhism as foreign and characterising Shinto as indigenous from time immemorial. The reality was deeply interwoven hybrid connections between the traditions that were not easily severed. However, one way to attempt this separation involved the destruction of Buddhist statues and temples. This violence was stoked by resentments toward the Tokugawa shogunate’s heavy-handed rule for the previous two-and-a-half centuries and, by extension, towards Buddhism, which had been used by the government as one method of control by means of forcing all Japanese to register their family with a temple. The resulting persecution and separation of Buddhism from Shinto (shinbutsu bunri) was mapped onto the

144

Landscape and Travelling East and West

landscape by burning down temples and otherwise removing Buddhist cultural markers from sites that had been shared by both traditions. The persecution lasted for less than a decade, but it was quite virulent in certain areas, with widespread destruction of Buddhist material culture and forced laicisation of monks. James Ketelaar’s 1990 work, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution, is a particularly insightful study of this persecution. It did not last long, but the destruction hit some areas especially hard. Among the four regions of Shikoku and its pilgrimage, the separation, persecution and destruction or displacement of Buddhist temples was most evident in the Tosa region, now known as Kōchi (Reader, 2005, pp. 138–9). Prominent examples near the regional capital of Kōchi reveal how these early Meiji policies of separation and persecution attempted to displace Buddhist buildings and statues and claim Shinto identity for the existing sacred sites. However, in contrast to the Meiji government’s intention, the histories and current pilgrimage practices at specific temples in this region, such as temple #27 (Kōnomineji) and temple #30 (Zenrakuji), demonstrate that pilgrims determined their own path through an increasingly Buddhist landscape. That is, pilgrims diverted their route to where Buddhist structures and statues were re-established. By trekking to the displaced Buddhist structures and statues rather than to the now ‘purely Shinto’ site, the Shikoku pilgrimage became more purely Buddhist even as some of the original sites, which now only included the Shinto shrine, suffered from neglect. Temple #27 (Kōnomineji) best exemplifies this inversion of the early-Meiji attempt to promote a more pure Shinto site at the expense of the Buddhist elements that had been integral to the original site. In the wake of persecution at Kōnomineji, it is the newer Buddhist temple at the would-be-marginalised lower ground that is actually visited. The relocated Buddhist site at temple #27 also re-established its place in the pilgrims’ mental landscape through associations with Kōbō Daishi, with the typical statue of the great teacher and a more innovative display along the outside of one temple wall with text and images celebrating his life and accomplishments. The reshaping of pilgrimage landscape has obvious implications for the earlier #27 site. The Shinto shrine at higher elevation up the old pilgrims’ path no longer received the traffic of pilgrims. In fact, during the author’s May 2005 fieldwork visit, no pilgrims climbed up to the old site and occasional cobwebs were visible across the old stone stairs. Kōnomine, the name for the old site that is still retained by the new #27 temple, means Kami’s Peak. However, stripping away the Buddhist elements during the Meiji persecution has left the kami and the



Poets and Pilgrims: From Saigyō to Shikoku

145

sacred highpoint of the landscape rather lonely. Sacrality has not remained fixed to a specific geographic place despite the reinforcements of time and tradition. Instead, the pilgrims’ preference for the newer Buddhist location proved more powerful and demonstrates how quickly the sacred landscape can shift with the pilgrims’ travel and chosen path as proof. The other example from this region invokes a prolonged competition between two Buddhist sites for official status as Shikoku temple #30. The catalyst for this repeated redrawing of the pilgrims’ path remains the persecution at the onset of the Meiji era. In this case, the Buddhist temple at site #30 (Zenrakuji) was destroyed in the ‘separation’ of Buddhist elements from the Shinto shrine at the same site. Important Buddhist statues and other artefacts had been saved and stored at temple #29, but then later efforts by two rebuilt Buddhist temples to claim #30 status illustrates another way in which the sacred landscape is constantly negotiated rather than static from ancient times. Once it had been rebuilt from its own destruction by fire, Anrakuji claimed the status of temple #30. Half a century later, Zenrakuji reclaimed its old site and attempted to reclaim its old #30 status on the multi-site pilgrimage. Anrakuji did not give up its claim, so the negotiation of sacred landscape was complicated by an ongoing competition for pilgrims, status, income and authenticity. Ian Reader addresses this conflict in a paragraph of his book by noting an ‘uneasy compromise’ where both claimed temple #30 status and issued stamps for several decades before a 1994 resolution in favour of Zenrakuji, with Anrakuji ‘acquiring special status as its okunoin (inner sanctum)’ (Reader, 2005, pp. 139–40). Probing into this relationship and examining the twists and turns of its history over many decades reveals a complex relationship shaped by many factors including the confluence of anti-Buddhist persecution, intraBuddhist politics, and the management of Shikoku pilgrimage by temple priests, pilgrimage societies and pilgrims’ own preferences. The competing claims were argued in reference to the key cultural markers at each site. This was a contest, in part, between Buddhist images. Anrakuji claimed to have the original honzon (principal image) of Amida Buddha. Zenrakuji had retrieved its statue of Kōbō Daishi from Kokubunji (temple #29), where it and the honzon had been kept safe during the brief but virulent persecution. Pilgrims expect to visit each type of image at each of the 88 sites, but here the original images were divided between the sites. The history and politics of these images, Anrakuji’s refusal to relinquish the honzon, the mediating role of the influential Kokubunji (temple #29) and the economic stakes are all addressed at greater length in the author’s chapter in Studying Buddhism in Practice (Harding, 2012). Here, it is most

146

Landscape and Travelling East and West

relevant to point to a couple dimensions of this controversy that are tied to pilgrims’ travel through sacred landscape. The first illustration relates to the traditional mode of the walking pilgrim and the second to the now much more common pilgrimage by bus. There is a bench and tranquil place for walking pilgrims to sit on their journey from temple #29 toward the city of Kochi, where Zenrakuji is located at the outskirts of the city and Anrakuji is situated more fully within the city limits. This site was less tranquil in earlier decades when partisans from each claimant for temple #30 status would intercept pilgrims at this point and (re)direct them to what they asserted was the authentic temple #30 (either Zenrakuji or Anrakuji depending on the partisan). Whereas this attempt to direct the pilgrims’ path allowed relatively equal opportunity for either temple to attract walking pilgrims, the accommodation of large buses gives a critical edge to Zenrakuji with its large parking lot outside the constraints of the city. The landscape of pilgrimage is not just a matter of high peaks, geological mandalas, beautiful views and traditional footpaths; instead, the layout of each temple site and contemporary concerns of pilgrimage management comes into play. Zenrakuji’s site includes several parking lots including one that accommodates multiple large buses of pilgrims. Anrakuji has very little parking. Almost all pilgrims come by vehicle, with buses and minibuses accounting for most of them. Although anti-climactic relative to pilgrimage tales of spiritual experiences, camaraderie, and tribulations that tested physical and mental limits, the mundane concerns of parking influence travel through sacred landscape!

Return The landscape has changed, as has the travellers’ path and the mode of transportation for the vast majority of Shikoku pilgrims. By means of encountering the same landscape (or what is perceived to be the same) of nature and cultural markers in this traditional pilgrimage route, there remains a strong sense of connection with fellow henro, with earlier pilgrims, and even with Kōbō Daishi himself, who is still understood as the primary pilgrim making the route sacred both through his initial ties to the area 1200 years ago and through contemporary henro accounts that claim to encounter Kōbō Daishi. Pilgrimage, in all its forms, is a fascinating mode of travel, in part, because of the way in which both external and internal forms of landscape are emphasised. The pilgrim’s task is to travel through and connect these two landscapes as well as to journey to sacred



Poets and Pilgrims: From Saigyō to Shikoku

147

sites. Here Saigyō again serves as a model guide. Where early in his Buddhist career his interior and exterior landscapes lacked fluidity as he sat awaiting water by the frozen pipe, his later poems reveal transformative movement. The following three poems by Saigyō offer satisfying fruits of this self-cultivation. The wisps of smoke from Fuji yield to the wind and lose themselves in sky, in emptiness, which takes as well the aimless passions that through my life burned deep inside. (LaFleur, 2003, p. 59) Clouds thickly mantle these mountains, but the blocked moon had already taken up residence in my mind, so nothing now prevents me from seeing its serenity there. (LaFleur, 2003, p. 67) Let it be in spring and under cherry blossoms that I die, while the moon is perfect at midmonth, like it was for his peaceful passing. (LaFleur, 2003, p. 69)

His diminished (though not extinct) passions dissipating in emptiness like Fuji’s wisps in the sky (sora) invoke Buddhist notions of emptiness and a realisation about the transformation of the ardent attachments that had long ago prompted him to become a monk in hope of becoming free of them. In the second poem, the moon (symbol of enlightenment) populates his internal landscape without need for the external prompt. Through imagery of the natural landscape, he continues to associate his cultivation with the enlightenment of the Buddha by linking their deaths in his famously accurate death poem written perhaps a decade before the predicted event. In these three poems we see expressions of an interior landscape linked both to the natural landscape of his travels, the symbolic landscape of Buddhist poetic imagery, and the historical tradition and hagiography of the Buddha’s enlightenment and death. Finally, this volume seems an appropriate place to bring in a last poem, which brings us from Saigyō to the present – completing the return phase of our poetic excursion. Here, one of our own guides us in the tradition of travelling

148

Landscape and Travelling East and West

through landscape linked to figures from the past and marking the presently felt connection with a poem. William LaFleur, a former friend and member of the Académie du Midi, visited Saigyō’s remote grave and reflected on the experience through a poem less than a year before his own untimely death. I’ll close with that unpublished poem sent to the author in a correspondence in 2009. P.S. With two friends, one William Elliott, a superb poet who has lived long in Japan and a Japanese poet, I finally got to Saigyō’s almost inaccessible grave in July. A long ride, heat and a cloud of mosquitoes gave a physical dimension to the pilgrimage. It happened to be my birthday and I wrote a poem. For what it’s worth – Uphill from Hirokawa Temple What’s in a grave? Or in my mind still fleshed enough to bow before a mound? Your Sanka-shū, your scattered bone-poems edited and stored – not on some plain where the jostling body politic buries gems honed by loneliness but here where the design of seventy-two years, a shower of white petals, and a final seven syllables of moon-roofed fever ensured that, aside from what of you now crosses seas, your home for these eight centuries would be so simple a mountain home. (William LaFleur, 23 July 2009)

References Harding, J. S. (2012), ‘Shifting signposts in Shikoku pilgrimage’, in J. S. Harding (ed.), Studying Buddhism in Practice. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 79–94. Ketelaar, J. (1990), Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. LaFleur, W. R. (2003), Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. Boston: Wisdom. Reader, I. (2005), Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Statler, O. (1983), Japanese Pilgrimage. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.

12

Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet1 Snježana Zorić

Introduction The concept of Tibet, Tibetan culture and Tibetanness is a mindscape of various imagoconstructs coming into existence within the European discourse after the Chinese occupation of the country in the middle of the twentieth century. However, the development of such perceptions reaches far back into the European historical and geographical representation of Tibet, in the times of the beginning of missionary activities in the eighteenth century2 and colonial conflicts and interests of the Great Game between Russia and British India, including China, a century later.3 Initially Tibet was not a place cut off from the rest of the world and its encounters with the West are extensively described by British civil servants or travellers (Bogle, Turner, Manning).4 Later on we come to know amazing stories of discoveries of Tibet through Indian pandits spying for Britons.5 The forbidden country inspired many adventurers as well. Everybody wanted to know about this remote place. Some of them wanted to reach it. Among these first brave people it is worth mentioning such names as Nikolai Przhevalski, William Woodville Rockhill, Annie Taylor, Henry Savage Landors and Susie Rijnhart. Some of them lost their lives on their journey but none of them ever reached Lhasa.6 Their works strongly affected the Western perception of Tibet and contributed to the Tibetan self-understanding and self-determination. My exploration of Tibet started with the presumption that, because of several exile communities dispersed around the world, we are today encountering several ‘Tibets’. One is in Tibet itself, which, after the Chinese occupation in the middle of the twentieth century, has come to be known as the Tibetan

150

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Autonomous Region, TAR; another Tibet placed in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, where the seat of the Dalai Lama and the governmentin-exile is; another in the state of Karnataka; and again another Tibet in other diasporic environments in Europe, especially Switzerland, and America. There are communities that have preserved Tibetan culture such as Ladakh and Sikkim, Lahaul and Spiti. Therefore the field of research of Tibetan culture cannot be reduced to one locality (McMillin, 2001; Klieger, 2002), as used to be the practice in earlier anthropological work. The situation of a dislocated Tibet perfectly fits in the frame of current anthropological thinking on multi-local sources in constructing the research and the writing of ethnography. The striking question in such a multi-local and multi-vocal constellation was whether it rends possible the creation of one homogeneous discourse on Tibetan culture or whether the complexity of both established and current Tibetan histories forces us into peculiar trajectories for theorising and producing representations. Where is the place of Tibetan culture: in Tibet, in Indian or Euro-American diasporas?7 How to relate the existing representations of Tibetan othering and self-representations to the example of new creation of sacred places in exile such as Tsuklakhang (or Drepung, Ganden, the Nechung monastery, or Norbulingka)? How is the performance of power on the part of the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile connected with the dominant Western discourse regarding Tibet as a marginal problem and its political status as an ‘internal’ Chinese matter and not as one of international relations? How to deal with the conspicuous fact that in post-colonial times the neo-colonialism in the case of Tibet is being ignored? In this chapter I want to challenge the dominant Tibetan exilic paradigm and ask what it means to be Tibetan and representative of Tibetan culture within the community living in McLeod Ganj through the doubling of sacred places and their travelling to new environments. Furthermore, I intend to show that, ontologically, the Tibetan attempt at a self-presentation created in the context of McLeod does not fit the Buddhist doctrine, while epistemologically it complements the shifting positionalities of the self-cognition conditioned by the locales of its origin. Finally, I intend to show that, methodologically, this self-presentation does not follow the logic of the modern building of democracy by reason of remaining anchored in the old paradigm of the priest–patron relationship, chö-yön. This trajectory will be explored through a testing of the theoretical and analytical applicability of two notions, which I consider appropriate for the Western representation of a displaced Tibet and its culture and for Tibetan



Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet

151

self-presentation: the concept of sacred place and the concept of dialogism. The former combines the questions of emplacement and creation of the life-world, and the latter focuses on ways of encountering the Other and their mutual communication. Finally, both concepts will lead to an understanding of what I call the performance of power of the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile, ultimately revealing a failure of such power performance within the structures of Indo-Tibeto-Chinese and world politics. I conducted my research in McLeod Ganj, the abode of the Dalai Lama and the seat of his government-in-exile in Gangchen Kyishong, near Dharamshala, in 2010. Here, the usual connections between the territory and the people inhabiting it in terms of an interrelated belonging to both place and people are missing: Tibetans have a status as refugees and lack permission for permanent residence. Tibetans born in India are granted neither Indian nor Chinese citizenship. According to Anand, ‘maintaining refugee status is viewed as an act of patriotism’ (Anand, 2003, p. 218). Tibetan citizenship does not exist. Citizens of Tibet in Tibet possess Chinese documents since the colonisation but are outnumbered by Han Chinese. Their high number in the Tibetan Autonomous Region transformed Tibetans into a minority in their ‘own’ country. Their everyday life is strongly influenced by the Chinese, the educational system is based on the Chinese language, and the practice of Buddhist religious life is reduced to the performances of some smallscale ritualised duties. Tibetan language is not forbidden, but knowledge of it has no significance in the Chinese administration. Therefore many Tibetans tried, and still try, to escape to India, Europe or America, in order to obtain a more appropriate education. As their children are born in exile, such Tibetans have never experienced the country of their origin other than through the power of their imagination. The creation of a cultural memory among these exiled groups depends on their efforts to keep memories alive. Thus, for many Tibetans, ‘beingin-place’ means being displaced. As a consequence, ‘being emplaced out of place’ brings with it a vast range of possibilities for self-understanding, self-presenting, identity constituting strategies and cultural transforming. Initially I wanted to believe in the predicament that, in the case of Tibet, more of Tibet would be found outside of it, a belief that proves true for Tibetan religious reality.8 The McLeod area of the Trans-Himalayan Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, as the locale of their emplacement, was a gift to the Tibetans received from President Nehru in the 1960s. Although meant as a gesture of hospitality, this generosity of the Indian government immediately caused a Chinese reaction: the war of 1962. Even though the conflict was soothed, the tense situation in the area remained.

152

Landscape and Travelling East and West

With the arrival of the Tibetans, not only the lives of the Tibetans but also the lives of the local groups started to change. Perceived as guests, the Tibetans were expected to leave; perceiving themselves as refugees, they also wanted to leave. In spite of the continuous intentions of Tibetans to leave their transitory emplacement as soon as possible, according to their Hindu and Muslim hosts they have already stayed too long. In the course of what is now more than half a century, the Tibetans have succeeded in a partial transfiguration of their new locale into a ‘transitory home’ by reproducing both sacred and profane places within their exilic and diasporic environment. This strategy not only reduced the feeling of homelessness and uprootedness, it also increased the feeling of authenticity in the Tibetan life-world that remained out of reach. Thus, a stage was created for the mise-en-scène of the Dalai Lama’s power in exile, and the rebuilding of crucial places of Tibetan cultural memory on the Indian landscape began (e.g. the aforementioned temples or the summer residence). Upon the horizon of such a newly created ethnoscape, I shall call this phenomenon Tibet and its doubles.

Tibet and its doubles Although the point of departure of this chapter is only one locale of the Tibetan life-world, it will be necessary to take into consideration other exilic and non-exilic places along with the voices representing them, which serve to create various images and mirages in order to justify their initially constructed position.9 McLeod Ganj, as the place of the Dalai Lama’s abode, contains in its complex the reproduction/reconstruction of the most sacred temple in Lhasa – Jokhang or Tsuklakhang. Tibetans themselves call their sacred places gnas. Essential for their sacredness is the special relationship between place and person. According to Huber, Westerners translated ‘those terms variously as “holy place”, “sacred site or space”, “Pilgerplätze”, “Wallfahrtsort”, “lieux-saints”, “power places”, “sacred geography”’ (Huber, 1999, p. 77), while observing them in the context of the ritual process of the pilgrimage travelling, thus overlooking this person–place interrelatedness. In the verbal compound gnas-pa, as stated in Huber’s thesis, the emphasis lays on the meaning of being, existing, abiding, and thus ‘the Tibetan usage carries a much stronger sense of existence, being and ontological value or status’ (Huber, 1999, p. 78). The place, in the sense of physical or



Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet

153

geographical entity, has no meaning to Tibetans if it is not animated and occupied by a multitude of natural and supernatural beings and spirits. It is an identity ‘established between place, person and deity’ (Huber, 1999, p. 79). The idea was later extended to the relationship between Buddhist deities and pre-Buddhist spirits existing in Bon, which proves the mutual communication between both religious views. Even some of the Bon spirits became protecting deities of Buddha’s dharma. Without entering further into this complicated issue, from the emic perspective the spatial reality of Tibet and its double begs the question whether it is at all possible to double sacred places if we understand them in the sense suggested by Huber or Singer, and whether or not the reproduction of such sacred places according to the cultural memory that Tibetans brought with them into exile carries the same meanings. On the ontological level, we could question the possibility of inscription, asking if the sacred power of the newly created places is equivalent to that of their original sites. Are the deities and protective spirits travelling with the refugees? Cultural geographer Chris Park argues (quoting Isaac) that sacred places ‘are not transferable […] and they do not need to be re-established with each new generation’ (Park, 1994, p. 250). The Tibetan example has shown the opposite. Considering the presence of various spiritual beings responsible for the sacredness of place experienced through the performances of persons visiting it, new dimensions are opened up for the conceptualisation of sacred space: it is generated through the interaction between the religious person and the spiritual beings, while both the place and the spiritual beings are transferable. Ergo they have been relocated as well. It seems that the figure of doubling is not restricted only to places but is also applicable to the most important personalities of the Tibetan politics of reincarnation, as, for instance, exemplified by the Panchen Lama. Panchen Lama is an honorary title that the Fifth Dalai Lama gave to his teacher, an abbot in the monastery of Tashilhunpo. He became the reincarnation of Buddha Amitābha, and Panchen – in accordance with the meaning of his name – as the great wise man who represents and stands in for the Dalai Lama until his coming of age, albeit without the possibility of exercising any political power. However, in the twentieth century, the Chinese tried to instrumentalise the Panchen against the Dalai Lama by giving him some political potency. Nowadays, the current Tibetan social and political reality is confronted with a sensitive issue – the Panchen Lama (as well as the Karmapa) exists in two people. Such a double figure of one and the same spiritual being is not primarily reflecting a religious controversy but a political struggle between Tibet and China. Of equal

154

Landscape and Travelling East and West

importance is the hegemonic struggle within the hierarchical structures of the Karmakagyu school itself, permeated with inconsistencies in the communication between the Chinese and diasporic community in McLeod, and further divided through the influences of some Western followers.10 As already mentioned, in Tibetan history the incarnation of the Panchen Lama was responsible for spiritual growth. As the second highest dignitary in Tibet, he also had a separate seat in the monastery of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse, central Tibet. As the political leader of the country, the Dalai Lama resided in Potala, Lhasa. In spite of not sharing the same abode, the bond of unity between the two lamas was strong. However, this bond was challenged for the first time by the Manchus, who assumed the power of the Seventh Dalai Lama and offered it to the Panchen, in the hopes that he would collaborate with them against the Dalai Lama. He refused. Using the same tactic, the Chinese tried to split the Gelugpas. In recent history, controversy has arisen again over the personality of the Tenth Panchen Lama and his successor (von Erffa, 1992, p. 58). Who is his incarnation? In 1995 the Dalai Lama recognised Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, a six-year-old boy, as the reincarnation of the Tenth Panchen Lama. This enraged the representatives of the Chinese government who, much like the Manchus before, claimed the right to decide about and acknowledge the selection of reincarnations. Even though Chatral Rinpoche, the abbot of Shigatse, performed the procedure of election of the Panchen Lama, loyally abiding by the rules of the Chinese government and presenting them his choice, the act of the Dalai Lama’s blessing which followed was considered a betrayal. Consequently, the abbot and monks of Shigatse were arrested, while the boy recognised as the Eleventh Panchen Lama disappeared soon after. According to the Chinese authorities, ‘he is doing well’, somewhere. In Tibet and amongst the Indian diaspora, the Panchen Lama is the most searched for missing person, and throughout McLeod Ganj one can find posters showing his child photos, headlined with WANTED. The other Panchen Lama, Bainqen Qoigyijabu from northern Tibet, born in 1990, was chosen and approved by the Chinese authorities in 1996. He currently lives in Beijing and is being educated and prepared for his arrival in Lhasa as a puppet ruler and other-directed representative of the Tibetan people. I have briefly outlined a rather multifarious picture of redoubled Tibetan places in India and their relation to the concept of person as contained in the traditional notion of gnas. Furthermore, the doubling of personalities was exemplified by the case of the Panchen Lama.



Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet

155

Dialogism or who is talking for whom The second analytical concept, the dialogism, is to be observed directly from the intercultural encounters of Tibetans with the groups of people living in McLeod at the time of their arrival and coming to live or visit McLeod later. The trope of dialogue always implies a multiplication of voices, the never-ending process of observing, bridging, permeating, transforming, identifying and othering. Dialogue not only means communication, tolerance and status quoist attitudes toward intercultural encounters, but is also interested in the creation of lifeworlds which provide a space for radical difference; its epistemological strength is auditory instead of visual. In terms of methodological procedure, the observer and the observed enter another relationship – one of equally positioned interlocutors. Nobody is gazing or being gazed at; both take place simultaneously within the exotopic space of dialogism: […] dialogism also functions […] as a principle of radical otherness […] as a principle of exotopy: far from aspiring to the telos of a synthesis […] the function of dialogism is to sustain to think through the radical exteriority or heterogeneity of one voice with regard to any other […] exotopy has to do with relationships between distinct cultural and ideological units. It would apply to conflicts between nations or religions […] In this perspective, dialogism is no longer a formal and descriptive principle, nor does it pertain particularly to language: heteroglossia (multivariedness between discourses) is a special case of exotopy (otherness as such) and the formal study of literary texts becomes important because it leads from intralinguistic to intracultural relationships. (de Man, 1983, p. 102f.)

In dialogue, nobody occupies a privileged position. There is no place for power. Dialogue is characterised by the ‘event-ness’ of interacting ‘in-between’. Sometimes this kind of ‘event’ happens in McLeod’s encounters between Tibetans, local groups, Kashmir Muslims and Westerners. Originally McLeod Ganj, this small Trans-Himalayan hamlet, was an abandoned hill station of the British imperial government and, by Indian standards, very scarcely populated by Hindus and Muslims as well as some members of the local tribes.11 The arrival of the Tibetans led to the gradual development of the area and better life conditions thanks to the Dalai Lama’s increasing popularity in the West. Westerners started to travel to McLeod looking for initiations into all kinds of Tibetan teachings on Buddhist spirituality, inherited from its literary representations and occult teachings which originated

156

Landscape and Travelling East and West

from the circles of the Theosophical Society around Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott. From its very beginning McLeod was a multicultural site, and the Tibetan encounter with its Other brought along various concreative and dialogic transformations. The exchange of voices with the West was a most intense and fruitful one, and it strongly influenced the self-presentation and representation of the exilic Tibetans on the international scene. In comparison, the communication forms with the local Hindu and Muslim groups have been less successful. Despite the fact that the Tibetan presence in the area, with its spiritual attraction for Western ‘truth-seekers’, dramatically changed the locale of McLeod from a poor forgotten site to one of the most powerful places for pilgrimage and tourism in the Indian spiritual landscape, it also caused envy and jealousy among some members of other local groups, as I heard from many informants. Nevertheless, they are content and happy due to the attraction the place has been radiating toward Westerners since the Tibetan arrival, opening up possibilities for development and a better life for the local population as well. We can conclude that through the dialogic efforts of all involved, the place has been transformed from a locale anchored in the past to a vivid place of various kinds of communication – economic, religious and political. Nobody in McLeod is going to metonymise it as some tensionless whole, but everyone recognises its threshold positionality of ‘in-between’, offering the possibility of actualising various life-worlds, fulfilling the expectations of creating new structures of life in each moment of the inter- or intra-cultural perception of the Other, hearing their voice and feeling the richness of their difference. Especially doubled places are not essentialised but are newly concreated according to the experiences conditioned through time, space and insights of communicating individuals and groups with their own differentiating world-views, as in the case of Norbulingka.12 New meaning is added. It is not merely the summer residence any more, but has become a place for preserving Tibetan heritage and a place for educating young Tibetans born in exile.13 According to Margaret Rodman, places are not to be narrated but are ‘narratives in their own right’. Thus, Norbulingka is becoming a place for keeping memory alive. Rodman quotes Entrikin’s book The Betweenness of Place, suggesting this apparent contradiction: This divide between the existential and naturalistic conceptions of place appears to be an unbridgeable one, and one that is only made wider in adopting a decentered /objective/ view. The closest that we can come to addressing both sides of this divide is from a point in between, a point that leads us into the vast realm of narrative forms. From this position we gain a view from both sides of the



Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet

157

divide. We gain a sense both of being ‘in a place’ and ‘at a location,’ of being at center and being at the point in a centerless world. To ignore either aspect of this dualism is to misunderstand the modern experience of place. (Entrikin, 1991, p. 134; Rodman, 2003, p. 209)

Aporetics In this section I intend to put a range of these examples in a broader Buddhist context and examine these apparently conflicting conceptions and aporetic realities that seem to exist simultaneously. My argument is that the imagoconstruct of Tibet in its exilic topicality of transitional emplacement and in its transnational creation of its double is a-topical, that it follows and contradicts its Buddhist inspiration while the symbolicity of the power of the Dalai Lama, in spite of his worldwide recognition, is performative. Since his arrival into exile and since his practice of intercultural dialogue with the Western and Indian real and imaginative Other, the Dalai Lama has stylised himself not as the highest authority of Tibetan Buddhism, with strong political power, but as a refugee and ‘a simple monk’ who serves as a representative of a colonised state. In such self-presentation, it is worth noting that Potala, as the main symbol of the power and real abode of the Dalai Lama, is not rebuilt and doubled in exile in spite of all the different meanings intrinsic to its mythopoetic existence. Why is that? One possible interpretation emerges from the dynamics of intercultural dialogism. Potala, no matter how sacred, is the centre of Tibetan feudal history, which the Dalai Lama in exile learned to distance himself from, starting his own transfiguring development through questioning the most sensitive issue of the theocratic social structure based on monastic exclusiveness of the Gelugpas before Chinese occupation, and also doubting the meaning of the tulku tradition and his own future incarnation. As the reincarnation of his predecessor, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and all before him, he inherited the duty to live as a theocratic ruler and protector of Tibet, spreading compassion among all other beings in his surrounding world. In spite of this mission, with the removal of Karmakagyus from the leading political and economic positions with the help of Kublai Khan in the fourteenth century, the Gelugpas did not leave a trace of compassion. The transfer of power was forceful and brutal as the Gelugpas overtook the leading position in Tibetan society. The fact that the Karmakagyu tulku tradition is the first known in Tibet and is in fact older than that of the Dalai Lama’s is rarely mentioned in the self-representations

158

Landscape and Travelling East and West

of Gelugpas and the Dalai Lama. Furthermore, the intrigues and very strong sectarianism of Tibetan Buddhist schools in the homeland were silenced for the sake of a politics presumed to be analogical to that of Gandhi’s ideal of ahimsā, a politics that was desperately missing in the older histories of Tibet. One only has to take a look at the biographies of the previous Dalai Lamas, who were usually poisoned or killed by their regents in their early childhood. The Dalai Lama is willing to present and transform himself as a peaceful fighter for bringing democracy to a colonised Tibet, refusing the role of a feudal theocratic leader of monks and laymen. Accepting the role of the ‘simple monk’, the Dalai Lama cannot reside in Potala any more. What remains problematic here is that the Dalai Lama never was a ‘simple monk’, and he is not one today. His refugees in McLeod and a large population in Tibet still see in his persona the incarnation of the celestial being Avalokiteśvara, his tulku. As such, he is the highest authority of the Tibetan people and their representative in and outside of Tibet, that is, in their international relations. Even though the majority of exilic Tibetans and a great number of old Tibetans in Tibet share this view, we must allow juxtaposed and different attempts at a self-determination and construction of identity in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. These voices are contradicting an identity based on the idea of ‘Tibetanness’ clearly articulated in exile and concreated in the intercultural dialogue with older mythopoetic Western representations of Tibet that have already existed in the times of the British presence in India. According to Dibyesh Anand, ‘while Western exoticization has a defining productive impact on Tibetan identity discourse, the same cannot be said of Tibetan exoticization of the West, herefore their relationship being asymmetric’ (Anand, 2009, p. 18). The Western longing for Tibetan wisdom is challenging and opposing the modern convictions about the dominant and superior West. The Orientalism is inverted and the Tibetan Other is seen, heard and experienced as rational, moral, efficient and superior. To be initiated into Buddhist wisdom, one should participate in the Kālacakra ritual consisting of several days of attending ceremonies and getting acquainted with the teachings of the Dalai Lama. In the time of my stay in McLeod, a part of this ritual was performed on demand for a large group of diasporic Chinese from Singapore. While expressing their feeling honoured for having the chance to receive an initiation by the grace of the Dalai Lama, the leader of the group largely apologised for the atrocities in Tibet caused by their compatriots from the People’s Republic. Always slightly cynical when describing the Chinese in Tibet, the Dalai Lama presents himself as compassionate and ready to overlook their infamous deeds in the past if



Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet

159

there is a chance for Tibetans in Tibet to obtain the right to freedom and selfdetermination in a real autonomy. But China in Tibet stands firm. A dialogue with the Chinese authorities is not possible, as they refuse every proposal coming from the Dalai Lama. The Five Point Peace Plan14 announced on Capitol Hill in Washington in 1987 caused a number of trials and two public executions in Tibet. Demonstrations started to occur in Lhasa and spread to many monasteries (von Erffa, 1992). The Chinese are largely afraid of monks because of their rebelliousness, as witnessed during the uprising in Tibetan Ganden in 1996, provoked by a ban on public displays of photographs of the Dalai Lama. As far as we know, six hundred monks had to leave Ganden, and the temple was closed for three months. Much like the monks, there are also some Tibetans in Tibet who would prefer to adopt more radical measures in the struggle for liberation and fight the Chinese in a way opposed to ahimsā. The moderate strategies of the Dalai Lama’s vision of Tibet’s liberation are for many Tibetans no longer acceptable, and more than a few Tibetans in Tibet would like to decide, speak and act for themselves without the tutelage of the Dalai Lama. The information about Chinese atrocities in Tibet, although well known from the reports of the refugees, is not comparable to the reality of their execution in everyday Tibet. This is why the opinions and actions of more radical Tibetan groups are no longer following ahimsā. The violence in Tibet is escalating, especially among monks who usually end up political prisoners without any legal proceedings. The Dalai Lama, with his ahimsic strategy, is not able to change this situation. In the cultivation of an ahimsic and peaceful political attitude towards the Chinese, I cannot help but notice at least a small expectation for the government-in-exile to enter the age-old Tibetan relationship of chö-yön, priest–patron relationship, with the West. Traditionally, chö-yön guaranteed Tibetans military protection. Phagpa, the first to establish this kind of relationship with Kublai Khan, was promised he would be protected in case of outside attacks but, at the same time, he and his highest lamas also obtained the right to preside over the ceremonies of the Mongol court. Similarly, the Dalai Lama is offering spiritual initiations to Western visitors who seek spirituality, but he is also expecting some help in return in the face of violations of human rights in Tibet as well as support in the dialogue with China. However, any activities in favour of Tibet are limited to NGOs and the ‘Free Tibet’ movement without any significant political support, because no country in the world wants to risk turning China into an enemy. We should consider another important aspect of Tibetan politics. Even if we agree with the image of the Dalai Lama as a ‘simple monk’ fighting for

160

Landscape and Travelling East and West

democracy, the aim he is struggling for, democracy, is what the Gelugpas were mostly fighting against while still living in Tibet. The concepts of nation, identity and territorial unity started to take shape in Tibet at the beginning and during the middle of the twentieth century, but more elaborate ideas came into existence ‘outside of Tibet’ and ‘in Tibet’ under communism.15 Before the Chinese ‘liberation’ of Tibet, Gelugpas brutally eliminated every opponent of the theocratic system. In the construction of Tibetanness, the imagoconstruct of peaceful, nomadic, idyllic people and spiritual Buddhists, these events are never mentioned. After the time Younghusband entered Tibet in 1903, there were several attempts by progressive Tibetans to change the feudal system or later to introduce communism according to the Chinese example even before the Chinese actually occupied Tibet. Goldstein informed us about the case of Lhasa’s aristocrat Lungshar, who was a prominent political figure prior to the Chinese occupation. Lungshar lived in the 1920s and travelled to Britain, after which his experience and knowledge of Western history made him suspicious about the theocratic state he lived in, making him question its authority. This led to his attempt to take power after the death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama and get rid of Gelugpas, aspiring to create a modern Tibetan state. The adventure ended with his imprisonment, while his eyeballs were gouged out as punishment. As Goldstein ironically pointed out, Lungshar’s vision of Tibet’s future was something Gelugpas ‘wanted to cut out at the root: obviously they did not like what he saw’ (Goldstein qtd. in Peet, 2000, p. 310). As we can see, the atrocities against those who questioned the authorities in Tibet, regardless of whether they were carried out by the Chinese or by Tibetans, are essentially no different. It seems that insisting on the idea of an inter-culturally constructed Tibetanness and its strong fixation as the only legitimate representation of Tibet is on its way to be deconstructed by non-exilic, ex-exilic and even exilic Tibetans, who are determined to create a different modern Tibet. Diasporic Tibet does not have an opportunity to follow all of the shifts in meanings and actions in Tibet, that is, how they think, how they understand and how they reinterpret themselves, how they act or are willing to act under communist pressure. Accordingly, in his short article, ‘Tibet in transformation’, Peet points out: Since 1959, Tibetans in Tibet have been learning a “language of modernity” in the context of a Chinese Communism which itself has not been a fixed entity. However, Tibetans who have gained freedom in exile, I will argue, go on to represent a “Tibet” as a singular, unified or more or less homogeneous entity to



Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet

161

themselves, to the world, and to Tibet, in this translation lose a different Tibet they left behind, struggling to articulate its own version, or more likely versions, of nation, identity and freedom. (Peet, 2000, pp. 304–5)

From the Buddhist point of view Approaching the end of these reflections in this passage I want to point out how the idea of Tibetanness ontologically contradicts the main Buddhist ideas concerning the nature of the phenomena in the world, which are impermanence (anītya) and non-substantiality (anātman). As the constituting insights of an enlightened mind, these characteristics should be transcended and not adhered to in the cognitive processes of Buddhist self-cultivation. Both concepts, disseminated upon the creation of identity in exile, substantialise and hold up a picture of the old Tibet as partly unchangeable and as it has always been. This construction of Tibetanness follows an unenlightened mind and contradicts the impermanent and non-substantial nature of the world. In the epistemic positionality of such a mind, Tibetanness transmits an idea of authenticity through substantiality and presumes to be able to repeat what has already passed, even to transfer sacred places although what is transferred is already no more, and to reincarnate one person in two bodies. If emptiness (śūnyatā) is the expression of the world, in being ‘only word’, it is still a unique way to articulate the dependent origination of the phenomenal world. The political sphere is only one part of it, while the question is how can the governmentin-exile create an idea of a new Tibet outside of it expecting that the same idea will be implanted in the proper and not imaginary Tibet. There can be no univocal answer to this. The exilic imagoconstruct of Tibetanness can no longer be the one and only voice speaking for the Tibetans in Tibet; in fact, it is a hegemonic variant of the discourse of the old elite living in freedom offered to the rest of Tibetans in Tibet, and it cannot be expected that the rest of the Tibetan Autonomous Region will conform to it. The strategies for a new Tibet should be elaborated from within, without adhering to the old imagery, and produced neither through exilic Tibetans nor through Western representations of the past.

162

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Conclusion Any doubt concerning the idea of Tibetanness does not intend to uncritically support a Chinese presence in Tibet. This doubt is conscious of the losses owed to a Chinese presence in Tibet. Its only aim is to seriously take into consideration those Tibetans living in Tibet, and the possibility for them to make their own choices when building a modern and autonomous Tibetan society. My position of doubt is aware of the fact that the old narratives of Gelugpas cannot be the exclusive part of imagery for the young Tibetan generation educated and raised in the Chinese environment. Compared with Western visitors in McLeod, the Tibetan visitors abroad are looking in the opposite direction: they are striving for an existence like the one that Western truth-seekers leave behind when coming to McLeod, hoping to replace it with a form of essentialised and non-Buddhist view of Buddhism. The interest in Tibet at the time when information on Tibet first became available was limited to opening trade routes between Tibet and India and stopping the spread of Russian power throughout Central Asia. Today, those very same trade interests are the reason why the rest of the world is merely a mute witness to the Chinese neo-colonial acts in Tibet. The later epiphanies of H. P. Blavatsky and Younghusband promised a spiritual metamorphosis in the encounter with Tibetan culture, but Tibet in Tibet does not correspond to the Tibet from Exotica Tibet. The gradually developed wholesome imagoconstruct offered by early Westerners who visited Tibet or later in the dialogue with the Tibetan government-in-exile disregard the other perceptions excluded from their mythopoetic constructions. Their representations are discontinuous and resound multiplied voices which do not stand for the ‘whole’ Tibetan identity, especially when its authenticity is not limited to Buddhism and ahimsā. There are multiple voices in the exile, as is exemplified by the controversy around the Shugden cult or the tensions with the Hindu and Muslim groups. The tensions spread to the local population; privileged in their diasporic existence through many donations coming from the West, Tibetans are getting richer and starting to employ the local people to work for them. We could even argue that the desperate poverty of some local groups forces them to accept the new colonising strategy of exiled Tibetans.16 Thus the Tibetan dislocated reality is characterised by the deconstructed isomorphism of space, place and culture. The above mentioned a-topicality of Tibetan culture in its disseminated modi of presence on various locales and sites, I see as always displaced, always beyond itself, ‘in-between’. The Dalai Lama who



Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet

163

has been received long ago as a guest in India is expected to go, but in his own country he is not even welcomed as a guest. He has no place, his political power is successful only if not demonstrated (ahimsā), and his expectation that the West would enter a chö-yön relationship with Tibet in the sense of political and economic protection is not realistic.

Notes 1

This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2014. 2 Hippolyte Desideri and Manuel Freyre were the first Europeans and travelling Jesuit friars reporting on the sacred nature of the places in the Kailas-Manasarovar region in 1715. 3 During the nineteenth century, the British Indian Empire expanded until its northern border extended from east to west for more than 2,000 miles. To the north of that border were five other political entities: Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, China and Tibet. By 1900, Tibet was the only one of those powers to which Indian Political Department officers did not have access. The Lhasa government regarded the British as a threat to the Buddhist religion which was at the heart of Tibet’s culture, and refused to allow European visitors to cross its frontiers.   The primary concern of the Political Department in its dealings with neighbouring countries was to protect the security of British India. While an isolationist Tibet posed no threat, British Indian strategies were concerned that Tibet could be a possible route by which imperial Russia might threaten the frontiers of British India. That most eloquent proponent of imperialism, George Nathanial (later Lord) Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, was determined to meet this (real or imagined) threat by establishing British authority over Lhasa and using Tibet as a ‘“buffer state” to exclude Russian influence’ (McKay, 1999, p. 305). 4 Bogle was a diplomat sent by W. Hastings as a leader of the first mission of the East India Company to establish diplomatic relations with Tibet (1774). Turner, who followed him, visited Tibet as a representative officer of the East Indian Company (EIC) (1783–4) and published a book in 1800 with the title Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet.   Unlike the aforementioned, Manning was a sinophile and researcher who visited Lhasa on his way to Beijing. Not connected with the EIC and hardly interested in Tibet, initially his only intention was to get to China. During his journey and after encountering some of the Chinese authorities in Tibet he

164

Landscape and Travelling East and West

changed his opinion about both, Tibetans and Chinese. His writing was published 35 years after his death together with Bogle’s report in 1875 by C. R. Markham.   After Manning, between 1784 and 1903, the representatives of the Chinese Qing dynasty did not allow foreigners to enter Tibet. (There are very detailed reports about their literary work in McMillin, 2001, pp. 7–71.) 5 Tibet was closed and the curiosity about the country which could not even be geographically mapped kept growing among Britons. They taught Indian spies how to travel with Ladakhi trade caravans and how to measure the country, the height of the mountains and positions of places. The most famous among them were Nain Singh and Sarat Chandra Das, who were prepared for their mission during two years of education in Dehradun. The initiator of this undertaking was EIC officer Montgomery. The pandits travelled disguised as Buddhist pilgrims, performing all religious duties on the way using their rosaries and praying wheels. In reality, the rosary was a way of counting steps and measuring distance, while the praying wheel was a secret place where they hid and stored the results of their investigation. 6 A wonderful report on these early travellers; for more detail, see Hopkirk, 1995/1982. 7 See also in Singer, 2003. 8 The other side consists of fast radical changes which followed the encounter with Western culture. A significant number of young Tibetans I met in Dharamshala travelled around Europe and got acquainted with Western culture. They learned to appreciate it and wish to reach its standards. Others who came from Lhasa recently even sympathise with the communist regime, considering the ‘old Tibetan’ way inappropriate for the current moment in history. 9 In my extended study I am going to include the research of Tibetan communities in Karnataka, Ladakh, Sikkim, Lahaul and Spiti, as well as the already conducted research in Rikon, Switzerland. 10 Ole Nydhal is the Westerner initiated into the Karmakagyu school, becoming a lama within its hierarchy. 11 They are Kinnaurs, Lahules, Spitians, Pangwalas, Gaddis and Gujjars. 12 Norbulingka was rebuilt with the generous donation of a Japanese family. In its construction, many signs from the formation of the Japanese garden are recognisable. 13 Of course, that is not the only additional meaning of Norbulingka. For an understanding of its multi-layered character, see Singer, 2003. 14 Demands of the Plan are as follows: 1. The transformation of the whole of Tibet into a zone of peace; 2. Abandonment of China’s population transfer policy which threatens the very existence of the Tibetans as a people; 3. Respect for the Tibetan people’s fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms; 4. Restoration and protection of Tibet’s natural environment and the abandonment of China’s use



Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet

165

of Tibet for the production of nuclear weapons and dumping of nuclear waste; 5. Commencement of earnest negotiation on the future status of Tibet and of relations between the Tibetan and Chinese people.   Since 1988, the Dalai Lama has only been asking for the full autonomy of Tibet and was ready to leave foreign affairs and defence to Beijing. However, the Chinese have never seriously intended to meet with the Dalai Lama. 15 About these processes there is a vast amount of literature (Anand, 2003; Barnett, 1994; Goldstein, 1998; Kvaerne, 1994; Lopez, 1998). 16 Especially tribal workers in the complex of Gangchen Kyishong.

References Anand, D. (2003), ‘A contemporary story of “diaspora”: the Tibetan version’. Diaspora, 12, 2, 211–29. —(2009), Tibet: A Victim of Geopolitics. New Delhi: Routledge. Barnett, R. (ed.) (1994), Resistance and Reform in Tibet. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Entrikin, N. (1991), The Betweenness of Place: Toward a Geography of Modernity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. von Erffa, W. (1992), Uncompromising Tibet. Culture-Religion-Politics. Dharamshala: Paljor Publications. Goldstein, M. (1989), A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State. Berkeley: University of California Press. —(1998), Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hopkirk, P. (1995/1982), Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet. New York and Tokyo: Kodansha Int. Ltd. Huber, T. (1999), ‘Putting the Gnas back into Gnas-skor: rethinking Tibetan pilgrimage practice’, in T. Huber (ed.), Sacred Spaces and Powerful Places in Tibetan Culture. A Collection of Essays. Dharamshala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, pp. 77–104. Huber, T. (ed.) (1999), Sacred Spaces and Powerful Places in Tibetan Culture. A Collection of Essays. Dharamshala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, pp. 305–21. Klieger, P. C. (2002), Tibet, Self, and the Tibetan Diaspora: Voices of Difference. Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the Iats, 2000, Vol. 8. Leiden: Brill. Kvaerne, P. (ed.) (1994), Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Vol.1. Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture. Lopez, D. (1998), Prisoners of Shangri-la. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. de Man, P. (1983), ‘Dialogue and dialogism’. Poetics Today, 4, 1, 99–107.

166

Landscape and Travelling East and West

McKay, A. (1999), ‘The British imperial influence on the Kailas-Manasarovar pilgrimage’, in McMillin, L. H. (2001), English in Tibet, Tibet in English. Self-Presentation in Tibet and the Diaspora. New York: Palgrave. Park, C. C. (1994), Sacred Worlds, An Introduction to Geography and Religion. London and New York: Routledge. Peet, C. (2000), ‘Tibet in transformation. Free in exile, lost in translation’, in T. Dekker, J. Helsloot and C. Wijers (eds), Roots and Rituals, The Construction of Ethnic Identities. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, pp. 303–14. Rodman, M. C. (2003), ‘Empowering place: multilocality and multivocality’, in S. M. Low and D. Lawrence-Zúniga (eds), The Anthropology of Space and Place. Locating Culture. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 204–23. Singer, W. (2003), ‘Dalai Lama’s many Tibetan landscapes’. The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 25 (3/4), 233–56.

Part Four

Confucian and Daoist Ways

13

Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations Henry Rosemont Jr.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to return to where we started from And know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot

Introduction One might argue that ‘travelling’ – that is, ‘making one’s way’ (dao) – is the governing metaphor of the Analects of Confucius specifically, and other Confucian writings more generally: ‘It is the human being that extends the way …’ (15.29).1 When we normally think of travelling, it is through space; we go from place to place as we work and play throughout our adult lives. Even though highway and airport gridlock have become an ever more frustrating series of obstacles to overcome, we still tend to think positively about travel overall: the underlying assumption behind the question ‘Where are you going on vacation?’ is that you should be going somewhere during that time in order to enrich your life. One of the most important reasons for the approbation generally given to travel, especially long-distance travel, is that it acquaints us with ways of living different from our own, presumably what the cliché ‘Travel broadens one’ is intended to convey. To be sure, climate and geography can and do contribute much to the excitement and wonder of travel, but it is how our fellow human

170

Landscape and Travelling East and West

beings live in differing environments that most captures and sustains our interest. And even more important than experiencing distinctive architecture, dress, cuisine and customs is attempting to understand the hopes, fears, dreams, beliefs and value-orderings of the peoples who embody those and related cultural determinants different from our own way of life. Such experiences will almost certainly affect our own future lives, and consequently the metaphor of the ‘way’ of Confucius should be interpreted temporally no less than spatially, which means that the philosophical significance of travel for illuminating the human condition tout court must take both dimensions of the metaphor into account. And it is this temporal dimension of ‘travel’ that Roger Ames and I want to concentrate on herein as we attempt to elucidate certain features of our interpretations of classical Confucianism as an ethics of roles, especially those features linked to their conception of what it is to be a human being, and their consequent instructions on how we might best lead our altogether human lives meaningfully as we traverse the spatiotemporal distance from birth to death. For my part, I will first take up briefly the concept of individualism – especially with respect to constancy, independence and freedom – which, although it is being questioned in some quarters, remains definitive of contemporary Western moral, political, economic and most religious thought, and I will contrast that view with the strong Confucian relational view of human beings that emphasizes change over time, interdependence and behavioural constraints. Imposing individualism on Confucian persons guarantees we will not understand who they are at any given moment, or desire to become in the future. Thereafter I will take up some features of the most basic group to which we must all belong, namely the family, focusing on our temporal journeys as sons or daughters, parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins and in-laws, and I will do so in the context of the contemporary world, suggesting some lessons the ancient texts might have for us today. The key term here is xiao, translated commonly as ‘filial piety’, but which Roger and I translate as ‘family reverence’.2 Along the way I will make an occasional reference to another group with which persons may identify, of signal importance to Confucius and his successors, namely, the scholar-literati, the ru, or our own choice, the ‘classicists’, i.e. those responsible for inheriting, maintaining and altering the cultural heritage of the society in which they live. Roger will then take up the ru in some depth, focusing on the dynamics of Chinese intergenerational cultural transmission of these processes of



Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations 171

maintenance and transmission, and how the Confucian ru committed to them were formed, re-formed and transformed over time. He will also make additional remarks about xiao and the family, in order to more closely analyse and explore cultural transmission within living family lineages, and in this way deepen our understanding of the changing cultural landscape as it is conserved and reconfigured across the centuries in ways that are not uniquely Chinese. Central for both of us is, first, a conception of morality that derives from a focus on families and family life, a conception significantly at odds with most contemporary thinking, especially those moralities associated with the deontological writings of Immanuel Kant, the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, or the virtue morality found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Equally central for us is the altogether non-supernatural conception of religion or spirituality that we believe emerges from Confucian familial and cultural orientations.3

On individualism Ever since the time of Hegel – and usually before then as well – the family has not been much of a concern for philosophers, especially moral philosophers. One very important reason for this neglect is that the dominant Western moral theories on offer today – deontological, utilitarian and virtue-based – are all grounded in the idea of human beings as fundamentally individuals, individuals who are, or certainly ought to be, rational, free and autonomous (and usually self-interested). Whether this idea (presupposition, actually) is taken descriptively or prescriptively is not important here; the thrust of it is to see and treat all other human beings as if they are free, rational and autonomous individuals (and usually self-interested). In addition to the ontological or normative individualism of philosophers, there is a methodological variant to the concept employed by psychologists and sociologists. The former assume, first, that psychological states can be individuated and studied independently of other psychological states, and second, that individual persons can exist and be studied independently of other persons. In sociology the claim of methodological individualism is that individual selves aggregated constitute the primary reality, with society, or the polity, being a second-order, abstract construct – a view common in the field since the days of Max Weber.4

172

Landscape and Travelling East and West

A foundational individualism is also easily discernible in epistemology, as, for example, in the view that human beings can come to knowledge of the world as individuals independent of a cultural perspective, that they can ‘see’ the world as it ‘really is’. Closely linked to the concept of objectivity at the empirical level, it is usually linked as well to subjectivity – more specifically, to the claim that the ontic individual self can know itself as an individual self. A moment’s reflection should make clear that none of these individualistic conceptions of being a human being will be of much use in accounting for the hopes, fears, dreams, deeds or the simple joys and profound sorrows of family life. We cannot explain the dynamics of family interactions, nor our feelings about those interactions, by seeing and treating our parents, grandparents and children (not to mention neighbours and friends) as individuals. Family relations, especially the most basic of them – namely, between parents and children (and grandparents) – cannot be described, analysed or evaluated on the basis of free and rational autonomous selves interacting with one another, for parents are implicated in the lives of their children, and children in the lives of their parents; a significant part of how both parents and children define who they are is in terms of the other, and hence cannot be autonomous in any important sense because their roles define them in terms of each other. (In a number of situations the most appropriate answer to a question asking me to identify myself might well be ‘Connie Rosemont’s father’, or ‘JoAnn Rosemont’s husband’, or ‘Timmy Healy’s grandfather’ – or, in an extended sense of family, ‘close friend of Roger Ames’.) I have changed significantly in my travels through time, becoming a different person when I married, when my first child was born and then her sisters in turn. All of these and numerous similar events have contributed a great deal to the definition of who I have been and who I am now, just as I have contributed significantly to their definitions of and by themselves, and by others. Hence, when it is ‘my daughter’ that must be used in the description of a supposedly moral situation involving me, the possibility of formulating and acting upon some abstract principle vanishes; if I do not have the requisite resources within me to ascertain the most appropriate means of dealing with the situation, Kant can no more assist me than Bentham or Mill – or any other universalist moral philosopher, for that matter; I do not seek a rule that will apply to all abstract individuals all of the time, but what I should do right now, with Connie, my daughter. The obviousness of this point becomes apparent when we imagine that I might well address the immediate problem by asking her ‘What would you like me to do?’ – which is not what will be found in universalist moral theories, or pluralistic ones either.5



Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations 173

Despite the non-universalistic orientation of an ethics grounded in familial relations, the neglect of thinking seriously about the family and family life when dealing with morality must end, because families are going to continue their dominant role in the lives of the peoples of all cultures, and must therefore be taken into account when addressing the Herculean economic, social, political and environmental tasks the world faces today. While a great many families today can be characterised as sexist, oppressive, and/or just generally dysfunctional, many more of them the world over are not, and families are not going to disappear as an institution no matter what some people might wish. Moreover, admitting that ‘family values’ has regularly been employed conceptually – especially in the United States – in the service of arch-conservative social, political and/or religious organisations reinforcing patriarchy, sexism, homophobia and worse, nevertheless, family values do not have to be monopolised by extremists spiritual or secular; I want to suggest that family values can be modified along much more progressive social, political and economic lines when placed in an updated Confucian conceptual framework. Roger will take up that framework more specifically in its early Confucian context; for the nonce, let me say only that within this framework each of us will be a unique person, but not an individual as delineated above; not isolatable, but interrelated; not autonomous, but interdependent; and not altogether free – even in principle – but encumbered by our responsibilities to those who define us, and whom we contribute to defining. Perhaps most important for the diverse societies of today, a family-orientated ethic can foster cultural pluralism even when not universalistic. How, then, might family values be seen as progressive rather than reactionary (while allowing for differing orderings of them)?

A family travelling through time in today’s world We must, in the first instance, think about the present when attending to that dimension of our paternal role as caretakers – seeing, that is, to the needs of our children for food, shelter, clothing, books, and more basically, security and love. From birth on, however, the relationship is reciprocal: the children are an outlet for the love and care parents feel and express, and provide as well the means for taking pride and satisfaction in meeting parental responsibilities, a necessary condition for human dignity in virtually all societies. As they grow, children can express love and care for their parents more actively by being obedient.

174

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Blind obedience, of course, is not to be encouraged, but it is a keen insight of Confucius that one significant way children show respect as well as love for their parents is by obeying them. (They know well, for example, that parents become increasingly distressed as the hour passes by which time the youngster was told to be home.) Thus family relations should be seen as reciprocal at all times (but of course not analysed as contractual). In addition to the responsibility of caring for them, however – meeting their needs – we are also aware as parents of our responsibility for raising our children to become adults, which obliges us to think long and carefully about the future as well as the present. This is no more than to say that I must not only attend to my children as they are right now but also as I believe it would be best for them to become in the future. There are certain ways I should like my children to be when they grow up, and certain ways I do not want them to be, the details of which will be largely dependent on my children’s mental, physical and psychological makeup, our socio-economic circumstances, and of course the cultural milieu in which we live. These details will also depend on my own (and my wife’s) family history, our ethnicity, citizenship, and other social factors that have largely determined the hopes, fears, dreams and goals we have not only for ourselves, but altogether naturally have for our children as well – without which we would not be who we are, nor would we be a family in any meaningful sense of the word. As parents, in other words, we must emulate the ru at least in part, as we are obliged to carry on, and transmit the culture we have inherited, modifying dimensions of it that are no longer consonant with the times and/or our values, or conducive to the well-being of our children. Anyone committed to an individualist morality in which autonomy and freedom are central may well take exception to this contemporary Confucian analysis thus far, because in raising children in this manner our concern is not solely, or perhaps even mainly, to seek to maximise the possibility of their later becoming fully autonomous and free individuals, as moralities grounded in individualism would insist. Today’s world is nowhere near as monocultural morally as was the China of Confucius, but his concerns are still important to consider in our contemporary and diversified societies. I attempt to live in accordance with an ordering of values that influences importantly who I am and what I do. I have that value ordering because I believe it is a very good one, and endeavour to exemplify it in my conduct with my offspring no less than with others. So, of course, does my wife, although she may have a slightly different ordering than my own. Needless to say, we will endeavour to instil our orderings in our children, for a major part



Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations 175

of our parental responsibilities are to have them become value-orientated, and if we do not orient them toward our own value orderings, which others might we use? This is not at all to suggest that we should attempt to make our children copies of ourselves. We are different people, obviously, and we must take those differences into account at all times, especially in matters of taste and personal preferences. But matters of morals, or basic political or religious matters, are different from matters of aesthetics or personal inclination. In these latter areas I have accepted a worldview and attendant ordering of values because in the end I believe that ordering better than other possible orderings. Consequently, in today’s increasingly pluralistic cultures we all have a fundamental responsibility to show our children that there are very decent and intelligent people who order their values somewhat differently than I do. But surely I am not in any way being derelict in my parental duties in endeavouring to orient my offspring toward what I believe is the best among the candidates? If not my own, then which?6 Consider a man whose chosen career has been that of a union organiser. He has enjoyed his work overall, and been extremely proud and happy when another work unit, through his efforts, voted in a union to represent their interests in negotiations with the corporate hierarchy. His career has not made him rich, but has provided the wherewithal to send his son to college, and to law school thereafter, a goal the boy has embraced since his sophomore year. Now, after passing the bar exam, the son announces that the best job offer he has had came from the largest union-busting firm in the state, and he has accepted it. My personal intuition here is that any pride and joy the father might take at this turn of events – the son has a job, which he has clearly chosen on his own – would almost immediately leave him and be replaced by severe depression; not simply because of the choice the son has made, but because of the way the father now had to view his role as a father in a very different, much more negative manner, namely as a failure in several important ways. It is not merely that the father secretly might have wished for the son to choose to become a labour lawyer; had the son chosen real estate law, criminal law, become an assistant district attorney or public defender, the father might have been a bit disappointed, yet not more than that. But for the son to embark on a career that was the antithesis of the values of solidarity and social justice his father has lived for and attempted to embody was proof positive to him that his fathering had been radically deficient in crucial respects. It might be tempting to think that the father is just being self-centred, either by wanting to live vicariously through his son’s work, or by being a dogmatist, or pressing his own socio-political agenda, or simply not thinking of how the son

176

Landscape and Travelling East and West

might take pride in the knowledge of his independence and ability to make up his own mind. But now shift attention directly to the son himself as he begins a career devoted to undoing his father’s life’s work and dreams: what would we think of him? Notice that so long as we merely see him as a free and autonomous individual who has made a rational choice, we will probably just shrug our shoulders and say ‘So what?’, or ‘It’s a private matter, and his father’s problem, not a moral issue’. My strong sense, however, is that if we focus on him as a son of this father we would not think much of him, and think of him as somehow a moral failure despite the private nature of the behaviour; we would see the son as fairly unfeeling, and certainly characterise him as self-centred for being so unmindful of the significance of his decision for his father, who, because of that decision, has now become a very different person, and not merely because of his sadness. The son has clearly been not simply ungrateful, but highly irreverent toward his family, with untoward consequences for the others with whom his life has been intertwined, and that is why we will hold him in low regard. And I suspect this would hold true even for people who hated unions. This, then, is role ethics in action, and how it differs from moralities built on the idea of individualism: if father and son are only autonomous (unencumbered) individuals, there is no moral issue here, only, at best, a personal one. Every parent must, of course, balance their guiding conduct toward their children on the one hand with an appreciation of the uniqueness of each of them on the other; the desired goal would be to have them take on a valueordering similar to the parents – not merely because it is theirs, but because they believe it is a good ordering, an ordering worth maintaining in the future, and committed themselves to it accordingly. And it seems to me that this goal can only be achieved on the basis of the love of the parents for their children, and exemplary conduct in raising them, with few if any abstract moral rules or principles playing a role. Returning to the union-organising father, how could he possibly assign a higher place in his value-ordering to the categorical imperative or the utility principle than to the overall ordering which has given his life meaning, purpose and satisfaction? Moreover, the father’s love of his work should have been exemplary for the son, too, and thus causes even more depression in the present case, for if the son hates his new job and is doing it only for the money, then the father’s example of pride and satisfaction in his work was also for naught as a model – depressing to contemplate. But not as depressing as the other possibility: that the son really likes to break up unions. Note that whatever concerns about the young union-busting lawyer we may



Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations 177

have, these are not generated by saying he has a ‘poor character’ or has no proper sense of ‘morals’; he has failed significantly as a son, the most basic role he has lived – our opprobrium applies to role-bearing unique persons, not autonomous individuals. (It might be objected here that all of this is well and good, but what do we do with fathers who don’t love their children very much, and are rigid dogmatists to boot? A full response to this straightforward objection falls beyond the scope of this paper, but an adumbrated reply is given in the following endnote).7 The moral of the story thus far should be clear from a contemporary Confucian perspective: when dealing with relationships between parents and children we cannot see any of the participants as free, autonomous individuals, for they are too intimately bound up with one another not only in their interactions, but in their sense of who they are, have been and will become as well – in all cases, bonded by love, through time. What it means, in large part, to be a father or a mother is to be sensitive to the personalities, abilities and feelings of their children at all times, taking these into account both when caring for them now, and raising them with an eye to the future. And what it means to be a son or daughter is to be sensitive to the beliefs and feelings of one’s parents before electing and following any significant goal in their lives, a sensitivity that must be maintained throughout their parents’ lives as a matter of loyalty. This loyalty does not preclude remonstrating with them, of course (or others in authority), as all the texts of classical Confucianism make clear.8 There is yet a third time factor that parents must take into account in meeting their responsibilities both to care for and raise their children, and that is the past. Here, it seems to me, the Confucians have perhaps the most to say to everyone today, with their detailed concern for rituals, especially those involving ancestor veneration. It is in the emphasis on the importance of keeping yesterday before us in order to properly live today and plan for tomorrow that Confucian family reverence can perhaps be seen most vividly in its religious no less than moral dimensions. Much of who and what we are may be traced fairly directly to our ancestors, from our physical appearance to our native tongue, from our ethnicity to the specifics of the socialisation processes we have undergone. Many of our tastes in food, music, dress, avocations and more can also often be traced directly to our parents and grandparents, and their grandparents in turn. (In a number of cases we can also trace our antipathy to certain of these tastes, or others, directly to them, too.) Like it or not, we belong to a family, and moreover, a family with a history – and in most cases, more than one. It follows from this that the more

178

Landscape and Travelling East and West

we know of our familial past, and the more we stay in touch with it, the better we can know who we are now, and envisage possibilities of who we might, or should, become, and define ourselves accordingly. This point is obvious to the families of the rich and the powerful: every Rockefeller, Kennedy, Bush, Vanderbilt, and so on, has a strong sense of who they are, and a sense of belonging to a special group, with a special history; all of the adults in these families, I would guess, can name in full not only their four grandparents, but seven if not all eight of their great-grandparents as well. But the point is not to celebrate snobbery, for it applies to all families, even when misfortunes like being poor, a refugee or an immigrant have made it almost impossible to keep even a two-generation family genealogy intact, and remembered. Each of us almost surely has a hero or heroine or two in the family tree, and very probably an occasional villain as well. Each of us has eight great-grandparents, and it is obvious to me that all of us will have a better sense of who we are if we know who they were. Their fame or infamy may have been great or local, or they may have been simply ‘ordinary’ folk, but the histories of all families are special – extraordinary, if you will – to the members thereof. Yet in order to obtain that sense of belonging to a family with a history (which every family has), you must know about that history, especially the lives of the ancestors who have made that history. It behoves all of us, then, to learn of our family’s history, to listen carefully to the stories told to us by our grandparents and their siblings, to look at old photographs, and/or do a bit of genealogical detective work. Knowing where we have come from provides major clues as to who we are, and might become, as we continue developing the history of our family – and contributing to it. In my opinion there is no better way to obtain this sense of belonging, of feeling the continuity of a family line, than by a ritual honouring of the ancestors on occasion, especially for parents and grandparents. It should thus be a significant dimension of my role as parent to instil in my children this sense of coming from, and belonging to, a family with a history, that I have responsibilities to my own parents and their parents in turn, responsibilities that do not cease at their deaths; it is my responsibility to my forbears to see that their memory is not entirely erased by time. Hence, in order to be an appropriate model for my children I should periodically engage in a ritual which honours our ancestors, a ritual that might be widespread throughout my culture, or more locally; or it might be a ritual unique to our own family’s heritage; it might even be a ritual my wife and I create for our descendants. I enrich the lives of my children by continuing to discharge my responsibilities toward my parents and



Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations 179

grandparents after they have died by rituals of remembrance. I personally know of no culture that does not have such rituals.9 It may seem strange to think that we owe a debt to the dead, but it is not. Even atheists can understand the obligatory nature of keeping a deathbed promise. And doesn’t every son and daughter raised in a loving home ‘promise’, even if only implicitly, not to forget them, nor to let our own children forget them? Rituals, especially family rituals, have tended to occupy the thoughts of most Western philosophers no more than the family has, but rituals can form a basic glue for families, and significantly affect the self-identification of its members, as well as their sense of worth. To see this point another way, consider the fact that a great many people invariably ‘talk’ to the tombstone when they visit a cemetery to pay respects to a deceased relative, teacher or friend. There is nothing surprising about this, it is altogether human; we know the deceased cannot hear us, but we speak anyway ‘as if they were present’ (3.12). For this insight, if for no other, we owe a continuing debt to the early Confucians. In the past, these practices undoubtedly stemmed from the almost universal belief in ghosts and spirits, benign and malevolent, in keeping with the theologies of the world’s religions. This occurred in China too, of course, and here is where the peculiar genius of the early Confucians is of such great relevance today, over and above the social, political and economic insights they can provide us as we undertake the task of seriously re-thinking the family: they also show us how rituals and customs of respect for our ancestors can be moving, satisfying and sustaining even for the increasing number of us the world over who give no credence to the idea of ghosts and spirits.10 But the satisfaction will come, I believe, only to those who can come to appreciate their interrelatedness and interdependence with others, and thus define themselves as role-living unique persons, not autonomous individuals, who may all too easily be seen as the nineteenth-century champion of women’s rights Elizabeth Cady Stanton saw them: ‘We come into the world alone […] and we leave it alone. Each of us must make the voyage of life alone […]’ (Nussbaum, 2006, p. 29). Equally stark, Aldous Huxley noted a century later: We live together, we act on, and react to one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. (Huxley, 1963, p. 12)

Against this brief background, Roger will continue our narrative of travel through time by moving from a family’s specific ordering of values to the

180

Landscape and Travelling East and West

more general norms definitive of the larger Chinese culture in which families and their role-living members were embedded, and through which they also travelled.11

Notes 1 2 3

4 5 6

7

Here and throughout the parenthetical numbers refer to the Lunyu, specifically the translation by Ames and Rosemont, 1998. See Ames and Rosemont, 2008. For more detail on these two themes, see the introduction to Ames and Rosemont, 2008. David Hall and Roger Ames (1995, pp. 271–7) have argued for the family being the most foundational of all metaphors in Chinese thought; see also their references to the sociological work of Ambrose King. For an overview of methodological individualism, see Udehn, 2004. David Wong (2009) argues long and well for a plurality of acceptable moral codes, with constraints, as an alternative to universalism in moral philosophy. We emphasise the prioritisation of values to make it clear that we do not believe it is possible to ‘take on a new set of values’ as most people would be inclined to say. One cannot logically take on a whole new set of values, but only re-order the values they (and everyone else except sociopaths) already have. How, for example, could one ever get you to change your mind about the worth of a particular value except by appealing to a more basic value you both share? Everyone values security, everyone values freedom; but different people order those values differently. And if members of one camp convince some members of another to change their minds, these latter have not ‘taken on a whole new set of values’, but have simply re-ordered the values they have long held, sometimes, but not always, permanently. In situation X, freedom trumps security, but in Y the opposite ordering might obtain. Usually couched as a conflict arising from the fact that good Confucians are supposed to serve in government when called upon, on the one hand, and the fact that the ruler you are now serving is a thoroughgoing rotter: what to do? What rule or principle will Confucius follow? If we are correct in our interpretation, however, there are no such rules or principles to be found in the early texts. But we may nevertheless resolve the conflict easily. Rather than searching for an abstract principle, we must ask, as one who is serving in government, whether this ruler, here now – is he re-formable? If the answer is affirmative, we must ask a second highly specific question: do we have the qualities and skills to reform him? If the answer to this question is also affirmative, King Wen becomes our model exemplar, and we continue to serve, remonstrating all the while. If the answer to



Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations 181

the first question is ‘yes’, but is ‘no’ to the second, Confucius himself becomes our model, as we return to family and community, and ‘serve government’ from there, as Lunyu 2.21 makes clear, and 7.16 and 8.13 reinforce. And if we answer the first question ‘no, we don’t believe he is re-formable’, then we must raise the flag of rebellion, with King Wu as our hero and precedent-setter. In sum, no conflicts; there is always a decision procedure. It is always highly particularistic – but none the worse for that, it would seem. The argument carries over, mutatitis muntandis, to fathers and other figures of authority. 8 Indeed, we want to claim that all interpersonal relations and interactions can be fruitfully described, analysed and evaluated on the model of parents and children, benefactor and beneficiary, as I have sketched here: the interrelations between friends, neighbours, colleagues and others. Nothing of ethical significance, we are arguing, will be lost, and much gained, by abandoning a foundational individualism altogether. 9 For more on the temporal and non-physical sense of immortality attendant on the performance of mourning rituals, see Rosemont, 2012, especially Chapters XI and XII. 10 It might well be objected that the overall view of the family portrayed herein is so wildly idealistic as to not be worth taking seriously. Two quick replies: 1) The picture I have suggested might be more realistic than a number of accounts of the family – East and West – have been. Individualism is supposed to have been a characteristic only of the family in the West. Until the nineteenth century children were seen largely in economic terms. The nuclearisation of the family in the West contributed greatly to the rise of capitalism, and many more stereotypes of the history of the family, whether compiled by sociologists (Western families), anthropologists (non-Western families), or by historians, comparative or otherwise, are deserving of careful scrutiny. 2) ‘There is nothing wrong with building castles in the sky’, said Thoreau; ‘That is where they belong. Now put the foundations under them.’ 11 Parts of this chapter were first read at a panel honouring the work of Joel Kupperman at the University of Hawaii in the summer of 2010. I am grateful to the audience there and to my fellow participants at the conference of the Académie du Midi in Alet-les-Bains in spring, 2012 for their many useful comments and encouragement.

References Ames, R. T. and Hall, D. (1995), Anticipating China. Albany NY: SUNY Press. Ames, R. T. and Rosemont, H. Jr. (trans.) (1998), The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine.

182

Landscape and Travelling East and West

—(trans.) (2008), Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Huxley, A. (1963), The Doors of Perception: Heaven and Hell. London: Penguin. Nussbaum, M. (2006), ‘In a lonely place’. Nation, 282 (8), 26–30. Rosemont Jr., H. (2012), A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Udehn, L. (2004), Methodological Individualism. London: Routledge. Wong, D. (2009), Natural Moralities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14

Travelling Together with Gravitas: The Intergenerational Transmission of Confucian Culture Roger T. Ames

Henry Rosemont and I are contributing jointly written chapters for this volume as an object lesson in how we have come to understand the narrative nature of philosophising within traditional Confucian philosophy and culture.1 We will argue that dao – that is, ‘forging our way together in the world’, or what we might elaborate upon as ‘travelling through a shared physical, social, and cultural landscape’ – is the metaphor that governs the central project of the Analects of Confucius and continues in the Chinese philosophical tradition to become one of its defining terms of art. As Confucius himself declares, each generation inherits the guiding moral compass of ‘this culture of ours’ (siwen) from those who have come before (Analects 9.5). It is then incumbent on them to embody this culture, to apply it effectively to resolve the pressing issues of their day, and in that process, to reauthorise it for their own time and place. Throughout their lives, they model the cultural practices for the generations that succeed them, and in so doing, recommend to their progeny that they do the same for those generations yet to come. Indeed, says Confucius, ‘It is human beings that extend the way, not the way that extends human beings’ (Analects 15.29).2 Confucianism as a living culture thus not only has ‘legs’ but indeed is more roundly genealogical as it is embodied, revitalised, and then passed on by each succeeding generation. In this chapter I will first try to develop a more nuanced understanding of what is meant by ‘dao-ing’ in the Confucian tradition – that is, ‘travelling together through a shared cultural landscape’. Next I will turn to the expression xiao or xiaodao that Rosemont and I have translated as ‘the way of family reverence’ to explore the process of cultural transmission within living family

184

Landscape and Travelling East and West

lineages.3 The third term I will invoke is ru or ‘literati culture’ (now conventionally translated unfortunately as ‘Confucianism’) to register the dynamics of an always changing yet persistent elite cultural landscape as it has been both conserved and constantly reconfigured across the centuries. I will then conclude by appealing to lineages of landscape painters from the Tang (618–907) through to the early Qing (1644–1911) dynasties as an illustrative case of both familial xiao and literati ru transmission. In Rosemont’s best effort to allow the Confucian tradition to speak for itself, he has begun our account of ‘travelling through a shared cultural landscape’ with his attempt to identify some of our own philosophical presuppositions that might willy-nilly be projected onto and thus overwrite very different sensibilities in the continuing construction of a shared familial and communal Confucian identity. The first among these uncommon assumptions is an uncritical foundational individualism that is most often defined in terms of autonomy, equality, freedom, rationality, and usually self-interest. This liberal notion of individualism has such deep roots in our tradition and is so entrenched as a cultural common-sense that it has become a default ideology that has only rarely and fairly recently been challenged by erstwhile alternatives.4 The problem with assuming that persons can be accurately described, analysed and evaluated as individuals – psychologically, politically and morally – in isolation from other human beings, however, is that where it was once a benign fiction, it has now become pernicious as a moral justification for a trenchant, self-interested libertarianism. Such an individualism not only fails to provide us access to a sufficiently robust understanding of shared life in family and community, but further stands in tension with the empirical fact of associated living. Indeed, such a fictive individualism ignores the intimacy, mutuality and particularity that is invariably defining of relations in real families. In failing to accommodate family roles lived through richly textured and constantly changing patterns of both natural and socially constructed differences, abstract individualism itself becomes reductive and violent by enforcing conformity at the unacceptable expense of excising real diversity and its creative possibilities. In his discussion of the central importance of lived family roles and relations, Rosemont draws upon what we have come to advocate as a sui generis regimen of ‘Confucian role ethics’ to argue that lives lived in our evolving roles as children and parents, as beneficiaries and benefactors, are too intimately bound up with one another to allow for the divisive and fragmenting assumptions that ground liberal individualism. We live associated lives, and are irreducibly social not only in the transactions that constitute our unique narratives, but



Travelling Together with Gravitas

185

in our most basic, role-informed sense of personal identity. The omnipresent responsibilities of family life not only direct our attention to the pressing current and future concerns of the day, but they also provide us with a historical and narrative sense of where we have come from, and, in important degree, tell us who we are. Within the interpretative framework of Confucian philosophy, associated, interpersonal living is taken to be an uncontested, empirical fact. Every person lives and every event takes place within a vital natural, social and cultural context. Association being a fact, our different roles lived within family and society are nothing more than the stipulation of specific modes of associated living: mothers and grandsons, teachers and neighbours. But while we must take associated living as a simple fact, the consummate conduct that comes to inspire and to produce virtuosity in these stipulated roles lived in family, community, and the cultural narrative broadly – that is, Confucian role ethics – is an achievement; it is what we are able with imagination to make of the fact of association. Let me build on Rosemont’s reflections on the tensions he registers between ethical theories grounded in individualism and the vision of the moral life espoused as Confucian role ethics by turning to a fuller and more specific discussion of the dynamics of interpersonal and intergenerational transmission within Confucian culture. It seems appropriate to frame this discussion with a memorable passage from an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a thinker out of Rosemont’s and my own past to whom we as Americans owe a profound debt in the shaping of our own national and cultural identity. Emerson appeals to a rather simple image of a carpenter hewing wood to make a rather profound statement about the march of continuing civilisation and the morality that must necessarily inform it. Emerson draws an intriguing contrast between the ineffectiveness of ‘going it alone’ in this world, and the indomitable felicity of squaring civilisation behind our shoulders and living lives that are propelled by the moral and cultural gravitas that such a shared purchase and momentum provides: Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what is higher. This rule holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of the elements. You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe chopping upward chips and slivers from a beam. How awkward! At what disadvantage he works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. (Emerson, 1862, p. 505)

186

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Emerson’s image of lives empowered by the weight of a common civilisation recalls the key philosophical notion of ‘a forging of our way together in the world’ (dao). How then are we to understand this important Confucian metaphor for the journey that we all join at birth in our families and communities? We must begin by exploring Confucianism’s own vocabulary and, in thus allowing the tradition to speak for itself, establish an interpretative context for reading the tradition. Dao, conventionally translated as ‘the Way’, is probably the most pervasive and widely recognised idea in Chinese philosophy. The specific character of Chinese philosophy arises because a dominant cultural factor in the tradition, now and then, has been the primacy of vital relationality and its many implications. To understand the on-going process of cosmic transformation, then, we must acknowledge the inseparability of any ‘thing’ and its relations with an always changing context. Corollary to this ‘event’ (rather than substance) ontology is the priority of process and change over form and stasis. This processual cosmology locates the human sojourn within the framework of an emergent, prospective sense of cosmic order wherein form itself is expressed as the cadence or rhythm of life. Of course, this vital process cosmology stands in a rather stark contrast with a tradition of classical Greek ontology and metaphysics, defined as it is in terms of antecedent and unchanging first principles from which cosmic order is derived. In this Chinese process cosmology, the notion of dao speaks to both the unbounded wholeness and the open-endedness of human experience as it unfolds among the presencing of the myriad things (wanwu or wanyou) of which the human being has pride of place. Indeed, on both the bronzes and in the recently recovered bamboo strips, the character for dao itself is not simply a road, but includes graphically a representation of the itinerant human being encountering a crossroad. And its dyadic correlate, de, references the commitment to the insistent, unique particularity of these myriad things within this continuing process. Said another way, the doctrine of internal relations in this process cosmology that would construe ‘things’ as being constituted by their vital relations guarantees the uniqueness of particulars as evolving matrices of always distinct relationships. It is because experience is always entertained and engaged from one particular perspective or another that the totality of experience, dao, and the myriad things as the content of experience, de, are simply two non-analytic ways of looking at the same phenomenon, with the former emphasising the continuity of experience and the latter the multiplicity of its content. And as we will see below, when in Confucian role ethics we focus on the relationship



Travelling Together with Gravitas

187

of particular persons and their various environments, the binomial expression daode is not simply descriptive of persons and their contexts; indeed, it becomes a normative term that speaks to the virtuosity that is achieved in and expressed through productive relations. Taking the gerundive, processional and dynamic sense of dao as primary, its several derived meanings emerge rather naturally: ‘to lead forth’ requires the ‘explaining’ of a ‘method, art, teaching, or doctrine’ that then produces a ‘way, path, or road’ that allows us to make our way forward. Thus, at its most fundamental level, dao denotes the active project of ‘moving ahead in the world’, of ‘forging a way forward’, of ‘road building’. It is to register the dynamic implications of dao that we have on occasion used the neologism ‘way-making’ as a translation (Ames et al., 2003, passim). By extension and derivative of this active sense, dao comes to connote a pathway that has been made, and hence that can be travelled. The parts of speech that order our European languages – nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs – encourage us to divide up the world in a culturally specific manner. Under the influence of these grammatical determinants, we are inclined to separate things from actions, attributes from modalities, ‘where’ from ‘when’, and ‘how’ from ‘what’. However, given the fluidity between space, time and matter assumed in this classical Chinese process cosmology, these familiar categories do not govern the way in which the holistic Chinese world is parsed and divided up. Time, space and matter are simply explanatory categories used to describe different aspects of the same transforming and transformative experience. Thus, language such as dao that is used to define a Chinese world must be seen as crossing the borders of time, space and matter. Dao as both ‘what is’ (things and their various attributes) and ‘how things are’ (their actions and various modalities) serves as a perfect example of this dynamic holism. To say ‘I know’ – literally, ‘I know dao’ (wo zhidao) – has as much to do with the subjects of knowing and their quality of understanding as it does with the objects of knowledge and their attributes. Thus, there is no clear line between what we might take to be putative things and events: A ‘thing’ is a distinctive, dynamic focus located within an unbounded field of experience that is holographically implicated within this focus, requiring a focus-field rather than a part-whole language to give it expression. Each note as it is played in Beethoven’s Ninth has implicated within it, and can only be evaluated by appeal to, the symphony as a whole. Turning to the human world and to the human dao, this process cosmology is expressed through the centrality of personal cultivation as the generative

188

Landscape and Travelling East and West

source of meaningful relations that bring us together on our particular pathways through the world. Human beings are not only travellers; they must also be road builders because the continuing human culture – the human dao – is always provisional and ever under construction. Again, the primacy of vital relationality means that the locus of this personal cultivation lies embedded within those evolving roles and relationships that constitute each of us in the narratives of our lives. The particular and yet continuous and vital character of the human culture is captured in a passage in which the protégée of Confucius, Zigong, is questioned about Confucius’ academic lineage. Zigong replies: The way (dao) of the early Zhou dynasty Kings Wen and Wu has not collapsed, but still lives on in the people. Since those of superior character realize the greater part of it, and those of lesser quality realize some of it, everyone has something of Wen and Wu’s way in them. Who then does the Master not learn from? And again, how could there be a single constant teacher for him? (Analects 19.22)

Of immediate import in this passage is the choice of King Wen – literally, King ‘Culture’ – as the source of Confucius’ education, and the claim that this living culture is embodied and realised in different degrees in the people themselves. The cultural narrative – the dao – unfolds in the ineluctable transmission of civilisation in the broadest sense from one generation to the next. Surveying and parsing the range of meaning invested in this polysemic term dao – ‘travelling through a shared physical, social, and cultural landscape’ – we can identify at least three overlapping and mutually entailing semantic dimensions that have relevance to the image of travelling together with gravitas. First, there is the primary ‘momentum’ sense of dao as an unfolding cultural disposition. There is a palpable glacial weight to dao as the continuing propensity of experience that provides us with identity and historical context as we inch ahead together. It is this sense of dao that justifies its familiar translation as ‘the Way’. If we look for approximations for dao in our own language, it can be understood as a generic idea such as ‘culture’ or ‘civilization’ or ‘life’ that resists resolution into familiar, exclusive dualisms such as ‘subject/object’, ‘form/function’, ‘agency/action’, ‘fact/value’, and so on. Dao in this sense is the confluence of lived experience as our narratives converge into a shared cultural identity, with all of the cadence, continuities, transitions and disjunctions that are characteristic of the stream of human experience. Second, we must underscore the fact that dao is normative rather than simply descriptive because human beings have a proactive, creative role in making our



Travelling Together with Gravitas

189

way forward in the world. There is certainly an ineluctable force of circumstances at play in our lived experience that accounts for the persistence and regularity of our daily lives. But this unfolding process is under-determined, allowing for our own unique and creative influence upon its course. Indeed, the indeterminate aspect that honeycombs what is determinate and intelligible in life provides a range of creative possibilities, and allows for the spontaneous emergence of novelty within each moment of experience. Making our way forward is participatory, allowing for an educated responsiveness to the more fluid and indeterminate opportunities that this experience presents. And our capacity to respond to these novel opportunities in an optimal way is itself dependent upon the richness and depth of our own past experience. Indeed, it is the educated palate that can anticipate and most fully enjoy the new culinary experiences that become available to us. Third, the human being, far from being perceived as a minor player, has a major, even religious role as a cosmic collaborator. Personal cultivation is the ultimate source of meaning, and, in this process, it is the achieved intensity and extensiveness of one’s roles and relations that determines the degree of one’s influence on the natural, social and cultural world. The human being, through a regimen of personal cultivation, has both the opportunity and the responsibility to become co-creator with the heavens and the earth. It is in this sense that the sage (shengren), as the most accomplished among human beings, is elevated to a truly cosmic plane that allows humanity to be properly described as ‘the heartmind of the cosmos’ (tiandi zhi xin). The most familiar yet derivative understanding of dao is a post hoc combination of these more primary meanings: the objectified use of dao that is expressed in the familiar demonstrative translation as ‘the Way’. To nominalise and thus over-determine dao can betray its fluidity, reflexivity and openness to the future, and when given priority, is often the first step to inadvertently overwriting a prospective, process sensibility with retrospective, substance assumptions. On the other hand, such a reading respects the aggregating weight of the tradition and the sacredness with which it becomes imbued. But even when we reflect on a temporally prior ‘way’ that is invested with the weight and authority of the tradition – the way of Confucius, for example – we must allow that our own present vantage point involves us reflexively in our interpretation and reauthorisation of it, making ‘Confucius’ dynamic and corporate rather than simply referential and antiquarian. We now turn from this perhaps overly abstract reflection on the more generic and cosmological sense of dao – ‘travelling through a shared physical,

190

Landscape and Travelling East and West

social, and cultural landscape’ – to a consideration of the more concrete xiaodao – that is, ‘the way of family reverence’. With xiaodao then, we encounter what is literally a more familiar ‘way’ of understanding this seminal idea, dao, in the sense that the words ‘family’ and ‘familiar’ share the same root. But before we turn to xiao itself, we must first clarify the nature and the significance of the institution of family within this Confucian context. The distinguished sociologist Fei Xiaotong draws a contrast between the nuclear ‘family’ that for anthropologists takes its major significance from being the site of reproduction, and the dominant historical pattern of pre-modern Chinese families as lineages of persons with the same surname (shizu), and by extension, as clans (jiazu) made up of several lineages who share the same surname. While these lineages certainly have the function of reproduction, Fei insists that within the Chinese experience they serve as ‘a medium through which all activities are organized’ (Fei, 1992, p. 84). That is, in addition to the perpetuation of the family, lineages have complex political, economic and religious functions that are expressed along the vertical and hierarchical axes of the father–son and mother–daughter-in-law relationships. Lineage relations are again reinforced socially and religiously through the institutions of ancestor reverence, a continuing practice that archaeology tells us dates back at least to the Neolithic Age (Keightley, 1998, pp. 816–17, 820). The contemporary anthropologist Yiqun Zhou marshals scholarly consensus behind her claim that pre-modern Chinese society was ‘for several thousand years largely a polity organized by kinship principles’ (Zhou, 2010, p. 19). In weighing the extent to which social order was derived from and dependent upon family relations, Zhou insists that, in contrast with the Greeks, ‘the Chinese state was never conceived as a political community that equalled the sum of its citizens’, and that ‘the relationship between the rulers and the ruled was considered analogous to the relationship between parents and children’ (Zhou, 2010, pp. 17–18). She cites the late Qing scholar Yan Fu, who claims that imperial China from its beginnings was ‘seventy percent a lineage organization and thirty percent an empire’ (Zhou, 2010, p. 19). It is this persistent family-based socio-political organisation of Chinese society that has within this antique culture, late and soon, elevated the specific family values and obligations circumscribed by the term xiao to serve as the governing moral imperative. Early in the tradition, the Analects is explicit in registering the foundational importance of family feeling as providing the entry point and the trajectory for the Confucian project of becoming consummate human beings through



Travelling Together with Gravitas

191

personal cultivation. Indeed, xiao is taken metaphorically as the ‘root’ from which dao as the vision of the moral life draws its energy and takes its form: Exemplary persons (junzi) concentrate their efforts on the root, for the root having set, one’s vision of the moral life (dao) will emerge therefrom. As for family reverence (xiao) and fraternal deference (ti), these are, I suspect, the root of becoming consummate in one’s conduct (ren). (Analects 1.2)

The profound influence of family on personal development begins from the utter dependency of the infant upon the family relations into which it is born. It is thus important to understand that an infant is not perceived as a discrete life form, but is rather inclusive of and constituted by these same family relations. And if infancy teaches us anything – and it teaches us much – its first lesson should be the inescapably interdependent nature of human beings for their very survival. The family is conceived as the centre of all personal, social, political and, ultimately, cosmic order. All meaning ripples out in concentric circles that begin from a regimen of personal cultivation within the moral space of increasingly meaningful family roles and relations. These circles extend outward through community to the most distant ends of the cosmos, and then with value added return again to inform and nourish the family as its primary source. In the Chinese Classic of Family Reverence, Confucius elevates this ‘way of family reverence’ and declares it to be the very substance of morality and education: ‘It is family reverence (xiao) that is the root of moral virtuosity, and whence education (jiao) itself is born’5 (Rosemont et al., 2009, p. 105). The opening chapter of the Chinese Classic of Family Reverence provides us with the familiar radial progression from a primary centre that we saw above and find consistently in the Confucian literature, beginning from concern for one’s own physical person as what is closest at hand, extending to care for one’s family and kin, and then culminating in service to the ruler and to posterity. In this passage, King ‘Culture’ (wen) is once again singled out as the source from which the current generation draws its inspiration and to whom it makes return with the cultural dividends it has accrued. Your physical person with its hair and skin are received from your parents. Vigilance in not allowing anything to do injury to your person is where family reverence begins; distinguishing yourself and walking the proper way (dao) in the world; raising your name high for posterity and thereby bringing esteem to your father and mother – it is in these things that family reverence finds its consummation. This family reverence then begins in service to your parents, continues in service to your lord, and culminates in distinguishing yourself in

192

Landscape and Travelling East and West

the world. In the ‘Greater Odes’ section of the Book of Songs it says: ‘How can you not remember your ancestor, King Wen? You must cultivate yourself and extend his excellence’.6 (Rosemont et al., 2009, p. 105)

The charge in this passage to keep the body intact certainly refers to one’s own physicality, but it also lends itself to a broader reading – that is, each generation has the responsibility of keeping the corpus of culture that it comes to embody whole and alive. One way of understanding the dynamics of ‘family reverence’ (xiao) as intergenerational transmission through this process of embodiment is to appeal to two cognate characters that are integral to the continuities of the family lineage: ti (‘body’, ‘embodying’, ‘forming and shaping’) and li (‘achieving propriety in one’s roles and relations’, ‘ritual’) (Ames, 2011, pp. 102–14). Without the formal dimension provided in human experience by embodied living and by the social grammar of meaningful roles and relations, there is a very real question as to whether the significant refinement achieved in and through our life forms would even be possible. As we have seen, ‘the lived body’ through its ‘embodied living’ is the site of growth in and a conveyance of the cultural corpus of knowledge – linguistic facility and proficiency, religious rituals and mythologies, the aesthetics of cooking, song and dance, the modelling of mores and values, instruction and apprenticeship in cognitive technologies, and so on – as a continuing, intergenerational process through which a living civilisation itself is perpetuated. ‘Family reverence’ (xiao) serves as the primary cultural imperative, and makes every life significant as a conduit of the living culture – the way of becoming human (rendao). As we have seen above, even ‘those of lesser quality realize some of it’. Still, the culmination of xiao lies with those who are able to raise their name high for posterity and in so doing bring esteem to their family lineage. It is these exemplars who in every age and who over the aeons have enabled us to transcend our animality and intensify the human experience with the elegance and refinement of culture in its highest sense. And it is to the role of this elite class of consummatory literati or ru in perpetuating the persistent yet transforming orthodoxy of this cultural corridor – what is called the daotong – that we now turn. The philosopher and teacher, Kongfuzi, Latinised as ‘Confucius’, lends his name to the English (but not the Chinese) expression of this tradition called ‘Confucianism’.7 Confucius was certainly a flesh-and-blood historical person who lived, taught and died some twenty-five centuries ago, consolidating in his own time a formidable legacy of wisdom that has been passed down and



Travelling Together with Gravitas

193

applied through the ages to shape the character of an entire culture. In and of itself, the profoundly personal model of Confucius remembered by his protégés through those intimate snapshots of his life collected in the middle chapters of the Analects has its own value and meaning. But then, as Confucius reportedly said of himself, most of what he had to offer had ancient roots, and he was one who was inclined to follow the established path rather than strike out in new directions (Analects 7.1). Indeed it is perhaps for this reason that in the Chinese language itself the tradition is not identified specifically with the person Confucius as ‘Confucianism’, but rather with the on-going ru literati class who over the centuries has provided the cultural tradition with its evolving ‘literati learning’ (ruxue). The earliest occurrence of the term ru in the extant corpus is found in a single passage of the Analects: the Master remarked to Zixia, ‘You want to become the kind of ru literatus who is exemplary in conduct, not the kind that is a petty person’ (Analects 6.13). These ru are in fact, as suggested by the etymology of the character, a class of ‘gentle’ people that dates back at least sixty generations before Confucius to the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 bce) and includes some eighty generations of scholars and intellectuals after Confucius’ death. This gentry class of intellectuals has across the ages and in different ways in different times contributed its own best thoughts to this ‘literati learning’ as a continuous, living tradition. In the Shang, the ru began in earnest to aestheticise urban life with the elaborate practices of a bronze culture that has become emblematic of an emerging Chinese culture in museums around the world. Consistent with Confucius’ own premises, this scholarly legacy called ruxue – the alwaysporous core of an aggregating Chinese culture – is both vital and corporate, and what we now have come to call ‘Confucianism’ is in fact a shared culture that has been appropriated, commented upon, reinterpreted, elaborated further, and reauthorised in each generation. And the ru, far from being doctrinaire advocates of some specific dogma, at different times across the centuries reflect different values and embrace an ever evolving range of ideas and cultural practices. I want to conclude this chapter by appealing to a few of the masters of the landscape painting lineage who lived during the millennium from the Tang dynasty through to the Qing as one specific example of how ruxue culture has persisted while, at the same time, has changed to express the evolving values of each age. In briefly surveying the story of a truly complex genealogy of ru, we might begin from the oldest and best known of the Four Masters of the Yuan dynasty

194

Landscape and Travelling East and West

(1271–1368), Huang Gongwang (1269–1354), who is preeminent in the long history of Chinese painting. Huang was a highly respected intellectual whose construction of the Temple of the Three Doctrines (sanjiaotang) reflects an ecumenical philosophical attitude that accommodates Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. Huang in his brushwork is much influenced by and builds upon the Dong-Ju school of the Tang dynasty that includes works by Dong Yuan (c. 900–62) and his student Juran (fl. 975–93). Indeed, one of his most famous paintings is entitled ‘Summer Mountains after Dong Yuan’. But Huang Gongwang not only inherits, reauthorises and passes on the style of painting from the generations that came before him; he in turn inspires the ages that follow. The great, late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) painter and theorist Dong Qichong (1555–1636), for example, is a prominent advocate of the expressive literati style of the Yuan Masters, with works such as ‘Landscape After Huang Gongwang’ (Eichman et al., 2011, p. 63). But Dong is not only indebted to Huang Gongwang in his painting, but also remembers in his work the Tang and Song dynasty precursors of Huang with ‘Landscape After Dong Yuan and Fan Kuan’ (Eichman et al., 2011, p. 65). Not unexpectedly, Dong Qichong’s students follow their teacher in their admiration of Huang Gongwang, with Wang Shimin (1592–1680), one of the Four Wangs of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), painting his ‘Landscape in the Style of Huang Gongwang’, and a second Wang Yuanqi (1642–1715) painting his ‘Landscape in the Manner of Ni Zan [1301–74, another Yuan Master and a close friend of Huang] and Huang Gongwang’, with Wang Shimin’s ‘Landscape After Ni Zan’ (Eichman et al., 2011, p. 79) continuing the lineage. And then there is the third Wang Jian’s (1598–1677) ‘After Huang Gongwang’s “Secret Forest”’ (Eichman et al., 2011, p. 91). But then, as the teacher of the Four Wangs, Dong Qichong himself rises to real prominence, he too becomes included as a source of this aggregating influence with Wang Yuanqi’s ‘Color Landscape after Dong Qichong’s Interpretation of Huang Gongwang 1710’. As is clear from this remarkable genealogy, the living tradition is transmitted in the body of work produced by each generation, allowing for those who have come before to live on in the new oeuvre and to continue to inspire those yet to come. And we must ask: what was the meaning and function of these works of art in a world that for the most part included amateurs (in both senses) rather than professionals, and that did not have galleries or museums for public display? These works are narrative paintings and handscrolls that take us on an episodic, interactive, cultural journey as we walk through the paintings themselves. And



Travelling Together with Gravitas

195

at another level, these works recall the eventful lives of the literati artists who belonged to a particular place and to their own lineage of artists, friends and colleagues. But as these works were passed on from hand to hand in their transmission, they were always available to later generations of connoisseurs not only to be remarked upon and enjoyed, but to be further enhanced by adding their own chops, poems, calligraphy and colophons that conduced to refinement and ‘re-creation’ for their own time and place.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5

6 7

Contemporary Western philosophers such as Charles Taylor are taking the conception of person in this narrative direction. Taylor (1989, p. 35) argues that ‘One is a self only among other selves. A self can never be described without reference to those who surround it’. ‘But this is to state another basic condition of making sense of ourselves, that we grasp our lives in a narrative […] In order to have a sense of who we are, we have to have a notion of how we have become, and of where we are going’ (p. 47). All translations are from Ames and Rosemont, 1998. See Rosemont and Ames, 2009, pp. 1, 34–6 and 105–16, for an argument for this interpretation and translation of xiao. Nuyen, 2012, offers Charles Taylor, 1989, Dorothy Emmett, 1966, Marion Smiley, 1992, and Larry May, 1992, as some examples of recent Western ethical theorists who offer a relational and role-based conception of person. We must resist any simplistic equation between filial deference and obedience. Xiao that is focused on the bottom-up deference children owe their elders must be distinguished clearly from pater familias, the top-down power and privilege of the father. At times being truly filial within the family, like being a loyal minister within the court, requires courageous remonstrance (jian) rather than automatic compliance. Such remonstrance is not perceived as merely an option, but as a sacred obligation. In the Chinese Classic of Family Reference 15, Confucius responds impatiently to a question by Zengzi that would reduce filial deference to simple obedience, making the case that such automatic compliance often produces immorality in conduct that is the opposite of what is intended. Songs 235. Cf. Legge, 1960, p. 431, and Karlgren, 1950b, p. 187. Tim Barrett (2005, p. 518) has identified Sir John Francis Davis (1795–1890) as the first person on record to have used the word ‘Confucianism’ (Davis, 1836, p. 45). See Standaert, 1999, pp. 115–32, for a detailed discussion of the ru tradition and its interpretation as ‘Confucianism’ that absolves the Jesuits of this problematic equation.

196

Landscape and Travelling East and West

References Ames, R. T. (2011), Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Hong Kong and Honolulu: Chinese University Press and University of Hawaii Press. Ames, R. T. and Hall, D. L. (trans.) (2003), Daodejing: ‘Making This Life Significant’: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine. Ames, R. T. and Rosemont, H. Jr. (trans.) (1998), The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine. Barrett, T. (2005), ‘Chinese religion in English guise: the history of an illusion’. Modern Asian Studies, 39.3, 509–33. Davis, Sir J. F. (1836), The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and its Inhabitants (vol. 2). London: Charles Knight & Co. Eichman, S. and Li, S. (2011), Masterpieces of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts. Emerson, R. W. (1862), ‘American civilization’. Atlantic Monthly, 9, 502–11. Emmet, D. (1966), Rules, Roles and Relations. London: Macmillan. Fei, X. (1992), From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. A translation of Xiangtu Zhongguo. G. G. Hamilton and W. Zheng (trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press. Keightley, D. N. (1998), ‘Shamanism, death, and the ancestors: religious mediation in Neolithic and Shang China, ca. 5000–1000 B.C.’. Asiatische Studien, 52, 763–828. May, L. (1992), Sharing Responsibility. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nuyen A. T. (2012), ‘Confucian Role Ethics’. Comparative and Continental Philosophy 4.1, 141–50. Rosemont, H. Jr. and Ames, R. T. (trans.) (2009), The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Smiley, M. (1992), Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Standaert, N. (1999), ‘The Jesuits did not manufacture “Confucianism”’. East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine, 16, 115–32. Taylor, C. (1989), Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Zhou, Y. (2010), Festival, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece. New York: Cambridge University Press.

15

Going Along – a Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics1 Paul D’Ambrosio

Introduction For the past several years Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont have been negotiating a new vocabulary for the way Chinese thought is both translated and understood against the background of our familiar ‘Western’ categories.2 One of their most fruitful discussions is their description of Confucian philosophy as ‘role ethics’. The notion of role ethics has been mostly limited to ‘Confucianism’ and its ‘ethical’ aspects, but I believe it can be equally applied to, and thereby further supported by, Daoist texts. In this paper I will argue that Zhuangzi also introduces role ethical depictions of the person and society, though he is clearly suspicious about its normative connotations. Zhuangzi’s hesitations, heckling, and humour about Kongzi and the prescriptive overtones in the Lunyu do not invalidate parallel views about our social world. In fact, I think that a fruitful comparison between these two thinkers can be based on their common view of the person as defined through roles/relations. For example, alternative descriptions of the sage (sheng ren) in the Zhuangzi are built upon a ‘role-defined’ or ‘role-based’ person. Similarly, questions about ‘meaning’ or ‘knowledge’ are also discussed in the context of ‘role ethics’. While introducing a reading of Daoism based on the ‘role ethics’ interpretation of Confucian texts, I will present the Zhuangzian sage as a ‘genuine pretender’. The ‘genuine pretender’ is another type of the role-based person, differing from his/her Confucian counterpart through a rejection of normative values in favour of a broader conception of how to be human. This view, founded in the Zhuangzi, argues for a person who can follow social customs

198

Landscape and Travelling East and West

without being internally affected by them.3 The genuine pretender thus lacks a definite notion of propriety in roles and relations (s)he plays.4 Here, pretending refers to actions lacking any commitment by thoughts or feelings – a requirement for role ethics. Paradoxically, this lack of feeling makes the genuine pretenders at the same time authentic, since nothing they do is at odds with their emptiness. In contrast to the seriousness with which Confucians live their various roles and the importance they attach to the human world, the genuine pretender merely plays. Wandering along, sometimes in accord with the various practices and mores of their time, they do not derive meaning or self-identity from society. In their interactions with others they view themselves in reference to the entire world – of which human society is only one small part. In other words, the world as seen by a genuine pretender differs from those who subscribe to Confucian role ethics. Their respective perceptions of human life resemble one another within the human realm, but then diverge in the way they focus (de) their landscape (dao).

Role ethics – What I am is how I am Role ethics differs from some other ethical theories by focusing on the person as radically embedded in their social lives. Ames and Rosemont are adamant that the familiar philosophical vocabulary consisting of words/concepts like individual, innate, virtue, character, or even self, does not fit well into the Chinese context. Pre-Qin thinkers do not discuss an inner core, nature, or soul. Instead, they tend to focus on the relationships people have, and the ways they treat one another, and thus to evaluate propriety in relation to particular positions and contexts. They explain that people are ‘co-relative’, meaning that they are defined by and through their interactions with others. Human exchanges are based on roles and relationships that are lived. Our identity – our aspirations, values, likes and dislikes, whatever we commonly associate with ‘who we are’ – are built on how we live the positions we have in society and at home. We cannot deny that the activities around us, our relationships, the roles we live, and the expectations connected to them, have an immeasurable impact on making us ‘who we are’. A more traditional Western model views meaning and identity as an innate and fixed substance contained within the individual. The role ethics model argues that meaning and identity are negotiated through the interactions between persons, who are dependent upon one another in order to become



Going Along – a Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics

199

significant. Since roles and relations are not ultimately fixed, but continually redefined in particular situations and circumstances, meaning and identity are constantly moulded and remodelled. Like a person’s weight, identity changes over time. Overweight people often continue to overeat each day, just as healthy people eat healthily most of the time. There are, of course, lapses; a threehundred pound American might not feel satiated after only two small meals and a cup of noodles on her way across the Pacific, just as the marathon runner may sometimes drink too much alcohol and skip a day of training. But these people remain at a more or less steady weight because of their normal routines, and the way they choose to eat on a daily basis. Things do, however, change. The marathon runner is only a marathon runner if he stays in training; an out-of-shape alcoholic who ran 26.2 miles ten years ago is no longer a marathon runner. Similarly, identity is retained in a father by the way he treats his son on a regular basis. From time to time he may make a mistake and act in an un-fatherly way, but as long as he generally persists in his fatherly actions, we can accurately call him a father.5 As long as the father ‘stays in training’, he is still fathering, but being a father is never really ‘achieved’ – just as being a marathon runner is basically only a temporary title. Those who identify themselves through roles and find meaning in relationships – as, according to Ames and Rosemont, the early Confucians do – are likely to take their roles and relationships seriously. Being a teacher or son is not incidental to Jack but it makes Jack who he is. Jack is Jack when he is ‘Jacking’ as a son or a teacher. This also means that Jack will believe that there are certain right and wrong ways to teach, or to ‘son’. Again, values are not universal; being a good Confucian, Jack recognises diversity and the necessity of using tactful methods when he teaches.6 Jack also knows that the line between student and teacher is fuzzy, and that learning is not a one-way street. 7 Each student is just as important as the teacher in the process of education. Efficacious learning happens when both the teacher and student are affected by one another. And because students learn in a slightly different manner, Jack will adjust his teaching accordingly, when and if he can. This does not mean that ‘anything goes’; Jack may not, for example, use violence to teach the more uppity students, nor will he simply ignore those who do not want to learn. He has a duty as a teacher, and he will not neglect his responsibilities because if so, he is no longer a teacher, and thus no longer that which he considers indicative of being Jack.

200

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Sincerity – why pretending is bad Some other unconventional terms Ames and Rosemont use when interpreting classical Chinese thought are ‘field’ and ‘focus’ as translations of dao and de. They argue that dao is our field of experience and each person is a de, or focus of the field (dao). We can understand this to mean that each person brings together certain aspects of their society or culture as a particular focal point in the larger community. In the Confucian context Ames and Rosemont define daode as ‘proceeding along one’s path in life disposed toward excellence in one’s habits of conduct (daode)’ (Ames et al., 2009, p. 51). Excellence is their alternative translation for de. Excellence is achieved through proper actions, which are contingent upon the people involved, their relations to one another, and the situation. The Confucian search for how to act as a human orients itself on appropriateness (yi). Our interactions are appropriate when they cultivate interpersonal meaning. This point is well evidenced by the fact that yi can denote both meaning and/or appropriateness. If meaning is created through human relations and associated with appropriateness, then there are only certain ways that make interactions meaningful. In order to achieve meaningful propriety, one must be sincere (cheng)8 in relating to others. Ames writes: […] in a processive and transactional world, sincerity is the bond that unites one in one’s relations with others […] Cheng [sincerity] is thus the ground of an integrative and creative process of becoming consummately human. It is not ‘being whole,’ but the process of ‘becoming whole’ within the multilateral relations that constitute one’s natural, social, and cultural environments. (Ames, 2011, p. 67)

Sincerity is the soil meaningful relationships require to grow. The cultivation of relationships, which inevitably means the cultivation of one’s own ‘personing’, starts with the way one treats their own thoughts and feelings. The accurate (and proper) display of ideas and emotions can ensure healthy communication and conduct. Actions that do not correspond to the content of one’s heart-mind (xin), and thus either fail to live up to or overreach the responsibilities and duties of a particular role, are disruptive and potentially dangerous. The Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals warns of such behaviour: What a pity! It would have been better to give him many cities. It is insignias of office and titles alone that cannot be conceded to pretenders […] if you concede them to pretenders, you concede the government along with them. If



Going Along – a Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics

201

the government is lost, the country will follow, and there can be no stopping it. (Ames, 2011, p. 101)

Exactly what the so-called ‘pretenders’ are pretending here is quite unclear. It may be that they are insincere (not cheng) in their display of thoughts and emotions, or perhaps they are overstepping or shrugging off some responsibilities (not yi).9 Ames explains this line according to the latter reading and comments: A major theme that runs through the Analects is Kongzi’s insistence that unrelenting attention must be given to retaining a strict correspondence between formal ritual practices and the ranks of office, with the risk of political collapse being the consequence of doing otherwise. More specifically, in his home state of Lu, Kongzi was repeatedly chagrined at the powerful Ji family’s usurpation of practices and privileges appropriate to the royal house. (Ames, 2011, p. 101)

The Ji family that Ames refers to here was denounced by Kongzi for their use of eight rows of dancers for certain performances, something only royal families should enjoy (3:1). In other places, Kongzi criticises Guan Zhong for having a special screen and inverted stand that were reserved for the ruler (3:22). Guan Zhong was not the ruler of the state, and yet he had and/or employed things in the way that only a ruler should. In Kongzi’s view, both the Ji family and Guan Zhong are pretenders. They act as though they are who they are not. Or, they act in accordance with roles they do not occupy; they are inappropriate (not yi). Pretending to be something one is not is an instance of utter disorder and confusion for Kongzi. When asked about ordering the state, Kongzi famously replies that initiating the appropriate use of names (zhengming) should be the first priority. Fathers should father, sons should son and so on (12:11). When the Ji family acts as if they are of royal lineage, or Guan Zhong takes liberties to appear as a ruler, they live in a harmful rather than productive fashion. They hurt themselves (their identity) and others through pretence. We may conclude that therefore pretending is a major obstacle for becoming a ‘good’ person in the sense of a Confucian role ethics. Now, I will move on to an alternative role-understanding that seems to be the exact opposite of what a Confucian role ethics envisions. In this view, ‘pretending’ appears as the most authentic way to live, and roles are indeed simply played, and thus do not create a meaningful identity.

202

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Genuine pretending – going along Thereby, if someone’s understanding is effective for a certain job, or if their actions can be applied in a certain village or if their virtuosity (de) is liked by a certain ruler, he may win over a certain country. This person will see themselves just like this [i.e. as the others see him, as fitting a specific job or role]. But Song Rongzi would have a laugh at such a person. Even if the whole world praised Song he would not be persuaded, and if the whole world scorned him he would not be upset. He fixed the distinction between the inner and outer, and distinguished the place of honor and disgrace. Nothing more can be done than this. He did not worry himself over worldly matters, and remained poised – though he was not firmly planted. (Zhuangzi, 2008, pp. 16–17, 1:3)

In the first lines of this quotation from the Zhuangzi, we are presented with the idea that a person may fit well a specific job or certain role in society. Interestingly, however, no specific values or personal abilities are mentioned. In line with a ‘role philosophy’, we find that the situation ‘just so happens’ to turn out favourably because of a certain fit, and that a particular person may ‘win over a country’. Other than in many Confucian texts such as the Lunyu or Mengzi, no reference is made, though, to the person’s ‘excellence’. Typically, we find Kongzi or Mengzi describing certain ways that an official should and should not act – such as ren, or not obsessing too much over sexual desires, or carrying out what one has said (xin). Zhuangzi, however, suggests here that positions might be had out of pure happenstance. Further on, we are told that ‘This person will see themselves just like this’,10 referring to such-and-such a role/position. A slightly more liberal translation of the line would read: ‘This person then begins to see themselves as the demands and responsibilities of their position.’11 So the person who just happened to fit a certain role, or who was liked by some important ruler, may now begin to understand and/or identify themselves with their new-found responsibilities or role. They may begin to believe, for instance, that they really are a good and responsible minister, or the appropriate war advisor. We can dub this kind of person ‘one who sees themselves through the eyes of the world or others’. Simply put, the Zhuangzi here affirms the role-based conception of the person as popular among his peers. Finally, a man named Song Rongzi is introduced as the antithesis of ‘one who sees themselves through the eyes of the world’. Song laughs at this kind of person and remains unmoved by what others think or say. Unlike those who identify themselves with roles and relations, Song differentiates between the



Going Along – a Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics

203

inner and the outer,12 and recognises the places of praise and blame. His understanding of himself is not reliant on his position or role in society, nor does he let the views of others influence him. Praise and blame have their place outside of Song and are separated from the way he views himself. This, we are told, is the best way to deal with roles; and the Zhuangzi says: ‘Nothing more can be done than this’, referring to the human realm. Nevertheless, it seems that Song is still missing something, since the last line laments ‘he was not firmly planted’.13 The above quoted passage on Song Rongzi is immediately followed by a much more famous report on Liezi: Liezi rode on the wind, light and elegant, and did not return for fifteen days. He did not calculate how to bring about happiness. In this way he avoided walking, but he still had something to depend on. Now if you rode on the alignment (zheng) of the sky and earth [with both each other and yourself] atop the movement of the six qi, you could wander without end, and what would you need to depend on? Therefore it is said: the utmost person has no [need to rely on a] self, the mystical man has no [need to rely on] achievements, and the sage has no [need to rely on a] name/reputation. (Zhuangzi, 2008, pp. 16–17, 1:3)

It may first seem that thus we are moved abruptly from a discussion of exercising roles to disconnected themes of dependence and mysticism. The only point of junction seems to be the lack of calculation in both Song Rongzi and Liezi. But if we venture to look past customary readings, the depiction of Liezi’s becomes rich with word-play and images that the Zhuangzi is well-known for. We can begin by noting that feng, instead of being translated literally as ‘wind’, can be used as a metaphor to describe customs and mores. Liezi’s talent for riding the wind could simply be a reference to his ability to go along with common practices. Supposing that Liezi could ‘ride’ on the views of those around him, we may understand that he avoided a different kind of ‘walking’ (xing). Xing can also mean, as it does in the very first lines of this passage, ‘actions’. These actions are related to public service in the beginning of this section, the kind of occupation that Zhuangzi was suspicious of and often cautioned against. But Liezi’s type of ‘playing’ such social roles is different because it requires yu as a prerequisite. Yu often means ‘riding’ or ‘charioting’, but it can also be translated as ‘to control’, ‘to manage’, ‘to use’, or ‘take charge of ’.14 So ‘riding’ on customs may be more like ‘making use of customs’ or ‘having understood and acting according to the common practices’. In this way, we can understand why Zhuangzi says that xing is something Liezi does only to contradict himself in the next sentence.

204

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Actions (xing) are not completely evaded, they are simply done in a different manner; and this is what makes Liezi so interesting as a person.15 Liezi avoided action by taking the practices around him as merely human-made customs, and this attitude enabled him to ‘control’ (yu) them. In other words, Liezi did not assign any significance to his conduct. He did not truly act, but modelled his actions based on the customs around him. This differs from the Confucians who act sincerely, based on their belief that what they are doing is actually appropriate or correct. Liezi acts like a pretender; he attaches himself to whatever is common practice and directs his movements accordingly. Most importantly, although his actions may outwardly be like those of a Confucian, his thoughts and feelings are not in line with the customs he follows.

Pretending – why sincerity is … ‘bad’ Another example of genuine pretending in the Zhuangzi is the story of the great mourner Mengsun Cai. Here, Kongzi’s student Yan Hui appears as a critic and makes the difference between role ethics and genuine pretending explicit: Yan Hui went to question Kongzi. ‘When his mother died, Mengsun Cai wailed but shed no tears, unsaddened in the depths of his heart, observing the mourning but without real sorrow. Lacking tears, inner sadness, and real grief, he nonetheless gained a reputation throughout Lu as an exemplary mourner …’ (Zhuangzi, 2008, pp. 274, 6:7) Kongzi said, ‘Mengsun Cai has gone to the very end of this matter, beyond merely understanding it … Other’s cry, so he cries too. And that is the only reason he does so. You temporarily get involved in something or other and proceed to call it “myself ” – but how can we know if what we call “self ” has any “self ” to it?’ (Ziporyn, 2009, pp. 47–8)

Mengsun Cai does not feel sad, and yet he expresses grief. With an empty heart-mind (xin) he follows the customary mourning habits as others do.16 Paradoxically, he excels in mourning precisely because he does not care about it. Since there is nothing in his heart-mind to express, he can act in the most effective manner. Mengsun Cai can do whatever this specific mourning ritual calls for, or these particular people expect, but that does not mean he has any concern for what might be ‘appropriate’ or ‘meaningful’. Actual sadness might even get in the way of his expression; it is the lack of feeling that allows for total compliance. It has to be stressed here, though, that Mengsun Cai’s observance



Going Along – a Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics

205

of the mourning ritual does not indicate that Zhuangzi would support a ‘blind’ following of customs.17 Liezi, for instance, is criticised for depending on the practices of his time. Zhuangzi wants to caution against, as he has Kongzi put it ‘getting involved in something or other and proceeding to call it “myself ” – [without knowing] if what we call “self ” has any “self ” to it’. This criticism, which the Zhuangzi has Kongzi put forth against his own role ethics, brings us full circle. The passage on Song Rongzi began by cautioning against the development of an identity based on one’s position in society or relationships with others, and here Kongzi is reminding us of this. For the Zhuangzi each person is a particular focus of (de) of a field or landscape (dao) that is broader than the Confucian horizon. Confucians are famous for viewing life in terms of human interaction – which culminates in the view of death as the reunion with one’s ancestors. Daoist philosophers point to a life that is lived in the framework of tiandi and the six qi, so that death is only another mutation of qi into other things. In connection with this view of life and death, the Daoist genuine pretender does not dispute role ethics, but questions whether this perspective may be limiting. Not unlike Ames and Rosemont who argue that a person is a ‘humanbecoming’, the genuine pretender sees the world as an endless ‘situationing’. The lack of calculation exemplified by both Liezi and Song Rongzi highlights, however, that there are simply too many factors in our ever ‘situationing’ landscape for us to decide what is ‘really’ productive, appropriate, or even fortunate. In other words, they understand that there is an expansive world (dao) beyond their full grasp. The genuine pretender cannot commit to what is proper in this situation or that context because he cannot find any distinction between this and that (shi-fei).18 The following story expresses this succinctly: The shifts of lucky and unlucky give birth to one another, and their changes [i.e. differences] are difficult to see [or know]. Close to a boarder [of importance] there was a man with skill. His horse suddenly ran away one day, to the land of the Hu. Everyone was upset. But the old man said ‘How can I know that it’s not good luck?’ After a few moons the horse came back with many hu-bred fine steeds. Everyone rejoiced. But the man said ‘How can I know that it’s not bad luck’. The old man’s son wanted to train the horses, and while riding fell and crippled his leg. Everyone was upset. But the old man said ‘How can I know that it’s not good luck’. After a year the Hu people came to the boarder [to fight] and every able body was mustered to fight. Nine out of ten were killed. But the father and son protected each other [and survived because the son was crippled

206

Landscape and Travelling East and West

and could not fight]. Thereby, lucky can become unlucky, and unlucky become lucky, the transformations have no end, and their depths cannot be fathomed. (18:9)

For the old man – a genuine pretender – good and bad luck are utterly indefinable. The terms can at best describe minute segments in an endless process of change; and only from some particular perspective. There is no old man being the ‘poor farmer’ or ‘rich horse breeder’. Sometimes he lives as a poor farmer and sometimes he lives as a rich horse breeder, but if he thinks of himself according to whatever luck or role he just happens to have, his world is limited. He identifies with constant change and ceaseless indefinable situations that dispel distinctions of good and bad, propriety and impropriety, self and other in one swift stroke. The landscape around him, the field that he focuses in his everyday activities, is severely reduced if we begin to introduce notions of meaning and appropriateness, like marking off what is and is not without following the veins of the beast we cut.

Conclusion – To ‘Jack’ or to ‘Jack around’ In conclusion, I think it is appropriate to confirm the validity of a role/ relationship understanding of the person in classical Chinese thought. Ames and Rosemont have certainly shown this for the Confucian texts, and I hope to have demonstrated that the Zhuangzi affirms this when he challenges Kongzi on the very essentials of a role ethics. Jack, the prominent father and teacher, may be proud of his accomplishments and celebrate his roles, finding both meaning and identity in his daily interactions. But if the stock-market crashes and Jack is forced to work at McDonald’s he may find ‘burger flipper’ to be a stifling role. Perhaps he will cease to identify with his job and find more solace in looking at it as just ‘Jacking around’. If we are defined by our relationship with others and the roles that we live, where does appropriateness or propriety come from? Isn’t it really the wind of our times that determines what we should or should not do? And if it is not, if there really are correct ways to father, how are they determined? What may be deemed fruitful or cultivating may lead to quite opposite ends (the dude who loses his horse). Based on these observations I would venture to say that the flexibility which role ethics adds to some traditional ethical philosophies is only intensified by genuine pretending. The Zhuangzi challenges us to appreciate the value of our environment and relationships within a larger field that we cannot



Going Along – a Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics

207

possibly comprehend. Our limited viewpoints cannot be overcome, but they can be recognised. Just as the small bird does not have to know the heights or lengths that the Peng must fly, we too can appreciate the dao and ride on the winds in a carefree and un-calculating way. After all, the winds may not always blow where we would like them to, or when we want, but they will always blow.

Notes 1

2

3

4 5

6 7

8

9

I wish to thank my friend Trenton Wilson. Conversations with him have been invaluable to the construction of this paper and my overall understanding of the history of Chinese thought. This description of the person and their relationships with others is built on the well-known description of Chinese philosophy being concerned with questions of ‘How’ rather than ‘What’. This is especially true of Kongzi, who sought the best way to be a human, and argued for how to structure a harmonious state. Being able to ride, or pretend, without being internally affected by what one does similar to what Chris Fraser has deemed the ‘engaged’ and ‘wandering’ dimensions of the Zhuangzi. Playing roles is in direct defiance to the vocabulary of ‘living roles’ Ames and Rosemont employ. This reliance on the particularity of each person means that role ethics does not make universal moral statements. Bill is not a ‘good’ man, but he might be a ‘good’ father, or a ‘good’ son, etc. This model celebrates a more detailed appreciation of the complexity and creativity in human experience. Persons may be good in some ways and terrible in others, and role ethics recognises this important point. It does not seek to generalise or oversimplify the human condition in the way that many Hollywood movies do. Tactful measures for a good Confucian means the respectful treatment of others that accounts for unique particularities and specific situations. In teaching, Jack is not only the proprietor of knowledge, he is also a student. Interactions do not take place on a simple giver–receiver model, like the traditional Western model of the individual may have us believe. Relations with others are always a give and take, although sometimes it may be true that one person gives or takes more. For example, Mengzi writes: (7:12) ‘There is a way [dao] to being a sincere body [person]: If you do not understand goodness [shan] you cannot be sincere to your self [or body, shen].’ He also writes: (13:4) ‘Everything [all possibilities] is in me. The greatest joy is, after introspection, finding oneself to be sincere.’ Either way Kongzi would not be happy.

208

Landscape and Travelling East and West

10 This line has been largely associated with the previous story where a small bird laughs at a larger bird for flying too far. In that parable, the joke is really on the small bird because his chuckle only expresses his ignorance over the difference between big and small things. Although I do not deny possible ties with this line to the prior parable, it is perhaps more compelling if we explain these words within the context of the current story, which does not exclude references to the text as a whole. 11 I do not find this reading to be too especially liberal, though it is unconventional, because it liberates many themes and motifs that are popular in the Zhuangzi. Also, the translation I give does not negate more conventional readings. 12 The Confucians saw the problem of inner and outer early on even in their own thinking. There, it’s framed most clearly as the difference between ‘for oneself ’ (wei ji) and ‘for others’ (wei ren). In this context, ‘for others’ is the privileged concept. To ‘act for others’, which sounds all warm and fuzzy, is actually a type of selfishness based on doing something solely because it will earn someone else’s praise. Song Rongzi is clearly trying to say that he gets beyond the ‘for others’ way of acting. One of the more provoking questions is why this is not enough for Zhuangzi? 13 The word ‘planted’ (shu) can also be understood here as ‘cultivated’. 14 Interestingly, Wang Bi, commenting on the Daodejing, also uses the world yu in reference to customs (su). He writes: ‘although today is different from ancient times, [and] the times and customs change […] Thus one can grasp the ancient way (dao) and accordingly ride/manage (yu) what [customs] are had today’ (chapter 14). Wang also writes: ‘grasp the ancient way (dao), [one can] use it to ride/manage (yu) [political issues and/or customs that are happening] today’ (chapter 17). In these two lines we find that Wang Bi makes basically the same point as the above explanation of Leizi, employing yu in a metaphorical way to discuss the management of contemporary customs.   For example, in the Xunzi there is the line (20.6, 20.7) where feng is likened to su, the latter being the more standard word for ‘customs’ or ‘social practices’. The Hanshu also equates the two (4.4). Many other texts evidence this reading as well, but these are the two that were written closest to the time the Zhuangzi was composed. 15 Just as, based on the literal reading, movement is not avoided, but done by different means; i.e., Liezi flies to avoid walking. 16 We can perhaps more readily understand this phenomenon in the case of laughter. People often laugh simply because others around them do. When speaking a non-native language, or when others speak a language one does not know, or even if the joke simply refers to something that one does not fully grasp (maybe an ‘inside joke’), one may laugh along with others. This is why laugh tracks exists in sitcoms; we often feel compelled to laugh based solely on the laughter of others.



Going Along – a Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics

209

17 In the story directly preceding Mengsun Cai, the Zhuangzi presents us with mourners who celebrate at funerals. Again one of Kongzi’s disciples is present and flabbergasted at the actions of the Daoist, and again Kongzi regards them as being more refined than his own views. 18 The distinction between what is appropriate and not, saying that this is appropriate, or that in this context, or that this situation is readily attributable to shi-fei arguments.

References Ames, R. T. (2011), Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ames, R. T. and Rosemont, H. J. (1998), The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books. —(2009), The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ban, G. (ed.) (2007), Hanshu. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Cheng, S. (ed.) (1990), Lunyu Jishi. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Hanfeizi (2010), Hanfeizi. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Mengzi (2008), Mengzi. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Xunzi (2005), Xunzi. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Zhuangzi (2008), Zhuangzi. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Ziporyn, B. (2009), Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

16

Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question’1 Chris Fraser

The motifs of ‘landscape’ and ‘travel’ are prominent in classical Daoist thought, as they provide rich metaphors through which Daoist texts present views of the human condition, the nature of agency and our identity as individual agents, and the sources of normative guidance. The metaphor of the ‘landscape’, I will suggest, helps to articulate the concept of dao (way), the field of structures, relations, forces and influences that presents possibilities for and guides action. In the Zhuangzi, the complementary metaphor of ‘travel’ epitomises an ideal mode of agency and a core component of the well-lived life. Agency is in effect a capacity for ‘travelling’ through the ‘landscape’. The finest mode of agency – and the crux of the well-lived life – is ‘roaming’, or ‘wandering’ (you), a concept that directly invokes the experience of travel. Indeed, for the Zhuangzi, our self or identity is constituted by our travel through the landscape. Metaphorically, what we most fundamentally are is ‘travellers’ moving through a ‘landscape’, our identity being shaped by our ‘travels’. The metaphors of landscape and travel thus help to highlight the conception of self that emerges in the Zhuangzi, namely one of an indeterminate, unfixed and not fully knowable nexus of spontaneous activity that is constituted and sustained through interaction between the agent’s virtuosity (de) and the ways (dao) the agent encounters and takes up. Awareness of such metaphors can help us better understand and apply Daoist views. As a concrete example of this point, I will employ these metaphors to develop a Zhuangist conception of the self and its place in the cosmos that yields a distinctive, plausible response to what Thomas Nagel calls the ‘cosmic question’: what is our relation as human beings to the universe as a whole? In the Zhuangist view, our identity as human agents is inseparable from our relation to the universe, because this relation – that of travellers roaming through a

212

Landscape and Travelling East and West

landscape – constitutes what we are. The cognitive and affective concerns that prompt Nagel’s ‘cosmic question’ could be satisfied by grasping how our identity is bound up in our relation to the world and hence identifying with the natural ‘landscape’ that generates and sustains us as ‘travellers’.

Dao and the landscape The central concept of early Chinese philosophy, ‘dao’, explicitly refers to a path, thus already implying a conceptual link to the notion of the landscape. Some of the fundamental metaphors used in the Daodejing to develop the text’s conception of dao also allude to the landscape. Particularly informative is the following passage, from Section 32: To give an analogy for the presence of dao in the world, it is like the relation of streams and valleys to rivers and seas.

As I read it, the passage implies that the world presents agents with structures and processes that guide action, much as valleys and streams channel water toward rivers and seas. Such action-guiding structures and processes are the manifestation or embodiment of dao in the world. This analogy between how dao is embedded in the world and the flow from streams and valleys into rivers and seas is one of a series of metaphors and analogies in the Daodejing involving water, valleys, and the downward flow of water from high ground to low. Their general import is to valorise ‘negative’, submissive, or subordinate features as more efficacious than ‘positive’, aggressive, or superior ones, because the former purportedly better align with the intrinsic propensities of things.2 The metaphors implicitly posit the existence of a directional or a channel structure, according to which the world is shaped such that some parts are ‘lower’ than others and so things tend to flow toward them, without intentional action or contention. In these passages, the text implies the plausible idea that the world as we encounter it presents ‘channels’ and ‘obstacles’ that form action-guiding structures. This idea can be taken both literally, as referring to actual physical structures such as valleys and mountains, and metaphorically, as referring to the demands and opportunities that other persons, social relations and political institutions present to us. The overall implication is that Dao – the totality of paths we might traverse – is embodied in the world as the sum of the various action-guiding features embedded in the (physical and metaphorical) landscape.



Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question’

213

Such ‘channel’ and ‘structure’ metaphors complement what is probably the most prominent treatment of dao-following in the Zhuangzi, the story of Cook Ding, an astonishingly adept butcher who slices up oxen as deftly and elegantly as if performing a ritual dance. Observing Ding’s work, his lord (and employer) expresses wonder at the heights of his skill. Ding famously replies that what he is keen about is dao, which advances beyond mere skill (3/2–12).3 Expanding on this claim, he sketches the principles behind his work: he heeds the ‘natural patterns’, cuts along the major clefts, and guides his movements by the main cavities, responding to what is ‘inherently so’ in the ox’s frame. The animal’s joints have gaps between them, he explains, in which there is more than enough space (di, literally ‘land’) for his blade to ‘wander about’ (you). Dao-following thus lies in navigating through a complex structure presenting both obstructions and channels through which one can move freely. As the text makes clear, Ding’s descriptions apply to pursuing dao not simply in his craft but in life as a whole; his lord exclaims that from Ding’s statements, he has learned how to ‘nurture life’. Dao is fundamentally a path or course metaphor. I suggest, however in Daodejing 32, dao refers not to a single, unique path, but to the totality of paths or courses. The analogy it presents is between the presence of dao in the world and the relation of any and all streams and valleys to the rivers and seas they flow into.4 This suggestion prompts a further interpretative proposal: in the Zhuangzi, especially in Book 2, the ‘Discourse on Equalizing Things’, I suggest that the operative conception of dao expands from the idea of a single, discrete path running through a landscape to that of a field or terrain presenting a range of potential paths. I base this suggestion on several points expressed in the text. First, fundamentally, dao connects everything into a whole (2/35). It is unbounded; no borders exist within it or between it and anything else (2/55). It is present everywhere, absent nowhere (2/25). Moreover, the actionguiding shi-fei (this/not-this) distinctions that demarcate paths to follow can be distinguished in indeterminately many ways, nothing in nature fixing them one way rather than another (2/27–31). Hence the text speaks of a dao-hub (dao shu, 2/30–31), from which agents can provisionally set out on different dao, which are formed as they ‘walk’ along them (2/33). The implication is that Dao is imminent in the landscape as a range of potential courses formed by interaction between our activity and features of our surroundings. To follow dao – to undertake some course of activity – is to travel through the landscape along one path or another.

214

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Dao, De and travel Early Daoist texts pair dao conceptually with de (virtuosity, agency). De and dao stand in a reciprocal relation; de is the virtuosity, power, or proficiency within agents by which they identify, interpret, and proceed along dao (Hansen, 1996, p. 174). A complementary, traditional understanding of this relation is that our de is in effect the workings of the dao of nature within us, the ‘power’ that nature bestows on us by which we act. According to one of the Confucius-Lao Dan dialogues in the Zhuangzi, de is ‘responding to things by attuning oneself ’, while dao is ‘responding to things by matching with them’ (22/38–9).5 The implication is that de is a capacity for responding adaptively to circumstances, while dao is the path shaped by circumstances as we find them – what we employ our de to ‘match’. The two concepts jointly imply a view of agency as lying in applying de to respond to the dao presented by our situation. A third notion conceptually intertwined with dao and de in early Chinese texts is xing, which refers to the activity or conduct that results from the agent’s applying de to follow dao. The notion of xing fills out the ‘path’ or ‘course’ metaphor associated with dao and directly expresses a travel motif, as the core meaning of xing is simply ‘to walk’. Action is conceptualised as walking or travelling along a path, the theoretical emphasis being not on discrete acts but on the overall course of activity. The conceptual relations between de, dao and xing entail that by virtue of their de, agents are understood to be intrinsically involved in ‘walking’ along some dao. In early Chinese thought, the self is regarded as inherently an actor or a participant in the world, not a detached spectator.6 To be an agent is thus to be engaged in an ongoing course of activity along some path or other. Whether or not to ‘walk dao’ is not up to us; what is up to us is which dao to walk. Even if we refrain from self-directed activity, we still travel along some dao, namely whatever path results from our being driven along by the things around us. Indeed, for the Zhuangzi, our circumstances always force some rough course or direction upon us, through what the text refers to as ‘inevitable’ (bu de yi) conditions. Coping with such conditions effectively is one mark of exemplary de. The conceptual relations between dao, de and xing confirm the appropriateness of the water and channel metaphors the Daodejing associates with the notion of dao. By their inherent de, agents ineluctably travel along (xing) various dao as water unavoidably flows downward through channels. The implied conception of agency focuses not on initiating or refraining from discrete acts, but on employing our de to respond to the dao we encounter – to identify,



Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question’

215

embark on, and navigate courses through the ‘landscape’ of our circumstances. Agency is similar to the course of water in that we are inevitably caught up in a directional flow of activity. The limit to the analogy is that unlike a stream of water, we are able to steer our way along.

Wandering through the landscape In the Zhuangzi, the ideal mode of such de-driven activity is conceptualised as you, ‘wandering’ or ‘roaming’ (Fraser, 2011, p. 102). Here again the Zhuangzi employs a metaphor alluding to travel: the virtuoso exercise of agency is regarded as a process of travelling or rambling about a landscape without any fixed destination – and thus without any fixed dao. We can contrast the Zhuangist notion of you with the ‘standard’ conception of conduct as xing (‘walking’). Whereas xing refers to proceeding along some particular dao or path – and other classical Chinese verbs of motion, such as shi and zhi, refer to travelling to a specific place – you refers to meandering about without any specific terminus. Elsewhere, I have proposed that you forms the core of a distinctively Zhuangist eudaimonistic ideal (Fraser, 2011, p. 102). Numerous depictions of virtuoso or exemplary figures in Zhuangist writings describe them as ‘wandering’, and a crucial discussion of how to deal with challenges in life emphasises ‘letting the heart wander by riding along with things’ while ‘nurturing your centre by consigning yourself to the inevitable’ (4/52–3). The metaphor of travelling about a landscape without a fixed destination, creatively adapting to the ‘inevitable’ circumstances we encounter, is central to the Zhuangist vision of a well-lived life. ‘Wandering’ here seems to denote our distinctive capacity as agents to discover, appreciate, and explore various dao within the totality of facts and processes that make up the undifferentiated Dao of the natural world. One key passage characterises it as travelling ‘limitlessly’ throughout the world without depending on anything in particular, by ‘mounting the norms of heaven and earth, [and] riding the fluctuations of the six qi’ (1/21) – that is, riding along with the patterns of nature and the alternations of natural forces, without assuming any fixed limits or preconditions. It is in effect a second-order dao by which to explore various first-order dao – a way by which to explore the various concrete paths opened up by the interaction between our capacities and motivation and our circumstances. De can be regarded as proficiency or virtuosity in wandering resiliently and skilfully.

216

Landscape and Travelling East and West

The wandering ideal is of course highly metaphorical. For most agents, in most situations, literally setting off on a carefree jaunt is impractical or impossible. The crux of the Zhuangist vision is that in practice we may face formidable constraints, such that the paths actually open to us are severely limited, and we cannot simply do as we please or pursue whatever preconceived ends we might have. Moreover, nature fixes no single, authoritative dao for us to follow. The Zhuangist response to this predicament is to approach our circumstances in the spirit of ‘wandering’, maintaining a resilient, flexible attitude without definitively committing to any one path or allowing ourselves to become frustrated by obstacles. We are to remain always prepared, like Cook Ding, to find gaps or channels in our circumstances through which to travel forward.

The Zhuangist conception of the self The Zhuangzi presents no systematic theory of the self, person, or self-identity. With few exceptions, the nature of the self is not thematised as an explicit topic of inquiry. Still, the text yields many implications about Zhuangist views of the self. Several passages in ‘Equalizing Things’ imply that the ‘genuine’ or ‘authentic’ (zhen) self, if one even exists, is mysterious and unidentifiable. One passage lists typical human affects and attitudes, such as joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure, and remarks that although without these, there is no ‘I’ and no choosing – and thus no agency – we know not whence they arise nor in whose employ they come. It is as if there is a genuine ‘overseer’ within us – a genuine locus of agency, in control of what we do and on whose behalf our various attitudes work – yet we find no signs of it nor catch any glimpse of its form (2/13–15). One implication of the text’s stance is that our motivating attitudes and our activities ultimately rest on unknown causes.7 Another is that nothing seems obviously in control, nor is there an obvious hierarchy between parts of the self. In contrast to many other early Chinese sources, which straightforwardly assert that the heart is the ruler of the other organs, ‘Equalizing Things’ implies that none of our parts clearly governs the others, and indeed perhaps they govern themselves jointly or take turns governing (2/16–17). The text hazards no definitive pronouncements about these issues: there might be a genuine ‘ruler’ within us, it acknowledges, but we are unable to confirm whether there is or not. The aim is not to reach a definitive conclusion about the nature of the self, but to highlight how little we know about the deep structure of the person and what, if anything, controls our various parts.



Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question’

217

Other Zhuangzi passages emphasise that our self-identity, including our values and the roles with which we identify, is fluid and subject to sudden, potentially surprising transformations. Consider the well-known story of Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly dream. Initially, in the dream, Zhou’s identity as a butterfly seems beyond question. Yet he awakens to discover he is now a different creature, the human Zhou. Reflecting on this transformation, he questions his present identity, wondering whether instead of being Zhou, who dreamed he was a butterfly, he might actually be a butterfly now dreaming it is Zhou. The implication is not merely that our identity is uncertain. It is that ‘things transform’ (2/96). Our very identity is subject to unexpected, startling transformations analogous to how things change when we wake from a dream.8 The transformations that produce and shape the self are regarded as part of the all-embracing process of the ‘Great Dao’, the course of the natural world. Stories such as Zhuangzi’s reflections on his wife’s death (18/15–19) or Master Lai’s reaction to his own imminent demise (6/56–60) depict human life as part of an overall process of ‘creation and transformation’ driven by natural forces. Master Yu, contemplating his disfiguring disease and impending death (6/47– 53), speculates how the ‘creator of things’ might transform him into any number of different forms, each with distinct dispositions and abilities. Huzi speaks of the self as emerging from a mysterious ‘ancestor’, the product of complex natural processes by which ‘impulses’ issue from ‘abysses’ deep within (7/15–31). The psychological states and processes that drive our activity are also constituents of the ‘Great Dao’ and share its uncanny, mysterious features. ‘Equalizing Things’ illustrates this point by metaphorically linking the ‘piping of heaven’ (2/8–9) – the mysterious force that drives the activity of the myriad living things – to the various motivating attitudes that spring up in us, which are like ‘music issuing from hollows’ when the wind blows through a forest (2/13). Since the self is created and shaped by ongoing natural processes, the content of the self – the values, abilities and capacities that enable and guide our activity – and the paths open to us are constantly evolving, partly as a result of our past activity, partly as a result of changes in our circumstances. Cook Ding, for instance, describes how his approach to his work, including even what he perceives when he looks at oxen, has changed over his career (3/2–12). The white-water swimmer who navigates dangerous rapids (19/49–54) reports that growing up in the water changed his xing (nature, inherent dispositions), leaving him as at ease in the river as on land. Following dao also involves continually extending and modifying one’s abilities to cope with novel circumstances. Ding explains how even at his level of expertise he encounters difficulties that can be

218

Landscape and Travelling East and West

overcome only by a creative, spontaneous extension of his skill. This spontaneous capacity for advancing beyond what we have done before may constitute the crux of agency. Although Zhuangist writings make few or no claims about the substantive content of a hypothetical ‘core’ or ‘genuine’ self, they present conceptions of our inherent ‘capacity’ (cai), our de (virtuosity), and ‘nature’ (tian) or ‘authenticity’ (zhen) that imply a distinctive view of the well-lived life. Rather than a first-order account of the content of the good life, this view focuses on the second-order ideal of wandering – the calm, adaptive, and creative exercise of agency in response to circumstances. An implication is that for many Zhuangist writers what we might call the self is in effect the aggregate of this capacity for agency plus the contingent features, arising from our specific background and present circumstances, that constitute the substantive values, motives, cognitive habits, abilities, and skills on which we act. The latter dimensions of the self are necessary to enable agency, yet ideally they remain open and fluid in order to allow for spontaneous responses to novel or changing situations. According to many Zhuangzi passages, the virtuoso activity central to the well-lived life may require bringing our capacity for spontaneity into play by ‘forgetting’ (wang) or ‘emptying’ (xu) ourselves of ‘personal’ (si) prejudices and preconceptions so as to more efficaciously ‘respond to’ (ying) or ‘fit’ (shi) our concrete circumstances.9 When engaged in the mode of activity characteristic of the well-lived life, our capacity for responsive, creative agency is at the forefront, while other aspects of the self are cleared out – a phenomenon again illustrated by Cook Ding, when he describes himself as encountering oxen with his ‘spirit’, while perceptual knowing ceases and he no longer looks with his eyes. The self achieves its highest realisation precisely when we ‘forget’ or ‘empty’ ourselves and allow the lay of our situation to guide our activity.

Landscape, travel and our identity Given the Zhuangist understanding of the self, we have no fixed self or identity that determines our values or dao and hence no fixed dao to follow. Instead, we can only wander by ‘riding along’ with our circumstances. The values and motives that guide our activity are contingent features of these circumstances, much as features of the physical landscape are. They are something we encounter and can never fully control. They are typically determined through interaction with our circumstances, rather than independently or in advance. Indeed, in



Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question’

219

some cases, we can regard them as merging with the landscape to form the conditions we encounter and respond to in our dao-following. (Sensations of hunger or pain, for instance, are features of our circumstances that we respond to much as we respond to the weather or obstacles to our movement.) The abilities we employ in responding to our circumstances – including our skills and the cognitive-evaluative distinctions we apply – are developed through wandering as well, since they are always partly a product of our previous course through the landscape. Tying these various observations about Zhuangist views of the self together with the theme of landscape and travel, we can say that for the Zhuangzi, our identity is constituted in multiple respects by our relation to the landscape, broadly construed as a conception of the world as incorporating structural features that present agents with various potential courses of action. Human agents are above all ‘travellers’, who flourish by wandering across the landscape. Our distinctive capacity for agency is employed when engaging with the landscape, which provides the setting through which we wander. Our location in the landscape and the travels we have taken mould the content of our character, self, or identity: our abilities, motives, and values. These factors determine who we are and how we will go on, and indeed we have no identity apart from our past travels, the dispositions and motives we have developed through them, and our relation to present circumstances. Extending this cluster of metaphors, we can even say that as agents we too are part of the landscape – part of the ‘Great Dao’, the totality of natural structures and courses. The source of our de lies in the same mysterious process of ‘creation and transformation’ that produces and shapes the landscape, and the content of the self can be regarded as part of the landscape, insofar as our own states also shape the paths open to us. Given the influence of the landscape on our identity, what distinction, if any, remains between traveller and landscape? To what extent do we remain agents who determine their own actions, rather than mere features of the landscape caught up in a stream of ‘geological’ events? On one level, the very notion of agency, especially when conceptualised as employing de in wandering, already contains the answer to these questions. Agents qua agents are not subsumed by the landscape but respond to it, undertaking spontaneous, self-directed activity without being wholly integrated into non-intentional natural processes, as inanimate objects are.10 Our de is precisely the capacity for such agency; one Zhuangzi passage associates de and our ‘capacities’ with ‘what employs the body’ (5/39–40). Although our identity is conditioned by previous interaction with the landscape and the paths open to us are delimited by our situation, our

220

Landscape and Travelling East and West

activity still rests on our own de. The modality through which the landscape influences our actions is by presenting courses to follow, not mechanistic or law-like causation.11 On another level, however, zooming out from the standpoint of the agent to that of the Dao of nature as a whole, I suspect some voices in the Zhuangzi would remain agnostic about the extent to which our exercise of agency is distinct from the natural processes that produce the landscape. For as the shadow asks the penumbra (2/92–4), how can we know what ultimately determines our actions?

The ‘cosmic question’ In his recent essay, ‘Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament’, Thomas Nagel discusses various ways in which secular philosophy might satisfy what he calls the ‘religious temperament’, a disposition to find an understanding of the world that connects us to the whole of reality and thus makes sense ‘not merely of our lives, but of everything’ (Nagel, 2010, p. 4). As he sees it, this disposition seeks a conception of the universe by which ‘an understanding of the totality of which we are a part can […] become part of the self-understanding by which we live’ (Nagel, 2010, p. 9). Such a conception would furnish an answer to what Nagel calls the ‘cosmic question’ (Nagel, 2010, p. 6): ‘How can one bring into one’s individual life a full recognition of one’s relation to the universe as a whole?’ The issue is not merely a matter of intellectual curiosity, of understanding our place in the universe. The aim is to find a way to live in harmony with the universe, a world-view in which our connection to it is part of our understanding of what we are and what we do. Thus the link to the ‘religious temperament’, which Nagel sees as being characterised by the aspiration to participate, through one’s own life, in the life of the cosmos as a whole (Nagel, 2010, p. 6). Religious doctrines might satisfy this aim by depicting our lives as parts or expressions of the spiritual agency or principle that grounds the existence of the universe. Nagel asks whether we can find a secular answer to this aspiration. One secular response he identifies is simply the ‘hard-headed atheist’ stance of denying the legitimacy of the question. Perhaps our self-understanding requires nothing more than a purely scientific, factual explanation of how creatures such as ourselves came to exist. Nagel suggests that this is an evasion, however, not a genuine response, as in his view the cosmic question retains its grip despite our acceptance of a scientific world-view (Nagel, 2010, p. 9). A second response is a humanistic, ‘inside-out’ account of the greater whole to



Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question’

221

which we as individuals relate. We can give sense to our lives through our place in human communities, cultures, and historical traditions, which are a locus of value or meaning. The problem with this approach, for Nagel, is that it does not really address the ‘cosmic question’. It makes no attempt to offer ‘a way of incorporating our conception of the universe as a whole into our lives’ (Nagel, 2010, pp. 11–12). For Nagel, only a third approach holds much promise, an ‘outsidein’ route starting from the viewpoint of nature or the cosmos. One such route might be to depict our existence as a product of fundamental forces of nature, as Nietzsche does through his evolutionary-genealogical appeal to the ‘will to power’. But contemporary evolutionary naturalism rejects Nietzsche’s power ontology, replacing it with a non-teleological reductive naturalism according to which the emergence of human life is little more than a lucky accident (Nagel, 2010, p. 15). Nagel is left speculating that only a radical alternative might answer the cosmic question: a Platonic, teleological conception of the natural order as non-accidentally evolving so as to generate self-aware, intelligent creatures such as ourselves. In this view, each of us is a part of the ‘extended expansion of organization and consciousness’ inherent in the natural order (Nagel, 2010, p. 17). Nagel is far from confident that this quasi-Platonic world-view can be rendered compelling, however, and acknowledges that his entire discussion might simply lead us to conclude that human life is absurd (Nagel, 2010, p. 17). My own view is that our contemporary scientific understanding of the world makes it difficult to see how the sort of teleological account Nagel considers could be defensible. The very idea of nature being arranged so as to inevitably produce creatures like us seems just the kind of self-comforting fiction that Nietzsche would have mocked as risibly anthropocentric and a Zhuangist would ridicule as ‘small’ and one-sided. Many Daoist writings do, however, share Nagel’s concern with the ‘cosmic question’ – or some variant thereof – and I suggest the Zhuangist conception of the self and its relation to the natural order offers a direct response to it. Like Nagel’s third set of responses, the Zhuangist stance is an ‘outside-in’ perspective, which situates human life within the overall scheme of nature. Yet it is distinct from the approaches he considers. The Zhuangist approach begins from the thought that our relation to nature as a whole – the landscape – is constitutive of our identity as agents – that is, as travellers. Our lives and abilities are fundamentally part of nature, and our de is manifested in wandering through it. The content of this de is shaped by our interaction with our natural and social setting – our ‘local’ region of the cosmos. As a secular response to the ‘cosmic question’, then, Zhuangist thought can offer the following self-conception: what we most fundamentally are is wanderers of

222

Landscape and Travelling East and West

the way, travellers in a landscape. We can make sense of our lives and situate ourselves within the larger totality of nature on the plausible grounds that our relation to the totality is precisely what constitutes us as the individual agents we are and provides the content of and field for all our activity.

Notes 1

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at ‘Landscape and Travelling – East and West’, Académie du Midi, Alet-les-Bains, France, 28 May–1 June, 2012. I am grateful to Franklin Perkins, Michael Nylan, May Sim, and Hans-Georg Moeller for constructive comments, many of which have been incorporated into this version of the paper. 2 See, for instance, Daodejing sections 8, 28, 32, 41, 66 and 78. 3 References to the Zhuangzi cite chapter and line numbers in the HarvardYenching concordance (Zhuangzi, 1956). 4 ‘Dao’ in classical Chinese is not marked as singular or plural, of course, and like most Chinese nouns can be used as either a count or a mass noun. I will use the lowercase ‘dao’ to refer to individual paths among the plurality of actual and potential dao and the upper case ‘Dao’ to refer to the ‘Great Dao’ of nature constituted by the totality of dao. 5 An alternative reading of the gloss on dao is ‘responding to things as one encounters them’. 6 This is not to suggest that agents never engage in contemplation, as Master Qi obviously does in the opening paragraph of the ‘Discourse on Equalizing Things’, when he ‘loses himself ’ in meditation while listening to the ‘piping of heaven’ (2/1–9). The point is that agents are regarded as inherently caught up in a stream of activity, even if that activity includes ‘quiet sitting’. Meditation itself may be regarded as a mode of flowing along with the course of nature, as Yan Hui implies about ‘sitting and forgetting’ (6/92–3). 7 The exchange between the penumbra and shadow hints that there is no epistemic position from which we could know with confidence what our actions ultimately depend on (2/92–4). 8 Other passages with similar implications include the story of Lady Li, who wept when married off to the king of a foreign country (2/79–84), Master Yu’s response to his fatal, disfiguring illness (6/47–53), and Mengsun Cai’s attitude toward the self (6/75–82). 9 In undertaking precarious diplomatic and political projects, for instance, Yan Hui is instructed to ‘fast the heart’ to become ‘empty’ or ‘vacant’ (4/1–24), and Master Gao is encouraged to ‘forget’ himself (4/34–53) so that both can spontaneously



Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question’

223

and efficiently adapt to whatever opportunities present themselves. Elsewhere, Yan Hui is praised for learning to ‘sit and forget’, leaving even his body and cognition behind and merging with the ‘Great Flow’ (6/89–93), while Master Qi’s ability to hear ‘the pipes of heaven’ is ascribed to his ‘losing himself ’ in meditation (2/1–9). Many of the skill stories associate virtuoso performances with psychological states described as ‘empty’ or ‘forgetting’ (Fraser, 2008). The ‘emptying’ at issue is presumably only partial or targets extraneous factors, because in the skill stories the core ends motivating the agent’s activity remain intact, such as carving up oxen, reforming an irresponsible warlord, or swimming through rapids without losing one’s life. On ‘finding the fit’ as a Zhuangist ideal, see Fox (1996). 10 At least one strand of Zhuangist thought does seem to advocate a conception of de on which agency completely dissolves into non-human natural processes. See, for instance, 15/10–14. 11 As these remarks imply, I conjecture that Zhuangist thinkers might accept a version of compatibilism about free will.

References Fox, A. (1996), ‘Reflex and reflectivity: wuwei in the Zhuangzi’. Asian Philosophy, 6 (1), 59–72. Fraser, C. (2008), ‘Psychological emptiness in the Zhuangzi’. Asian Philosophy, 18 (2), 123–47. —(2011), ‘Emotion and agency in the Zhuangzi’. Asian Philosophy, 21 (1), 97–121. —(forthcoming), ‘Wandering the way: a eudaimonistic approach to the Zhuangzi’. Hansen, C. (1996), ‘Duty and virtue’, in P. Ivanhoe (ed.), Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture: Nivison and His Critics. La Salle, IL: Open Court, pp. 173–92. Nagel, T. (2010), Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zhuangzi (1956), A Concordance to Zhuangzi, Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, supplement no. 20. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

17

The Moving Subject: Transcendence and Reification in the Philosophy of Tang Junyi Ady Van den Stock

On ne peut penser et écrire qu’assis (G. Flaubert). There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value. (Nietzsche, 1978, p. 478) People nowadays only know how to travel (lüxing) and are unable to truly journey (youli). (Tang, 2005c, p. 753)

Introduction In this chapter I would like to discuss two different conceptions of movement which can be discerned in the work of the Confucian philosopher Tang Junyi (1900–78). I will call the first of these antithetical conceptions ‘journeying’ – understood here as free, self-sufficient movement not orientated towards any pre-established goal that would determine the direction of and the coordinates within which it is to take place. Journeying in the above-mentioned sense is familiar to the Daoist tradition, particularly in the idea of ‘wandering’ (you). Such an idea of natural and unconstrained movement seems to be clearly at odds with the second concept of movement at work in Tang’s philosophy, which can be roughly characterised as teleological. Well-known examples of teleological movement on a historical and social level are Auguste Comte’s three stages theory and Hegelian philosophies of history. Related to the tension

226

Landscape and Travelling East and West

between these contradictory ideas of mobility are two forms of conceptual movement, namely transcendence (chaoyue) and reification (wuhua). The opposition between the latter two is more specific to Tang’s philosophy than that between journeying and teleology. In his work they are repeatedly brought into play to criticise certain aspects of modernisation.1 Transcendence and reification can be understood in relation to the aforementioned opposition between free, journeying movement on the one hand and predetermined movement largely instrumental to the goal towards which it is orientated on the other. We could say that a teleology is a ‘reified’ journey, a voyage stripped of the freedom and potential to move outside of artificially imposed constraints. I will try to show that Tang puts forward his own particular view of transcendence (analogous to the model of journeying) as a means to overcome what he takes to be the pathological reification structurally underlying modern society and undermining the possibility of a more just and humane world. These considerations will allow us to gain a better understanding of why and how Tang Junyi critically employs and appropriates Hegel’s dialectical philosophy as a means of theoretically confronting and countering the reifying materialism and mechanism he associates with the rise of modernity. I will argue that both forms of movement are present in Tang’s work and that the tension between these two modes of (conceptual) ‘travelling’ can be understood against the background of his philosophical project at large, which seems to me to be animated by this tension. It is my opinion that the historical horizon of modernity against which Tang elaborated his philosophy should itself be brought to the foreground and related to the interplay of concepts in his work in order for the latter to acquire its full meaning and significance.

Cultural exile and the relational conception of individuality Tang Junyi’s philosophy is marked by the famous ‘restlessness’ the German Idealist philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) attributes to Spirit (Geist) in the preface (Vorrede) to his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) (Hegel, 1977, p. 4). Although Hegel ascribes restlessness to both the world and to subjects engaged in this world as an inherent, trans-historical property, it is clear from the text of the Vorrede that the supposed eternal mobility of Spirit has a historical dimension as well and has come to manifest itself more clearly in the modern age. The sheer volume and the minute and searching style2 of the many writings in which Tang sought to rethink the Confucian tradition attest to this



The Moving Subject

227

restlessness and could, in this sense, be seen as a sign of the relentless mobility characterising the modernising world in the face of which he attempted to preserve and renew Confucianism.3 The New Confucian Movement, of which Tang was one of the most creative and innovative representatives, should thus be grasped in its relation to the acceleration of historical change brought on by modernity.4 In the first decades of the twentieth century, the iconoclastic May Fourth Movement and revolutionary Marxism came to see traditional culture as one of the main culprits for the vulnerability of China in the conflicting world system of nation-states, and accordingly propagated the casting of Confucianism into the infamous ‘dust-bins of history’.5 Tang was one of the many traditionalist intellectuals who left mainland China during the tumultuous period preceding the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 to seek refuge in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In an article published in 1961, bearing the evocative title ‘The dispersal of the blossoms and fruits of the Chinese people’ (Zhonghua minzu zhi huaguo piaoling) (Tang, 1975, pp. 1–27), he reflects on the condition of exile he had then already been in for 12 years: Chinese culture and the mind of the Chinese people […] could be compared to a large tree that has collapsed in a garden, causing all the blossoms and fruits to drift away and scatter in the blowing wind, so that they can only find shelter in the shade of someone else’s garden and hope to one day grow again. (Tang, 1975, p. 2)

It is important to note that, for Tang, exile (described in this tableau as a movement of dispersal sustained by the uncertainty of ever being able to return) is not simply a personal problem. He sees exile as the condition of Chinese culture and the Chinese people at large (Shen, 2012, pp. 26–7). Tang deplores and criticises the loss or abandonment of traditional culture which he considers to be endemic in overseas Chinese communities. An example he gives is the phenomenon of overseas Chinese trading their native language for English in Hong Kong and other areas of the world. He argues that on a subjective level, such an abandonment of one’s mother tongue is predicated on a functionalist view of language as a neutral and exchangeable medium or tool (Tang, 2005c, pp. 607–9). According to Tang, however, language, culture and history, as well as the forms of social interaction transmitted within these domains, cannot be so easily discarded. Far from merely being things the individual can dispose of at will, they constitute ‘the place where our life force must take root in order to live on and where our very nature is located’ (Tang, 1975, p. 8). Such a strong affirmation of the social and cultural rootedness of the individual

228

Landscape and Travelling East and West

allows him to argue that not only would Chinese people cease being Chinese if they abandoned their tradition and culture, but also that it would not even be possible for them to truly become individuals in any meaningful sense. Tang says that ‘not forgetting where one began from’ and ‘not losing one’s origin’ […] is certainly not a mere question of habit; on the contrary, it is doing so which enables human beings to truly become human, they are the real and necessary principles that enable me to truly become myself. If one derides this attitude as conservatism, then conservatism is precisely that through which man preserves himself and that through which the self preserves itself; it is a conservatism that the human race cannot but and indeed should have. (Tang, 1975, p. 15)

From this perspective, he sharply criticises what he considers to be the empty and free-floating universalism of some of his compatriots in exile. He concedes that individuals could indeed be said not to belong to any particular culture or historical group, but quickly goes on to add that this is only true for their ‘abstract and potential existence’, and not for their ‘concrete, real and actual existence’ (Tang, 1975, pp. 10–12). Tang’s view of human beings is relational in a double sense: first, he argues that individuals cannot be severed from the web of inter-subjective connections into which they are born and in which they act and exist;6 secondly, considering human beings apart from their relation to the larger historical and cultural community to which they belong requires an unjustifiable abstraction which is often dismissed in his texts. It is clear that Tang does not consider such an abstraction to be merely a case of erroneous reasoning. He also identifies it as a real tendency in modern society. To borrow a term from the Marxist tradition, his critique of abstract individuality is grounded in a recognition of the performative force of this abstraction, making it a ‘real abstraction’ (Sohn-Rethel, 1971, pp. 101–30; Sohn-Rethel, 1978, pp. 17–29).

The moving subject: transcendence and reification It is important to take into account the historical background that constitutes the critical dimension of Tang Junyi’s philosophy. Tang does so himself on numerous occasions. In his work, highly abstract philosophical discussions are regularly embedded in or followed by an exposition of the underlying problem towards which they are directed7 (Tang, 2006, pp. 661–704). One of the constantly recurring objects of criticism is a Western-centred teleological



The Moving Subject

229

discourse in which tradition is expected to be swept away by the ineluctable force of modernisation with technology and science at the forefront. Tang often develops his own points of view by pitting them against the naturalism, materialism, utilitarianism and scientism he associates with this world-view. These negative tendencies converge in the concept of ‘reification’ (wuhua).8 He uses this term to refer to a wide array of phenomena in which a reality he assumes to have originally been both constituted by and infused with value is degraded to a mere material ‘thing’, to which value can only be subjectively, contingently and provisionally attributed. Reification thus effects a reduction of quality to quantity and of absolute value to mere utility (Tang, 1980, pp. 19–23; Tang, 2005, p. 586). Among phenomena subject to such a reduction in modernity, Tang includes social relations and customs (including family relations, relations between teacher and student, etc.) and – perhaps most important in the present context – human beings’ relation to themselves, that is, the way in which individuals constitute themselves to become and function as fully developed subjects. Using the observations encountered in Tang’s reflections on exile, we can say that when individuals come to conceive of themselves as ‘abstract’ individuals existing independently of their cultural and historical context, this would constitute a reification of their ‘real’ existence. Such observations are grounded in his metaphysical presuppositions. For Tang Junyi, it is not simply the case that things and the world have value and meaning (morally, culturally, and so on), or that they are meaningful, but that they are meaning; that the whole universe is in some sense meaning itself9 (Tang, 1986, pp. 93–118). Value (jiazhi), by which he specifically means moral value, is not merely something subjectively added to things. Value is rather the condition of the possibility for the existence of things as such.10 By granting an ontological status to (moral) value as the alpha and omega of human existence (and, in a way, of existence as such), Tang proceeds to apply a procedure of what might be called revaluation or trans-valuation onto socially reified phenomena11 (Joas, 2000, p. 21; Tang, 2005c, pp. 641–5). I think his idea of transcendence (chaoyue) can be understood as describing an alternative and an opposition to the phenomenon of reification and teleological affirmations of reification as a necessary path towards modernisation12 (Tang, 2005c, p. 586). By exploring the hidden presuppositions behind the reduction of, say, a social custom, to a mere, accidental ‘thing’, Tang attempts to dialectically reverse the movement of reification by redefining it as a stage of a larger movement that would itself be reified by taking the moment of reification as an end-point or a finality. Reification is thereby reinscribed into the process

230

Landscape and Travelling East and West

of transcendence (a return to value) as an intermediary stage. Tang does not directly close the gap between the real and the ideal (between reality and value) by dismissing the real as ephemeral or illusory; nor does he do so by dogmatically equating the real with the ideal13 (Joas, 2000, p. 21). Rather, the imperfect nature of the real is rationalised as a condition for keeping the ‘propensity of things’14 towards transcendence alive by indefinitely delaying the moment of completion, at which point the journey would be reified into a sterile state of arrival that is close to death.15 In other words, the discrepancy between the real and the ideal is reinterpreted as a constitutive property of the ideal itself, which needs this gap in order to manifest and complete itself. According to Wang and Liao (2008, p. 43), the fundamental difference between Tang’s idea of the moral self and the traditional Confucian idea of morality is that ‘the moral subject must first go through a form of self-disintegration’ (ziwo bengjie). Within this framework, moral practice becomes an unending process that mediates between the real and the ideal by gradually bringing them into asymptotic alignment.

Teleology against modernity In the above, I tried to show that Tang Junyi’s dialectical philosophy of transcendence is connected to the concern he repeatedly expresses over the reification of culture, social relations and subjectivity in modernity. Perhaps the use of the term reification in itself already points to the existence of a certain common ground between Tang and Marxism, a way of thinking about the world which he otherwise quite relentlessly criticised and denounced. In fact, his writings often present Marxism (-Leninism) as the direct opposite of his own philosophical project. At first sight, it may seem strange and somewhat contradictory that Tang made use of a concept one would be inclined to associate with the Marxist tradition to criticise Marxism (in practice). Of course the contradiction soon disappears when we remember that Marxism was not only a critique of modernity, but itself became a mode and an ideology of modernisation (state-regulated, organised industrialisation instead of laissezfaire free market capitalism) (Dirlik, 2011, pp. 91–2). In a manuscript written in 1951–2 for a work that was to be entitled ‘The philosophical spirit of modern Western idealism’ (Xifang jindai lixiangzhuyi zhi zhexue jingshen) (Tang, 1986, pp. 601–752), mainly devoted to his interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy, Tang spells out his intention to establish a non-dialectical (wu bianzheng) or meta-dialectical (chao bianzheng) substance, which he finds in the unchanging



The Moving Subject

231

self-identity of the (moral) mind. This mind (xinti) is put forward as the origin of all ensuing dialectical development. He also makes it clear what is at stake in the establishment of a non-dialectical foundation for dialectics and what is so important about the withdrawal of the moral mind from and immunisation against the process it instigates: if the Hegelian dialectic is not supplemented by such a foundation in a substantial moral mind, it runs the risk of being reversed and thereby relapsing into dialectical materialism, an outlook on the world he sees as reducing all things to their material (economic) constituents and reifying tradition and culture into external implements. Interestingly enough, Tang becomes somewhat of a teleological thinker when discussing the complex and much-debated relation between Hegel and Marx.16 Thus it seems Tang reintroduces a certain notion of irreversibility that he himself combats when criticising reification. In the following passage, he ridicules Marx’s claim of having ‘reversed’ the dialectic to save it from the hopeless idealism of Hegel’s system by ‘standing it back on its feet’ (Althusser, 2005, p. 89). Tang does not mince words: Marx and Lenin have completely misunderstood Hegel’s philosophy […] They say they want to reverse Hegelian philosophy, but it never even occurred to them that his philosophy cannot be reversed on this particular point […] Dialectical materialism is a kind of philosophy that wants to explain the emergence of spirit from the dialectical development of matter, [so that] spirit is derived and of secondary importance. But in reality, Hegel’s dialectics on the one hand and materialism on the other are two mutually exclusive terms. This is because if one assumes that matter will necessarily develop in such a way as to produce spirit, then matter is in fact in a process of self-transcendence and self-negation and spirit is nothing else but the concept and the truth towards which it develops. From this it is clear that materialism will necessarily negate and transcend itself in order to become a philosophy of spirit. (Tang, 2005b, pp. 865–6)

I think it would be wrong to see the reintroduction of teleological elements apparent here as an isolated case of ‘polemic parallelism’ (Krech, 2012, p. 63). Significantly, Tang often adopts a teleological point of view when dismissing the teleological view of modernity articulated by the Marxist ideology he so abhors, by engaging in a reversal of his own that is, at least formally, similar to the reversal Marx claimed to have performed on the Hegelian dialectic. In a text from 1949, evaluating the ‘cultural effects of materialism as a worldview’ (Yuzhouguan weiwulun zhi wenhua xiaoyong), he even takes on a heavily Christian jargon in order to make his case against Marx’s historical materialism:

232

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Most of humanity’s philosophical theories had an effect on human culture because they were true, Marx’s theory however has had its effect [precisely] because of its erroneous nature. This is because Marx made a false prediction and thereby spurred people on to prevent this prediction from coming true, so that they came to attach more importance to social, political and cultural forces outside of economic factors. This then has been Marx’s contribution to human culture. God sent Jesus to take on our sins and relieve us of them. He also sent many scholars to take on many errors so that future generations might obtain the truth. When people took Marx’s errors for the truth and failed to continue to search for a higher truth, they failed to live up to the will of God and as a consequence could not understand the true value of Marx’s historical materialism for human culture. (Tang, 1949, no pagination)

The teleo-theological dimension of Tang’s work is not only present as a rhetorical ‘skilful means’ in the context of his sustained polemics against Marxism. In striking contrast to the principles of his own relational ontology, custom-designed to oppose the reification of dynamic processes into substances motionally confined to the fixed and inflexible limits of their own isolated identity, Tang tends to reinstate precisely such an idea of immutable substance on a historical and cultural level when speaking about the ‘spirit’ (jingshen) of Chinese culture. In doing so, Chinese culture comes to figure as a Hegelian meta-subject with a fixed trajectory from which it cannot and indeed should not deviate: The spirit of Chinese culture has an incomparable strength; it is directly linked to the depths of the life and spirit of all Chinese. But one must understand that this spirit can only exist objectively in the society, history and culture of the entire people and exist in the present through its presence in the minds of all the Chinese. It absolutely does not belong to any individual or political party. It is nothing but a vast flowing river searching for its own path, completing its own development, soundlessly and ceaselessly following its necessary direction in accordance with is own nature. ‘Those who act in accordance with heaven will persist; those who go against against heaven will perish.’ It [the spirit of Chinese culture] is nothing but the God of the Chinese people […] All your efforts should be devoted to this spirit. It is nothing but your innermost self (zui neizai de ziji).17 (Tang, 2005c, p. 651)

Such a conception would seem to bring the concept of a self-sufficient substance in through the back door in the guise of a cultural Subject. It risks compromising the programmatic attempt running through all of Tang’s work to overcome historically conditioned dichotomies between individuals and



The Moving Subject

233

between individuals and society. Moreover, the tension between his relational ontology on the level of moral practice and a substantial ontology on the level of Chinese culture, which is more complex and charged than I have been able to outline here, to a certain extent conceptually undermines the strongly universalist aspirations of his work. At the same time, this tension provides us with an interesting point of departure for studying both the timeliness of his thought and the time it sought to comprehend in thought.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6

7

8

See, for example, Tang, 1975, pp. 500–39. Tang’s style is somewhat unfairly described as ‘hair-splitting’, ‘abstruse’ and ‘wordy’ in Bresciani, 2001, p. 303. For good overviews of New Confucian thought, see Bresciani, 2001; Makeham, 2003; and Zheng, 1990. See Dirlik, 1995, and Postone, 1993, pp. 186–215 and pp. 286–306. Such an attitude towards tradition is exemplified by Chen Duxiu’s ‘Essay on the destruction of idols’ (Ouxiang pohuai lun) from 1918. But even this essay, for all its radical and uncompromising tone towards all things traditional, reveals that the attitude of intellectuals was more complicated than a simple opposition or choice between iconoclasm and traditionalism. This is at least suggested by the fact that Chen lists the modern nation-state alongside all the great religions of the world as an ‘idol’ that needs to be destroyed in order to save China from destruction. See Schmidt, 2012. Diametrically opposed to this relational model is a substantial ontology in which the world is seen as composed of atomised, individual substances independently existing side by side. Cf. 2006b, pp. 29–45. This is most clearly the case in Tang’s Life, Existence and the Horizons of the Mind, where over 40 pages are devoted to the circumstances which gave rise to the creation of this work. See Tang, 2006, pp. 661–704. The Chinese term wuhua can already be found in the Zhuangzi in the famous story about the butterfly where it refers to the unending ‘transformation of things’ and means precisely the opposite of reification in this context (namely the transformation of non-things into things: see Palmer, 2006, p. 20). For a comprehensive discussion of the Zhuangzian concept of wuhua, see Liu, 2008. It should also be noted that the term reification, made popular by the Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács in his famous 1923 essay ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’ (see Lukács, 1971, pp. 83–222), did not become frequent in China until after the death of Mao, when Marx’s humanist Paris

234

9 10

11

12

13

14 15 16

17

Landscape and Travelling East and West Manuscripts became a big theme of discussion. Although I have still to investigate this more closely, I do not consider it very likely that Tang adapted the term directly from Marxist sources. See Tang’s 1944 essay, ‘General introduction into the world of meaning’ (Yiwei zhi shijie daoyan), in Tang, 1986, pp. 93–118. Tang’s most elaborate application of this idea in the sphere of cultural philosophy can be found in Tang, 2005a, where he systematically deduces the family, economy, political institutions and state from the concept of the moral/spiritual/ transcendent self and goes on to ground philosophy and science, art and literature, religion and even law and military affairs in moral reason. See Tang, 2005c., pp. 641–5. Joas (2000, p. 21) notes that ‘[t]he concept of “value” takes the place once occupied by the concept of the “good” in the philosophical tradition. However, whereas the “good” could, according to this tradition, be accorded a status ascertainable either by rational contemplation of the cosmos or through divine revelation, and thus had a “being” – even a higher being than other existents – there is attached to the concept of “value” an ineradicable reference to the valuing subject.’ It would seem that in the case of Tang’s philosophy of value, ‘value’ takes over the properties of the concept of the ‘good’, so that the ‘valuing subject’ is conceptually derived from a value to which an ontological status has been accorded. Cf. Tang, 2005c, p. 586: ‘Man must strive to become divine (shenhua) in order to oppose the tendency towards reification.’ I should stress that Tang takes care to distinguish his concept of transcendence from the Christian notion which he sees as presupposing a clear and radical split between the human and the divine. If anything, he uses it to refer to a process (rather than to a thing or a fixed state) through which human beings can overcome precisely such dichotomous oppositions. Cf. Joas, 2000, p. 21: ‘The metaphysical unity of the true and the good is replaced in the philosophy of value by a dualism between “facticity” and “validity”, between a realm of verifiable facts and, opposed to this, another, peculiar mode of being, in which values and valuations are given. The philosophy of value does not fix this dualism, but is instead concerned, in its various forms, to bridge it.’ The expression is by Jullien, 1995. Tang, 1986, p. 679, refers to F. H. Bradley’s metaphor of ‘thought’s happy suicide’; see Bradley, 1930, p. 173. Cf. Bradley, 1962, pp. 234–5. Probably one of the best examples of how fruitful an investigation into the complexity of this relation can be is Louis Althusser’s essay, ‘Contradiction and Overdetermination’, in Althusser, 2005, pp. 87–128. Also see Colletti, 1973, and Hook, 1971. Tang, 2005c, p. 651, my italics. The quoted passage is from Mencius, 4A, 7. Translation amended from Lau, 2003, p. 75.



The Moving Subject

235

References Althusser, L. (2005), For Marx. London and New York: Verso. Bradley, F. H. (1930), Appearance and Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —(1962), Ethical Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bresciani, U. (2001), Reinventing Confucianism: The New Confucian Movement. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies. Colletti, L. (1971), Marxism and Hegel. London: NLB. Dirlik, A. (1995), ‘“Confucius in the borderlands”, global capitalism and the reinvention of Confucianism’. Boundary 2, 22, 3, 229–73. —(2011), Culture & History in Post-Revolutionary China. The Perspective of Global Modernity. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Hegel, G. W. F. (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller with Analysis of the Text and Foreword by J. N. Findlay. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hook, S. (1971). From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Joas, H. (2000), The Genesis of Values. Cambridge: Polity Press. Julien, F. (1995), The Propensity of Things: Towards a History of Efficacy in China. New York: Zone Books. Krech, V. (2012), ‘Dynamics in the history of religions. Preliminary considerations on aspects of a research program’, in V. Krech and M. Steinicke (eds), Dynamics in the History of Religions Between Asia and Europe. Encounters, Notions, and Comparative Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, pp. 15–72. Lau, D. C. (2003), Mencius. London: Penguin Books. Liu, Z. (2008), ‘Lun Zhuangzi wuhua de zhexue hanyi (The philosophical meaning of the “transformation of things” in the Zhuangzi)’. Chaoyang xuebao, 13, 379–404. Lukács, G. (1971), History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. London: Merlin Press. Makeham, J. (2003), New Confucianism: A Critical Examination. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nietzsche, F. (1978), The Portable Nietzsche. Edited and Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Palmer, M. (2006), The Book of Chuang Tzu. London: Penguin Books. Postone, M. (1993), Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, S. (2012), ‘Humanity as trans-individuality: Tang Junyi’s (1909–1978) philosophy of Renwen humanism’, in O. Kozlarek, J. Rüsen and E. Wolff (eds), Shaping a Humane World: Civilizations – Axial Times – Humanisms. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, pp. 257–80. Shen, V. (2012), ‘The concept of centrality in Chinese diaspora’. Religion Compass, 6, 1, 26–40.

236

Landscape and Travelling East and West

Sohn-Rethel, A. (1971), Warenform und Denkform: Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. —(1978), Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology. London: Macmillan Press. Tang, J. (1949), ‘Yuzhouguan weiwulun zhi wenhua xiaoyong pinglun (Evaluation of the cultural effects of materialism as a world-view)’. Minzhu Pinglun, 1, 8, consulted online (14/12/2012): http://www.philosophyol.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=27016 &page=1&extra=page%3D1 —(1975), Zhonghua renwen yu dangjin shijie (Chinese Humanism and the Contemporary World ). Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju. —(1980), Renwen jingshen zhi chongjian (The Reconstruction of a Humanist Spirit). Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju. —(1986), Zhexue lunji (Collection of Philosophical Essays), Vol. 18 of Tang Junyi quanji (Complete Works of Tang Junyi), revised edition, vols. 1–30. Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju. —(2005a), Wenhua yishi yu daode (Cultural Consciousness and Moral Reason). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. —(2005b), Zhexue gailun (Introduction into Philosophy). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. —(2005c), Zhonghua renwen yu danjin shijie bubian (Chinese Humanism and the Contemporary World, Supplementary Volume). Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe. —(2006), Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie (Life, Existence and the Horizons of the Mind ). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. Wang, Xueqing and Liao, J. (2008), ‘Lun Tang Junyi “yiben duoyuan de wenhua zhexue – yi dexing wei zhongxin er quanfu kaizhan de renwen shijie”’ (‘On Tang Junyi’s cultural philosophy of “diversity in oneness” – basing oneself on virtue to fully develop a humanistic world’). Daye daxue tongshi jiaoyu xuebao, 1, 41–60. Zheng, J. (1990), Xiandai xin ruxue gailun (Introduction to Contemporary New Confucianism). Nanjing: Guanxi renmin chubanshe.

Index Altdorfer, Albrecht 100 America 4, 150–1, 185, 199 Ames, Roger vii, 5, 10, 49, 71, 91, 170, 172, 180nn. 1, 2, 3, 183, 187, 192, 195nn. 2, 3, 197–201, 205–6, 207n. 4 Anand, Dibbyesh 151, 158, 165n. 15 Anrakuji 145–6 Aristotle 171 Nicomachean Ethics 171 Austin, James H. 117, 122n. 5 Avatamsaka Sūtra 130 Bainqen Qoigyijabu 154 Bashō 2–3, 9, 12, 16–21, 45–6, 48, 49n. 1, 138, 141 Narrow Road to the Interior 45 Basso, Keith 121 Beijing 24, 154, 163n. 4, 14 Being and Time 37–8 Benjamin, Walter 48, 83 Bentham, Jeremy 171–2 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 156, 162 Bloch, Ernst 10 Bodhidharma 118, 128, 130–1, 133 Bohemia 24 Book of Songs 192 Botton, Alain de 9 The Art of Travel 9 Brah, Avtar 35 Cai Yong 78 Jiushi 78 China vii, 4, 18, 85, 88–9, 113, 119, 128, 130, 134–5, 149, 153, 159, 163nn. 3, 4, 164n. 14, 174, 179, 190, 227, 233nn. 5, 8 Chuang-tzu 18 Clifford, James 35 Comte, Auguste 225 Confucius ii, 1, 71, 88, 169–70, 174, 180n. 7, 183, 188–9, 191–3, 195n. 5, 214

Analects of Confucius/Lunyu 169, 183 Chinese Classic of Family Reverence 191 Cosgrove, Denis 71, 79 Coutinho, Steve 10–11 Cranach, Lucas 100 Dalai Lama 150–60, 162, 165n. 14 Daniels, Stephen 71, 79 Dante 12 Danto, Arthur 12 Daodejing 1, 3, 10, 32, 33n. 6, 63n. 1, 64n. 4, 76, 208n. 14, 212–14, 222n. 2 Derrida, Jacques 46 Descartes, 1–2, 24–8, 31–2 Discourse on Method 24–5 Meditations 25 Dharamshala 151, 164n. 8 Dibyesh Anand 158 Ding Gao 78 Dōgen 118–20, 123n. 7 Mountains and Waters Sutra 118 Dong Qichong 194 Dong Yuan 194 Summer Mountains after Dong Yuan 194 Du Fu 92 View of T’ai-Shan, A 92 Dumoulin, Heinrich 135 Eckermann, Johann Peter 100 Eichendorff, Joseph Freiherr von 98–9, 102 Divining Rod (Wünschelrute) 98 Elliott, William 148 Emerson, Waldo Ralph 185–6 Entrikin, N. 156–7 Betweenness of Place, The 156 Europe 4, 24, 135, 149–51, 163nn. 2, 3, 8, 187 Fayan, Wenyi 111–12, 122n. 1 Blue Cliff Record (Biyanlu) 112

238 Index Fazang 130 Treatise on the Golden Lion 130 Fei Xiaotong 190 Feng Youlan 46 Fernow, Carl Ludwig 106 On Landscape Painting (Über die Landschaftsmalerei) 106 Flinck, Govert 101 Friedrich, Caspar David 3–4, 81, 89–93, 103–4 Caspar David Friedrich in his studio 89 Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (Kreidefelsen auf Rügen) 103 Solitary Tree, The 87 Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, The 81 Furong Daokai 118 Gandavyūha Sūtra 129 Geertz, Clifford 27, 31 Gellini, Giovanni 82 St Jerome in the Wildness 82 Gentz, Friedrich 100 Germany vii, 24–5, 87, 100 Gidō Shūshin 116 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 100 Goldstein, Melvyn C. 160, 165n. 15 Görres, Joseph 100 Goyen, Jan van 101 Graham, A. C. 11 Grave, Johannes 106 Great Learning 114 Guanzi 72–3, 79 Guo Xi 90 Han Yin 73 Hanshi Waizhuan 73, 79 Hansen, Chad 49, 66n. 15 Heart of the Wind (Kaze no kokoro) 118 Heart Sūtra 140 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 96, 105, 171, 226, 230–1 Phenomenology of Spirit 226 Heidegger, Martin 1–2, 27–32, 33n. 4, 35–41, 84, 86 Building, Dwelling, Thinking 36 Ister, The 36–7 Hill, Jason 29 Himachal Pradesh 150–1

Hoffman, Ernst Theodor Amadeus 98 Hölderlin, Friedrich 27, 36, 39–40, 47–8, 104 At the Source of the Danube (Am Quell der Donau) 105 Holland 24–6 Hong Kong vii, 49, 227 Huang Gongwang 194 Landscape After Dong Yuan and Fan Kuan 194 Huangbo Xiyun 115 Huber, Toni 152–3 Huizi 11, 32 Hungary 24 Huxley, Aldous 179, 182 Huzi 217 Ikkyū Sōjun 134 India 127–9, 135, 149, 150–2, 154–8, 162–3, 163nn. 3, 4, 5 James, Williams 97 Principles of Psychology, The 97 Japan 2, 4–5, 113, 122, 122n. 6, 127–8, 134–5, 137, 139, 142, 144, 148 Juel, Jens 83 Kant, Immanuel 14, 72, 84, 86, 96, 171–2 Karnataka 150, 164n. 9 Kersting, Georg Friedrich 89 Ketelaar, James 144 Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution 144 Khan, Kublai 157, 159 Kiyō Hōshu 114 Kleist, Heinrich von 99–100 Kōchi 144, 146 Kongzi 197, 201–2, 204–7, 209 Koninck, Philip 101 Kūkai 138–9, 141–3 Kurama 139 Kyishong, Gangchen 151, 165n. 16 Kyoto 119, 137 LaFleur, William 138–40, 147–8 Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō 138 Uphill from Hirokawa Temple 148 Lai, Master 217 Landors, Henry Savage 149

Index Lao Dan 214 Laozi 1, 10, 48, 57–63, 63n. 1, 64nn. 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 65n. 12, 66n. 15, 67nn. 21, 22, 23 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 27, 97 Lhasa 149, 152, 154, 159, 160, 163n. 3, 4, 8 Li Bo 45 Preface for the Poetry from a Spring Evening Party for my Cousins in a Peach Blossom Garden 45 Liao Junyu 230 Liezi 6, 64n. 6, 66n. 15, 203–5, 208n. 15 Liji 73, 79 Lingis, Alphonso 2, 31–2, 33nn. 1, 5 Linji 4, 128, 131–4, Linji lu 131 Lorrain, Claude 82, 83 Lungshar 160 Lüshi Chunqiu 72 Lynn, Richard John 113 Lysias 62 Marin, Louis 30 Matsuo Bashō/Matsuo Kinsaku 16 Narrow Road to the Deep North, The 17 McLeod Ganj 150–2, 154–6, 158, 162 Mengsun Cai 204, 209n. 17, 222n. 8 Mengzi 71, 202, 207n. 8 Milindapañha 128 Mill, John Stuart 171–2 Moeller, Hans-Georg vii, 1, 15, 48, 222n. 1 Momaday, N. Scott 121 Montaigne 26 Mu, King 85 Mugan, Soō 114 Müller, Adam Heinrich 102 Musil, Robert 48 Nagle, Thomas 6, 211, 220 Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament 220, 223 Nehru 151 Netherlands 101 Ni Zan 90, 194 Nietzsche, Friedrich 3, 48, 221, 225 Nijō, Yoshimoto 114 NISHIDA Kitarō 137

239

Norbulingka 150, 156, 164nn. 12, 13 Nyima, Gedhun Choekyi 154 Olcott, Henry Steel 156 Ouyang Xiu 117 Painting of Goddess of River Luo (Luo-shen-fu-tu) 82 Park, Chris 153 Parker, Joseph 113, 117, 122nn. 2, 4 Peaches, Annie 121 Peng Feng 207 Petrarca 104 Petrarch 85 Phaedrus 62 Plato 3, 53–63, 63nn. 2, 3, 65nn. 13, 14, 67nn. 17, 19–26 Phaedrus 53 Phaedrus Socrates 53 Republic, The 60 Poetry, Language, Thought 36 Pohl, Karl-Heinz 122n. 3 Pollack, David 113–4, 117 Walking in the Mountain 114 Przhevalski, Nikolai 149 Qian Mu 74 Qiu, Peipei 16 Reader, Ian 142, 144–5 Making Pilgrimage: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku 142 Reigen, Kisei 114 Richter, Ludwig 97–9 Memories from the Life of a German Painter (Lebenserinnerungen eines deutschen Malers) 98 Rijnhart, Susie 149 Rockhill, William Woodville 149 Rodman, Margaret 156–7 Rosemont, Henry vii, 5, 169, 172, 180nn. 1, 2, 3, 181n. 9, 183–5, 191–2, 195nn. 2, 3, 197–200, 205–6, 207n. 4 Rosenkranz, K. 95 System of Sciences (System der Wissenschaften) 95 Rossetti, Christina 115 Rubens, Sir Peter Paul 100

240 Index Runge, Philipp Otto 103–4 Nile Valley Landscape (NiltalLandschaft) 103 Rest on the Flight (Ruhe auf der Flucht) 103 Russia 149, 162, 163n. 3 Saigyō 4, 137–41, 143, 145–8 Saxony 99, 103 Schelling, F. W. J. 4, 84–5, 89, 96, 101–2, 104 Schelling, Friedrich 4, 84, 85, 89, 96, 101–2, 104 Ideas for a philosophy of Nature 84 Schlegel, Dorothea 100 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 86, 92, 99–100, 107 On Religion. Speeches to the Educated among its Despisers (Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern) 99–100 Shigatse 154 Shikoku 137–46 Shimazaki, Hiroshi 143 Shirakawa 19 Shirane, Haruo 16 Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimochi 114 Silko, Leslie 121 Singer, Wendy 153, 164nn. 7, 13 Sloterdijk, Peter 46 Snyder, Gary 119–20, 122, 123n. 10 Socrates 1, 3, 53–4, 58, 60, 62–3, 63n. 2, 68n. 27 Song Di 113 Song Rongzi 202–3, 205, 208n. 12 Spinoza, Baruch 97 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 179 Studying Buddhism in Practice 143, 145 Su Shi 89, 113, 115–16, 118 Sudhana 129 Switzerland 150, 164n. 9 Taihaku Shingen 115 Taiwan 227 Tanaka, Koji 55, 56 Tang Junyi 6, 225–6, 228–30 Cultural effects of materialism as a world-view (Yuzhouguan weiwulun zhi wenhua xiaoyong pinglun) 236 The dispersal of the blossoms and fruits

of the Chinese people (Zhonghua minzu zhi huaguo piaoling) 227 The philosophical spirit of modern Western idealism (Xifang jindai lixiangzhuyi zhi zhexue jingshen) 230 Tao Yuanming 49 The Return 49 Taylor, Annie 149 Tesshū Tokusai 117 Living in the Mountains 117 Tibet 149–54, 157–63, 163n. 3, 5, 8, 14 Tieck, Ludwig 100, 105 The Travels of Franz Sternbald (Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen) 105 Vimalakīrti 128–30 Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, The 129 Vimalakīrti Sūtra 129 Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich 105 Wang Shimin 194 Washington 159 Watson, Burton 10 Watteau, Antoine 81, 83 Weber, Max 171 Wen Tong 89 Wenning, Mario vii, 2, 9, 138 Wenzhou 75 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 47, 97 Philosophical Investigations 47 Wohlfart, Guenter vii, 3, 45, 49n. 2, 138 Wong, David 14–15, 180n. 5 Xingche 116 Expressing My Emotions 116 Xinshu (The Way of the Heart/Mind) 71–3 Xunzi 73, 208n. 14 Yan Fu 190 Yan Hui 204, 222–3 Yang Wanli 48 Yijing 76 Young, Julian 37, 40–1 Younghusband 160, 162 Yu, Master 217, 222n. 8 Zangjing 75 Book of Jin, The (Jin Shu) 75 Classic for Burials 75

Index Zenge, Wilhelmine von 99 Zenrakuji 144–6 Zhong, Guan 201 Zhou, Yiqun 190 Zhuang Zhou 15, 217 Zhuangzi 2, 9–11, 13–17, 26, 30–2, 45–6, 48–9, 49n. 1, 71, 73, 87, 138, 197, 202–6, 207n. 3, 208nn. 11, 12, 14, 17, 211, 213–16, 218–20, 222n. 3, 233n. 8

Zigong 188 Zixia 193 Zong Baihua 87 Zong Bing 89 Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals 200 Zuozhuan 75

241