Chinese Buddhism | Contemplative Inquiry

March 9, 2024

BOOK REVIEW: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DU FU

Highly recommended to anyone interested in Chinese traditional poetry and culture, and the way it is received in China today. I looked at an aspect of Michael Wood’s In the Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (1) in my last post (2). This is a full book review. The back cover provides an accurate basic summary of its contents: “For a thousand years Du Fu (712-70 CE) has been China’s most loved poet. Born into the golden age of the Tang Dynasty, he saw his world collapse in famine, war and chaos. The poet and his family became impoverished refugees, but his profound vision and his empathy for the sufferings of humanity endured, and have endeared him to readers ever since. … Broadcaster and historian Michael Wood follows in Du Fu’s footsteps on a pilgrimage through the physical and emotional landscapes of his life and work”.

The book, lavishly illustrated, is divided into 24 chapters. Many of these are headed by place names. Michael Wood visited most of them on his own journey, talking with scholars and enthusiasts and also taking time to observe the very different China of today. The narrative is somewhat tilted towards the last 15 years of Du Fu’s life, when the War of An Lushan (3) displaced Du Fu and turned him into an internal refugee, constantly on the move, for the rest of his life. It is also seen as the period of his best poetry.

The first chapters of the book emphasise the easy optimism of Du Fu’s early years. A new Emperor, himself a painter, musician and poet, launched a cultural rebirth. He was a patron of libraries and scholars. He ruled a prosperous and peaceful country. Du Fu writes nostalgically of childhood years in which “rice was succulent … the granaries were full, and there was not a robber on the road in all the 9 provinces of China”. Growing up in the city of Gong-yi on the Yellow River, the son of an Imperial official, Du Fu looked forward to a successful life as both official and poet. “I’d read everything and I thought I was superb”. He went to Chang’an and took his exams for the Imperial service.

He failed them. “In the blue sky my wings failed me”. For some years he went on a series of family supported wanderings, honed his poetic skills and became interested in the Chinese version of Mahayana Buddhism. Returning to Chang’an he failed the exams again, but managed to get a lowly official job, married, and began to raise a family. He settled them in Fengxian near the capital, a place that featured hot springs. Although he had to be available at Chang’an, he visited often. At this point his poetry began to show a concern for ordinary people.

Here at the hot spring the emperor entertains his court

And music echoes around the hills.

Only the rich and powerful bathe here.

But the silk they wear was woven by people,

women whose husbands are beaten for their taxes.

In 755, even before war broke out, China was devasted by floods and a resultant famine. Du Fu lost an infant son to starvation and wrote that he was ashamed to be a father. Famine threatened again, on the road, after the rebel victory:

My little girl bit me in her hunger

And fearful that wolves or tigers would hear her cries

I hugged her to my chest, muffling her mouth,

But she struggled free and just cried more.

Michael Wood provides a map of the family’s subsequent movements, generally in the rugged, often spectacular and less populated west of China. They could never settle for very long, as political and military conditions remained volatile and unsafe. I describe Du Fu’s sojourn in Chengdu in my pervious post (2). Towards the end of his life, conditions seemed to be easing and the family began moving back east via the Yangtze river, in gradual steps. This gives Michael Wood the opportunity to describe his own experience of the hyper-modern city of Chongqing, though Kuizhou and the spectacular Three Gorges area are more important to Du Fu and his work. Wood says that, “in the Gorges, though it had been at great cost to himself, Du Fu’s gift was creative and imaginative freedom”. His output was prolific, and drew on a meditatively close encounter with nature.

Crescent moon stilled in the clear night

Half-abandoned to sleep, lamp wicks blossom

In echoing mountains unsettled deer stir

Falling leaves startle locusts.

By this time Du Fu was worn down by asthma, diabetes and years of hardship. Though he got a little further down river, he never made it to his original home. Nonetheless he was able to be defiantly celebratory:

Old and tired, my hair white, I dance and sing out:

Goosefoot cane, no sleep, catch me if you can!

Du Fu died at the age of 58 in Changsha in Hunan Province. Michael Wood went there simply to complete the journey, but was rewarded with a new lens on Du Fu’s work and the creative tradition he came from. He met Professor Yang Wu at the University there. One of her interests is “the living oral tradition of poetry and the possibility of reconstructing the ancient music that might have accompanied it”. Research on ancient poetry and music is an expanding subject in today’s China. Du Fu’s poetry has been preserved in Hunan oral tradition as well as in manuscripts. A local tradition of poetry clubs has survived the early Communist period. Now it is reviving and being encouraged. Professor Wu and her students have been busy with making replica’s of Tang dynasty instruments – for example the qin, a seven-stringed instrument with strings of twisted silk. They are finding manuscript records of early musical settings, and sound-recording local people’s singing. For me this adds another dimension to Du Fu’s work – where he can be understood , in part, as the lyricist for music that was performed in group and public settings.

In the Footsteps of Du Fu is highly informed and engagingly written. For me is also a beautiful artefact, though eminently portable, not at all a coffee table book. I rarely buy printed books now because the print is too small for me. But I was fine with this one and the illustrations are a joy. Another reason for my strong recommendation.

(1) Michael Wood In The Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet London: Simon and Schuster, 2023

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/03/06/poem-welcome-rain-spring-night/

(3) In December 755 An Lushan, a Turkic general in the Imperial service, marched on China’s then capital city, Chang’an, from North China with a quarter of a million men. They inflicted a series of defeats on the Imperial army and occupied Chang’an in July 756. An Lushan was assassinated by his own son in 757 but the war continued for 7 years. Tang dynasty China, whilst nominally lasting for decades longer, was never the same again.

Personal note: Michael Wood’s introduction begins: “if you love literature of any kind, you will have had one of those moments when you encounter a book that opens a window onto a world you never dreamed existed. Mine was at school when I first encountered Du Fu in A. C. Graham’s wonderful Poems of the Late T’ang.” I had my own version of the same experience, and still have my battered old copy. Du Fu is transliterated in that and some other translations as Tu Fu. The price, in the top left corner of the cover (see picture) is 4/- (four shillings, or 20 pence in post-1970 UK money). I have never been a formal student or scholar in this domain, but modern English translations of classical Chinese poetry have left a deep impression on me. Another poem from this collection can be found in this blog at: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2016/02/04/poem-a-withered-tree/

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October 31, 2019

MAP AND TERRITORY

The Empress Wu Zetian ruled the Chinese empire alone from 690-705, the only woman ever to do so. It was the time of the Tang dynasty, when China was open to central Asian and Indian cultural influence. Wu herself had a strong Buddhist commitment.

She was curious about the world view of an esoteric Buddhist school, the Hwa Yen. In this view, all the universes were seen as a single living organism, characterised by mutually interdependent and interpenetrating processes of becoming and unbecoming. The Empress asked for a simple and practical demonstration of this complex vision.

The Hwa Yen sage Fa-tsang was given a palace room in which he placed eight large mirrors, each at one of the eight points of the compass. He placed a ninth mirror on the ceiling and a tenth on the floor. Then he suspended a candle from the ceiling in the centre of the room. The Empress was delighted at the effects thus created. ‘How beautiful! How marvellous!’ she cried. Fa-tsang explained how the reflection of the flame in each of the ten mirrors demonstrated the relationship of the One and the many, and also how each mirror also reflected the reflections of the flame in all the other mirrors, until myriad flames filled them all. The reflections were mutually identical. In one sense they were interchangeable; in another sense they existed individually. Then Fa-tsang covered one of the reflections to show the significant consequences this had for the whole. He described the relationship between the reflections as ‘One in All; All in One; One in One; All in All ‘.

Hwa Yen Buddhists also spoke of ‘The Great Compassionate Heart’. They understood it as a quality of awareness that sees all phenomena including ourselves as arising out of Emptiness, remaining part of the Emptiness whilst assuming a temporal form, and finally falling back into Emptiness and being reabsorbed. “It is a quality of awareness that quite naturally expresses itself in acts of deepest, yet quite unsentimental reverence and compassion for all that is, the just and the unjust, humans, animals, plants and stones”.*

Fa-tsang was careful to provide a ‘the-map-is-not-the-territory’ caveat. “Of course, I must point out, Your Majesty, that this is only a rough approximation and static parable of the real state of affairs in the universe – for the universe is limitless and in it an all is in perpetual, multidimensional motion”. Yet he had still taken care to provide his Empress with a beautiful, memorable and instructive map. Such maps, and the sense of ‘Great Compassionate Heart’ which they foster are of great value. They can nourish the seeker and illuminate the way, for rulers and non-rulers alike.

*Richard Miller Yoga Nidra: a Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation and Healing Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2005 (A more extended version of the story is included in this book.)

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October 11, 2019

A SMALL GOD OF THE EARTH ATTAINS BUDDHAHOOD

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I have had this statue for awhile, and intend to pay it more attention. He might be a small god. or he might be a human priest or shaman, acting as guardian of a sacred place. I imagine it as including a waterfall and springs, with rocks and earth and trees. Either way he would be eligible to become, or realise that he latently is, a Buddha or Taoist Immortal, to use another framework from his culture of origin.

There are even rumours of his being Maitreya, the next world saviour, on account of his laughing, ecstatic demeanour. For me, this works best in a model where we could all be prompted into saving the world together. I’m not sure how best to name and describe him – what words to use, or references to make. So I took this picture instead.

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July 6, 2017

DOVE ENERGY

Guanyin is the Bodhisattva of compassion, who hears the cries of the world. In Chinese iconography, she is sometimes portrayed as seated on a lotus, holding a jar that contains pure water. It is the divine nectar of life, compassion and wisdom. She also has a small willow branch, to sprinkle on devotees and bless them with spiritual and physical peace. The willow teaches the wisdom of knowing how to bend rather than break, and has a history of use in Chinese shamanic and medical practice.

Often depicted as a woman in white (signifying purity and maternity) Guanyin may also have doves flying towards or around her. Doves are associated with fecundity, marital fidelity and longevity. There was a tradition of awarding a jade sceptre with the figure of a dove to people who reached the age of 70. Ritualized dove releases were used as a means of warding off evil. The Lotus Sutra (1) contains a chapter on the transformations of Avalokitesvara, Guanyin’s male alter-ego, travelling the world and “by resorting to a variety of shapes”, conveying beings to salvation.

I feel increasingly that Guanyin represents the same archetypal energy as Sophia, the Gnostic “mother of angels” (2). In my icon of Sophia, she holds a chalice at heart level, and a dove sits in it, facing out. When I had a Temple of Sophia practice, she often appeared in dove form rather than anthropomorphically. She inherits dove symbolism from the Goddesses of the Eastern Mediterranean, and from Jewish culture, again with dove symbolism, derives the role of revealing God’s inward thought, and communicating insight and knowledge to mankind.

For me it is as if a dove energy has relocated me to a new practice community. The opportunity to work more systematically on lovingkindness and compassion than heretofore, yet in a gentle unforced way. Hence the cultural change of garment from ‘Sophia’ to ‘Guanyin’. Early this year I had two episodes of active imagination (open waking dreams rather than structured guided meditations). In the first, I was a mouse in the talons of an owl, flying over water to an unknown destination. I knew that the owl was Sophia. In the second, I was under the tutelage of Sophia on a small ocean-going yacht. Here too, I didn’t know the destination. I remember her asking me to contemplate my existing resources, and I thought of Russel Williams talking about “stillness, pure consciousness, emptiness of being – based on sense-feeling, and filling the emptiness with lovingkindness” (3).

Some months later I contacted the Community of Interbeing. It’s a Mahayana Buddhist community, and so under the aegis of Guanyin, and is proving a good place to be. Beyond its regular meetings, there have been two spin-offs. The first is my Mindful Self-Compassion course (4). The second is a recent retreat with members and friends of my sangha. The theme was ‘embodiment’. The purpose was to make Buddhist practice more somatically aware and Earth honouring. We spent a significant amount of time outside and making use of local topography. It was very like my outdoor experiences of contemplative Druidry and included the same sensitivity to the politics of Deep Ecology In terms of Dove guidance, I feel that I have landed now, and I simply go on from here.

(1) The lotus sutra: saddharma-pundarika Translated by H. Kern, 1884 (Kindle edition)

(2) Jean-Yves Leloup The gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the gnosis of the sacred union. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2003 (Translation and commentary from the Coptic. English translation, Joseph Rowe. Forward by Jacob Needleman)

(3) Russel Williams (2015) Not I, Not Other than I: the Life and Spiritual Teachings of Russel Williams (Edited by Steve Taylor) Winchester & Washington: O Books

(4) https://centerformsc.org/

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June 14, 2017

POEM: SILENT ILLUMINATION

Silently and serenely, one forgets all words,

Clearly and vividly, it appears before you.

When one realizes it, time has no limits.

When experienced, your surroundings come to life.

Singularly illuminating this bright awareness,

Full of wonder is the pure illumination.

The moon’s appearance, a river of stars,

Snow-clad pines, clouds hovering on mountain peaks.

In darkness, they glow with brightness.

In shadows, they shine with a splendid light.

Like the dreaming of a crane flying in empty space,

Like the clear, still water of an autumn pool,

Endless eons dissolve into nothingness,

Each indistinguishable from the other.

Chan Master Sheng-Yen The Poetry of Enlightenment: poems by ancient Chan Masters New York: Dharma Drum Publications, 1987

This is the first section of a longer piece by Hongzhi (in this text transliterated as Hung Chi), who lived in China from 1097-1157. He developed a version of what we now call mindfulness meditation called Silent Illumination.

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June 6, 2017

GUANYIN 1940

Childhood inspiration in a traditional Chinese Buddhist setting ….

“My early sense of spirituality was also derived from my mother. She was a member of the local Guanyin Society, twenty or thirty women who met three times a year to chant to Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of the Great Compassion, who hears and responds to the cries of all living beings. Most of the women, like my mother, could not read, so they just chanted simple prayers in a melodic drone.

“The women wanted me as part of the group because there was a common belief in China that children – pure of mind and unsullied by unwholesome thoughts such as greed – have a clearer connection to the life of the spirit than adults. But I also think that in subtle and unconscious ways my mother wanted me to chant because she was directing me toward a spiritual life.

I’d chant – a scrawny, sticklike kid among the sturdy peasant women in their padded jackets and pants, who laughed at my bumbling attempts to follow along. We met in different women’s living rooms by night, our activities lit by an oil lamp, sitting on wooden benches around a rough wood table. In the center of the table was a statue of Guanyin, in front of which we placed offerings of incense, fruit and candles.

“The women’s laughter was indulgent and spurred me on. I chanted with great energy. I grew to love chanting and would often chant on my own while doing chores or walking. I don’t think it is an accident that later in life, when I became a monk, a core part of my practice involved prostrations to the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion. I believe that it is because of good karma in previous lives that I started chanting Guanyin’s name as a child. The karmic connection with Guanyin continues to this day. It is the foundation of everything I do.”

Chan Master Shen Yeng Footprints in the Snow: The Autobiography of a Buddhist Monk New York: Doubleday, 2008

Shen Yeng was born in 1930 and grew up by the shores of the Yangzi River. He was the last of six children in a poor rural family, but got the chance to enter a Buddhist monastery in his early teens. It was a time of civil war and Japanese occupation in much of the country.

In 1949 he was a monk in Shanghai and. along with other young monks, pragmatically recruited into the fleeing Nationalist Army as a means of reaching the safety (for a Buddhist monk) of Taiwan. He was not to see any of his family again until 1988. By this time both his parents were dead but he met up with an older brother, who had news of them and other family members.

On his discharge from the military in 1960 he resumed his life as a monk, became a well-known figure in Taiwanese Chan Buddhism, studying also with Zen practitioners for a period in Japan. Invited to teach in the U.S. in the mid 1970’s, eventually establishing a base for the ‘Western Chan’ in New York. From this beginning the Friends of the Western Chan, where people don’t necessarily have to become Buddhist to benefit from Chan teaching, have become established in several English speaking countries.

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December 14, 2016

POEM: STAYING OVERNIGHT AT WILLOW BANK INN

When are my travels ever going to end?

My old body has come to this inn again.

The roadside pines and junipers are ten years older,

Once short, but now tall and stately.

The place where I stopped last night is far away;

And tomorrow, tonight will be last night.

In just an instant the present has become the past –

I’d have to be a saint not to drink wine.

From Yang Wan-li Heaven my Blanket: Earth my Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1975 (Translated and introduced by Jonathan Chaves

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February 4, 2016

POEM: A WITHERED TREE

Not a twig or leaf on the old tree,

Wind and frost harm it no more.

A man could pas through a hole in its belly,

Ants crawl searching under its peeling bark.

Its only lodger, the toadstool which dies in a morning,

The birds no longer visit in the twilight.

But its wood can still spark tinder.

It does not care yet to be only the void at its heart.

By Han Yü (768-824)

From: Poems of the Late T’ang translated from the Chinese with an introduction by A.C. Graham Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965

Han Yü was primarily an essayist and polemicist, and initiated an ultimately successful Confucian revival at a time of Buddhist cultural dominance. When writing verse, he adopted devices traditionally confined to prose and to fu (prose poems) and sought to attend to the social and human content of poetry.

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January 15, 2016

THE GOLDEN FLOWER

“Naturalness is called the Way. The Way has no name or form; it is just the essence, just the primal spirit.” (1)

The Secret of the Golden Flower is a lay manual of Buddhist and Taoist methods for clarifying the mind. It was first published in China towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is the product of the ‘Complete Reality’ School of Taoism (2), which synthesized the internal alchemical arts of longevity, the meditation techniques of Chan (Zen) Buddhism and Confucian ethics. Its key texts included the Tao Te Ching (3) the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra (4) and a later Taoist work which translates as Cultivating Stillness (5).

The golden flower itself symbolizes the quintessence of the paths of Buddhism and Taoism, as understood by this school. Gold stands for light, the light of the mind itself; the flower represents the blossoming, or opening up, of the light of the mind. Thus the image evokes the awakening of the real self and its hidden potential. Primal spirit is a mode of awareness subtler and more direct than thought or imagination, and it is central to this blossoming. The Secret of the Golden Flower is devoted to the recovery and refinement of primal spirit in the practitioner.

“The beauties of the highest heavens and the marvels of the sublimest realms are all within the heart: this is where the perfectly open and aware spirit concentrates. Confucians call it the open centre, Buddhists call it the pedestal of awareness, Taoists call it the ancestral earth, the yellow court, the mysterious pass, the primal opening.”

In 1920 a thousand copies were reprinted due to a demand by an “esoteric circle” in Beijing according to Richard Wilhelm, who brought it to Europe in a German edition a few years later with a foreword and commentary by C. G. Jung (6). An English edition translated from the German by Cary F. Baynes appeared in 1929. These editions included fragments from a second work, also from the Complete Reality School, called Hui-Ming Ching (7). This adopted the Chan idea that there is no separation between original nature or wisdom-mind (hui = Sanskrit prajna) and stillness (= Sanskrit Samadhi). At the same time hui-ming means uniting wisdom-mind with the energy of life (ming). Contemplative stillness is to be complemented by a system of energetic movement, drawn from Chinese energy arts (chi gung) – an approach consistent with the Taoist understanding of the Tao as simultaneously the underlying permanent reality and the changing flux of things in transformation.

Modern translators recognize the importance of the pioneering Wilhelm/Jung work, whilst expressing dismay at its level of inaccuracy and misrepresentation. In relation to the Hui-Ming Ching Eva Wong, who was able to translate a complete copy with illustrations, says: “Baynes’ translation is severely biased by Jungian psychology and does not present the work from a Taoist spiritual perspective … the historical and philosophical connections with its major influences … [are] … ignored … we cannot appreciate the spiritual value of a text if we impose a particular perspective, especially one that comes from a different culture … we need to yield to the text and let it speak on its own terms”. Thomas Cleary is equally unhappy on behalf of The Secret of the Golden Flower, using his own notes on the text to compare the older version unfavourably with his own and asserting that “Wilhelm was not familiar with even the most rudimentary lore of Chan Buddhism”.

In a way, Wilhelm and Jung suffer from the downside of being pioneers. Their successors are bound to know the territory better, partly thanks to them. But they were also men of their time in other ways, in their view of the mystic orient. Jung’s introduction began with a section on Difficulties encountered by a European in trying to understand the East. He expressed admiration for Chinese recognition of the “paradoxes and polarity inherent in what is alive. The opposites always balanced each other – a sign of high culture. One-sidedness, though it lends momentum, is a mark of barbarism”. He also used the opportunity to express pleasure that the West was now learning to value feeling and intuition and thereby widen Western consciousness and culture beyond a narrow “tyranny” of intellect. But he also made (to us) embarrassing statements like “measured by it [Western intellect], Eastern intellect can be described as childish … it is sad indeed when the European departs from his own nature and imitates or ‘affects’ it in any way”.

We are now in a globalizing 21^st. century where large numbers of Westerners are working with Buddhist meditation and Chinese energy arts and finding them entirely accessible and transforming. China and its place in the world are also very different. We can let go of any residual notion that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. I’ve had a personal involvement with Buddhist meditation and Tantric traditions that have incorporated chi gung exercises. I do not find them alien. My Western Way is a result both of a personal choice, and perhaps of a personal call. It could easily have been different.

I can learn directly from the East and I find that Taoism has a particular attraction – both that of the early classics and of the much later Complete Reality School: its attempts at inclusivity, its dialogue with Chan, its cultivation of the energy of life, and a Taoist/Chan sensibility in poetry and painting all speak to me. I am aware of a cultural note that is different to mine, yet I can incorporate key lessons directly into my practice. When working with breath, I have become increasingly conscious of a simultaneous movement of the breath and a stillness in the breath. For me this is both an experience and a metaphor. In my terms it feels very Sophian, and I believe I owe the insight to my acquaintance – however superficial – with Taoist tradition.

The Secret of the Golden Flower: the Classic Chinese Book of Life (1991) Translated by Thomas Cleary, with introduction, notes and commentary New York: HarperCollins
Eva Wong (1997) The Shambhala Guide to Taoism Boston & London: Shambhala
Lao Tzu (1998) Tao Te Ching: a Book about the Way and the Power of the Way New version by Ursula K. Le Guin, with the collaboration of J. P. Seaton Boston & London: Shambhala
The Heart Sutra: the Womb of the Buddhas (2004) Translation and commentary by Red Pine Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint
Cultivating Stillness: a Taoist Manual for Transforming Body and Mind (1992) Translated with an introduction by Eva Wong Boston & London: Shambhala
The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life (1962) Translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm with a Foreword and Commentary by C. G. Jung, and part of a Chinese meditation text The Book of Consciousness and Life with a foreword by Salome Wilhelm. London & Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul (revised edition)
Liu Hua-Yang Cultivating the Energy of Life (1998) A translation of the Hui-Ming Ching and its commentaries by Eva Wong Boston & London: Shambhala

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May 4, 2015

WHAT IS POETRY?

Yang Wan-li’s poem ‘What is Poetry?’ asks the question from the Buddhist and Taoist influenced perspective of Sung Dynasty China (the poet lived in our 12th. century – a little younger than Geoffrey of Monmouth, a little older than Gerald of Wales). It is also timeless.

Now, what is poetry?

If you say it is a matter of words,

I will say a good poet gets rid of words.

If you say it is simply a matter of meaning,

I will say a good poet gets rid of meaning,

“But”, you ask, “without words and without meaning

Where is the poetry?”

To this I reply: “Get rid of words and get rid of meaning,

And there is still poetry.”

From Yang Wan-li Heaven my Blanket: Earth my Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1975 (Translated and introduced by Jonathan Chaves)

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Tag: Chinese Buddhism