Of Mortals and Immortals: The Role of Mountains in North America and China - Part One (VIAGGI E CULTURA) ~ di Curtis Dean Smith - TeclaXXI
VIAGGI E CULTURA
CURTIS DEAN SMITH
Of Mortals and Immortals:
The Role of Mountains in North America and China
Part Two*
*La prima parte è stata pubblicata da TeclaXXI il 14/10/2025
As
Tao now led a life of leisure, he would frequent his friends in Mount Lu,
including Hui-yuan and Lu Xiu-Jing.
After Hui-yuan founded the White Lotus Society to teach Pure Land
Buddhism later in his life, he made a vow to never leave Mount Lu. It was said that, if he were ever to cross
Tiger Stream, that flowed outside of Dong-lin Temple, all the mountain cats
would howl. One day, Tao Yuan-ming and
Lu Xiu-Jing visited Hui-yuan, and when they left, Hui-yuan accompanied them to
see them off. Before they realized it,
they had passed Tiger Stream, upon which they stopped and looked at each other
and then broke out into laughter. This
story is often repeated as an illustration of the religious harmony in Chinese
culture.
Tao
Frequented Mount Lu, and although he sought spiritual, political, and
intellectual freedom, he never moved into the mountains. He had a wife and children to look after, and
besides, he never did openly declare himself to be a spiritual seeker. At most, he said that he was more interested
in drinking wine and lazing about than anything else. To make sure that everyone knew this, he wrote
a mock biography, “The Biography of Mister Five Willows,” in which he said:
I don’t know who this man was, neither am
I clear about his name. There were five willows by the side of his house, and
so he took this as his alias. He was quiet and of few words and did not lust
after fame or fortune. Although he enjoyed reading books, he did not try to
strive for detailed understanding; whenever he grasped the idea, he would be so
overjoyed that he would forget to eat.
By nature, he enjoyed wine, but he was
poor and was not able to come by it often. Friends and relatives knew of this
and so would occasionally prepare some and invite him over. When he drank, he
always finished it all, with the intention of becoming drunk. Once drunk, he
would take leave, never staying on for the sake of courtesy.
His surroundings were sparse, not enough to block the wind and sun. His clothes
were ragged and patched, and his bowl was often empty. He was content. He often
composed prose for self-amusement, expressing very well his own ideals. He
ended his days in oblivion to attainment and loss.
Tao
enjoyed his home life, drinking, reading, caring for his children and garden,
and composing poetry. One of his most
famous poems, the fifth from a series of twenty poems titled simply “Drinking
Wine” 飲酒,
was said by the great literary critic and all-around literatus Su Shi
(1037–1101) to be one of the best poems of Chinese literary history:
I
build my hut among the people,
And yet there’s no clatter of carriage or horse.
You
ask how this can be?
With a mind distant, the place too grows remote.
Picking
chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge,
I just happen to see Southern Mountain.
The
mountain air at dusk is so fine,
And flying birds together return home.
In
this there is principal truth;
Wanting to express it, I have already forgotten the words.
What
caught Su Shi’s attention in this poem was the third character in the sixth
line, 見
jian, translated above as “see.” Su Shi wrote that common editions of Tao’s
poems at the time had altered this character to 望 wang,
"to gaze at." This one
alteration negates the entire meaning of the poem. By exploring this change, we can get a taste
of what mountains mean to the Chinese culture.
Although
traditionally viewed as a recluse with Daoist tendencies, Tao Yuan-ming was at
heart a steadfast Confucian; he wanted to serve society. Unfortunately, his many attempts at an
official career all met with disappointment, and so he felt impelled to follow
Mencius's admonition that, in times of order, one should participate in
government, but in times of disorder, one should retire.[1] As a member of the educated literati class,
by retiring from public service, Tao was making a public statement that he
viewed the current government as not deserving his service. Other literati had been killed for such an
action, and so Tao had to find a way to protect himself. He did so through poetry, building a persona
of a lazy drunkard unfit for service to the government. Thus, the first couplet states that, although
he lives within the social realm, the horses and carriages of the rich and
powerful elite do not pass by or stop at his front gate. The second couplet is almost a cliché when he
says that it is because of his detachment to the current affairs of the ruling
class that his micro-realm has become remote, allowing him the leisure to sit
in his yard and drink wine.
How
do we know that he is drinking wine, other than by the title of the
series? In the fifth line, Tao leans
down to pick a chrysanthemum flower, which from the seventh poem in the series,
we know that he will float in his wine: “Autumn chrysanthemums have beautiful
appearance / Dew still on them, I pick the flowers.”[2] As Tao leans over to pick this flower, he
only by chance happens to see Southern Mountain, or Mount Lu. One would think little of this unassuming
couplet, nor the following couplet, if not for the final couplet in which Tao
makes a reference to the first lines of the Lao-zi, also known as the Dao-de
Jing: “The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way.” Tao has somehow achieved a spiritual
revelation. We know by the
chrysanthemums that the season is autumn, and we know by the mountain breeze
and the returning birds that dusk is approaching. As he sits comfortably in his yard at home
with the warmth of the fire over which he warms his wine, he just happens to
see Southern Mountain, Mount Lu, where his friends Hui-yuan and Lu Xiu-jing are
preparing for a cold and fearsome night.
Night is, after all, when the mountain tigers and other beasts come out,
and the bandit’s roam. Tao, however,
enjoys the fragrance of the breeze carrying the fragrances of the flowers and
trees down from the mountain without having to be in the mountains. He then sees the birds returning from a day
seeking food to the warm coziness of their nests to spend the night. The principal truth that Tao has realized is
that, as Mahayana Buddhism preaches, true enlightenment cannot ultimately come
to those who actively strive for it; to achieve enlightenment, one must give up
the search for enlightenment, for the desire of enlightenment is itself an
obstacle to its attainment. The “see” in
line five is the key to the poem, for it is passive, unlike the active
“gaze.” Tao has already found his
freedom just by giving up all pursuits.
Not only is his mind distant, but it is free. As Treatise on Realizing the Nature,
attributed to Bodhidharma[3]
says: “If one can see one’s own true Nature, one thus attains Buddhahood.”
In
conclusion, to appreciate mountains in North America, one hikes into the
mountains to communicate with nature. It
is through the solitariness of being in the mountains that one realizes one’s
minuscule insignificance in relation to the greatness of nature. In Chinese culture, however, the best way to
truly appreciate mountains, as Tao Yuan-ming taught, is to be not in the
mountains but to appreciate the essence of the mountain from an objective
distance. As Su Shi said of Mount Lu in
1084:
From
the front, it is a range; from the side a peak
Far and near, high and low, from each perspective it is different.
I
do not recognize the true face of Mount Lu
Only because I am in the mountain.[4]
[1] 治則進，亂則退. Mencius, 2A2.
[2] 秋菊有佳色，裛露掇其英 。
[3]
Boddhidharma: the semi-legendary figure traditionally
believed to have brought the indigenous Chinese school of Chan, or Zen,
Buddhism from India to China.
[4]橫看成嶺側成峰，遠近高低各不同。不識廬山真面目，只緣身在此山中。 Su Shi, “Written on the wall of Xi-lin [Temple]” 題西林壁.
CURTIS D. SMITH
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