Читать книгу Watching the Tree: A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Spiritual Beliefs and Universal Wisdom - Adeline Mah Yen - Страница 8

After I graduated from the London Hospital Medical School, I was fortunate enough to be chosen by the renowned neurologist Sir Russell Brain as his house-physician. One of the fringe benefits of working under Sir Russell was that it gave me the opportunity to treat his roster of famous private patients, many of whom suffered from unusual diseases that were difficult to diagnose. Among them was the great English poet Philip Larkin.

He was then close to forty, a balding man who worried about everything, with anxious intelligent eyes behind thick glasses. He had a private room and many vague symptoms: insomnia, deafness, lack of concentration, fainting spells. I was ordered to perform a plethora of painful diagnostic procedures on him which he endured without complaint. After each ordeal he would quiz me about the significance and rationale of the tests. On many occasions he would order the nurse in charge to page me ‘immediately’. When I rushed back in response to his summons, I would find him listening to the radio or reading in bed, having forgotten he had sent for me.

We did, however, have some wonderful conversations: about literature, philosophy, poetry and the art of writing. I was in awe of his talent and flattered that he should want to chat with someone like me, a lowly intern with literary aspirations assigned to look after his health. Once he complained of boredom and asked whether I would consider having dinner with him outside the hospital on my day off. I declined and told him it was against hospital rules for house-physicians to socialise with their patients. ‘The real reason is that there is someone special in your life, isn’t there?’ he asked. But I found his question difficult and left without answering.

We discussed music and I told him that my favourite composer was J. S. Bach. He mentioned a Dutch artist named Escher, whose drawings consisted of recurrent cyclical themes that reminded him of Bach’s fugues and preludes. Then he asked me, ‘What’s the best book you’ve ever read?’

‘Shakespeare’s King Lear,’ I answered without hesitation. ‘What’s yours?’

He started to laugh. ‘It’s almost too ironical. Here you are – a Chinese girl saying that the best book in the world, ever, is Shakespeare’s King Lear. And here I am, an Englishman, telling you that it’s the Tao Te Ching* by Lao Zi . Every word in that book matters. Nothing is superfluous. It’s a work of absolute genius! Are you familiar with it? No?! I almost feel like learning Chinese just to be able to read it to you in the original. You must get hold of a copy! Most British libraries carry the Arthur Waley translation. Lao Zi delighted in writing in circles and paradoxes. You should read it while listening to Bach and looking at Escher’s art. The works of all three have a common, revolving theme that somehow blends them with each other!’

Philip Larkin was discharged from hospital without a definite diagnosis. We said goodbye, and he gave me a copy of his poems, The Less Deceived, inscribing it to ‘Dr Yen’ and signing it ‘With kindest regards from Philip Larkin’. A few months later, having completed my term as house-doctor, I moved to Edinburgh (as mentioned earlier) and went to work there. I took the book with me when I moved into the attic of Dennis and Helen Katz, colleagues and close friends of Karl’s. However, Karl continued to write and his sporadic visits were deeply disturbing. At times, I thought I, too, would go mad. At the end of two years I finally made a clean break from Karl and went ‘home’ to my family in Hong Kong, leaving Larkin’s book with the Katzes. On the publication of Falling Leaves three decades later I was doing a reading at the Edinburgh Festival when Dennis and Helen entered. In their hands they held a gift. They were returning Larkin’s book.

I like to work in public libraries. While writing this chapter, I happened to be in the library on Brompton Road in London’s Earls Court. Looking up from my manuscript one morning while searching for a word, I saw Anthony Thwaite’s Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985 standing on a shelf immediately above my desk. On a whim, I took the volume down and flipped through its pages, wondering if my former patient had described any of his experiences at the London Hospital. To my amazement and delight, I found my name mentioned in two of his letters to Maeve Brennan.

April 10, 1961 … Everyone is very nice (my doctor, or rather, the house-doctor, is Chinese, a Miss Yen) …

Well, now it is 9.45 and almost time for me to settle down for the night. Miss Yen came in and said the ear report was negative, so there’s no cause to worry about that. Still, there are plenty of other things, aren’t there. Miss Yen intimated that she couldn’t hear what Sir Russell said either!* She keeps asking how one writes poetry, how one manages the beats and rhymes. I say that is the easiest part. The hardest part is having something to write about that succeeds in drawing words from your inner mind – that is very important, as one can always think of subjects, but they have to matter in that peculiar way that produces words and some kind of development of thought or theme, or else there’s no poem either in thought or words.

Philip Larkin died in 1985 at the age of sixty-three. Ours was a brief encounter and, after his discharge from hospital, I never saw him again. Looking back, his belief that the Tao Te Ching was the greatest book ever written must have influenced me subliminally over the years. It suggested the possibility that Chinese thought, if properly translated, can be of interest to other western minds besides that of one brilliant, gifted British poet. It may even have inspired me to base Watching the Tree on this very theme.

Of all the ancient Chinese classics, the one which has been most frequently translated into foreign languages is a slim volume written 2500 years ago: the Tao Te Ching (Classic of the Tao and Its Virtue). More than forty different translations in English alone are in print. According to many sources, the author was someone named Lao Zi (Old Master), a contemporary of Confucius. But some people doubt Lao Zi’s existence and think that the book was written by unknown authors in the fourth century BC

Lao Zi, the founder of Taoism, was born in Ku Xian, Henan province (400 miles south of Beijing) in 571 BC His real name was Li Er. He came from a distinguished and cultured family and was employed as a curator of the imperial archives and historical documents at the royal court in the capital city of Loyang during the Chou dynasty. Confucius admired him and was said to have sought his advice around 517 BC.

Lao Zi was married and had a son who later became a general in the state of Wei. According to legend, Lao Zi left his post in his old age and travelled west to India, leaving his writing in the hands of a frontier warden guarding the Hankukuan Pass.

His book, the Tao Te Ching, is very short. It contains just over 5000 Chinese characters and the entire text will fit on a single sheet of newspaper. Divided into eighty-one separate, tersely worded and rhymed chapters, its concepts are subtle and profound, but its cryptic language lends itself to many different interpretations.

The central theme revolves around the tao , which means ‘the way’ or ‘the road’, but which is often used to indicate the order of Nature. As a philosophy Taoism deals with the unchangeable, eternal and pervasive oneness of the universe; with cycles and the relativity of all standards; and with the return to the divine intelligence of non-being, from which all being has come.

The book begins enigmatically:

The Tao which can be expressed is not the unchanging Tao;

The name which can be defined is not the eternal name.

The tao is the ancestor of all things. It is powerful but is also invisible and inaudible. It is hidden and nameless dao yin wu ming , and operates by non-action ( wu wei), which means non-interference or letting things take their own spontaneous course: ‘Tao takes no action but nothing is left undone.’

Lao Zi’s metaphysical concept bears an uncanny resemblance to the teachings of the Dutch philosopher Spinoza (1632–77). Like Lao Zi, Spinoza finds his God in the whole of the universe, which contains all reality. His pantheism essentially restates the same ideas as the Tao Te Ching. Rejecting the concept of a personal and emotional God, or one with human attributes who meddles in human affairs, Spinoza envisaged a higher being who acts according to the necessity of His own nature and does not interfere in the everyday life of men. Lao Zi expressed it thus:

Hence the wise man depends on non-action for action,

Continues teaching his ‘lessons of silence’.

Yet the multitudinous creatures are influenced by him;

He does not reject them.

He nurtures them, but claims no possession of them,

Oversees them, but does not put pressure on them.

Accomplishes his purpose, but does not dwell on his achievements,

And precisely because he calls no attention to his actions

He is not banished from the completion of his tasks.

In the Tao Te Ching, the tao is compared to water, which accomplishes much while being meek and receptive. It is all-powerful in its humility. Called by some the ‘master of camouflage’, Lao Zi taught that power can be disguised as weakness and non-violence will overcome force.

Nothing under heaven is softer and weaker than water,

Yet nothing surpasses it in battling the hard and strong.

Like water, the tao affects the universe through wu wei: a non-invasive and persuasive love whose strengths are its virtue and submission. Lao Zi wrote:

The best of the best is similar to water.

Water aids and benefits ten thousand different creatures,

Yet it neither tussles nor contends,

But rests content in places despised by others.

It is this which makes water so near to the Tao.

Man should consider his home a good dwelling place,

In his thoughts, he should value the profound,

In his friendship, he should be gentle and kind,

In his words, he should be truthful and sincere,

In his government, he should abide by good order,

In his affairs, he should be proficient and effective,

In his actions, he should seize the opportune moment.

Although many of the concepts in the Tao Te Ching reach lofty and mystical heights, their effectiveness can be understood and appreciated only through personal transformation. Lao Zi anticipated this problem:

When a scholar of great talent hears the Tao

He tries his best to practice it.

When a scholar of average talent hears the Tao,

He is torn between applying it and not applying it.

When a scholar of inferior talent hears the Tao,

He laughs loudly at it.

If it did not provoke laughter, it would not be the Tao.

He wrote of the sense of hidden divine influence in the universe, expressing the mystery and beauty of the tao poetically:

Look at it, but one sees nothing,

It is called illusory.

Listen to it, but one hears no sound,

It is called undetectable.

Feel for it, but one touches a void,

It is called minuscule.

These three, because they elude us,

Meld to become one.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century traditional western thought based on Aristotelian logic of the either/or classification is being increasingly challenged by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Ironically, 2500 years ago Lao Zi had already written about the rise of relative opposites in his book:

Existence and non-existence are dependent on each other

Difficult and easy give rise to the same concept

Long and short are derived by comparison

High differs from low only by position

Sound and echo blend into one harmony

Front and back follow one another in sequence.

In 1927 Werner Heisenberg propounded the Principle of Uncertainty for subatomic particles. ‘In the subatomic situation,’ he wrote, ‘the effects introduced by the observer to observe the phenomenon automatically introduces a degree of uncertainty in the observed phenomenon.’ Lao Zi expressed similar sentiments in these words:

He who knows does not speak;

He who speaks does not know.

Dualistic thinking in terms of unified opposites was expressed thus:

Thirty spokes are joined at the nave to build a wheel

But it is the space between that lets it function

Lumps of clay are fashioned into a vessel

But it is the emptiness within that renders it useful

Doors and windows are cut to build a room

But it is the enclosure that furnishes a shelter

As we benefit from that which exists,

Let us recognise the utility of that which does not.

Lao Zi’s intuition about the hidden might of the tao is succinctly captured in a few short lines. Without the empty space of the hub in which the wheel turns, the cart cannot move. Without the hollowness in the vessel, the vase has no function. Without the emptiness behind the windows and doors, there is no place to live.

The development of Taoism can be roughly divided into three periods:

 Ancient Period (from 571 BC to 221 BC, when China became united by Qin Shi Huang Di, first emperor of China)

 Middle Period (from 221 BC to AD 906)

 Third Period (from AD 906 to the present).

The wisdom of Lao Zi was supplemented and expanded two centuries after its inception by Zhuang Zi (Master Zuang), who wrote the book also known as Zhuang Zi, considered to be one of the most important books of Taoism.

Zhuang Zi was born about 200 years after Lao Zi and died shortly after 300 BC. He was from Mengshien in Henan province (the same province as Lao Zi) and held a minor post as an officer/administrator. In his book he tells us that one day, while he was fishing, two ambassadors from the southern state of Chu came to visit, bringing precious gifts from their ruler. They tried to persuade him to take up the post of prime minister but Zhuang Zi declined without even looking up from his fishing pole.

He was married but childless. When his wife died, his disciples found him sitting on the ground with an inverted basin on his knee. Instead of mourning her, he was singing a song and beating time on the basin, while her coffin lay in a corner awaiting burial. Shocked at his behaviour, they questioned him. This was Zhuang Zi’s reply:

‘When she died, I was in despair. But soon, I told myself that in death, nothing new has happened. In the beginning, we lacked not only life, but form. Not only form, but spirit. We were blended in one great featureless indistinguishable mass. Then the time arrived when the mass evolved spirit, spirit evolved form and form evolved life.

‘Now life in turn has evolved death. Besides nature, man’s being also has its seasons; his own sequence of spring and autumn, summer and winter. If someone is tired and lies down to rest, we should not pursue him with cries and laments. I have lost my wife and she has laid down to sleep in the Great Inner Room. To disturb her with my tears would only demonstrate that I am ignorant of the Laws of Nature. That is why I am no longer mourning.’

In another passage Zhuang Zi mused further about death:

How do I know that wanting to be alive is not a great mistake? How do I know that hating to die is not like thinking one has lost one’s way, when all the time one is on the path that leads to home? …

While a man is dreaming, he does not know that he dreams; nor can he interpret a dream till the dream is done. It is only when he wakes, that he knows it was a dream. Not till the Great Wakening can he know that all this was One Great Dream …

He once had a vivid dream in which he was a butterfly fluttering from flower to flower. During the dream he was utterly convinced he was a butterfly. When he woke, he said to himself, ‘Am I Zhuang Zi dreaming I was a butterfly or am I a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuang Zi?’

Zhuang Zi developed and refined the basic concepts of the Tao Te Ching and taught that the tao way is the way of Nature. It includes the substance as well as the manner in which the cosmos exists and acts. Over 2000 years before the birth of Einstein, who propounded that matter and energy are interchangeable, this ancient Chinese sage and his disciples had already suggested that the balance in the universe remains for ever the same. Zhuang Zi conceived of the cosmos as a stream in which one state succeeds another endlessly. Change is the only constant. Time never stops and no state can be retained. There is incessant transformation. However, while everything is changing, for each action there is a reaction so that the cosmic balance remains the same.

When I first started to learn English in earnest, one of the English words that used to puzzle me was ‘universe’. The English-Chinese dictionary translated ‘universe’ into yu zhou. The Chinese word yu means ‘space’; but zhou means ‘infinite time’, or ‘time without beginning or end’. As teenagers, my third older brother James and I puzzled over the inclusion of ‘time’ into the concept of ‘space’ in translating ‘universe’ into yu zhou. A few years later, after James was admitted to Cambridge University in England, he sent me a note. ‘According to Einstein’s theory of relativity,’ he wrote, ‘our ancestors were correct all along. Our universe does consist of “space/time” and not space alone. Yu zhou is right on the money, after all.’

While doing research for this book, I actually came across the words yu zhou in ancient Chinese books. It gave me a thrill to note the similarity between my ancestors’ conception of the universe and that of our greatest contemporary physicists.

Zhuang Zi says, ‘Tao is real, is faithful, yet does nothing and has no form. Can be handed down, yet cannot be passed from hand to hand. Can be acquired but cannot be seen. Is its own trunk, its own root. Before heaven and earth existed, from the beginning, Tao was there.’

In Taoism, the goal is spiritual freedom, to be achieved in the realm of Nature. Following Nature means wu wei (taking no action), through which one will gain contentment, enlightenment and peace. Man should see his lifecycle of birth, growth, decay and death as part of Nature and accept change to be the tao of everything in the universe.

During the Middle Period (221 BC–AD 906) Taoism developed more as a religion than a philosophy. The writings of Taoist philosophers such as Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi were carefully culled by priest-magicians to cultivate and reinforce superstitious practices such as the search for immortality and alchemy. Huai Nan Tzu (178–122 BC) first started mixing philosophy with mystical concepts such as spirits and distant fairylands. Certain elements were synthesised by religious leaders and interpreted according to their beliefs. Borrowing from the I Ching, they taught that all things were products of cosmic negative and positive forces (yin and yang), which could be harmonised with the vital force ( qi) of the universe and concentrated in the human body to promote health and prolong life. They developed breathing techniques ( qi gong) in an attempt to control the flow of qi, along with special sexual practices which allowed men to regulate and preserve the flow of their semen, thought to be linked to male (yang) qi. Various ‘scriptures’ were written which aimed to provide Taoism with a theory as well as an elaborate system of practice. Ceremonies were formulated and names given to a great number of gods: kitchen; stars; ancestors; famous historical personages; literature; medicine; wealth; immortals; ideals, and countless others. Taoists had their own clergy, temples and images. The head of the clergy was called the Heavenly Father, a title retained by his direct descendants. Taoism became an organised religion as well as a state cult, reaching the zenith of its power and influence during the Tang dynasty (AD 618–960), partly because the Tang emperor had the same surname as Lao Zi (Li).

Over the years Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism imitated, influenced and intermingled with each other extensively. One of the most popular Taoist gods, Guan Yin (Goddess of Mercy), was borrowed wholesale from Buddhism. Another was a courageous and red-faced military hero named Guan Yu , who fought and died during the Three Kingdoms War (AD 220–264). However, Taoism was less organised than Buddhism and lacked an intellectually enlightened leadership; it gradually widened its sphere and lost its focus. Primary objectives became earthly blessings such as wealth, happiness, health, children, longevity and the fulfilment of personal desires. These were to be obtained through witchcraft, magic, aphrodisiacs and incantations. Instead of developing a comprehensive philosophy based on the Tao Te Ching, Taoists concentrated on cultivating practices such as breath control (qi gong), periodic vegetarianism, meditation, shadow-boxing ( tai chi – modelled on the movements of animals such as birds and panthers), and attempts to transform mercury into gold. Geomancy (Jeng shui ), fortune-telling, divination and the use of charms were some of the offshoots of religious Taoism. Ritual observances became increasingly ‘practical’. Food was offered to departed ancestors but eaten after the ceremony by living relatives. A westerner summed it all up by saying that in China the intellectuals questioned everything and believed in nothing whereas the uneducated questioned nothing and believed in everything.

With the coming of Christianity and western missionaries following the Opium War in the nineteenth century, Taoism as an organised religion declined and faded away. However, its influence is deeply etched in the Chinese psyche. Many Taoist temples, gods, legends, fairy-tales, ceremonies, festivals and traditions have not only survived but are still celebrated in China as well as in Chinatowns all over the world. In addition, the teachings of Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi have left to Chinese thought their lasting legacy of agnosticism, scepticism, tolerance and detachment.