tang dynasty times

Echoes from Ugarit

Don't you wonder if Babylon was really as bad as people say? We are, after all, talking of the Old Testament's city of sin. Located in that land between the rivers, Mesopotamia was a place where almost a dozen city-states rose up --give or take some 5,000 years ago (which is old even by Chinese standards!) Sumer, Ur, Ninevah, Babel, Uruk, Aleppo,  Babylon-- these places flourished right there from the very start of written history and written language. And as it turns out, they were every bit as cosmopolitan as the later city-states of the Silk Road. Dozens of languages co-existed side-by-side-- with six of the major languages sharing the same cuneiform script. The languages (which were mostly unrelated to each other) were used interchangeably-- and often transcribed in parallel translations--hinting at what must have been a surprisingly sophisticated and international world.

As linguistic scholar extraordinaire Nicholos Ostler tells us,

This is a region of so many world firsts for linguistic innovation. Unlike Egypt, China or India, its cities and states had always been consciously multilingual, whether for communication with neighbors who spoke different languages or because their histories had made them adopt a foreign language to dignify court, religion or commerce. This is the area where we find the first conscious use of a classical language; but also by contrast, the first generalized use of a totally foreign language for convenience in communication, as a lingua franca, an early apparent triumphant of diplomatic pragmatism over national sentiment 

In addition to their cosmopolitanism, the Babylonians and their friends were the great list makers (ie memory tools) of the ancient world. Compiled on clay tablets, these lists in cuneiform are what remain so impressive to us today.

Composed of a combination of hieroglyphic characters as well as phonetic symbols their writing system had much in common with Japanese.  Extremely difficult to master, writing things down was left to educated scribes. And, by "writing things down," I mean: use a blunt reed to scratch out what you wanted to say on slabs of clay, which were then fired in a kiln like earthenware pots.

In addition to temples, the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia are known for their museums and libraries-- yes, libraries (They had to have somewhere to store all the tablets). Palace libraries contained countless written in many languages. Composed in Hurrian, Sumerian, Babylonian and Ugaric, there were unending lists, measures and astronomical data. There were also texts on medicine and tales of a Great Flood. All of this, remember, predates the Ancient Greeks by 1000 years and the Bible by even longer.

Thousands and thousands of these clay tablets have been uncovered. The world's first private (ie royal) library was discovered in what was the ancient state of Ugarit, located on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Populated by the Canaanites of the Bible, the people of Ugarit had a reputation every bit as morally degenerate as that of the Babylonians.

And, it was in this degenerate city that the oldest --so far-- clay tablet was unearthed, dating back 3400 years.

Out of all those endless lists of merchant transactions and different fruits and diseases that the ancients Mesopotamians seemed to like jotting down, the oldest surviving piece of writing is not list, but rather is a musical score. This, of course, makes it the oldest musical score on earth! (Don't you love that?) 　→The Hurrian Songs.

Not only is the oldest surviving piece of writing a work of music, but this musical score has vocals and musical notation as well (written at the bottom of the tablet). It is like finding a rare insect in a piece of amber. You cannot help but wish you could bring it back to life.

The tablets had been broken in two and were discovered about two decades apart. And not unlike the story of my favorite Carpaccio painting, when at last the pieces were put together, everything turned into a puzzle. Because now that we had the complete work, the real trouble began; for how was one to reconstruct music written down in a language now dead with no instructions on the tuning of the instrument?

The song itself turns out to be a sad hymn about an infertile woman praying to the Moon Goddess to bless her with a baby. It is very sad and somehow very moving as well. The music was for a harpist (a lyrist) who played facing the vocalist much as shown in the picture at right.

Many scholars have worked at reproducing the ancient song. The most recent attempt by a Dutch professor and musician is here (music starts at :34)

It is truly beautiful. The Dutch scholar, Theo J.H. Krispijn, based his rendition on the content of another recently discovered tablet which had instrument tuning instructions. Basing his song on these tones, he reproduced the music at a concert in Chicago in the late 1990s.

And here is another, much earlier atempt. Made by Anne Kilmer, a professor from Berkeley after 15 years of study in the later 1970s, this version includes a very ancient form of harmony (which had been thought to be a technique totally absent from ancient musical traditions). This earlier one in particular is so like the chanting and music one hears in a Greek Orthodox Church today that it took me by surprise. The music is in the Western "do-re-mi" scale, which is perhaps why it seems so strangely familiar to us today-- considering that it is the world's oldest song.

Finally, it should be pointed out that while found in Ugarit, the tablet was actually written in the Hurric language, which at the time was a language going extinct. Scholars surmise that perhaps the tablet was placed in the library as much for its musical content as it was an effort at preserving a relic of a dying language.

I like to imagine the antiquaniarian impulse in people so ancient themselves. (My man Huizong would have liked that too, I bet).

**

Below is Echoes from Ugarit. Syrian composer & pianist Malek Jandali took the ancient melody and arranged an orchestral piece. Here it is performed by The Syrian Symphony Orchestra and recorded with The Russian Philharmonic Orchestra in Moscow

Reading Cloud Atlas and thinking of how things are passed down, I wanted to recommend William Dalrymple's piece on Syria (where ancient Ugarit was located)-- for it is heart-breakingly true that their future lies in ruins.

For more puzzles: Being embodied with Master Wang (知行合一)

 

Don't you wonder if Babylon was really as bad as people say? We are, after all, talking of the Old Testament's city of sin. Located in that land between the rivers, Mesopotamia was a place where almost a dozen city-states rose up --give or take some 5,000 years ago (which is old even by Chinese standards!) Sumer, Ur, Ninevah, Babel, Uruk, Aleppo,  Babylon-- these places flourished right there from the very start of written history and written language. And as it turns out, they were every bit as cosmopolitan as the later city-states of the Silk Road. Dozens of languages co-existed side-by-side-- with six of the major languages sharing the same cuneiform script. The languages (which were mostly unrelated to each other) were used interchangeably-- and often transcribed in parallel translations--hinting at what must have been a surprisingly sophisticated and international world.

As linguistic scholar extraordinaire Nicholos Ostler tells us,

This is a region of so many world firsts for linguistic innovation. Unlike Egypt, China or India, its cities and states had always been consciously multilingual, whether for communication with neighbors who spoke different languages or because their histories had made them adopt a foreign language to dignify court, religion or commerce. This is the area where we find the first conscious use of a classical language; but also by contrast, the first generalized use of a totally foreign language for convenience in communication, as a lingua franca, an early apparent triumphant of diplomatic pragmatism over national sentiment 

In addition to their cosmopolitanism, the Babylonians and their friends were the great list makers (ie memory tools) of the ancient world. Compiled on clay tablets, these lists in cuneiform are what remain so impressive to us today.

Composed of a combination of hieroglyphic characters as well as phonetic symbols their writing system had much in common with Japanese.  Extremely difficult to master, writing things down was left to educated scribes. And, by "writing things down," I mean: use a blunt reed to scratch out what you wanted to say on slabs of clay, which were then fired in a kiln like earthenware pots.

In addition to temples, the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia are known for their museums and libraries-- yes, libraries (They had to have somewhere to store all the tablets). Palace libraries contained countless written in many languages. Composed in Hurrian, Sumerian, Babylonian and Ugaric, there were unending lists, measures and astronomical data. There were also texts on medicine and tales of a Great Flood. All of this, remember, predates the Ancient Greeks by 1000 years and the Bible by even longer.

Thousands and thousands of these clay tablets have been uncovered. The world's first private (ie royal) library was discovered in what was the ancient state of Ugarit, located on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Populated by the Canaanites of the Bible, the people of Ugarit had a reputation every bit as morally degenerate as that of the Babylonians.

And, it was in this degenerate city that the oldest --so far-- clay tablet was unearthed, dating back 3400 years.

Out of all those endless lists of merchant transactions and different fruits and diseases that the ancients Mesopotamians seemed to like jotting down, the oldest surviving piece of writing is not list, but rather is a musical score. This, of course, makes it the oldest musical score on earth! (Don't you love that?) 　→The Hurrian Songs.

Not only is the oldest surviving piece of writing a work of music, but this musical score has vocals and musical notation as well (written at the bottom of the tablet). It is like finding a rare insect in a piece of amber. You cannot help but wish you could bring it back to life.

The tablets had been broken in two and were discovered about two decades apart. And not unlike the story of my favorite Carpaccio painting, when at last the pieces were put together, everything turned into a puzzle. Because now that we had the complete work, the real trouble began; for how was one to reconstruct music written down in a language now dead with no instructions on the tuning of the instrument?

The song itself turns out to be a sad hymn about an infertile woman praying to the Moon Goddess to bless her with a baby. It is very sad and somehow very moving as well. The music was for a harpist (a lyrist) who played facing the vocalist much as shown in the picture at right.

Many scholars have worked at reproducing the ancient song. The most recent attempt by a Dutch professor and musician is here (music starts at :34)

It is truly beautiful. The Dutch scholar, Theo J.H. Krispijn, based his rendition on the content of another recently discovered tablet which had instrument tuning instructions. Basing his song on these tones, he reproduced the music at a concert in Chicago in the late 1990s.

And here is another, much earlier atempt. Made by Anne Kilmer, a professor from Berkeley after 15 years of study in the later 1970s, this version includes a very ancient form of harmony (which had been thought to be a technique totally absent from ancient musical traditions). This earlier one in particular is so like the chanting and music one hears in a Greek Orthodox Church today that it took me by surprise. The music is in the Western "do-re-mi" scale, which is perhaps why it seems so strangely familiar to us today-- considering that it is the world's oldest song.

Finally, it should be pointed out that while found in Ugarit, the tablet was actually written in the Hurric language, which at the time was a language going extinct. Scholars surmise that perhaps the tablet was placed in the library as much for its musical content as it was an effort at preserving a relic of a dying language.

I like to imagine the antiquaniarian impulse in people so ancient themselves. (My man Huizong would have liked that too, I bet).

**

Below is Echoes from Ugarit. Syrian composer & pianist Malek Jandali took the ancient melody and arranged an orchestral piece. Here it is performed by The Syrian Symphony Orchestra and recorded with The Russian Philharmonic Orchestra in Moscow

Reading Cloud Atlas and thinking of how things are passed down, I wanted to recommend William Dalrymple's piece on Syria (where ancient Ugarit was located)-- for it is heart-breakingly true that their future lies in ruins.

For more puzzles: Being embodied with Master Wang (知行合一)

 

bamboo dream 竹夢

 

A few days ago, I mentioned having found a poem to cross a desert with. I boldly said, I didn't even need the entire poem at all--just that one famous line:  採菊東籬下-- Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence.

A popular subject for calligraphy or to be used for the seals of gentlemen on retirement, the phrase evokes the good life--not of La Dolce Vita but rather of the simple life; of a serenity achieved by a life of service and self-cultivation, where less is more and nature provides wonderful company.

It is, I think the simple truth that contentedness comes from being easily contented. And hence lies the great allure of plucking peonies (oops, I mean chrysanthemums).

 

A friend, having read my blog post then mysteriously posted another poem to my facebook wall: 

 

"Passage of Sighs"
Cao Zhi, AD 229

Carried out by strong winds
Only wanting to return home
Heading southward, the wind blows me northward
Thinking it will blow eastward, it takes me westward
Drifting, drifting, where will I end up?
Surely I will perish and yet life continues
Wandering through hills and plains
Drifting and turning, no place to stay
Who knows my hurt?
I wish to be grass in the forest
Burned in autumn fires
Destroyed by fire-- does his extinguish the pain?
Wishing for this with my roots remaining

曹植
吁嗟篇

吁嗟此轉蓬，居世何獨然。
長去本根逝，宿夜無休閑。
東西經七陌，南北越九阡。
卒遇回風起，吹我入雲間。
自謂終天路，忽然下沉淵。
驚飆接我出，故歸彼中田。
當南而更北，謂東而反西。
宕宕當何依，忽亡而複存。
飄颻周八澤，連翩歷五山。
流轉無恆處，誰知吾苦艱。
願為中林草，秋隨野火燔。
糜滅豈不痛，願與根荄連。

Not surprising given he is a mysterious man, there was no explanation of why he posted it and at first I was thrown. So, I contacted the Great Professor Wang who kindly sent me the original Chinese and the historical context. In many ways, the story echoes the chaos experienced by Lady Li—a woman who lost everything she loved and yet chose the pen name, “easily contented” 易安 (whereby freedom is based less in our choices as in the ability to shape our lives around contingency).

Professor Wang explains,

This is supposed to be one of his later poems, sort of summarizing, and sighing over, his own painful life history, being blown here and there by successive political winds.  His father, Cao Cao, chose Cao Zhi's brother Cao Pi to be his successor to the throne, and kept Cao Zhi far from the center of power; after he became emperor, Cao Pi had Cao Zhi and their other brothers sent away from the capital (blown this way and that by winds of change....)"

The winds of change and the winds of destiny, I suppose Cao Zhi felt as if he had fallen through the cracks of his own life. I am still not happy with the english in the last line (and would love help with it!) but I like very much this image of enduring and self-cultivation through the overcoming of hardships; love the image of the poet hoping only that his roots will survive the fire.

Is this not the perfect poem for a mid-life crisis par excellance?

As to the title, remember when Dante sighed?

In late May, in the New York Review of Books,  Robert Harrison, reviewed Slavitt's new translation of La Vita Nuova. talking about poetry's connection to sighs, he says,

What appears to the eyes then becomes spiritualized and, as spirit, enters the onlooker's inner being, inspiring the soul to emit a sigh. From this sigh of inspiration--this culminating intake and exhalation of breath--the poem we are reading is born.

  

As I have mentioned here many times before, Francois Jullien talking about daoist physiology brings up "breath phenomenon 氣象" and says that through one's in-haling and ex-haling, one breathes in landscape, atmosphere and social context and breathes out character, heart, correct behavior..............and poetry. Or as Rushdie says, "We inhale the world and breath out meaninf. While we can. While we can." 

This kind of elegant sighing in the wind/sighing in the mountains happens again and again in Chinese literary history. A person's dreams are dashed by fate and they lose everything (like running out of a burning house). But, finding great solace in nature, they realize (and are grateful that) they are still able to sigh. 

Suspiro ergo sum. 

For Tao Yuangming it was plucking chysanthemums and for Su Shi, it was bamboo.

 

On Qian Seng's Green Bamboo Skin Veranda, by Sū Shì

I would rather eat a meal without meat

than live in a place without bamboo.

Eating without meat makes you lose weight,

but living without bamboo makes you lose refinement.

When a person loses weight, it may be regained,

but when scholars lose refinement they are untreatable.

Others will find these words funny,

seeming lofty and at the same time, crazy.

Ruminate on this carefully if you're wise,

or you'll never ride a crane to Paradise.

 

"於潛僧綠筠軒"

蘇軾

可使食無肉，不可居無竹。

無肉令人瘦，無竹令人俗。

人瘦尚可肥，士俗不可醫。

旁人笑此言，似高還似痴。

若對此君欠大嚼，世間哪有揚州鶴。

 

The translation is Professor Wang's, and he explains that the "cranes of Yangzhou in the last line is a metaphor for ascending to heaven." It reminds me of the paintings made in the Heian period which depicted Amida traveling down to earth over spectacular landscapes on whispy sighing clouds to come and meet the dying and escort them back to paradise. The paintings, called Amida raigo-zu 阿弥陀来迎図, were sometimes held up right in front of the aristocracy when they were on their deathbed--their last sights being these beautiful paintings of landscapes with Amida traveling down to meet them on the breath of clouds.

Ah, the simple life.

A Poem to Cross a Desert With. Bamboo Dreams below (thank you so much, Ting-Jen, for introducing me to the amazing Cloud Gate Dance Theater).

a poem to cross a desert with (採菊東籬下)

飲酒詩　　　　　陶淵明
結盧在人境　而無車馬喧
問君何能爾　心遠地自偏
採菊東籬下　悠然見南山
山氣日夕佳　飛鳥相與還
此還有真意　欲辨已忘言

Drinking Wine (#5)--Tao Yuanming
I’ve built my house where others dwell
And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses
You ask me how this is possible-- (And so I say):
When the heart is far, one is transported
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern fence
And serenely I gaze at the southern mountains
At dusk, the mountain air is good
Flocks of flying birds are returning home
In this, there is a great truth
But wanting to explain it, I forget the words (牡丹訳）

 

A poem to cross a desert with?

He said, the poem is only interesting because the poet had passed the examination system (科挙) and had lived the life of a scholar--but only then, after achieving a high level of accomplishment and cultivation in the world had left it to live in seclusion. That is, it would not have been as interesting if the poet had been born and never left that hut--for this poem is infused with the journey that came before it. It reminded me of something the Japanese monk Yoshida Kenko had written-- that the goal of Zen is to swim out into deep waters with the only real purpose to be finding oneself back up in the shallows again. Back in the shallows but with new vision.

Scattering blossoms, fallen leaves 飛花落葉-- life is change but this idea of gaining new vision is something universally embraced in many cultures as part of the hero's journey, I think. Everything being a matter of the heart　→ 心持次第.

When I was a young "lady" (I use the term loosely) in Berkeley, I don't even know why-- but I scribbled a poem by Osip Mandelstam on a purple piece of handmade Nepali paper and thought, "this is a poem to cross a desert with."

Depriving me of sea, of a space to run and a space to fly,
And giving my footsteps the brace of a forced land,
What have you gained? The calculation dazzles
But you cannot seize the movements of my lips, their silent sound.
--Osip Mandelstam 1935

I have carred it with me ever since. Whenever I look at it now, I cannot help but wonder what in the world drew me to it when I was still so young and free-spirited...but in fact this poem, and others by the Mandelstams have sustained me in recent years.-- as a testament to the great strength that our inner lives have to sustain us...

In the days before email (!!) my handwriting was so pretty! But times have changed and last night, I scrawled on the back of the aged purple Nepali paper the famous line from Tao Yuanming's poem:  採菊東籬下-- Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence. It is a popular subject for the seals of gentlemen retiring as the phrase alone, I think, sums up perfectly the serenity achieved by a life of cultivation and at the end of the hero's journey. Coming home.

I am re-reading Wei Djao's book about Li Qingzhao, A Blossom like No Other. One of China's greatest poets, I am a huge fan of Lady Li--and not surprisingly, Lady Li took her sobriquet (号:易安) from another line by Tao Yuanming → 倚南窗以寄傲， 审容膝之易安　(Leaning on the southern window, I surrender my pride to nature and in this room scarely big enough to contain my knees, I am easily contented). The line, which is very famous, was taken from an essay by Tao Yuanming (also known as, Tao Qian 陶潛) called "Homecoming" (歸去來兮辭). The essay, written in 404 CE is about the poet's leaving officialdom to "return home" and devote the rest of his life to self-cultivation and the simple life. The essay inspired countless philosophers and poets in China and Japan to turn inward and to never forget that "less is more." Lady Li and her husband Zhao Mingcheng named their own country home, The Return Home Hall 歸來堂 to signify their commitment to living a simple life in harmony with nature.

She also signed her works thus: 易安 "easily contented" and "the inhabitant who is easily contented" 易安居士.

I can really see why some women would want a tattoo. I guess for me, scribbling things on slips of paper that I carry around in my otherwise empty wallet serve the same function. I think the next twenty years, my poem to cross a desert with will be these lines about the simple life by good ol' Tao Yuanming.

Recommended: Andy Couturier's A Different Kind of Luxery. His book is wonderful. And, A Blossom Like No Other: Li Qingzhao.

易安室にて

Illustrations to Tao Qians Prose Poem Homecoming 歸去來辭書畫卷

mood and wind (法 versus 道)

It was Early Spring. They often rode through hills burnt bare from napalm; past villages populated by amputees. Despite the relentless scars of war, the country was stunningly beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful place on earth, she thought. Indeed, sometimes, riding on the back of his motorcycle and looking out past the languid Perfume River at those gentle blue-green hills beyond, she thought she had died and gone to heaven—such was the poetic beauty of the place. And he was part of it. The man seemed to breathe the landscape. Sitting under a tree to “write the mountains and trees;” and “sing like the wind in unrestrained brushstrokes,” he would tell her --humming a tune--that he missed the sound of the rain in Japan.

Me too.

Shared moods and the rain.

Robert Harrison, began his show on the Philosophy of Moods with an opening monologue in which he too spoke of missing the rain and he said:

"mood is a form of attunement between nature and spirit; between habitat and inhabitant" 

Heidegger would point out that a minimally meaningful life requires sensitivity to the power of shared moods that give mattering to our world and unity and meaning to events. According to Heidegger, moods are not something inside a person but rather are something that a person can be in. That is, moods come over us; overcoming us. The German word famously reflects this, as  philosophers like to remind us that die Stimmung [stimmungen?] means mood in terms of atmosphere ("ambiance"). Often likened to music or to weather, Heideggerean mood wraps itself around our bodies. It is something that we unconsciously attune ourselves too. Indeed, it is one way we have to grasp the way the world discloses itself to us.

**

I am reading François Jullien's new book, The Great Image Has No Form, Or the Nonobject Through Painting. Jullien also talks a lot about landscapes and moods. He uses the image of wind （風）:

風教　風景　風姿　風儀　風度　風神　風情　風味

And says:

The concept of atmosphere was condemned to remain weak in European thought, given that, unlike the activity of cognition, "atmosphere" could not be conceived in terms of the opposition between the objective and the subjective. It is an influence that emerges from beings and things and is valid only by virtue of the impression it produces in us: it e-manates or im-parts and hence circulates inseperably between what is neither "that" nor 'us" anymore... indeed, an atmosphere is diffuse, disseminated, dispersed, elusive....

And hence, through one's in-haling and ex-haling, one breathes in landscape, atmosphere and social context and breathes out character, heart and correct behavior. It is not unlike a Confucian scholar whose meticulous actions-- perfectly attuned to the situation-- are guided by a Confucian sensibility, or sensitive negotiating of shared mood. Like the sound of jade reverberating off the walls of the great hall, the Confucian scholar just feels it-- this thing called virtue or proper conduct is something to which he attunes himself as embodied know-how. And as Robert Harrison's guest Sepp Gumbrecht suggests, in the same way that a violin will internally reverberate when bowed, this mood is internalized in the sense that it becomes almost impossible to really differentiate between outer environment and inner self as they are indeed inter-dependent.

That different cultures across geography and time have emphasized or have sought to cultivate this sensibility to a greater or lesser degree is commonsensical. And not all philosophies were created equally either. Sepp Gumbrecht holds up the ancient Greeks as one culture that placed great emphasis on cultivated sensibility. But we can also think of this in terms of cultivation in Confucian traditions. Confucian sensibility. And working backward from there, if one wanted to re-construct what a philosophy such as this was like-- a philosphy  whose project was, rather than being concerned with the deduction of universal truths via subjective logical cognition, was instead concerned with correct behavior within a social context-- one would perhaps do well to try and approach via phenomenology--not analytical reasoning.

**

Javanese gamelan-- it was said to have originated in the ancient bells used in China as part of the Rites. Like a sensitivity to atmospheric conditions and landscapes, so too was music thought to attune or cultivate a person into virtue. When I studied dance in java, explanations were not given and movements were not dissected (as they were in ballet for example). Teacher just danced in front of the students. Mirrors were not used as the students were encouraged to focus totally on teacher's movements as exemplerary model (see first video below).

The music too was one of internalized patterns where there often were no written down musical notes (rules) but it was a musical "know-how" where patterns were loosely followed. Repetitive, culturally conservative it was also highly improvizational, compared with European classical music, for example. Our music teacher in japan, when explaining Japanese 囃子 music (or the music in Noh Theater) explained this in terms of the difference between rules/law versus path/way: 

法 versus 道

And for "michi," he suggested, what is required is the internalization of correct patterns and a refined sensibility to the "atmosphere" ("atmosphere" 雰囲気 is, along with michi, another other big concept in japanese) not a cognitive grasp of rules or truths. Indeed, for a lot of the hayashi music, there is no real musical notation at all. One just goes and following along, goes with the flow.

For as Nietzsche desribes, stepping out into the dark Venice night, surrounded by the sound and smell of water, a mood overcomes like a song:

 Venice-- At the bridge of late
I stood in the brown night.
From afar came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music--
drunken it swam out into the twilight.

My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
--Did anyone listen to it?

 

Lady Rokujo (治大國、若烹小鮮)

 

He was not the first man to accuse me of engaging in curses, the evil eye or other forms of supernatural sabotage. It is true, I have been known to break dishes, send blinds crashing down and now it seems I have the power to zap a cell phone just by virtue of my angry feelings.

Riled to fury like Lady Rokujo. The world was once populated by Rulers, the Ruled and Vengeful Spirits. What is the other side of longing but a vengeful spirit?

Karyn Lai was recently discussing this passage on the philospher's Zone:

六十
 治大國、若烹小鮮。以道莅天下、其鬼不神。非其鬼不神、 其神不傷人。
非其神不傷人、聖人亦不傷人。夫兩不相傷。故徳交歸焉

The Sage governs a large kingdom as he cooks a small fish
By approaching (莅) the world by way of the Dao--
The spirits of our dead ancestors will not haunt (其鬼不神).
Even if these spirits do not stop haunting
Still, their haunting shall not harm the people (人民）.
The Sage of a large realm too (亦） shall not seek to harm the people
If neither sages nor spirits causes harm
Then so shall virtuous governing be achieved

In thinking and talking about translating this passage with Epicurus, we tried out a number of words for 鬼 （gui）-- demons, ghosts, spirits, the dead, "the ancient manes," bogeymen, "your inner demons"-- but we became increasingly frustrated: just what is it we were talking about here? What are these spirits exactly?

It was clear enough that the classical Chinese word 鬼 generally meant the spirits of the dead (however, there were exceptions, I was told). But what do these spirits do exactly? You see we were looking for the perfect phrase for 其鬼不神 ("these spirits won't x").

The similarity to traditional Japanese concepts of ghosts immediately comes to mind-- but so too is the similarity to the ancient Roman concept of "the manes"

Epicurus summarizes information gleaned from several online sources (including the usual place) thus:

The Manes are the spirits of the dead ancestors. When the deceased receives the due honours and rites, he is allowed to ascend from the Underworld to protect his family. This is in contrast with the Lemures or Larvae, evil ghosts which are the souls of the dead who the Dii Inferi refused to receive in the Underworld.

Mānēs, in Roman thought, the spirits of the dead, named euphemistically the ‘kindly ones’ (from the old Latin adjective mānus, ‘good’). From a sense of their collective divinity they were worshipped as the di manes (‘the divine dead’) at the festivals of the Feralia, Parentalia, and Lemuria. By extension the name manes was applied by the poets first to the realm of the dead, the Underworld, and secondly to the gods of the Underworld (di inferi), Dis, Orcus, Hecatē, and Persephonē. Later the di manes were individualized and identified with the di parentes, the dead of the family. The individual tomb led to the conception of each dead person having an individual spirit, and manes, although a plural noun, came to be used of a single spirit. Graves were originally dedicated to the dead collectively and were inscribed dis manibus sacrum (‘sacred to the divine dead’); under the empire it became customary to add the name of the dead person, as if the meaning was ‘sacred to the divine spirt of so-and-so’.

The Manes were offered blood sacrifices. The gladiatorial games, originally held at funerals, may have been instituted in the honor of the Manes.

Incidentally, James Legge, chooses this word "manes" for his translation, translating the above passage:

“Let the kingdom be governed according to the Dao, and the manes of the departed will not manifest their spiritual energy. It is not that those manes have not that spiritual energy, but it will not be employed to hurt men. It is not that it could not hurt men, but neither does the ruling sage hurt them. When these two do not injuriously affect each other, their good influences converge in the virtue (of the Dao).”

Why "Manes" (singular "manis), though, when he could have gone with Furies? Especially since Manes were thought of as being benevolent spirits.

The Furies, on the other hand, known intrigingly as both the "angry ones" and the "gracious ones," are often on my mind these days. There are two aspects about them that I think help illuminate our problem (ie, 其鬼不神):

First, as Dreyfus points out in his lectures on the Oresteia, while the Furies were all about intense emotions, like rage, jealousy and revenge-- he insists that "these were no kinky emotions of the kind people talk about with their psychologist."

What does he mean by that, you wonder?

Well, the emotions that are being displayed by the Furies are the kind of emotions that anyone would feel in that circumstance. This is important. And, I think Dreyfus is right. Modern people may have their neuroses, but these are profoundly different from the emotions expressed by the Furies-- which, while attached to individual people, the emotions themselves are not particular to that person's personality. For example, Clytemnestra's furies are not particular to her individual personality but are just the kind of fury that any woman in her experience would manifest (even though they are manifesting specifically by her, they are not intrinsic to her personality in the way a "kinky" neurotic fear of flying is, says Dreyfus).

So, they are attached to an individual but yet they are universal in their manifestation.

Dreyfus secondly explains that the Furies stand for personal vengeance-- as opposed to the Rule of Law, and  indeed, he sees this play as portraying the way societies transition from the rule of blood feuds to that of Law.

Even today, if a person is wronged, there are really two methods for justice open to him: punishment via law, or via personal vengence. (The Oresteia also displays the manner in which personal vengence turns into a cycle of violence as one blood murder begets the next blood murder. It takes two such extractions of justice to start a fued). Parag Khanna, in his book The Second World, talks about areas in Pakistan where tribal law (jirga) and blood feuds still reign. And, I think both forms are expressed to a larger or lesser degree no matter where we look today.

**

This is the world we are talking about in the Daodejing passage above. A world populated by 1) rulers, 2) the ruled and 3) vengeful spirits. And, if a ruler rules by way of the Dao, then this ruler--a sage ruler-- will  not do harm to the people nor the spirits; that is, his action will not rile the spirits to vengence. This does not mean that he performs some kind of magic which takes away the powers of the spirits but rather that by the virtue expressed in his actions, he will not rile them.

 **

Lady Aoi and Lady Rokujo--

Lady Aoi was Genji’s first wife in the Tale of Genji. The Noh play, which is based on one episode of the novel, is about Lady Aoi’s suffering at the hands of a spirit that possesses her body and causes her to fall ill. In order to try and identify who is tormenting her, Lady Aoi sends a Priestess to try and draw the spirit out by the sound of a bow made of Japanese cherry birch (azusa-yumi); thereby discovering it was the jealous spirit of the Lady Rokujo, who then appeared right there next to the pillow that Lady Aoi was resting on. After talking about the happy days she spent as Genji’s lover, the spirit of Lady Rokujo thereby becomes enraged and her fury results in Lady Aoi's death

Lady Rokujo. What is so stunningly unforgetable about her is that she actually did her "haunting" while still alive. You see, so consumed by jealously was she that her spirit actually left her body to do its haunting.

An elegant and clever but haughty older woman or a sweet and adorable younger woman?

Genji made his choice and the lady was not happy about it.
 

  

virtue & a little dostoevsky

 

Our man in Singapore is a polyglot extraordinaire. This morning, utilizing the usual cipher, he sent the following missive:

I was inspired by your post to pull out my 字形図解辞典, by a scholar and calligrapher from Shanghai (http://www.gujianping.com). I have
attached a digital photo of the entry on 徳

It's interesting that the Japanese version of the character lacks the
一 for 一心で徳を為す and "the beginning and the end are as one",
始終如一。Scholars of kanji migration can probably tell us about the
significance of this.

I also find this lack of "one heart" interesting. First, let's take a look at how Gu Jianping deconstructs (解字) the kanji. The first thing we notice is that he too categorizes 徳 (de) as 会意字 (character composed solely of semantic elements). Second, we learn that the character only got the 心 (heart) element during the time of bronze inscriptions. Gu sees the character as originating in the idea of a straight road (that is, virtue as a moral person "walking the walk and talking the talk" (ie, walk the talk). See Derek's comments below.

You will notice that this follows the Japanese wikipedia entry but differs slightly from Shirakawa. It also looks like, according to Gu, it was during the Han dynasty (楷）that the character received its final element: the "one" 一 which Derek explains: 一心で徳を為す (achieving virtue by one heart) and "the beginning and the end are as one" (始終如一) .

So, the Japanese never incorporated this idea of "one heart" (一) and the  "one" does make a nice case for the good professor's preference for "Integrity" (integrity of action/heart) as a translation for 徳、though, does it not? Anyway, back to our man in Singapore:
 

What I find fascinating is the evolution of the character and the unit
of meaning it has come to signify through time. It comes to mind that different languages employ different metaphors to talk about the metaphysical qualities, and in Chinese (and its derivatives, of which　I consider Japanese to be one) "straightness" is often the desired　quality in the discourse about ethics. (English has a bit of this in　phrases like "the straight and narrow", but nowhere as predominant as in Chinese, to my knowledge.)

So while it was enough to see (know) the straight road (and presumably take it) initially, the conditions for virtue expanded to include "thinking virtuous thoughts" and then eventually to doing so *all the time*. And this doesn't even touch the topic of what virtue *is*, which is the problem of the philosophers. The Church struggled with the question of whether it was a sin to think evil thoughts or whether one actually had to act upon them -- I wonder if we can read the Chinese answer to this question in the character they have chosen with which to write virtue.

I also looked up the entry on 直, which . . . derives its meaning from
a property of light (viz., that it travels in straight lines). The 甲骨文
(is this what you call the Oracle Bones?) has but an eye and a
straight line leading from it to represent 視線 (目光 mu4 guang1 in
Chinese). 金文 (Bronze?) adds the line to mean the line on the face (of the eye socket).

I concur, as in Japanese as well, so central is this metaphor of "straightness" that you cannot even really talk about virtue without it coming up. 真っ直ぐ。 In fact, before Adonis was born, I had considered using that kanji "straight" (直) for Adonis' name before I was vetoed (his father prefered "harmony")...

And while I had never thought of this myself, I do think it's true that, compared to Roman (Stoic) and Christian thought, there is not the same emphasis on avoiding "vice" in Chinese philosophy, as the stress really seems to be on "walking and talking (誠＝言+成）on the straight and arrow"　（真っ直ぐ=信・心・真+直）→　誠

**

Finally, a word about 恩徳 (2nd citation above).

恩徳 (compassion; grace) is one of the three virtues in Buddhism. I wonder if the term maps to Yi (義)- in earlier pre-Buddhist philosophy? In Confucian philosophy, 義  is one of the 五常  (仁・義・礼・智・信） and I like the translation of “favor, grace and kindness” This is the so-called “seat of shame” and is supposed to be the faculty that restrains the less pleasant human emotions like greed or lust, and it is what governs “correct behavior toward other people” Hence the translation: “benevolence” (恩)

Interestingly, the same 漢字　is used to translate into japanese (and Chinese?) the Greek word used in Christian philosophy diakonia ("benevolent service")… and it can be read in Japanese 義しい＝”tadashii= correct” Not surprisingly, along with "straight" (直)and "harmonious" (和), it is a popular character used in boys' names as well.

So, what informs “correct behavior”? I would guess a delicate combination of 1) 質 (acting in a simple and as close to natural way as possible) and 2) learning 文.

Is 質 equivalent to Aristotle’s physis? How is it different? Is it the seat of human agency?

Maybe one could say that Ivan Karamazov never got anywhere in all his dazzlingly elaborate philosophizing because he relied so heavily on 文. While his brother Dmitri, who "loved humanity but hated his neighbors," lacked a certain– how shall we say??  "義"。It was only Alyosha, who embodied Christian  恩 or 義,　and acted from both 文 and 質。Hence, I think it could be argued that Alyosha is the 義人 (⇒恩徳）par excellance in the Christian and Confucian story.

So, how's this? 徳 as ①Path　道徳→美徳 ② Benevolence or uprightness 恩徳 and ③　Beliefs, our morals 信念→　同心同徳

(Lady Li taught us about the virtue of flowers--that flowers are admirable; for not only are they beautiful and joyous but they also symbolize strength and nobility of character-- attributes that we can all learn from. When a flower blooms, it either blooms in its fullest capacity and with all its might, or it’s a dud. No half measures for flowers. And while each blooms at its own pace and in its own time, there is also a window or a season as well, so that a peony cannot bloom in the fall.)

 

translating virtue

   

It was a hot, windless afternoon and the Master had led his students outside, to sit under the shade of the giant tree standing in the courtyard. As they gathered around him, the large group of young men grew so silent that they could just barely hear the sound of a myriad of birds taking flight over the Ganges River-- thousands upon thousands of miles to the west. The whole world grew very still and...

Drawing in his breath deeply; the Master slowly opened his mouth to speak:

吾未见好德如好色者也

"It is a rare man who would turn his mind to virtue when he could follow love instead" (Analects 15.13)

Nobody dared to say a word. And so the Master, with a smile on his face, spun on his heels and walked away. Really what more could be said? And the Master looked quite pleased with himself too (a fact to which everyone present later confirmed). 

Beijing, however, complains: "It's a rather innovative translation, don't you think?"

The problem being the word "love," of course. And, I realize that in our times so high do we hold Love （愛）that "love" （恋）for us must carry much more weight than it ever could possibly have for the ancients. In all fairness, the word is not really "love," but rather 色。Beijing thinks that it should probably be translated as

I've yet to meet anybody who is fonder of virtue than of sex

Fair enough, but I just don't think people talked that way back then. I mean, I cannot imagine them talking like that at least. And being in a stubborn mood, I try to persuade him:

"But what does the character 色 itself convey but the emotion felt when two people are embracing; in love." 

As a compromise, however, I here offer this:

"It is a rare man who would turn his mind to virtue when he could follow romance instead"  

Approximately 2500 years have passed since the time Kongzi was said to have uttered these words-- and in one sense, I guess it is partly comforting to think- how little has changed. A teacher wishes to gently urge his students to "keep their eye on the ball." We are all human-- and everyone loves romance-- but it's important to try and stay the course. On the other hand, I cannot possibly imagine that Kongzi is criticizing his students. They're not, afterall, monks-in- training.

To me, the interesting question is what do you think the Master would say to a bunch of students today? In one sense, it seems like romance and love affairs have really been banished to a place outside acceptable conversation ("family values" etc.)-- is it just me or do other people just find it impossible to imagine a teacher telling his students:

     It is a rare man who would choose study over romance

This is not religion and the students are not monks in training. Rather, this is philosophy concerned with how to live a good life. And, as I read the analects again after all these years, I am struck by the way in which something in the project feels somehow very similar to the project of poetry:

to never deny desire or emotion-- but to refine it like art

Saying this to Beijing, I wasn't necessarily saying that through the Rites or study that all desire or emotion should be civilized as to be no longer recognizable as such (sublimated in the form of archery, for example). But rather, more like poetry, that emotion is refined and moderated. 

**

Anyway, the readers of these pages will all be interested to learn that through my travels in this blog-- I have come to re-think my previously-held dark-and-gloomy conviction that people are no longer able to be swept away by things, or to be really moved by someone or something. 

Some of you will recall that the philosopher I work for in Hiroshima is very interested in a German thinker named Wolfgang Welsch (who teaches at Schiller University at Jena). I have written about his work in greater length here (or better here), but Welsch writes a lot about what he characterizes as our contemporary focus on "amusement and the virtual."

This from his Undoing Aesthetics:
 
In surface aestheticization the most superficial aesthetic aesthitic value dominates:  pleasure, amusement, enjoyment without consequence. This animatory trend today reaches far beyond the aesthetic enshroudment of individual everyday items-- beyond the styling of objects and experience-loaded ambiances. It is increasingly determining the form of our culture as a whole. Experience and entertainment have become the guidelines in recent years. A society of leisure and experience is served by an expanding culture of festivals and fun. And whilst some of the all too strident offshoots of aestheticization, or singular aspects of the cosmetics of reality, might raise a smile, with its extension to culture as a whole, this is no longer a laughing matter. 

What is interesting about this phenomena--beyond the obvious resulting anti-intellectualism and philistinism-- is that there is a "leveling;" whereby "experience" and "having fun" (entertainment) create what Welsch calls the Disneylandification of our emotional experiences-- that is to say: everything loses its depth.

To be emotionally carried away-- or moved-- by music; by beauty; by art; or to be carried away by another person (in love); to be carried away by landscape somehow seem to be retreating outside our ability to experience.

**

Travel back in time 1000 years.

There meet a young man who writes of falling so deeply in love that he is unable to function--indeed, he can barely breath. Maybe he would say falling in love with that woman was like a thermonuclear meltdown in his heart...

Totally impressed, I recall the words of a friend, who once wrote that

Our passions are like the sail”, a generic Hindu guru once said, “and our reason — like the rudder. Without the latter, the boat will founder; but without the first, it won’t go anywhere.”

This is very much how I think of the Master's advice. I mean, even the southern song landscapes that I love so much-- while they may have been called "untrammeled"-- in fact, they were moderated and refined expressions of emotion plus reasoned restraint (but remember the boat ain't going anywhere without the passion part).

Finally, over a bowl of noodles, I ask Adonis' father what he thinks about the passage. Immediately, he responds,

"Sex is the worst translation"

"Why?" I ask (though I already know exactly what he is going to say).

"Because 色　is not 遊び and in the end, it doesn't matter whether the person acts on their feelings or not-- it can all be inside his own mind and still be 色。” And then after another few slurps of noodles he says, 心の動き、それだけ。("it's all about being moved")

Amour

**

From Beijing, who says that this is probably the real context of 15.13: The Romance of Nan Zi 

And, for Beijing: A slide show here with some good shots of the 新光戲院

Photo above is one of Jim Gourley's Top 40 China Photos. This particular one is one of my personal favorites.

And speaking of photographers I like, here is Michael Wolf (I've been wanting to buy his book of hong Kong photographs for some time) Architecture of Density is HongKong and Transparent City is Chicago.

 

In Praise of Heroes not Saying Stupid Things

-- In Carthage (from the Peony Archives)

Standing beside the large window that overlooked the harbor, they stood silently watching the sea. She stood just behind her lover, trying to gaze out in the same direction in which he was silently staring. His gaze, sang the poet, so faraway that, 

his lips were immobile
like a seashell where the roar is hidden, and the horizon
in his goblet was still.

It was warm and she could feel the sunlight streaming in from the window. Flinging off her shawl, she stood dressed from head to toe in the luxurious purple robes that had made her ancestors so rich that they could send their daughters out across the sea to establish Kingdoms of their own.

A Queen, she stood in a cloud of perfume. Jasmine and sandalwood, frankincense and lemons-- she walked in bare feet over carpets covered in rose petals. Yet, it was the smell of the sea which lingered so undeniably.

Trying to follow his eyes out toward the horizon where he was looking, no matter how hard she squinted, she couldn't see past the intense glare of the sun shining off the water.

The Poet sang of what happened next-- of the Queen, whose

love
was just a fish—perhaps which might
plunge into the sea in the pursuit of the ship,
and knifing the waves with the supple body,
perhaps yet overtake him—but he,
he in this thoughts already strode upon the land.
And the sea became a sea of tears.
But, as one knows, precisely at the moment
of despair, the auspicious wind begins to blow.

And the great man left Carthage.  

And thereafter history has questioned whether he really was all that.

Cut him some slack

my friend, Conrad-- an expert in these matters--once remarked,

is it that we have become so Greek that we are no longer able to understand the Romans?

I mean, I guess you could say, he really had to do his duty, right? Pious Aeneus.

Or, is it that we are no longer able to really daydream? For the Queen, walking in a cloud of fragrant dreams was not really thinking clearly, was she? As Conrad teases:

While Dido in a Bed of Fire,
A new-found way to cool desire,
Lay wrapt in smoke, half Cole, half Dido,
Too late repenting Crime Libido

In complete disgust, Conrad's friend the Count had called him "a sod and a wet blanket," suggesting that, "Dido must have really killed herself because she wouldn't believe that she fell for that???"

Indeed, in her distress

She stood before the bonfire, which her soldiers
had kindled by the city walls,
and she envisioned between the flame and smoke of the fire
how Carthage silently crumbled
ages before Cato’s prophecy

Dreyfus seems to think likewise, complaining that the real nail in the coffin was not only did he say, "Honey, I've got bigger fish to fry," but that he had to gone on and add "but even if I didn't have to obey Zeus and leave, I still wouldn't stay with you as in truth I would probably choose to go back to Troy if I could...." Couldn't he have let her down a little more gently, really?

This is what just baffled Dreyfus, who suggests that, it's hard not to dislike him really.

The Count was similarly annoyed with the invocation of Zeus... for as he remarked :

 Zeus has nothing to do with it. This is the sod part.(And it can be admirable: look at Odysseus, who is always, always, in every instance, the better man. Baby, he says to Calypso, you are everything a man would ever wish, but I love another. Calypso hates it, and can’t come to terms with it for seven long years. But in the end she does. And she does because at least she knows she is not being lied to, made a fool of, cheated. Usually — sometimes — even a woman spurned can admire character in a man).

I tend to agree. Character is everything-- and Aeneas was no Odysseus, that's for sure. Really, is it any wonder that Dido lamented? But as I suggested to Caesar this morning, as the philosophers suggest, fate is probably nothing more than a person's character and their chosen path. Yet, "chosen" is probably itself ambiguous as it doesn't necessarily mean "to choose" does it? As in fact, in the end what is a person's fate but one's charater plus the world one is thrown in? Look at Aeneas. Did he choose what he wanted to do or did he merely do what was felt necessary given the man he was and the world he was embedded? 

Amor Fati, whispered Nietzsche.

A man with a mission, and yet, I just cannot help-- in praise of daydreaming; in praise of desire; in praise of heroes not saying stupid things-- to side with the Queen.

**

Below Joseph Brodsky's Dido and Aeneas is the from BBC's Vanity Fair. Rebecca Sharp's dazzling rendition of Dido's Lament:

DIDO AND AENEAS, by Joseph Brodsky

The great man stared through the window
but her entire world ended with the border
of his broad Greek tunic, whose abundant folds
resembled the sea on hold.
And he still stared out through the window, and his gaze
was so far away from here, that his lips were immobile
like a seashell where the roar is hidden, and the horizon
in his goblet was still.

But her love
was just a fish—perhaps which might
plunge into the sea in the pursuit of the ship,
and knifing the waves with the supple body,
perhaps yet overtake him—but he,
he in this thoughts already strode upon the land.
And the sea became a sea of tears.
But, as one knows, precisely at the moment
of despair, the auspicious wind begins to blow.
And the great man left Carthage.
She stood before the bonfire, which her soldiers
had kindled by the city walls,
and she envisioned between the flame and smoke of the fire
how Carthage silently crumbled
ages before Cato’s prophecy.

 

 

 

Talking to Fingarette

   

Last night, I started reading Herbert Fingarette's Confucius: the Secular as Sacred. A mystery man without even a wikipedia page, I have been unable so far to find out much about his background in philosophy-- other than that he appears to be really well known for his work in the philosophy of psychology (addiction, etc.)

I was also-- I may as well confess-- not in the best mood when I started the book since the rain had prevented me from buying more plum wine. Thus, still in a bad mood from before, and way too sober for my own good, I picked up the book, which opens like this:

The remarks which follow are aimed at revealing the magic power which Confucius saw, quite correctly, as the very essence of human virtue.

It was not what I was expecting and if we had all been in a Japanese movie, I am sure at that precise moment a bell would have been rung at a temple down the road: gooooong... Beautifully written, I found myself drawn in almost immediately. I am also reading, by the way, the Ames and Hall book, and Fingarette in comparison, I think you could argue, really takes the road less traveled. And that is, he is basing a lot of his arguments not on what the texts says, but rather was the text does not say. And, by looking at the obvious metaphors or conclusions that a Western thinker would make, and seeing these things absent from early Confucian thought, he goes on to make extrapolations from there.

For example, we have the great Chinese metaphor of a path 道 However, says Fingarette: no "crossroads." Fingarette uses this "absence" to explore issues of path as "A Way without a Crossroads;" that is morality without conflicting obligations or inner crisis and guilt. My first response was: nonsense. One just has to go to literature or drama to seek out these cases of tragedy or conflicting obligations as giri-ninjo (義理人情）-- since that is the usual place where such expressions of pre-modern crisis and drama are more often found, right?

However, the more I thought about this notion of the "absence of the choice-responsibility-guilt conplex of concepts" that Fingarette posits, the more an experience I've had here in Japan felt somehow very clearly illuminated in this light. In fact, this is something I was trying to describe to Beijing when he was here as we were talking about Japanese-style moral education, which starts in first grade in Japan. Beijing is interested in such matters and I was trying to describe to him what is a real noticeable absence of what Fingarette calls litigious punishment. To an American, it comes a surprise that when a child does something wrong, instead of a kind of one-for-one punishment (to teach "consequences") --other more indirect methods are used to try and improve behavior. 

Trying to describe it to him, I said, in the short term it seems so ineffective. I mean, to keep a child in at recess after they disrupted class seems like the easiest way to get the child to understand the consequences of their actions. And, yet these methods are stunningly absent. But then I said, "concerning long term goals, I don't know; I mean look at this place, isn't it beautiful?" And, he looked around, no doubt notiving the tidy recycling cans and the safe, beautiful streets. As we were talking a big beautiful egret descended and seemed to be walking on the surface of the water in the perfectly kept pond.

When I think of it, I realize that this idea of 道 ("Way") versus 法 ("Law") is not unique to education but is something Adonis' violin teacher also speaks so much about as underlying the difference between Western classical music and Japanese traditional music. (Or think of the memorized "patterns" of the more ritualized forms of gamelan).

When Adonis was younger, we spent much more time in the Western part of his empire. When he was 3, in fact, he spent about six months at a ritzy preschool in LA. During the first parent-teacher meeting, the teacher mentioned that Adonis had a very developed "moral sense." That is, he was always concerned about being good. I rememeber he was always talking about who were the good boys and who were the bad boys and continually asking me if I thought he was a good boy.

Returning to Japan, however, his father immediatly noticed how he kept using the Japanese expression .."fault" (to have responsibility); as in "that was his fault." People just don't talk that way here, and Adonis' father was very worried that Adonis would never cut it in school if he was always casting blame on people. "Even adults hesitate to use that expression." Over the years, I have tried to get him-- when he speaks Japanese-- to just indirectly express dislike for the action without casting blame on the person who commits the action, but sure enough this came up this year at his first parent-teacher meeting for 1st grade.... his teacher said that he gets very upset when someone breaks a rule and will blame the person. And in her words, "to blame a person will then cast blame back on Adonis and ruin the harmony of the group." 

Of course, Adonis probably gets this all from me since I have such legalist tendancies, and I stupidly said, "Well, maybe if you inacted swifter punishments....?" To which she said, "When a child misbehaves, it is just because we have not educated them enough. I promise, give it time and as a group they will all improve together."

"It just may take some of the boys longer," she added giggling.

Fair enough. 

Do you all remember that scene at the end of the Last Emperor when Puyi was made to write unending, hansei-bun 反省文 (essays repenting past misdeeds)... I don't know about in China, but here those essays start the moment the kids learn how to write. And, no self-recrminations are involved.  Hansei 反省 is always about the action-- not the person. It is interesting but basically, the children are to write what the misdeed was, and why it was unacceptable. No where is any fault cast on the person, but rather it is always in the hope of improving behavior by talking about the misdeed in terms of the context in which it was performed.

We mothers, by the way, have 反省会 (meetings to discuss our mis-deeds) after each and every event. It is a disaster for me since I never see the tiny mistakes and usually smile, "Didn't we do a great job??" To which no one responds and other people step up to point all the mistakes that I never even ever would have noticed.... Everything is mentioned and discussed in the passive tense so there is no actor just action), and then we vow to do better next time.

So, I suppose what I am trying to say is that I do think Fingarette is on to something interesting. There is perhaps something inherent to the Confucian concept of education and ethical Way that really does not have an end-goal in mind but rather provides "a socially oriented, action oriented view which provides for personal dignity." Or to use another quote from the 2nd chapter: "It is a moral sentiment focused upon one's status and conduct in relation to the world rather than an inward charge against one's stained corrupt self."

My little legalist though, he just gets so mad. Last night, we were snuggled up in our futon-- both of our heads on the same pillow as always and he said, "Seiya-kun has to write hansei-bun every single day-- why is he such a bad boy mommy?"

This was before I had read Fingarette's book, so I could only sympathize: "Oh, you mean that stupid kid with the humungous head? That kid is a damn fool."

To which Adonis said, "Teacher wouldn't like to hear you talking like that Mommy...."

Oh well. I guess I remain all about personal responsibility and grief.

Speaking of which, I think I mentioned the Philosophers Zone program (you all know how I love the host) with Genevieve Lloyd last week? Well, Lloyd has a new book out called Providence Lost. I definitely am going to read it-- anyone care to join me? (I'm lookin' at you A Ku!)

The first thing that really struck me about the program was this idea of the centrality of the concept of Providence to our Western Heritage, and I could not help but wonder if the under-emphasis of personal responsibility and choice that Fingarette sees as characterizing the Analects was not all that dissimilar to our own tradition until Augustine?

Contrasting this to the modern secular age, Lloyd says that we are left now with what can only be described as an unending sense of responsibility-- it never ends (this human cause of fault in everything) because we no longer have Providence (God or Luck or Spinoza's nature or even Fingarette's Holy Rites to fall back on as blame) so that now it's always up to Us. And that this never ending sense of responsibility is too much for some people. You know, I actually felt very close to tears as I listened to this and have been thinking of it a lot. My new friend in Hawaii keeps suggesting that sometimes people just need to let go ("to release")... and I think we can find this same sense of Providence in Fingarette's idea of "human community as holy rite" and that this is in fact, just as he suggests a situation whereby the secular is sacred. 

OK, to be continued....

All paintings, by Bui Huu Hung, are lacquer on wood.

**

Also see: Fingarette I: Confucius Hates Choice at A Ku Indeed!
And for those who may have missed these: Talking to Confucius and 西遊記 & Translators of the Silk Road

Finally, I had recommended this book to Beijing, but am now recommending it to Professor A Ku as well (Have not read it but have wanted to read it): Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China and the United States

<

the voltaire solution

 

--for borges (again)

You will recall where we last left off. We were discussing the famous passage in the analects (15.13), when the Gialbo suggested that we think of romance/sex/female beauty versus virtue in terms of another passage-- this time from the Dechongfu 德充符 (Completion of Virtue) section of Zhuangzi:

"There was an ugly man in Wei, called Ai-tai Tuo. His father-in-law, who lived with him, thought so much of him that he could not be away from him. His wife, when she saw him (ugly as he was), represented to her parents, saying, 'I had more than ten times rather be his concubine than the wife of any other man.'... he must have been different from other men. I called him, and saw him. Certainly he was ugly enough to scare the whole world. He had not lived with me, however, for many months, when I was drawn to the man..."

De, the Gialbo says, is the power to move others, and you can do it sexually as well as morally.

Beijing immediately complains and suggests that rather than his sexual powers, it was his powers of virtue that moved his wife (to the point where she overlooked the less-than-sexy aspects of his person). Again, in a stubborn mood, I replied that it has been my experience that women can be less visually-oriented when it comes to falling in love. And, that indeed, the man of Wei's virtue (his character) could have been the very thing that so enthralled her-- in that way we could say that his powers of virtue and his sexually powers were-- yes--inextricably connected (in his wife's heart). 

I am sure you will all agree that it is certainly possible at least. 

Anyway, as I mentioned in the comments here, I am reading a very interesting paper right now by Manyul Im in which he discusses two different models in virtue ethics: the perfectibility model versus the natural development model. Concerning Mencius, Manyul complains of commentators (I assume he means anglophone) "foisting" the Aristotelian perfectibility model on to their readings. I suppose I feel similar here, in that Kongxi's virtuous life, to my mind, is not a path for enlightenment (or some kind moral perfectibility) but rather is a path for balanced and moderated moral engagement through lifestyle choices and ritualized habits based on cultural context (where Chris sees Kierkegaard, I tend toward Heidegger).

**

Paradise: In the distance, a great ziggurat rises toward the shimmering blue sky. Containing every book ever written, it stands as a place of great possibility.

Whenever I imagine myself there, I am always with one man. Borges. And, my man Borges says on FB: "I don't do long-distance."

And, I don't blame him. Who wants to do long-distance? But in a dark and gloomy mood, I inform him that the only thing more tiresome than a long-distance relationship is a short-distance relationship (breathing and space being highly desirable).

Someone once told me (and it could be completely false) that a great 
percentage of divorces happen in japan when the husband retires and the wife realizes: oh my god (Just kidding Chris!)

I tell him (growing increasingly dark from nightmares and lack of sleep):

Yes, no long-distance but no short distance either.

I then ask: Did you know 
Voltaire (and his pet toad) lived in a great mansion with his lover Madame du Châtelet (who was herself married to another man but somehow the other man was OK with this living arrangement, probably due to an arrangement of his own).

Dreaming about them again last night, I go online this morning to look at pictures of the place where they dwelled together: the incomparable Chateau de Cirey. And I then say this to Borges:

There they are-- working in opposite ends of the chateau. It would probably have taken 15 minutes to walk from his wing to her's, and people say they passed notes constantly during their days apart; liveried butlers would deliver handwritten letters on silver platters whenever one of the lovers had something to say to the other.

And they did also dine together as well-- every evening. Their conversations must have been divine and I read that guests too were encouraged to spend their time alone as well reading until the evening meal.

**

So, Confucius. He might not have liked this arrangement-- I'm not sure. It was, without a doubt, civilized, refined and ritualized-- and yet, the two lovers said on more than one occasion: rules are for other people.

**

Borges, though, thankfully likes the idea and calls it the Voltaire Strategy. However, being a humble man, he says: I don't know if I  need that big of a house though. Just give me Wittgenstein's mountain  place to escape to on occasion.... 

**

I immediately imagine Heidegger's hut. (Has anyone actually looked through the book?)

I end here with a very compelling concept from Manyul's paper (which is highly recommended reading):

There is, then, an important disposition to be cultivated. It is the disposition of habitually performing at the opportune times the proper formalized-- that is, ritualized-- expressions of one's natural emotions. But this is neither to have modulated one's emotional responses nor to have acquired new motivations.

Learning to be good-- versus-- the refined expression of what is already good? (Oh, if only life were that easy).