tang dynasty times

the glorious mural express (臥遊)

There exists a great arc dotted with Buddhist cave temples that stretches from the State of Maharashtra in India reaching all the way across the Taklamakan Desert-- deep into the heart of China.

It is miraculous really. From influences derived from the West, Buddhist art was born.

And within 5 centuries, dozens of cave temples covered in murals of impossible beauty were to be created across thousands and thousands of miles along the Silk Road-- all the way to Japan.

I told him: We really should start a railway company and put down tracks to connect all the temples so that pilgrims can ride with us on our glorious mural express.

Being a practical sort of guy, he was dubious about the diplomatic and political hurdles, and so I sought to persuade him.

It would be a wonderous beginning, that's for sure. I mean, starting in India, the Murals of Ajanta would set the mood, right?

He said he was listening. So, I continued:

It must be a riny narrow gauge train with blue cars and a carmine red engine and red caboose. "Just like the one we rode to Shimla," I say. And it won't be for everyone either-- for like Mecca, our train will be a place reserved only for true believers-- for believers of love and beauty.

He smiled and answered that, It wouldn't be easy since the mountains kind of get in the way.

That's when I tell him my plan to dynamite our way through the mountains:

What do you think about blasting a huge tunnel that goes for miles and miles under the Himalaya—and then we can use laser lights to recreate all the murals that were lost on the tunnel’s dark walls for our dear passangers? Wouldn’t it be romantic? They can dine on Cantonese cuisine by candlelight as they watch the evening laser light mural show?  After all, so much has been lost.

Are you in or not, my darling?

I'm in, he says at last. And asks, Where to from Ajanta?

Well, first it's up to Ladakh.

Ladakh? Isn't that a little off the beaten track?

No, not really. For in that remote region, downtown Leh might as well be downtown Manhattan. And everyone loves Manhattan.

Just a few kilometers outside of the town of Leh is-- of course-- the Monastary of Alchi, which has paintings that have almost stained my mind with their dazzlingly rich colors. As I have written in these pages before, sometimes when I close my eyes before sleeping at night--even now all these years later-- I see those colors. And, it was Alchi that first inspired me to dream this dream journey dream from Ajanta to Dunhuang and then all the way across to Horyuji-- traveling on the glorious mural express.

**

I spent some time last year translating two documents for the Oriental Library about two other cave temple sites along the Silk Road: Bezeklik and Kizil. As I looked at photos from the sites, I become dazed like a pilgrim-- nearly blinded by the beauty of the Flaming Mountains and and the seering noonday sun of the desert, I imagine stepping into a darkened cave temple, and there I find myself in another dimension-- a place of pilgramage.

This from my translation:

The architecture follows an iconographic programme, functioning as the stage for the carrying out of a Buddhist pilgrimage. device for this procedure. Entering  the cave, the pilgrim   first contemplates the past lives of the Buddha as he or she passes along murals depicting scenes from these past lives. The pilgrim would next circumambulate the corridor moving in a clockwise fashion. Along the back walls, the pilgrim would view scenes Sakyamuni’s nirvana scene and in order to contemplate his or her own existence...

Like falling in love; like mountains of the mind; indeed, like all pilgramages-- this is an imaginary possession achieved via the colloboration between physical form and human imagination; a dream journey that occurs at precisely that disjuncture between the real and the imagined. Pilgramage. I wonder if this is not yet another essential human practice on the decline (an endangered species?) Pilgramage being of particular significance since it is both practiced collectively together with others and serves to connect inner and outer understanding.

 

Recently, I listened to an old TED Talk lecture with Matthieu Ricard, on his book the Habits of Happiness. In the lecture, Ricard talks about the Buddhist idea of a pebble being tossed about on the waves on the ocean. Most of us exist in such a state that like a pebble being tossed about in the water, our state of mind is so dependent on outside forces that we are happy when things are going well and then crash when bad things happens. The Buddhists tell us to combat this doomed way of being, we need to cultivate our inner serenity, inner freedom, and confidence through what Ricard calls mind training (ie meditation). For it is mind that "translates" all our outer experiences into inner meaning, he says. As a translator myself, this image of mind "translating" experiences into meaning speaks to me very strongly. Ricard urges us to think about how illusory our control inevitably is over outer circumstances. And indeed we meet people all the time who have everything in the world and yet remain unhappy. And vice versa, those suffering great adversity who seem strangely quite happy.

In the end, I think just as Ricard says, it all comes down to working to cultivate practices and habits which will enrich us by forming and strengthening what is an underlying ethical-aesthetic sensibility-- for it is that which will help us to flourish and feel serenity. Ricard talks of meditation while the Dalai Lama speaks above about the "shaping power" of pilgramage. The Dalai Lama's words above recall the project of the Confucian Rites as proper comportment through the cultivation of ethico-aesthetic sensibility, don't you think? I know I am not the only one who wonders what is at stake for the human race when collective and shared practices which have long served to connect inner and outer understanding via the human heart are lost forever (Are we really destined to become McPeople like I fear?).

I like to imagine that the Mural Express will have a special line that travels West to Bamyan, which stands as the ultimate symbol of that which is lost forever and then East all the way to Japan. For what better place than Japan to end up? Beautiful Japan-- land of the Great Antiquinarians, the Japanese have been obsessed with the Silk Road since the 1980s and scholars continue to work to re-create what was lost--in reproductions or in digitalization--in what in itself is an act of pilgrammage.

Favorite writer William Dalrymple on Ajanta: The Greatest Ancient Picture Gallery

persian picnics and other elegant pastimes (春山淡治而如笑)

 -the vernal equinox 春分

Some say Nowruz, or Persian New Year, is a holiday that goes back 2,500 years. Seems impossible, but everyone agrees it is one of the world's oldest celebrations-- a celebration which continues to be one of the most looked-forward to events in the Persian calendar. 

Part of the festivities include a picnic-- hopefully with a fire. Persians love their picnics-- as this devotion to picnics can be seen across the vast expanse of what was once the Great Persian Empire. From Turkey, Afghanistan, Central Asia to Kashmir-- even in Tehrangeles, in the more elegant part of LA-- people picnic around the vernal equinox. 

It is a civilized pastime, very much like cherry-blossom viewing-- a day to relax and dream of paradise-- enjoying both the company and  spring itself-- the birds, the clouds, the sunshine, and more than anything the flowers.

And, why is it that everything tastes better outdoors?

I was indoctrinated into picnics long before I came to Japan (by a Persian best friend back home). It is a custom which I carried with me to Japan-- where, of course, it fit like a glove.

So, every year we would celebrate the vernal equinox by picnicking. And, in my heart, this will always be the real New Year.

Like clockwork, the ducks and egrets return to the Uzumagawa River and specks of green start sprouting in the lawn-- yes, the return of life and the start of a new year. I cannot help but start imagining all the picnics and flower-viewing-- and somehow everything seems so filled with possibility.

    

The Kid and I usually would start taking to the mountains just before the equinox to go "baby fern hunting."  Called "zenmai" 薇 you know how they are like little coiled springs waiting till it gets to be just the right time to unfurl?

They are so cute and adorable. I read once that ferns used to cover prehistoric forests... so maybe they're very old like dinosaurs? Can you imagine wandering in never-ending forests of ferns as huge, prehistoric dinosaur birds soared in the skies above?

There is an expression used in haiku poetry composition around this time of year: "Mountains smiling in early spring" Borrowed like so many other things from China, the painter who coined this phrase, the Northern Song painter and Literati great, Guo Xi, is most famous for his work titled Early Spring. His poem about mountains smiling appeared in an poetry anthology in Japanese known as  漢詩集 「臥遊録」 (yes, that's right, the Han Anthology Dream Journey Jottings)

春山淡治而如笑
夏山蒼翠而如滴
秋山明浄而如粧
冬山惨淡而如眠　

Mountains smiling in early spring was a theme much appreciated at court-- even during my beloved's times-- which came about 100 years after the painter wrote his legendary poem. Imagine after what must have felt like an almost unendingly long period of cold and depressing "mountains sleeping," the mountains in March would seem to almost "spring" to life again.

First, came the slow but sure return of green. Followed by a splash of color here and there: plum, robai, and finally sakura. And, so people would take to the hills....

This was also after all the best season for a love affair ---for of course, we all know everything is always dashed to hell by mid-Fall so it's better to get started early, right? :))

In China, people travel back to their hometowns around this time of year for qing ming to sweep the tombs of their ancestors and celebrate the return of spring-- very much like Japanese O-bon. There is also a custom of eating outdoors to celebrate spring.Some scholars see the Japanese cherry blossom-viewing custom having its roots in qing ming --as a day of family communion (between the living and the dead), picnics (celebrating spring) and purification. Ideally, one picnics on top of a hill and purified oneself in a river (to wash away in bad deeds or bad luck). There are probably poems about friends climbing hilltops （踏青）or maybe about picking mountain herbs　(山菜摘み）...

It was this idea, of "stepping on blue" （踏青→ getting out and walking in nature）, along with the Japanese idea of the gods of the fields returning from their long slumber around this time of year that are most deeply connected to Japanese sensibilities surrounding cherry blossom viewing.

And, it's that time again.

**

 Shalimar Garden; one of Srinagar's three famous "gardens of love," one the most memorable picnic I ever had in my life took place in the shade of one the garden's many chinar trees. Beautiful tulips were planted alongside the many fountains, and families sat in the pavilions as what seemed like an army of newleyweds strolled across the grass....Sultan's wife had prepared a true Persian picnic of pollo rice and yogurt, kebabs and tea served in glasses. Although nearly 20 years have passed since then, I will never forget it. Sultn's wife had brought the most beautiful tomatoes I have ever seen and we laughed and talked about the flowers and all the future children we would have.

To sit in the warm sunshine in a cool garden surrounded by the sounds of flowing water and laughing children truly is the perfect pastime for a spring day. I only wish I could go back in time and somehow insert my son right smack in the middle of the memory. Of course, he is war of rice with nuts and fruit in it and isn't crazy about tomatoes....Still, I think he could have really had fun in those fountains.

Persian New Year article in National Geographic: Persian New Year Transcends Religions, Regimes

  

 

shimmering blue

   

Kublai Khan: There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us at evening with the odor of the elephants after the rain and the sandalwood ashes growing cold in the brazier, a dizziness makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of the plainspheres where they are portrayed, and rolls up, one after the other, the despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops, from defeat to defeat, and flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings who beseech our armies' protection, offering in exchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and tortoise shell....Italo Calvino

I recently read that so tightly controlled was the Great Khan's empire that it was claimed that a beautiful woman could cross the great expanse of pax Mongolica carrying a solid gold tray atop her head and be assured of arriving wherever she was going in perfect safety. 

Empire does have its advantages, I suppose.

In spite of his tremendous power and wealth, however, the Great Khan seems restless; and while he doesn't necessarily believe everything the Venetian tells him, still he enjoys the listening; for indeed, there is no better way to wile away the evenings than in storytelling.

And so like a magnificent Caliph in a long and luscious dream, Kublai Khan listens to the Venetian tell stories of marvelous and exotic cities located on the edges of his vast empire. And, in this way, the Khan and his humble servant Marco Polo engaged in the most exquisite conversations-- where sometimes they even speak without words, as one imagines what the other wants to say, the other imagines answering.

You will recall that I too sometimes have conversations with an emperor. While we often talk about the way the light reflects on the icy cold river, whose waters flow slowly south from Siberia; sometimes he will silently-- extemporizing a poem-- describe one of his paintings; delicate and perfectionist paintings of flowers or tiny, plump birds-- "paintings

which are but a promise
of a thousand autumns to come
Painting Autumn birds"

Every so often too, we will playfully try and describe a partiular shade of color. This game often goes on for hours as describing a shade is never easy. Some may even say it is impossible to describe a color.

He said, "Close your eyes and imagine the color of the sky, in early morning after a rainshower..."

I closed my eyes and recalled that

over the years, my Emperor and his unquenchable “yearning for blue was a beautiful, imperial dream which had somehow worked its way into my own heart (in the way of all truly fine conversations). And, I became fascinated not so much by his passion as by his method-- for what better way to capture a shade than in porcelain?

And as the wish of the great Emperor, it wouldn’t take long for the ingenious potters at nearby Ru to provide him with exactly what he as looking for either.

The most beautiful porcelain in the world

Because Ru ware was created with the Emperor’s particular taste in mind and then disappeared mysteriously without a trace after the fall of his dynasty, it has been forever after associated with my man. And, with less than 100 surviving examples, a very small piece was sold several years ago at Sotheby’s in New York for approximately 1.5 million dollars. The National Palace Museum in Taipei holds the great majority of the remaining pieces, with a large amount held British museums as well.

As rare as they are stunningly beautiful; the celadon glaze ranges from pale green to a lavender blue and is characterized by its delicate opalescent quality caused by minute crystals and air bubbles trapped in the glaze. It is this shimmering quality--this transportive luminecence-- which reminds me of the luxerious purple of the Roman emperors.

The glaze is also characterized by a fine crackle, a quality which was highly appreciated as a kind of natural decorative element to the otherwise unadorned vessel. Due to its watery translucency and magnificent green-blue color, the quality of its much admired glaze reminds one more than anything else of jade, and although countless artists and even scientists have tried to re-create it, its exact method of production remains a mystery. 

Researcher, Fumito Kondo, on assignment for Japan’s NHK, visited the Ru kiln site not all that long ago, and he describes his meeting with a Chinese researcher, a certain Mr. Zhu, who had been working for over 20 years en-situ, attempting to unlock the glaze’s secrets. Kondo writes,

On the day we arrived at Ru to begin filming, 30 pieces of celedon were being fired. The color in celedon glaze is extremely delicate and so  slight changes occur depending on where the vessel is placed inside the kiln. Mr Zhu, carefully removing each piece, upon examing
them, discovered that not one piece had turned out! Mr. Zhu then
exclaimed that 20 years at Ru together with all the advances in
modern technology had been unable so far to bring back that very
mysterious color blue.     

Its not just Ru ware either. Many of the most renowned Song dynasty glazes as yet remain impossible to perfectly reproduce. Isn't that amazing?

My emperor. When he spoke of his Palace so faraway-- it was almost as if like a swallow traveling south-- his eyes too were locked faraway on the horizon.

 How can I ever forget that old Palace?
 Sometimes I visit in dreams
 And yet all alone
Sometimes I am even unable to dream

To not be able to dream-- and yet, so well did he describe that  rain-drenched color of the morning sky after a rain-- that, well, I don't believe he ever stopped dreaming-- though sometimes I understand how he felt.

-- It's not the voice that tells the story but the ear (Calvino's Cities by Colleen Corradi Brannigan)

-- Recommended viewing: Ru Ware at the Palace Museum