tang dynasty times

Being embodied with Master Wang (知行合一)

He doesn't know what he doesn't know, said my friend, the Brilliant Master Wang Yangming. He knows nothing about human nature and anyway, The Great Learning shows us what are genuine knowledge and genuine action. It asks us ‘to love the good as we love the beautiful color and to hate the evil as we hate the bad odor.’ Here seeing the beautiful color belongs to knowledge, while loving it belongs to action. However, at the very moment one sees the beautiful color one has already loved it; it is not the case that one decides to love it only after seeing it. Similarly, smelling the bad odor belongs to knowledge, while hating it belongs to action. However, at the very moment one smells the bad odor, one has already hated it; it is not the case that one decides to hate it only after smelling it.” All anyone can really know is the view out the window right in front of them. They may think they know more than that but they don't, do they?

My friend was indeed famous for his unusual epistemology. The unity of knowledge and action (知行合一says in a nutshell, “If you want to know bitterness, you have to eat a bitter melon yourself.” No other knowledge is possible. All we know is what we do. And what we do is all we can know. 

To approach the issue you would, I think, have to work well outside a Cartesian mind-body duality so that knowledge is always something *embodied* and therefore in this radical de-emphasis of the thinking-action divide, all knowledge is-- as embodied-- also an action. So, in this way, as the philosophers over at Warp, Weft and Way suggested, this pushes beyond Ryle's know-that versus the know-how dichotemy, to say that all Confucian knowing is a knowing-to.   

Hence, knowing affects or informs, influences. At the same time, though, this is saying that all we can know is what we do- or what we see. "Vision pours in through the eyes," says Dante, "straight into imagination." Even through our very breath, (or 気) we take inside (内）what is outside (外) and can thereby be affected by osmosis. In such an epistemology, what is then emphasized is a sensitivity or a receptive sensibility to the shared world around us.  

This is a partial rejection of knowledge ex nihilo with a strong emphasis on inter-relational and inter-subjective knowing. Knowing as doing. Doing as being.

Yes, the view out our window as we are in the act of looking.

It reminds me of the Renaissance idea of painting as a window on the world. As Leon Battista Alberti in the 15th century famously declared, painting should be like “a transparent window through which we look out into a section of the visible world.” Yes, the Venetians. In their exquisite subjective "eye-witness style chronicle of daily life," perhaps no one achieved this ideal like Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and Carpaccio. Really, no wonder Ottoman Miniaturist Master Effendi was stunned-- so different were these paintings from what he was accustomed to back home.

The Getty Center in LA has a gorgeous and endlessly fascinating work by Carpaccio, Hunting on the Lagoon.

Painted by Carpaccio at the very same moment that my friend, Master Yangming, was writing down his unusual theory of epstemology on the other side of the world, Hunting on the Lagoon had puzzled art historians for decades. The painting shimmers in atmosphereic effects. Painted in azurite, lead white, ultramarine, with touches of vermilion used for the red on the Moor's jacket, it is one of the great views out a window.  

Hunting on the Lagoon. But, hunting water birds with a bow and arrow?

It was the Ming dynasty and the art of cormorant fishing had already arrived in Venice by that time. In Japan, you can still see this traditional way of fishing, called ukai. We saw it years ago by lamplight at night on boats that ply the Inuyama River, in Gifu Prefecture. The birds are trained to catch fish and deliver them back to their owners, the fisherman on the boats. Looking at the painting, while I spotted the cormorants without any problem, the practice was altered beyond recognition. The most fabulous lagoon in the world, during the Renaissance it must have been jam-packed with fish and mussels and clams and birds and, well, it must have been a wonderful place to spend an afternoon. And, these guys with their bows are clearly no fishermen.

I mean, I almost hate to draw attention to the big white lilies portruding from the water in the foreground of the painting. It surely must have driven art historians nuts for generations.

And, it wasn't until 1962 that a tentative answer to the mystery of the lilies was offered either.

You guessed it. There is another painting that has an empty vase.

An even more famous painting by Carpaccio, it hangs in the Correr Museum in Venice. Two Venetian Ladies  was described by 19th century art collector John Ruskin as, "the best picture in the world." And, until 1962, with that bored look in their eyes and the high wooden clogs tossed in the corner, it was long assumed and insisted upon that these two ladies were courtesans.

But as Brilliant Master Yangming insisted, it is almost impossible to understand the view out the window unless you are the one doing the looking. All your knowledge will be based on rather shaky presuppositions otherwise.

Do you see the pretty majolica vase sitting on the railing of the balcony? Well, finally someone put two and two together. Someone looking at the empty vase surmissed --and then tests later confirmed-- that the lilies of Hunters fit right in that vase. Yes, the two paintings (paintings painted on wooden panels) fit together one on top of the other!

You can see here how it worked.

Talking about a window on the world, these paintings are believed to have been painted on a shutter or panels for a cabinet (the other painting facing this side being missing). Like pieces of a puzzle, looking at the paintings as a set, art historians now believe that these "ladies"-- rather then bored courtesan-- are probably the wives of the "fishermen," who are themselves no longer believed to be fishermen but rather aristocratic Venetians out hunting water fowl for sport on the lagoon.

The ladies, sitting on their elegant altane, are waiting-- waiting for the return of their men.

So this window on a world affords a view of two patrician ladies awaiting--finely clothed and surrounded in luxery, they look extraordinarily bored, don't they? They do not seem interested --though we certainly are-- in the view out their window of the most beautiful lagoon in the world. La Serenissima.

**

See Part 1: View from a Minaret

Highly recommended paper by Rebecca Norris: Hunting on the Lagoon and Two Venetian Ladies: A Vignette; and even better, Yvonne Szafran, 'Carpaccio's “Hunting on the lagoon”, a new perspective', Burlington Magazine, 1995

And "Is there something more than knowing-how and knowing-that?" by Yong Huang.  

Finally, this youtube video Carpaccio Vitorre 

♪♪♪♪♪♪  and if Venice is sinking, I'm going under   ♪♪♪♪♪♪

Ponte dei Sospiri (溜息橋)

         

absence / absence
Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved object -- whatever its cause and its duration -- and which tends to transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment-- Barthes

 Queen Dido.

You will recall, the last we saw the two lovers, they were overwhelmed and lying in each other's arms-- whispering softly in Japanese: 愛していますよ, she says, "I love you."

That eros （愛神）had intoxicated her in a cloud of longing and desire -- that cannot be denied. I ask, though, that you recall the cave scene (caves as female body/sexuality) when "torches of lightning blazed," and the "prisoners of lust" ("enthralled by shameless passion') make love

That was the first day of her ruin and the first cause for sorrows; for she is not moved by her appearance or reputation, now Dido no longer thinks of her love as a secret: she calls it marriage; she hides her fault by this name

Is everyone finally getting the picture?

They have made love, and she now believes they are married. Aeneas, for his part is probably thinking, "Hey, who said anything about marriage?"

And that is amour （恋愛）.

Turning back to daoism for a moment, last night I re-read a friend's work on the topic for the third time. And, if daoism urges us to put aside our various mental constructs (of Self, of how we think the world should be, etc.) and go back to the purity and honesty of childhood, I am left asking again, what if anything was Dido's reaction than a fit of love and abandonment? I wonder, if the ancients had this one 狂気の愛 (amour fou).

Burning incense and tossing oracle bones, I read Barthes like the Gialbo reads the yijing:

A classic word comes from the body, which expresses the emotion of absence (to sigh 溜息→感嘆 ): "to sigh for the bodily presence": the two halves of the androgyne sigh for each other, as if each breath, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other: the image of the embrace 色 in that melts the two images into a single one: in amorous absence, I am, sadly, an unglued image that dries, yellows, shrivels.

So there she is-- walking over the Bridge of Sighs (溜息橋), but finds herself utterly unable to just turn around and walk back to the other side. And so in my reading, Dido does nothing （無為）-- or she does something 有為 (it's all in what direction you are facing on the bridge) but walking forward (or backward) she lies down in the flames; cursing all Trojans.

Regarding the wuwei world （無為自然）I found one japanese explanation I liked a lot-- though, I warn you I have no idea if this works for those dwelling in the State of Chu. And that is this, the kanji wei (為/为) means, "to do" and "to become" but in Japanese at least, the more common meaning of the kanji is "for the purpose of"-- and one blogger wrote how it is this that is the point of wuwei. Do not perform any action which you do for the purpose (...の為に）of something else. This means, basically, to always act in terms of ends (ends in themselves)-- never in terms of means. Being un-strategic and without ado... About Dido's heart, Brodsky said, "her love was like a fish."

Is she not the real hero of the epic?

I was listening to an In Our Time program on free will and not surprisingly, Aeneas was mentioned. Discussing the surprising lack of interest the hero has received by Hollywood, one of Bragg's guests mentioned that it may in part have been due to the hero's lack of free will. Indeed, out of all the ancient heroes, Aeneas is considered to be almost totally lacking in free will. Pious Aeneas and his duty. Controlled by destiny, there is almost no wiggle room in his mind.

But, of course, this is not the only reason Aeneas-among the ancient heroes-- has been looked down upon and sometimes even derided. For as Hubert Dreyfus said (and I agree), it's hard not to dislike him really.

For as my friend, the Count 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).

For more, see In Praise of Heroes Not saying Stupid Things.

Barthes ends his meditation thus:

The absence of the other holds my head underwater; gradually I drown, my air supply gives out: it is by this asphyxia that I reconstitute my "truth" and that I prepare what in love is Intractable.

a medieval heart

 

The ancients told us that it was the heart that mattered. Thinking too much, they warned, will only give you a headache. And this fact was backed up by the finest research of Medieval physicians and theologians. Aristotelian philosophy had imparted to the Medievals that the heart was hot and dry-- often times burning hot; and that intelligence, emotion, passion and sensations all originated there, in that heat. Ibn Arabi further refined this by adding that, if the mind thinks (考）, the heart imagines （思・想）.

We find ourselves, therefore, back in a Medieval time when heart and imagination took center stage.

In addition to its heat, the Medieval heart was also believed to be extremely porous--something which inextricably connected inner with outer (and outer and inner). Heather Webb explains it thus:

 It was thought that the air we breathed mixed with the blood in our hearts to form generative spirits that, sent back into the world, connected us to one another and to the greater circulating universe. According to the Aristotelian and Aquinian theory, the heart should imperfectly mimic the circulations of the heavens"

Through our breath, then, and our persistently beating hearts, we are connected to the world around us. One breathes in landscape, atmosphere and social context and breathes out heart and poetry. 

****

Remember when Dante sighed?

Out to buy figs, young Dante was in a rush to arrive at the market. As he walked he imagined the smell of Sicilian lemons; of sweet sugar from Egypt; of perfumed vinegars and syrups made from grapes.  Cherries, endives, oranges, spicy sausage; dried fruit, dried fish, mint, orange blossoms and roses---cumin, peppers and of course saffron. Just thinking about the perfume of these things caused him to quicken his pace. And, turning the corner to the lively street that followed the great River Arno, he spotted her. Beatrice. It had been precisely nine years since the first time he had caught glimpse of her, at a time when they had both still been only children. But he recognized her in an instant.

Then, as she approached him-- not surprising, given the story-- their eyes locked.

And as a thousand birds took flight in his heart, the man stood there barely breathing. Time stopped. Breath quickened and he let out an amorous sigh (溜息→感嘆).

Too quickly, however, Beatrice's friend, with whom she had been walking arm-in-arm, urged her to continue walking, and so Beatrice-- with just the most prefunctory greetings to her beloved-- walked away. Somehow, though, she felt absolutely sure that she would never be the same again.

Seeing the world anew.

In a dream later that night, The God of Love commands Dante: Vide cor tuum: Look upon your heart. 

Dante. His world was largely un-interested in Nirvana or Enlightenment-- or any other project which saw our human lives as a resource to be shaped, utilized, improved and perfected. People didn't really seek to be the best me they could be. Nor did they go to elaborate lengths to avoid pain. For those in Dante's world, one needn't empty oneself or seek to detach oneself from emotions as their world was not a world of independent self-enclosed brains. Dwelling in a world that itself was bleeding and wounded (wounded Christ heart), poets and philosophers considered that the best one could do was to bravely and vigiliantly keep an open heart-- a generous heart (Sacred Heart).

And through one's own heart's wounds, from out of this would true art be created.

Dante was very clear about this.

But, the Middle Ages was a long time ago. So, imagine my surprise when visiting a psychic down on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood not that long ago, I was told: You have forgotten your Medieval heart. Your Gypsy heart.

**

In the Comedia, hopelessness is the greatest Sin of all and only in Hell, is a person's heart closed. Heart becomes cold and likewise --as Dante tells us again and again-- hell is not a hot place but rather is a full of ice. For in Hell, people harm themselves by hurting others.

While in Paradise, people picnic.

All art by Tullio DeSantis

 

 

dante's dream

 

Scholars continue to study the beautiful love letters that were exchanged between the young Ibn Arabi and his Lady in the window. A rich and glorious tapestry of love and the exquisite color of their desire; I admit that I too cannot get them out of my mind. And, I am particularly taken with a phrase that our young hero would repeat to his Lady: If I hand you my heart, you won't drop it, will you?

Most of you, Dear Readers, will agree I am sure that it is the Medieval romantic trope par excellance. This image of the Lover ripping out his beating and bleeding heart and presenting it to the Beloved-- we see it over and over again in Medieval literature. A "macabre literalization of the metaphoric seat of love: the heart itself," says Robert Harrison in his book the Body of Beatrice.

The heart.

We forget now in our age of mind and reason that for a long time it was the heart that was thought to be what really mattered.

It all reminds me of Dante's dream from La Vita Nuova.

Exactly nine years had past since he had first caught glimpse of her as a nine year old child. Now aged 18, she walks in lovliness and in virtue. And, passing him on the street one day, she turned to greet him (salute as greeting, salute as "saving," in Italian).

Dante was overcome. And fell into sweet sleep.

Dreaming, the room became infused with a flame-coloured light as the God of Love, the Lord of Amor 愛神 appeared before Dante's eyes. Veiled in deep red, sighing and in great longing, Dante sees that in Amor's arms is his beloved, Beatrice, also draped in crimson.

Joyfully Amor seemed to me to hold
my heart in his hand, and held in his arms
my lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping.
Then he woke her, and that burning heart
he fed to her reverently, she fearing,
afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.

Vide cor tuum: Look upon your heart. Thus commands Amor. And Dante looks and sees there that his heart, held tightly in Amor's fist, is red and on fire. Then, in fascination and amidst many sighs, the Lord wakes Beatrice and commands that she eat the Lover's heart. Amor feeds this heart to Beatrice as Dante watches in red. The act completed, Amor unexpectently turns sad. And gathering tightly to his chest the Lady held tightly in his arms, he thereby acsends to heaven in tears.

A mystery to be sure, even in Dante's lifetime, people were puzzled by his dream. Robert Harrison, in his book, describes how Dante's contemporary Cino da Pistoia interpreted the dream that Amor sought to show Dante that true love sees the lover desiring to have his heart be uttrely known to the Beloved. And he shows this by offering Dante's heart to Beatrice for consuming.

Another contemporary, however, advises that Dante try and "wash his testicles with plenty of water to disperse the noxious vapors that bring on the delirium of such visions."

恋愛.

I personally think (and I am basing this on my reading of Ibn Arabi's letters-- themselves so full of longing and sighing) that Amor begins to weep because he knows this is as close as Dante will ever get to his Beloved-- as she is doomed to die. For as Barthes says,

Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved object -- whatever its cause and its duration -- and which tends to transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment

This is seen in both the tears of God and the sighing of the poet. Like a Tibetan prayer wheel sending up a prayer to heaven with each turn of the wheel, so too do sighs and tears express the movement of inner to outer; the transcendence of our immediate and bodily felt sensual or spiritual desires upward.

Barthes:

A classic word comes from the body, which expresses the emotion of absence (to sigh 溜息→感嘆 ): "to sigh for the bodily presence": the two halves of the androgyne sigh for each other, as if each breath, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other: the image of the embrace 色 in that melts the two images into a single one: in amorous absence, I am, sadly, an unglued image that dries, yellows, shrivels.

And as Dante sighs, Dante is deeply and forever moved by love:

From then on I say that Amor governed my soul, which as soon so soon wedded to him and began to acquire over me such certainty and command, through the power my imagination gave him, that I was forced to carry out his wishes fully.

What is so fascinating about this is that Dante admits that everything that came to pass did so through the free will of his own heart. That is, Dante freely surrendered to Amor. 

Heart can only count to one.

It surrenders or it doesn't.

And, in an age which no longer prioritizes heart and where imagination hardly stands a chance, I have wondered in my darker moments, about the state of love. Do you think-- if we turn off our TVs-- we are still able to fall in love like Dante did-- in longing and amidst great sighs?  

**

Here is Patrick Cassedy's inspired version of the Sonnet, Vide Cor Meum and even as joy becomes bitter tears, the poet is at peace; for "see my heart," he says.

Chorus: And thinking of her
Sweet sleep overcame me
I am your master
See your heart
And of this burning heart
Your heart
(Chorus: She trembling)
Obediently eats.
Weeping, I saw him then depart from me.
Joy is converted
To bitterest tears
I am in peace
My heart
I am in peace
See my heart 

 

 

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The Road to Oxiana

 

--from the archives (why the battle of talas is my favorite battle)

The almond groves of Samarqand,
Bokhara, where red lilies blow.
And Oxus, by whose yellow sand
The grave white-turbaned merchants go --Oscar Wilde

1000 years before the infamous "Great Game," which was the name given to the intense rivalry that existed at the turn of the century between Czarist Russia and Victorian England for supremacy in Central Asia, there was another "Great Game." This older rivalry occurred between the Chinese, the Arabs, the Tibetans, and Turkish peoples.

And the region they were fighting for, you ask? Well, it was the same old stretch of land-- a stretch of land that has somehow remained right smack in the middle of everything for 1000 years.

To the East was China, and such was China's greatness under the Tang dynasty that none save the Arabs to the West were said to rival her. Rome had long been overrun, and for all intents and purposes Byzantium was in a state of great decline. The Arabs-- in what was a stunning rise to power-- after toppling the Persian Sassanian dynasty in 637, had next turned their attention to those lands to the East.

Despite the astonishing speed at which the countries of the Middle East came under the power of the Arabs and Islam, the nations of Central Asia, which had long been part of the Persian sphere of influence, proved to be a much tougher nut to crack. As the Arabs made increasing encroachments into areas long considered by the Chinese as being part of their sphere of influence (particularly that of Transoxiana) the Chinese and Arabs saw increased fighting occur along China's Western borders.

The Chinese, however, also had the Tibetan Empire (which had reached its zenith during Tang times) to the southwest and various nomadic peoples (such as the Turkish Uighurs and Mongols) with their shifting alliances and shifting moods to the north to contend with as well. Perhaps what is most surprising, as Susan Whitfield points our in her fascinating book, Life Along the Silk Road, is that these empires and super-powers clashed in places that were not only thousands of miles from their home bases, but were in some of the most remote spots on earth. The battles almost exclusively occurred on frozen mountain terrain or in desolate and burning deserts.

Of course, skirmishes like this continue down to today. I mean, we still see India, China, and Pakistan (among others) wrestling for control of a Himalayan peak 17,000 feet above sea level or some stretch of highway in the desert. You cannot help but think to yourself, if they really want that glacier that badly, why not give it to them? But, regiments of Indian, Chinese and Pakistani soldiers remain stationed high up in the mountains year-round. It is for strategic reasons, they are told, in strategic foreign policy that is as old as the silk road.

It is the terrain that perhaps more than anything defines Central Asia. In addition to being dominated by some of the highest mountain ranges on earth, the area is also home to some of the most deadly deserts and lifeless basin areas as well. Completely landlocked, it is a land of great extremes. Through this rough terrain, two great rivers flow north-- down from the mountains into the Aral Sea. These rivers are the lifeblood of the people.

To the West, forming a natural border between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; and then between Tajikistan and Afghanistan is the Amu Darya. The river is known locally as the Jayhoun, which is thought to be derived from Gihon-- one of the four rivers of the Garden of Eden of the Bible. We in the West know the river by its Classical Greek name, the Oxus. The other river, the Syr Darya flows the great length of Central Asia from the Krgyz Republic; briefly into Uzbekistan and then through Kazakhstan. This river is also commonly referred to by its ancient Greek name, the Jaxartes-- being perhaps most famous as the northernmost point of Alexander the Great's conquests in the East.

From ancient Greek times, the land between the rivers was known as Transoxiana-- or Oxiana.

It was not far from the Syr Darya River that the decisive Battle of Talas took place. Occurring in 751, the five day battle is one of the most important battles of the East (and yet few in the West have even heard of it!). The Arabs in their push Eastward (into lands previously held by the Persians) were seriously encroaching on China's strategic Silk Road Garrisons. Something had to be done, so the Emperor sent out his best forces under the leadership of the famed Korean commander Gao Xianshi. Known as Lord of the Mountains, Commander Gao had made a career out of inflicting defeat on China's enemies to the West. Inflicting defeat on Turks, Tibetans and Arabs, the battles were fought almost exclusively in the dazzlingly high Pamir Mountains.

Neither side wanted war-- as war would interrupt what had for centuries been the incredibly lucrative trade of luxury items that passed through Transoxiana. Silk was the most famous item traded, but passing from the West through Oxiana on its way East was the lucrative trade in furs, amber, honey and walrus ivory from Eastern Europe. Plus they each had other enemies to contend with as well. Sending emissaries to visit each other's capitals to negotiate, there is little doubt that neither side wanted war--- and yet they were on an inevitable collision course.

The underlying cause of the Battle actually had nothing whatsoever to do with Chinese-Arab relations, but rather was caused by tensions with Tibet and a local feud between two small Central Asian Kingdoms. The Tibetans at the time not only had a highly sophisticated culture but they also had a strong military-- a military which was on the move. They had caused China no end of troubles with their incursions further and further North (into areas long considered under Chinese suzerainty). To stave off any further ambitions, China established alliances with the Kingdoms to their rear in Kashmir and in the Pamirs. But, things came to a head when the King of the Kingdom of Gilgit announced himself as being pro-Tibetan. The Chinese had had enough and sent in their Commander of the Mountains, Gao Xianshi.

Swooping down on the enemy in a surprise attack, he destroyed the bridges into the Kingdom thereby cutting off help expected from the Tibetans, and before any allies could arrive to fight alongside them, Gao had cut off the heads of the King and his advisers. And that was that. Commander Gao became the Military Governor of the region, including Kucha and Kashmir and from that base, China kept a hand in all that went on in the area. (This battle forms the backdrop of Susan Whitfield's second Tale in her book, Life Along the Silk Road).

It seemed that an uneasy alliance between the Tibetans and Chinese, as well as the Chinese and Arabs had been formed, until a petty feud between two Kings further North in Transoxiana brought things to a head again. This time, it wasn't just the Tibetans either, but the Arabs who were also said to have played a role, when the King of Ferghana was deposed with the alleged help of both the Tibetans and Arabs. The deposed King escaped to Kucha were he requested help from his old ally Commander Gao who was still there as Military Governor. In the process of re-installing the King, Gao led massacres in three towns in Sogdiana, which were increasingly closer to the Arab-controlled regions.

Sensing the time had come to put the Chinese in their place, the Abbassid Governor in Khorasan mobilized his army. Marching from Merv, they crossed the Oxus, heading straight for Kashgar. The two Titans finally crossed paths on the banks of the Talas River, in Kyrgystan. During the encounter, the Arabs achieved a stunning victory which they credit to superior strategy. The Chinese, for their part, blame defection of their allies part way through the battle.

While it was neither excessively long or bloody, the Battle of Talas remains the battle people talk about. Arab sites give it an almost jihad-ish flavor as the battle which caused the "infidels to take flight." And both sides seem to agree that if the Battle had gone the other way, it would have been China , not Islam which would have been the great influence Central Asia. For with this battle, the lines were finally drawn in the sand: Turkestan belonged to the Arabs, and China thereafter withdrew to its garrisons in the Tarim Basin.   

Nobody, of course, thinks that this one battle was the sole reason for the Chinese withdraw East of the Pamirs, but it became what was the last nail in the coffin of the Tang dynasty as the event that heralded on the infamous An Lushan Rebellion (755-763)-- see my post here for more on the man who would rock the empire.

It is said to have been the only time in history that the Arabs and Chinese fought, but the Battle of Talas was to have a profound impact on world history. As mentioned above, Chinese expansion West was firmly stopped at the Pamirs, and Central Asia would forever after be influenced by Arab and Islamic (Persian) culture. In addition, at the battle's end, Chinese paper-making artisans were kidnapped and brought back to the new Abbasid capital at Baghdad. At last, the mysteries of paper-making were unlocked. It was thanks to this technical know-how that the Arab empire embarked on what was a huge cultural enterprise to translate and propagate Greek philosophy, mathematics, and medicine.

Without this Arab effort, the great riches of Classical Greek culture would have been lost forever as Medieval Europe had turned its back on its classical past. The work of Aristotle was most famously preserved under the Arabs, but so too was Euclidean geometry and Alexandrian astronomy. Knowledge was not only preserved, but was also refined and re-worked into the great body of knowledge and culture which was propagated during the Arab golden age. For example. classical mathematical theory formed the basis of algebra, which was pioneered during the Golden Age of the Abbasinian dynasty.

Whether intentional or not, French philosophers (and your occasional Japanese academic) again and again urge us not to forget the pivotal role the Abbasids in Baghdad (with great Persian influence)-- as well as the Muslim philosophers and scholars of al-Andalus-- had on the Renaissance that occurred in Europe not long after. From the East, the Arabs received the technical achievements of the Chinese and Indians, and from the West, they took the body of Western Classical culture. They then dedicated themselves to preserving and expanding this body of knowledge. It was philosophers like Averroes and Avicenna who kept the light of philosophy and mathematics, physics and medicine burning brightly in what was a great cauldron of intellectual activity centered around Baghdad.

It seems at times-- whether one is interested in the achievements of the East or of the West-- that all roads truly lead to Oxiana; as Oxiana, perhaps more than anywhere on earth, has been a land that has stood at the crossroads of civilizations.

in the mood with heidegger

 

--from the peony archives

 Gondolas, lights, and music-- he insinuated that I was moody; telling me I do "a good imitation of a nut."  (Can you believe it?)

"That's good," I thought, recalling a poem about Venice written by Nietzsche. Robert Harrison, talking about the Philosophy of Moods, describes how Nietzsche-- a man of many moods-- once sang the poem in the middle of the night on a train from Turin back to Germany in a state of madness:

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?

Nietzsche in the mood.

Talking last time about the imagination, Bezdomny had remarked that, 

Trouble is we still live in an age of bread and circuses. Any real enchantment or imagination any of us may have will immediately be shot down as the ravings of a nutjob

The ravings of a nutjob-- don't you love it? But, nut-imitation skills-- or any imitation skills really!-- are not a bad thing to have, if you think about it. Remember how much pleasure Masetto had in Book Three of the Decameron? (Well, at least at first!) 

You remember,

 as the dawn was already changing from vermilion to orange, as the sun hasted to the horizon, the queen rose and roused all the company.

And carrying out her duty, she appointed Filostrato to be storyteller of the day. In those days, storytelling was important business and Filostrato took his job seriously-- telling the group about the young man, Masetto da Lamporecchio, who so pines for the lovely ladies of a nearby nunnery that he "feigns to be dumb" in order to obtain a gardener's position at the covent, whose women,

with one accord make haste to lie with him.

Listening to the story, who among the assembled ladies and gentlemen were not moved?

Why tell stories if no one is any longer capable of being moved by them, right? I have been spending a lot of time talking about imagination and storytelling, but, in the end perhaps what I am really trying to get at is this capacity to be engaged with life. That is, one's capacity of being moved by mood.

Being in the mood.

As I said here,

I know some of you may blame Peerless Helen. I mean, of course, all those dead Trojan soldiers for one thing. Virgil, too, I think came down hard on her. But, it's interesting to note that the ancients themselves had a more ambiguous understanding of Helen, whom they called, Peerless Among Women. For the ancients lived in great awe of the moods-- and so in one sense that great Mood that overcame Helen inspiring her--overcoming her--to run away with Paris, well by acting on it, was she not going with the Flow (it is hard in a sense to judge now because we cannot but help see it through Christian or even Roman terms, can we?) The above is pure Dreyfus-- but I like it.

And so, when my man Caesar called me moody, I asked him whether he thought that someone not prone to moods would be able to truly be moved by things? That is the question, is it not? If the strings are not pulled pretty tautly on the stringed instrument of our souls, nothing will revereberate within us. So, no, I don't think the opposite of "high strung" is laid back. I think the opposite is 鈍感= dull, insensitive, obtuse, flat.

This is much on my mind since I've been thinking of Heidegger and his concept of mood. For Heidegger, moods are very different from how we ordinarily think of them today. As Dreyfus explains

Until recently, if philosophers thought about moods or feelings at all, they thought of them as inner mental states. On this view, often called "Cartesian" after the French philosopher René Descartes, people are not really in a mood but moods are in people. A person's private feelings are expressed (made outer) by bodily movements, which can then be observed, interpreted, and responded to by another person through his or her movements.

For Heidegger, then, 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.

Robert Harrison explains it thus:

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

People are wrapped in mood. This is different from emotion, like anger or sadness, which has a cause. Mood is something more general that comes without cause from outside us-- like a song, calling. Hence, moodiness could be seen as a kind of sensitive attunement.

Nietzsche steps out into the dark Venice night. Surrounded by the sound and smell of water, a mood overcomes him like a song-- quivering across the surface of the water.

Gondolas, lights, and music--
drunken it swam out into the twilight.

And he asks, Did anyone listen?

It is not unlike a Confucian scholar whose meticulous actions-- perfectly attuned to the situation-- are guided by a Confucian sensibility, or 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 guided by mood. 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.

Mood is how we situate ourselves in our circumstances sensitively. That different cultures across geography and time have emphasized or have sought to cultivate this sensibility to a greater or lesser degree is commonsensical. Sepp Gumbrecht holds up the ancient Greeks as one culture that placed great emphasis on cultivated sensibility (think of Helen of Troy). But we can also think of this in terms of cultivation in Confucian traditions. Confucian sensibility. 

And so as a Medieval lady in Japan is overcome by longing during the time of long June rains, far away in in Florence, a group of ladies and gentlemen gather around the fountain in the garden to tell tales. As Filostrato tells of the wondrous adventures of the young man Masetto in the convent of young ladies, those listens were envloped in a wondrous and intoxicating mood. And who among those present was not moved? 

And I leave you with Saburo Teshigawara's dance piece exploring stillness (danced to music by Gurdjieff).

Dido Sings the Wuwei Blues (Part 2)

 

 Shipwrecked at Carthage-- Part 2 (this time for the Gialbo) 

Seneca is stoically silent, while Ibn Arabi voices his complaints loudly on Facebook. It seems that some of you are not yet convinced that Dido had a point. The Gialbo-- in his typically subtle and yet sophisticated manner-- brings up the famous scene where Zhuangzi mourns his dead wife in order to try and better understand what exactly we are talking about:

莊子妻死，惠子弔之，莊子則方箕踞鼓盆而歌。惠子曰：“與人居長子，老身死，不哭亦足矣，又鼓盆而歌，不亦甚乎！”莊子曰：“不然。是其始死也，我獨何能無概然！察其始而本無生，非徒無生也，而本無形，非徒無形也，而本無氣。雜乎芒芴之間，變而有氣，氣變而有形，形變而有生，今又變而之死，是相與為春秋冬夏四時行也。人且偃然寢於巨室，而我噭噭然隨而哭之，自以為不通乎命，故止也

I am at first taken aback by Seneca Crane's interpretation (see here). It is pure stoicism (I cannot help but think darkly). Although I do know what he means in a sense. That one is to "taste without tasting" (ddj63) etc. At the same time, I decide to go ahead and make my own translation of the passage to see if I cannot get to an interpretation that will be more satisfactory to me (and to Dido).

After completing my rendition, I discover, it's not all that different from Watson's-- except perhaps that I would want to stress much more this concept that Zhuangzi (otherwise known as ZZ) is basing both his behavior as well as the reason behind his behavior on something the Japanese translations have as 自然の法則　principles of nature and the dao　道理.

Ibn Arabi-- whose stamina for debate is unsurpassed-- has many problems with this, but for now I am sticking to this idea that what Watson call fate and what Legge calls "what is appointed for all" is really best expressed as the laws of nature or Way.

But more importantly, that this really boils down to one man's (the man we call ZZ) personal response to Way. And, that this personal response to Way has less stress on an objective-sounding normative "should" than the Roman version would suggest (I am basing my interpretation on online Japanese sources-- which many of you will be aware that I usually am more friendly to since after all they have been doing this a 1000 years). In fact, concerning this second point, two of the online sites I used had this last line explicitly translated something like, "and as for myself, I thought to cry like that would be ignoring what was natural as Way.... "

These small adjustments in emphasis lend for a translation that is much more intuitive to me:

(牡丹訳）

(trans)
When Zhuangzi's wife died, Huizi found him singing and drumming.

Huizi asked him: "Zhuangdi, is it right to to be singing and drumming during a time of mourning? Afterall was it not your wife who lived with you all these years, raising your children? To not cry is one thing, but to sing and drum-- is this not a time for sadness (is not your reaction unnatural)?"

Zhuangzi replied: "Not at all. Was I not devastated when she first died? Did I not cry then?

"Thinking about it, though, I thought about that time before she was born when she had no real "existence." Not only did she have no real "existence" but she had no physical form. And without a body, she also had no spirit (氣). From out of this murky nothing, however, 氣 was generated and this was changed into "form." Now this body and 氣 has returned to it's origins-- and this is no different than the changing of the seasons. From spring to summer, from summer to fall, from fall to winter, this is the natural way of the world. That humans can return to a peaceful slumber in a great room within nature-- in this happy state, why would I then cry thinking of her like that? To cry after thinking of it in this way would be to ignore what is natural-- or the Way of Nature." (天命）

Watson calls this concept of 「命」 Fate. And, I don't dislike this-- as long as we remember that while for the Stoics, fate was like a dog tied to cart being dragged around town; for the daoist sage, what was fate other than simply the natural unfolding of events? Actually, just going by the Japanese, 天命 perhaps all it really suggests is the concept of all those things which are out of human hands-- or as wikipedia explains, "how one should live the life given to human beings by "heaven" (天から人間に与えられた一生をかけて行うべき命令のこと)

Ok, fate.

To my mind, the interesting question is: how does one know what to do in any given situation? How can person understand what is their fate? Well for the stoics, one knew fate (or Nature) through reason. And to cultivate reason one was to do everything in their power to diminish the emotions which could cloud our rational faculties (like our Lady Dido). Harvard tells me that his Latin professor once remarked in class that the main Stoic policy was, "Never fall in love, under any circumstances". 

I just don't see that as being part of the daoist mindset since emotions and passions are not categorically dismissed in the same way. And indeed, to "not act" is-- in fact-- to act. "Not acting" as such is an absurd concept so we really, I think, have to be not so quick to dismiss poor Dido just because she acted (even in this case cursing unto suicide!). Because of course, even had she not acted with passion, she still would have been acting.

How can one possible judge what was in harmony with the way and what was not? Well, I am left with the idea that our fate (or Way) is known through our intuition and to cultivate intuition one seeks to heighten sensibility in what is in the end a very individual project. And, I would suggest that only those involved-- including Dido's subjects-- only they could pass accurate ethical judgement-- after the fact.

**

So, what does that say about Zhuangzi mourning his dead wife? Well, I reject that it says anything whatsoever about the limits of our loving relationships-- at the same time agreeing with Professor A Ku that it recommends-- rather than any sort of emotional detachment--  rather it prescribes an individual commitment to staying in the present tense and yes-- going with the flow (even if that means cursing onto suicide).

Indeed, when I read the passage, it resonates to me as one long meditation which has as its base ZZ's tremendously attached love for his wife. For if he wasn't so enthralled by her as to be devastated by her passing, why would he have thought about this so deeply. It is absolutely beautiful, I think.

And no where does he say, "better not to be attached to love," but rather-- better to understand that death is nothing to be fearful of as death is part of the natural cycle of things (自然の循環 ）. Where Confucian teaches, "just take care of your life and death will take care of itself," our Man from the State of Song, says that death is as part of nature as the passing of the seasons. It is not only not a sad event, but it is all part of the way things are (無為自然→自然の規則的な循環 ）

As a side note, I read a very interesting paper last night as I lay next to Adonis watching him sleep like an angel. Written by a professor at Nihon Daigaku, Kunitsugu Kosaka, it presents wuwei as being not something that humans do alone, but rather that it is nature that is wuwei. Again and again the paper had this phrase 無為自然 and so this I think is the best clue to understanding what wuwei is (and perhaps it is something that all daoists need to take their own stand on in individual ways?)

**

Anyway, I learn that my man Ibn Arabi also plays the guqin. Over at his very bare-bones abode, he writes very beautifully about a piece of music called Mozi Grieving over Silk, explaining,

Mozi was walking through town one day when he came across silk dyers plying their trade. He was moved to tears by this scene as it led him to reflect that on the inevitable force exerted on man by his surroundings, his relationships, and his experiences. Life dyes us: we can never go back to the way we were, let alone imagine how we might have turned out if this hue, that hue had never bled through us.

And when I complain

Yes, I think it is true that life dyes us– every single experience. Therefore, don’t you think only the cowardly turn away?

He wisely responds-- whether you turn away or not, life will dye you.

True. But, we also don't want to turn away from life or our emotions, right?

Ronald de Susa ends his paper Learning to be Natural like this

We are forever launched into a dialectical dance: our emotional dispositions respond to, but also create, entirely new contexts. We obviously can't judge new situations with anything other than our old dispositions; but if we apply ourselves to take as comprehensive a view of the new context as possible, the totality of our emotional reactions will generate new paradigm scenarios, from which emerge fresh axiological judgments.

"Every translation is an interpretation"

Happy birthday to Sam, and to the man who made me smile all day long yesterday after telling me, "I am no Roman-- I am all about the love" this is for you:

lacrimae rerum ( & Dido sings the wuwei blues)

 

I abandoned your shores, Empress,
against my will.
-- Aeneid, Book 6

It was his fate. Well, that is, if you believe that fate is a person's chosen path (plus their character).

Aeneas.

Thinking about Him, I spent some time last night re-reading a discussion about wuwei 無為 that went on over at the Gialbo's palace last spring: Wuwei-- what does it mean? The Gialbo suggested that in daoist wuwei there is more emphasis on something like “non-learned action.” I agree to a point-- though I personally would much prefer to see the emphasis placed the avoidance of action based on over-thinking ("hard-boiled action?).

But, we actually don't have a lot to go on, do we? 

In Japan, wuwei has become so intertwined with Buddhist notions of non-causality that it's hard to step back and recall how wuwei was used by the daoists-- especially if you are thinking in Japanese. But, in fact, kojien gives this earlier pre-Buddhist understanding of the word first in its list of definitions: 道の在り方 "the way of the Way." (also, "the natural state of the natural state").

Maybe the Buddhist conception has somehow influenced the understanding of the word in today's time, but I question whether wuwei is anything more than a general policy concerning not over-thinking one's actions; that is, rather than a categorical state of non-action (as a form of Self-extinguishing), it is instead a Will to heightened-awareness in order to be more sensitive about what is happening around oneself; a sensitivity to how things are unfolding, developing, moving or not moving in any direction. And, the Sage or Hero cultivates this sensibility in order to "go with the flow."

As a side note about flow, to me this is profoundly different from Czikszentmihalyi's concept of Flow-- which has more in common, I think, with a skilled absorption in meaningful occupation as a means to achieving happiness.

For one thing, is wuwei even about achieving happiness? Not really. Isn't it more about achieving a kind of harmony with the here and now (people and events as they exist in front of us)?

What do you do, though, when there is a Disturbance in the Force?

Last month, my sister took Adonis with my nephew, little Puyi, to Puyi's preschool. Some little girls can be so forward with little boys, and one of the girls in Puyi's class took a real liking to my Adonis and latched on to him like glue; following him around, not letting anyone else get near him and otherwise monopolizing him. So, there they were out on the playground happily playing with Adonis' hotwheel cars (which he always travels with a few hotwheels in his pocket). Well, he must have said or done something really stupid because the little girl suddenly flung her hotwheel down in to the dirt and yelled, "I hate you!" And turned and walked away.

Adonis, looked around in complete bewilderment at all the mothers and raising his arms up toward the heavens, asked, "What just happened here?"

Yes, that is what I call a Disturbance in the Force.

Baffled and completely beyond understanding, he just went back to playing. Some may think-- yes, non-action, wuwei.

But is it? Did Adonis take the hero's path?

Wuwei is not really about non-action as much as knowing when it is natural to act and when it is not natural to act-- and how does one "know" this? I would say by pure Confucian sensibility.

I know some of you may blame Peerless Helen. I mean, of course, all those dead Trojan soldiers for one thing. Virgil, too, I think came down hard on her. But, it's interesting to note that the ancients themselves had a more ambiguous understanding of Helen, whom they called, Peerless Among Women. For in one sense that great Mood that overcame her to run away with Paris, well by acting on it, was she not going with the Flow (it is hard in a sense to judge now because we cannot but help see it through Christian or even Roman terms, can we?) The above is pure Dreyfus-- but I like it.

Now back to my man-- the Antihero. He tells us that it is his Fate to leave the Empress, right? It is his path and is also his character. But was it wuwei?

How can one even know?

I think the tricky aspect of thinking about wuwei is just this: that perhaps it can really only be understood in retrospect.

As some of the readers of these pages may recall, I have unendingly watched My Lover the Emperor trying to navigate this path of lesser resistence. He was an ardent daoist-- like me, he tried to keep his head down and never look Fate in the eye. This fate of His, though, (the world falling in on you) was never faraway and as armies amassed along his borders, he still chose non-willed engagement-- choosing instead to focus on other projects-- the bronzes, calligraphy, his gardens, poetry, painting, music and the perfect shade of blue. Distractions? Or merely the path of lesser resistence?

It wouldn't end well for him, would it? And yet, history has not come down hard on him like it did on the wet-blanket Aeneas.

Odysseus, Huizong and Aeneas-- all three chose to act-- even if acting was not a direct confrontation of the issues at hand (Huizong).

Self chooses-- to act or not to act.

Of the three, Aeneas alone was not particularly sensitive to his surroundings as he chose his course of action-- insulting Dido and then sneaking out in the middle of the night. Really, is it any wonder that she would not speak to him when their paths crossed again in Hades? This was perhaps my friend's gripe with him: that his actions were over-thought, hard-boiled and not sensitive to the situation.

The situation being Dido.

My friend Geneva might well suggest that Dido could do with a little wuwei herself. And yet, did not the great poet already tell us that her love was like a fish? (Fish, of course, usually swimming with the flow) That is, did she not do what felt so right to her that it overcame her? And did not the gods forgive her in the end? Because wuwei does not mean "doing nothing"-- but rather suggests a sweet and skillful understanding of the situation based on a harmonious and intuitive grasping of what is happening right in front of your eyes concerning how and when to act (or not). Whether you call it destiny, or Way or "fate plus character," I would argue that a Self is there that intutively chooses. 

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.

**

Professor Ku and I started chatting about choice in Confucian philosophy versus Existential philosophy. We may or may not disagree as we have not gotten that far yet. We did, however, decide to next read Fingarette's Confucius: the Secular as Sacred. I will make an announcement when we decide when and where-- but for anyone who might like to join the conversation, the more the merrier. Chris and Manyul will also post announcements to the reading before we start.

**

And about the heartbreaking world of tears and the burdens of mortality that so touch the heart, my comrade Conrad's comrade, the honorable Raminagrobis, has written a great post about the problems of... yes, the problems of translation.

Finally, I copy the Akhmatova poem that I loved so much below(thanks Austin) And below that-- because, well, why do I not own this DVD yet??-- The 2005 Choreographic Opera, Dido and Aeneas (this one too even better--for Geneva of course)

11

I abandoned your shores, Empress,
against my will.
-- Aeneid, Book 6

Don't be afraid -- I can still portray
What we resemble now.
You are a ghost -- or a man passing through,
And for some reason I cherish your shade.

For awhile you were my Aeneas --
It was then I escaped by fire.
We know how to keep quiet about one another.
And you forgot my cursed house.

You forgot those hands stretched out to you
In horror and torment, through flame,
And the report of blasted dreams.

You don't know for what you were forgiven ...
Rome was created, flocks of flotillas sail on the sea,
And adulation sings the praises of victory.

--Anna Akhmatova1962
Komarovo

The Centrality of Central Asia

-- for Paul

I wonder how many of you recall my post on Tyrian purple? I ended it with a question-- which I will copy here:

Something has been bothering me about the way the silk road is sometimes held up as a symbol of something worth emulating for today's times. We see, for example, scholars in Europe (UNESCO scholars) nostalgically discussing silk road exchanges as a "two way street" where, perhaps in contrast to monoculturalization or super-power monologues of today, silk road influence functioned more along the lines like true dialogue. (And, how much of this is being romanticized is not really the point as the interesting thing is not the historical accuracy, but rather what contemporary phenomenon it is being contrasted with).

In history books as well, there is a stress on the manner in which trade led the way for these exchanges. And, sometimes when I read, while I feel that there is an implied contrast at how things occur in today's world, I am left with questions.

Aren't international exchanges even today based on trade? Or has the financial world changed to such an extent that true two-way trade doesn't really exist any longer? But, we know that huge trade imbalances existed during Roman times. Pliny (I seem to recall) took pains to complain about Roman trade deficits with India. Purple silk was banned in part for this reason in ancient Rome (being reserved for the emperor). But, if it is not contemporary trade imbalances, what then is being implied?

Last month, Sam Crane had a post over at his place called Finance is Immoral, in which he wrote:

Decades ago, "finance" was generally understood as financing something other than finance itself; that is, stocks and bonds and money were tied to the production and circulation of goods and services, which were for the most part tangible, or "real" in economic parlance.  Beginning with at least the oil crisis of the 1970s, finance has been transformed, now stunningly overshadowing the "real" economy.   Left academics have coined the term "Financialization" to get at these changes.  How big has finance become?  That is a difficult question but think about this kind of statement (from the above linked Wikipedia page):

Thus, [in 2006] derivatives trading – mostly futures contracts on interest rates, foreign currencies, Treasury bonds, etc had reached a level of $1,200 trillion, $1.2 quadrillion, a year. By comparison, U.S. GDP in 2006 was $12.456 trillion.

     Indeed, this week "trillion" has become a common reference.  How big is the market in credit default swaps?  We hear reports in the tens of trillions.  Government action valued in the hundreds of billions seems puny by comparison.  Welcome to the world of financialization.

Sam asks, what would Mencius think? I think it's a good question.

**

I have finally gotten my hands on a book I've been wanting to read for several months now by Andre Gunder Frank, called The Centrality of Central Asia. The book remains an important work on both Central Asian history and on what is the more or less neglected field of "global history." The more I read about his life and his work, the more fascinated I become with Frank and this particular book is short but has all kinds of really interesting insights. And, being associated with the UNESCO scholars, he was for a time involved in UNESCO'S Silk Road Project.

One of Frank's main aims in the book is to bring out the way in which "trade both preceded and exceeded diplomacy;" so that the term "international trade" is probably unfortunate since it implies that international trade came into existence after nations did-- as some kind of trans-"national" trade. Frank says however, that in fact, ancient peoples-- with a few notable exceptions-- were organized along tribal loyalties with various shifting alliances which were not necessarily based on territory. And that even if the tribal groupings became organized within a larger empire, that people for the most part probably continued to associate along these more locally -based groupings. 

(Perhaps an ancient times a man from the Kingdom of Shu would in fact have considered himself not as a Chinese but a man from Shu? But in any case in Central Asia today, it is probably true that people identify themselves by their ethnic association rather than by their national/territorial identity).

Based on these smaller groupings, Frank says, people actively traded with one another, so that kingdoms, empires and nomadic groups (ethic associations) were much more symbiotic with each other than is apparent by reading modern history books. This is part of Frank's world system thesis (500 years or 5000?). And, it's true that it is always awe-inspiring to read about the way luxery items were traded up and down the silk road or around the Mediterrean, for example. Silks, horses, dyes, teas, slaves (particularly on the Western side), jade, pigments... and with these items came philosophies and religions. The amazingly speedy spread Islam in particular is associated with trade, but so too was Buddhism.

It almost seems ironic to be harkening back to this time so far back in history for its robust international trade and cosmopolitanism in our own age of globalization. If Frank is correct, humankind has been closely linked (symbiotically in some cases) for some 5000 years. Parag Khanna too holds up the silk road as one exemplery model for cosmopolitanism. He contrasts this with the strategic rivalry and international competition represented by the infamous Great Game, asking, what it's going to be for us in the future-- the silk road or another Great Game?

Frank gives numerous examples of the way the ancient civilazations were linked and the manner in which events during certain periods would have a ripple affect across the map. Here he quotes Beckwith on the Tang:

It is a curious fact that, unlike the proceeding and following centuries, the middle of the seventh and eighth centuries--specifically the period 742-755-- saw fundamental changes, usually signalled by successful political revolts, in every Eurasian empire. Most famous among them are the Carolignian, Abbasid, Uighur, Turkik, and the anti-Tang rebellions, each of which is rightly considered a watershed in the respective national histories. Significantly, they all seem to  have been intimately connected with Central Eurasia (1987)

And this leads to Frank's main point (as suggested by the title of the book) which is Central Asia has has a longtime central role in the history of the world, and that it remains--thanks to the massive amounts of oil and natural gas discovered there-- strategically key. Indeed, it sometimes feels as if all roads truly lead back to Oxiana.

So, these topics remain on my mind, and I still am not exactly sure how to approach them:
silk road trade versus contemporaray finance
silk road cosmopolitanism versus contemporary globalization
silk road international relations versus the Great Game

The Centrality of Central Asia (1992)/ Frank's website

A shining city upon a hill

  

Back in September, Sam Crane of the Useless Tree wrote an interesting post called, Can a Black Man be Chinese? which generated quite a lot of discussion. You can read the comments following his article for more, but in a nutshell, Sam questioned whether the expansion of China's economy would result in not only greater  globalization in China, but in a "culturalization" whereby, might not someday "a black person become Chinese?"

The question itself, I thought, had fatal problems, begging a lot of important questions-- not least of which is this: Does-- in fact-- globalization put forces in motion that lead inevitably to pluralistic societies?

I think we can look around the world and see that it it probably does not. Globalization can lead to various degrees of more flexible immigration policy and increased foreign labor (high-tech and special economic zones)-- but it has not--so far-- led to the birth of a gaggle of new pluralistic societies-- in the sense of say the US or Australia; New Zealand or Canada. Most developing, globalization countries seem to take different paths-- from highly restrained acceptance of foreign guest workers to out-right human rights violation disasters.

China, too, will most likely choose a course which will be markedly different from what Western observers might hope or expect--but that course will be unique to its history and cultural proclivities (with its own staggering domestic labor force, I doubt we'll be seeing any issues like that in Dubai, for example-- a place where more people probably ought to be looking).

Two things come to mind when I think about China and globalization.

One is that years ago, when I first came to Japan, I read in a guidebook what was probably a stupid piece of advice, and yet it has stuck with me all these years. That is, when Japanese go out into the world, they are shocked to see that other people actually live in ways very much like they do, while Americans going out into the world are shocked to see any place where people are doing things differently from them.

The above is obviously a huge exaggeration (the stuff one finds in guidebooks) But, then again, I do think there are many places, which I shall call the Old World countries, where people remain very conscious of the way in which their culture is unique and non-transferable; while there are other places, which I shall call New World countries, which are shaped by utopian, philosophical notions in which they see their way of life as having model-like qualities-- something to which all cultures could if they so desired strive toward; even in some cases, seeing the modern liberal democratic way as being the culmination of  enlightened development.

And herein lies the tension.

I am just finishing reading Parag Khanna's tour de force book, The Second World (NYT's review here), in which he makes the very crucial point that if the US wishes to continue playing a leadership role in the world, it might have to accept the fact that it is no longer the only game in town; and that, the world is no longer in a post-Cold War state of being whereby there are only two choices to choose from: our way or the highway.

Rather now, in what Khanna calls the geopolitical marketplace, up and coming developing countries, as well as other First World Countries for that matter, can "shop around" and choose to align themselves with one of several superpowers-- or better: align themselves with more than one at the same time- keeping things interesting.

According to Khanna, currently there are three superpowers that stand as empires: the US, the EU and China. So, for example, nowadays a "second world" country in Central Asia might wish to take on aspects of China's "communitarian" traditions (which stress collective welfare and stable, centralized government over over individual, political rights, etc.).

Khanna, in what is the most interesting (to me) aspect of the book, does not see this as a negative situation per se. Indeed, I had just finished Europe-based conservative Robert Kagan's latest book, in which-- Kagan basically painting a similar picture of the current state of the world, still sings the old post-Cold War song of an increased military vigilance in order to maintain hegemony (in order to avoid the old clash of civilizations thing).

In contrast-- a breath of fresh air really-- Khanna is calling for the US to embrace this new world and to perhaps, more like Europe, start thinking more globally itself.

And, that's the rub.

I am re-listening to Dreyfus' lectures on Kierkegaard (trying to get to the bottom of the Knight of Faith), and in the first lecture Dreyfus talks about Plato's play, the Meno, in which Socrates teaches a foreign-born slave how to solve the Pythagorean Therum. Greek civilization and the heights of its cultural achievements were in fact open to everyone (as long as they spoke Greek perhaps?) A slave yes, but even still participation in culture was open to him.

Contrast this, says Dreyfus, to the ancient Hebrews, where their culture was based on a covenent with God-- they were (at least at the start) the Chosen People. Conflicted by this dual heritage, perhaps there is a belief in the universality of our culture coupled with a desire to bring others into the Covenent. (I like to call it "sharing the good news").

Indeed-- and this is my second problem-- it could be said that our melting pot culture itself encourages not a true cultural pluralism but rather a melting of minority cultures into the dominant culture (the concern of anti-globalizationists). As I have written about many times in these pages, I keep seeing the "two-way" Silk Road being held up in European (UNESCO) publications as an alternative-style of internationalism. I pretty much said everything I wanted to say about the topic here. In my post, I held up Penang as an example of what I see as an old-world style cosmopolitanism, but another good example would be Ladakh.

You will recall that was where my pet peeve and I were headed out of Kashmir. Arriving in what still is one of the most most remote spots in India (which at that time had only been open to the westerners for less than 20 years and had only had electricity maybe 10 years) what surprised me most was its stunning cosmopolitanism. This is from my journal from 20 years ago:

At almost 12,000 feet, there are very few trees and everything is the same dusty shade of the mountains. Another Central Asian marketplace, the Leh Bazaar is jammed packed with stalls selling vegetables, live animals, jewelry, Tibetan arts and crafts and clothing. Walking around the bazaar, you just cannot believe how many different races of people found their way to this extremely remote Tibetan place on the Tibetan Plateau. Light-eyed Kashmiris, light-skinned Central Asians, dark haired Indians and Tibetans in their furs, tall hats and turquiose all walked the streets, shopping and enjoying the warm summer weather. Of course, in this remote region, downtown Leh might as well be downtown Manhattan.

Manhattan.

It really did remind me of New York too. The vibrant neighborhoods which for the most part are mutually-tolerant-- it wasn't a melting pot so much as a huge bazaar with two-way trade serving as the main conduit between people-- as Leh has existed right smack in the middle of the pilgrims paths and trade routes that crisscrossed the mountains on the roof of the world since the earliest days of the silk road.  

Khourosh says that to get beyond race and culture and believe in something bigger is ultimately "better"-- so that (in his example) to put being Singaporean above being Tamil or Chinese or Malay is somehow the more enlightened path. But if that just means we all become globalized (Americanized in Tokyo and Sinicized Kashgar) -- is that necessarily somehow better?) And what about those places which place a higher value on social and economic rights over individual liberty and free speech? As Khanna mentions, "Mencius argued that violating the right to food and material well-being is a greater crime than denying political rights." Aren't there other cultural priorities which also make sense?

Mutual tolerance and mutual benefit over ideology; dialog based on trade and culture are perhaps some of the ideas behind this recurrent interest in the silk road. (Indeed, even the Internet is called the New Silk Road).

Khanna too speaks of the Silk Road. In fact, he also sees two forces at work (particularly in Central Asia)-- which he says are the "two metaphors for the regions past as well as its future." These two forces are a Silk Road-style conduit of East-West globalization, as well as "a Great Game laboratory of unambiguous imperial competitition." And this is, I think, the choice before us: ideology and strategic competition or free-trade and mutual tolerance.

Michael over in the Opposite Side of China talks about how really tough it's become these recent years living as an American overseas.To wit, yesterday I received this email note from a friend in Kyoto in which he laments another accidental bombing in Afganistan:

昨日も、米軍がアフガニスタンで誤爆をしたとのことですが、アフガニスタンにしても、イラクにしても、相手の文化のことを理解せず、米国流が正義という考え方では憎悪の連鎖を生むだけですよね。そういう意味では新大統領には期待したいですが。。。

Yesterday there was another mistaken bombing on Afhangistan. In both Afganistan and Iraq, American-style justice which can be devoid of any understanding of other cultures, only breeds a cycle of hatred. For this reason, I am hopeful about the new President's election...

You know things are bad when your Japanese friends start saying stuff like that. As Michael says

I think it's safe to say that we've been exposed more frequently to the dislike/hatred of the United States that's grown over the last eight years during the disastrous Bush administration. I'm looking forward to at least four years of some pro-USA love! 

A little pro-US love.... now that would be refreshing. I'm still holding out for my EU passport, though.

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Khanna's book is highly recommended.

And this too (by way of languagehat)-- which made me smile and reminded me of the unforgettable music in southern Africa-- so different from the jackhammers in Hongkong (with an ocassional songbird singing) or the air blowers in Los Angeles-- or even from the quiet of Japan... nonstop music.

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Finally, I added one final comment to Inside a Bronze Ding: Part 3

OK, back to work (this week-- hoping to pick up some tips! Here for pre-modern ways of walking in Japan)