A beautifully descriptive line from the Chinese poet Tao Yuanming;
“a cloudless sunset,
the spring breeze fans gently”
Contrary to the current fashion of searching for totems of precedence limited to a souvenir-shop view of one’s ‘own cultural identity’ (as if the luminaries of the past were anything but broad minded and seeking even broader and more universal horizons), I look to find what I believe is valuable from any place, any time of human tradition; ‘nothing human is alien to me’ (at least, that is the maxim I aim for – I’m not particularly good at achieving it. I very often fall into fixation and closed-mindedness).
A philosopher in whose work I find immense benefit and insight is the 20th century Chinese philosopher, Xiong Shili. He is considered one of the founding members of the New Confucianism, today represented most notably (in the west anyway) by Tu Weiming. A western cultural identitarian would say that as an Irishman, I should be looking to Eriugena or Berkeley as intellectual heroes. But neither Eriugena nor Berkeley were so mean or self-obsessed as to look to some shibboleth of cultural identity and limit their thinking. They were Irish, and their philosophy was aimed and nourished by the wide world, and a universal outlook. I am Irish. And I look and find intellectual and spiritual nourishment in sages and philosophers from anywhere. It’s true I have a particular affiliation and sympathy with East Asian philosophy. But Greek philosophy, Latin literature and culture, Christianity itself were ‘foreign’ to this island at the time of their ‘appropriation’. I gain insight from East Asian philosophy. That is the ‘Irish identity’ embodied in me. That is simply a fact.
Xiong Shili began his philosophical career as a devotee of Yogacara Buddhism, but was not shy to criticise what he found lacking in it. He developed his philosophy in critique of Yogacara, but of course, criticism of tradition is the life-blood of living tradition. In his work “Treatise on Reality and Function” I find a brilliant, rational and- in terms of thinking – practical synthesis of Buddhist and non-Buddhist thought. I want to share here a synopsis of the insight I have gleaned from his work on the subject of “stillness”, which is not only a very important concept in Buddhism, but which has universal practical value.
Stasis. Everything in nature is moving already. Even what appears dead and fixed is so only relatively. Vast and empty space is not separate from motion. Motion properly understood is simply the nature. The paradox; change is the constant, changeless. Imposing stasis is contrary to the nature. Even in deepest, dreamless sleep we are not separated from the flux. Time and being are not separate.
Imposition of stasis is both impossible and is not quiescence. Neither is abandoning oneself to go with the flow, as it is popularly understood; often when it is spoken of, ‘going with the flow’ means allowing the ego to vent along with popular passions and excuse itself of consequences. Highly intelligent people often do this. They go against their better judgement, look for and find occult forces as excuses or as apologies for chipping into popular aggression and dangerous irrationality. Far from “abandoning the self to the flow of events” they very definitely insert their self, their ego, into the fray and attempt to yoke the confusion to their own will, rather than to embody the antidote of sane rationality and benevolence. Confusion and conflict are the seething blood streams of ego.
True quiescence is to move with all things without ego. It is not a blank or a resignation to fate or anything so irresponsible. It is seeing and knowing that the powers of the human being are not limited to ego but limited by the ego. To move with nature means to deal with events with a mind unclouded by the desires and impositions of ego.
The quotation at the beginning of this essay is a quotation of the poet that Xiong himself uses in his treatise. He sees in the description an analogy for “nature-as-Reality”;
the cloudless sunset is the quiescence of reality – bright , vast, open, luminous, wonderful – the spring breeze is the constant functioning, or flow of the nature of reality as change and creating. The two are not separate.