Shih-Tao (1642-1707)

Shih-Tao: Empty and Full Edited by Peter Y. Chou WisdomPortal.com

Empty and Full (Published 1994)

François Cheng, Empty and Full Shambhala, Boston (1994) Shih-Tao's Landscape Paintings Light of Dawn (1669) Conversation with the Mountain (1701) Go by the Cold Paths (1690)     In a celebrated passage, Confucius writes, "The man of heart is charmed by the mountain; the man of spirit delights in water." [Confucian Analects, 6:23]. The two poles of the universe correspond to the two poles of human sensibility... Mountain and water should not be taken for mere terms of comparison or pure metaphors; they embody the fundamental laws of the macrocosmic universe, which has organic links with the microcosm that is man.     The profound significance of mountain-water arises from tis vitalistic conception. Through the richness of their content and through their relationship of contrast and complementarity, mountain and water become the principal figures in the universal process of transformation. This idea of transformation is based on the conviction that, in spite of the apparent contradiction between the two entities, they have a relationship of reciprocal becoming. Each one of them is perceived as a state that is constantly attracted and complemented by the other. Just like yang, which contains yin, and yin, which contains yang, mountain, which is characterized by yang, is virtually water, and water, characterized by yin, is virtually mountain. (pp. 84-85) Shih-Tao on Mountain and Sea     The sea possesses a vast onrushing; the mountain possesses a latent harboring. The sea engulfs and vomits; the mountain prostrates and bows. The sea can manifest a soul; the mountain can be the bearer of a rhythm. The mountain, with its superimposition of peaks, its succession of precipices, its secret valleys and its deep abysses, its lofty crags bluntly pointing, its vapors, its mists, and dews, its hazes and clouds, makes us think of the onrushing, the engulfing, the surging of the sea. But all of that is not the soul that the sea itself manifests. These are only the qualities of the sea that the mountain appropriates.     The sea can also appropriate the character of the mountain. The vastness of the sea— its depths, its wild laughter, its mirages, its leaping whales and towering dragons, its tides in successive waves like peaks— all this is the way the sea appropriates qualities of the mountain and not the mountain those of the sea. Such are the qualities that sea and mountain appropriate for themselves, and man has eyes to see this... But he who only grasps the sea at the expense of the mountain or the mountain only at the expense of the sea— in truth such a person has but dull perception! But me, I see it! The mountain is the sea and the sea is the mountain. Mountain and sea know the truth of my perception: Everything is in man, in just the free energy of the brush, in just the ink! (pp. 85-86)     This process of reciprocal becoming evokes the circular movement that Shih-Tao calls chou-liu (universal flowing) and huan pao (universal embracing): Nothing less is necessary than to have recourse to mountain in order to see the breadth of the world. Nothing less is necessary than to have recourse to water to see the immensity of the world. It is necessary for mountain to work on water in order for the universal flow to be revealed. It is necessary for water to work on mountain in order for the universal embracing to be revealed. If this reciprocal action of mountain and water is not expressed, nothing can explain this universal flowing and this universal embracing. Without these, the discipline and life [of the ink and the brush] cannot find their field of action. But once discipline and life are exercised, the universal flowing and the universal embracing find their cause, and onc they find their cause, the mission of the landscape is perfectly fulfilled. (p. 86)