Study on Chinese Traditional Theory of Artistic Style

Martin J Lee, Emily Lee;Joyce Lee

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9789813279445
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

Is tai chi a stretching exercise, deep-breathing program, martial art, dance or prayer? Yes, it's all those and more.

Tai chi, like many ancient Eastern practices, does not fit strict Western categories. Tai chi, together with the extraordinary self-healing method developed by Dr Lee, offers relief for stress, breathing disorders, muscular ailments, chronic headaches, and a variety of modern office- and sports-related complaints, as well as for deep emotional distress.

Few today are as well positioned to explain the healing powers of tai chi as Dr. Martin Lee, a renowned engineering physicist and tai chi master. He and his wife, Emily, also a tai chi master, are the only Americans to have studied with Yu Pen-Shih, one of China's foremost ch'i kung masters. Dr. Lee has developed a groundbreaking practical program that combines Eastern and Western approaches to wellness, which he calls 'physical philosophy.' Its goal is to help people become 'one with nature,' a Buddhist term for the natural restoration of true health.

The rewards of one-with-nature tai chi are inner happiness, self-control, self-realization, and self-healing. Each one of these benefits receives individual attention, complete with the 64 tai chi forms, thoroughly illustrated with photographs and diagrams. The central focus is on the flow of energy — the chi, or 'inner breath' — that tai chi evokes through Lee's four basic instructions: Relax. Breathe. Feel the earth. Do nothing extra. Here is a valuable health, exercise, and meditation program that combines ancient spiritual insights with advanced scientific knowledge and important original discoveries.

Contents:

• East Meets West: How I Came to Tai Chi:
  • One-with-Nature Theory
  • Becoming One with Nature
  • One-with-Nature Tone Ch'i and Inner Happiness
  • One-with-Nature Tai Chi and Self-Control
  • One-with-Nature Meditation and Self-Realization
  • One-with-Nature Touch and Self-Healing
  • Personal Wellness and Cell Wellness
  • The Tao, Science, Philosophy, and Spirituality
  • Beginner's Guide to Tai Chi Practice
• One-with-Nature Tai Chi, the 64 Forms

Readership: Tai Chi practitioners and enthusiasts. General public interested in healthcare, wellbeing and quality of life.Tai Chi;One-With-Nature;Self-Control;Self-Healing;Personal Wellness00

Chapter 1

The Philosophical Basis of the Theory of Vitality–Charm

Pre-modern Chinese scholars particularly excelled in conducting analyses and presenting depictions from the viewpoint of the relations and interactions among such Three Powers as Heaven, Earth, and Humans. The excellence is also displayed in their discussions on phenomena in art. Notwithstanding their primary focus on human activities, the scholars tended to ground their examination of the activities in their cosmology and their views on how nature was structured. This tendency is reflected in their examination of the artistic expressiveness and the patterns of its transformation.

Yao Nai 姚鼐 (1731–1815 A.D.), a literary critic, observed in his ‘Letter in Reply to Lu Jiefei’ 復魯絜非書 that ‘Yin and Yang, as well as Firmness and Softness, constitutes the entire Way of Heaven and Earth. Literature, which embodies the essence of Heaven and Earth, is where Yin, Yang, Firmness, and Softness is manifested’ 天地之道, 陰陽剛柔而已. 文者, 天地之精英, 而陰陽剛柔之發也. ‘For [a man of letters] endowed with the duende of Yang and Firmness, [his] works of literature will strike like thunder, like lightning, like a galloping horse, like high mountains and lofty peaks, like a gale gusting past a valley, and like a river that comes bursting out through [the debris of its] barrier. The brilliance of [his] works will be comparable to a bright sun, to fire, and to iron gilded with gold. Personified, [such a work of literature] commands like someone standing high and gazing afar, dominates like a sovereign receiving the worship from thousands of [his] subjects, and impels [people] like a drum inspiring thousands of trump warriors to march to the battlefield. As for [a man of letters] endowed with the beauty of Yin and Softness, [his] works of literature will impress [us] like a rising sun, like soft breeze, like cloud, like rosy dawn, like mist, like a brook winding its way deep in a forest, like ripples and bobbles of water, like the glistening of pearls and jade, and like a swan that cries soaring into the vast azure. As does a person, the work may touch [us] with serene sighs, impress with profound thoughts, warm us up with [its] gladness, and stir up [our] feelings with [its] sadness.’ 其得於陽與剛之美者, 則其文如霆, 如電, 如長風之出谷, 如崇山峻崖, 如決大川, 如奔騏驥; 其光也, 如杲日, 如火, 如金鏐鐵; 其於人也, 如憑高視遠, 如君而朝萬眾, 如鼓萬勇士而戰之. 其得於陰與柔之美者, 則其文如昇初日, 如清風, 如雲, 如霞, 如煙, 如幽林曲澗, 如淪, 如漾, 如珠玉之輝, 如鴻鵠之鳴而入寥廓; 其如人也, 漻乎其如歎, 邈乎其如有思, 暖乎其如喜, 愀乎其如悲. ‘As regards yin and yang, as well as Firmness and Softness, their fundamental duality takes variegated forms, where the myriad and, a fortiori, inexhaustible forms taken by Qi — through its sufficiency, deficiency, rising, and ebbing — give rise to all things, hence the saying that “the interwoven operations of Yin and Yang constitute what is known as the Way.”¹ This is true with myriad changes in literature. It would be acceptable [for a literary work] to have both [Yin and Yang] with one more prominent than the other. But if the imbalance went to such an extreme where there was only one without the other, or if the Firmness or the Softness [in the style of a literary work] were not as firm or soft [as it should be], then there would be no literature to speak of.’ 且夫陰陽剛柔, 其本二端, 造物者糅, 而氣之多寡進絀, 則品次億萬, 以至於不可窮, 萬物生焉. 故曰‘一陰一陽之謂道.’ 夫文之多變亦若是已. 糅而偏勝可也; 偏勝之極, 一有一絕無, 與夫剛不足為剛, 柔不足為柔者, 皆不可以為文. These words are worthy of our attention because, firstly they evidence a quest for the cosmological principle that underlies artistic expressiveness. The quest postulates a Way of Heaven and Earth characterized by the duality of Yang and Firmness on the one hand and Yin and Softness on the other — a duality that is considered to be accountable for the forms taken by all things, including artistic expressiveness. Secondly, with those words, Yao Nai depicted the characteristics of two basic types of artistic expressiveness, Masculinity and Femininity. The former bespeaks a case in which the strength of Qi prevails and of which thunder, lightning, gales, and lofty peaks are no exceptions. The latter features the prevalence of poise and charm, which can be most appropriately characterized if compared to things like rising sun, soft breeze, serene forest, and so on. Regrettably, Yao Nai concentrated too much on Vitality’s capability of transforming things. Due to his unawareness of what Charm could do to give things their completion, he lost sight of a whole picture presented in the following words in the Zhou Yi 周易 (Book of Changes). ‘Qian (symbolizes Heaven, which) directs the great beginning of things; Kun (symbolizes Earth, which) gives to them their completion.’²

Where, then, does such a strong vitality of traditional theory of Vitality–Charm come from? Do Qian and Kun, or yin and yang, correspond, respectively, with Vitality and Charm and, for that reason, account for the expressiveness of art? These are some basic questions we need to answer in this chapter.

1. The Qian, Kun, Jian, and Yi in the Zhou Yi

As a text from early antiquity, the Zhou Yi features the most comprehensive and most detailed commentaries on Yin, Yang, Firmness, and Softness. The book was accorded so much importance that it had, throughout the entire history of pre-modern China, ‘topped all the classics’ 羣經之首. Summed up in the book are the experiences that the ancients gained when they observed phenomena in the sky, investigated patterns of the earth, ‘drew analogies from things afar,’ and ‘sought enlightenment in things as near as in their own person.’³ Many of the ancients’ views derived from those experiences have demonstrated enduring vitality, and they are capable of offering guidelines to modern academia and particularly to our effort to explore, and sort out, the cultural legacy from pre-modern China. Therefore we need to learn more about the views. Hegel considered the Zhou Yi to be a text that ‘contains the wisdom of the Chinese.’⁴

1.1. The expository structure of the Zhou Yi

The text of the Zhou Yi consists of two parts, the Classic Texts 經 and the Commentaries 傳. One of the earliest texts in China, the Texts took shape arguably in the Shang (16^th? Century–11^th? century B.C.) and the Western Zhou (11^th? century–774 B.C.) times. Presumablly their content is the earliest and the most reliable embodiment of the characteristics of Chinese culture as known to us. To a certain extent, they can be regarded as the source of both Confucian and Daoist thoughts. According to the Shiji 史記 (which was completed in 90 B.C.) (Vol. 47, shijia 世家 [Hereditary Households] No. 17), ‘Confucius was fond of the Zhou Yi in his late years. [He] prefaced [its] “Tuan,” “Xiang,” “Shuogua,” and “Wenyan.” [As a result of his repeated] reading, the string connecting the [bamboo-strip text of] the Zhou Yi broke three times.’ 孔子晚好易, 序彖, 象, 說卦, 文言. 讀易韋三絕. The Classic Texts may also be a source of inspiration for Laozi’s 老子 theorization of yin, yang, and so on. Originally meant to be a book of divination, the Texts owe the philosophical and ethical dimensions of their content to the Commentaries, which convey mostly Confucian thoughts. From Chapters 13 and 33 of the Zhuangzi 莊子, we learn, respectively, that ‘there is the Yi [i.e. the Zhou Yi] on the Way of yin and yang’ 易以道陰陽 and that ‘the quietude [of someone who enjoys Heavenly Pleasure 天樂] would be of one nature with yin, and [his] action would be flowing together with yang.’ 靜而與陰同德, 動而與陽同波. These views may have been under the influence from the Commentaries of the Zhou Yi.⁵

It is said that in the Xia (21^st?–16^th? century B.C.), Shang, and Western Zhou eras there were, respectively, the Lianshan Yi 連山易, the Guizang Yi 歸藏易, and the Zhou Yi, collectively known as the Three Yi. According to Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200 A.D.), they each feature such three aspects as yi-jian 易簡 (the tendency of initiating changes and that of endowing forms), bianyi 變易 (transformation and varying), and buyi 不易 (changelessness).⁶ I consider the aspect of Yijian to be a fundamental and defining property of the Way of Changes. The operation of the Way of Changes is mainly sustained by its aspect of Bianyi, specifically by the Way of Qian that underlies Bianyi. As regards Buyi, it, on the one hand, bespeaks things’ relative stability, which is determined mainly by the Way of Kun. On the other hand, Buyi stands for the principle of eternal immutability. The character Yi 易 in the book title is suggestive of both the ancients’ attempt to grasp what is constant in human life and the universe and the explorative spirit demonstrated by the ancients in their inquiry into the mysterious patterns of things’ development and their examination of what they postulated as the connection between Heaven and humans. The attempt and the spirit, which bears certain resemblance to the philo-sophia in ancient Greece, are also in evidence in the phrase of ‘drawing analogies from things afar’ and that of ‘seeking enlightenment in things as near as in their own person.’ The basic cosmological structure depicted in the Zhou Yi is sketched with the Diagram of the Great Ultimate 太極圖. But there is no way to find the original Diagram. The Diagram — along with the Yin–Yang Fish 陰陽魚 — that we see today is transmitte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• About the Author
• About the Translator
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Philosophical Basis of the Theory of Vitality–Charm
• Chapter 2 The Development and Substantiation of the Vitality–Charm Theory in History
• Chapter 3 Connotation of the Category of Vitality–Charm
• Chapter 4 Mediation of Relevant Disputes in History
• Chapter 5 Vitality–Charm and Similar Categories: A Comparison
• Chapter 6 The Artistic Form Taken by Vitality–Charm
• Chapter 7 Vitality–Charm and the Development of Art
• Chapter 8 The Vitality–Charm Theory and the Theory of Art in the World
• Chapter 9 Theory of Vitality–Charm: The Significance of Its Development to the World
• Index