【天人合一】The Chinese Baptism

                
                
                
                
                
                
The Taoistic ongoing influence to the Chinese people is just like that to the Israelites of the two stone tablets Moses brought from Mount Sinai, or the Ten Commandments to the Jewish and Christians.
Take the term in Chinese in the subject title as an example, 天人合一, which is as much Taoistic as man’s meditatively in communion with the Heaven as One. This term is, to the Chinese, I think, ritual, philosophical, epigrammatic, colloquial, and it has been so taken into account for thousands of years over the history.
It might be childish to say that Mao Zedong was against Taoism, merely because of some of the government slogans in the political movements such as in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (the keyword is Proletarian, instead of Cultural, I think), and even that it was uprooted in the mainland of China. For how could he, knowing that many, if not all, of his poems were full of but the heroic voice of the Tao, as in pushing forward of his ideas. He was a strategist and, I think, having a thorough understanding of the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite, he was meanwhile a great practitioner of the philosophy in his plan.
Li Jihhua (1565-1635) described the spiritual baptism of a great painter:
"Huang Tzuchiu often sits the whole day in the company of bamboos, trees, brush-wood and piles of rocks in the wild mountains, and seems to have lost himself in his surroundings, in a manner puzzling to others. Sometimes he goes to the place where the river joins the sea to look at the currents and the waves, and he remains there, oblivious of wind and rain and the howling water-spirits. This is the work of the Great Absent-Minded [name of the painter], and that is why it is surcharged with moods and feelings, ever-changing and wonderful like nature itself."- translated by Lin Yutang
Ni Yunlin (1301-1374), a great Yuan painter most distinguished for the quality of the freedom in his works said:
My bamboo paintings are intended merely to paint the fugitive spirit in my breast. What do I care whether they are exact or not, whether the leaves are thick or thin, or whether the branches are straight or crooked?" Again, he said:" What I call painting is only a few swiftly-made strokes of the romantic brush, not intended to copy reality, but merely to please myself." - translated by Lin Yutang
                
                
The Eden is, to the Chinese, not where Adam and Eve lived, but where the crane lives, in a place untrodden and remote, as could be imagined by the huge, imagery leaves in the Chinese painting above-showcased. For the crane is the very symbol for longevity to the Chinese people. Why the crane? I do not know, and I’ve never read anything deciphering it, and I now fancy that the answer might be hidden in the strange, long neck of the big bird: how could it be evolutionarily into such a long form unless, perhaps, that cranes of this sort might be the bearer of a dream-like hope, which is healthy, and day in, day out standing up with their necks all stretched out, as much as they could be, longing to see afar off, and awaiting patiently their dream come true, such as the descending of the paradise.
- From my diary: Saturday, 20 December 2014 in Beijing
                
                
Taoism as a theme is in all art forms of China, such as the Chinese Buddhism is expressed in the Taoist phraseology.
"I am sitting alone in an empty room and I am getting annoyed at a mouse at the head of my bed, and wondering what that little rustling sound signifies - what article of mine he is biting or what volume of my books he is eating up. While I am in this state of mind, and don't know what to do, I suddenly see a ferocious-looking cat, wagging its tail and staring with wide open eyes, as of it were looking at something. I hold my breath and wait a moment, keeping perfectly still, and suddenly with a little sound the mouse disappears like a whiff of wind. Ah, is this not happiness?"
– tr. Lin Yutang