The Importance of Finding Nothing: Jia Dao Ventures on the Path
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NOTES FROM THE TOWER OF SONGS
Issue 5
by Prof. Dr. Dan KJ Vercammen
We’ve met Jia Dao before (see issue 2 of these Notes). He’s an interesting poet. A frustrated would-be official, turning to Buddhist practice, yet breathing Taoist influence. A typical Tang dynasty figure: the three teachings, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism have all proven their value and can provide spiritual and practical support in different periods of one’s life. Especially Taoism and Buddhism have grown closer, but on the other hand maintain some rivalry, as they look for followers among the same audience.
When we read today’s poem by Jia Dao, he “sounds” very Taoist. The title “道人 daoren” is frequently used for both Buddhists and Taoists. Important Taoists, such as the alchemist and medical expert Sun Simiao (581–682), were well versed in both traditions and used practices and philosophies from these and even foreign sources (e.g. India). The story told in Jia’s poem seems to suggest that he is in search of a Taoist alchemist. But more on that after the poem and its translation.
尋隱者不遇
松下問童子
言師採藥去
只在此山中
雲深不知處
Xun yin zhe bu yu
Song xia wen tong zi
Yan shi cai yao qu
Zhi zai ci shan zhong
Yun shen bu zhi chu.
Searching for a hermit without meeting him
I’m interrogating the boy underneath the pine trees
And he says: “My master went picking herbs,
Just in these mountains,
But the clouds are thick and I don’t know where.”
In traditional China, it was customary for people looking for spirituality to go traveling to famous mountains where there were Taoist and Buddhist monasteries or where hermits were supposed to live. From thousands of years ago the Chinese believed that the mountains also housed 仙 xian (often interpreted as “immortals”, although the character refers to “mountain-person” or “person-mountain”) and that meeting one could mean the difference between living an ordinary life and becoming an immortal oneself.
The xian came to be identified with alchemists, mostly Taoists who knew how to brew the elixir or make pills that offered longevity or immortality to those who ingested them. During the Tang dynasty, the experimental version of alchemy was very fashionable. Experimental alchemists combined preparing herbs and minerals with practicing internal techniques such as specific breathing exercises and meditation. However, immortality was a means and a side-effect of the ultimate goal of joining with Dao or the Way or of becoming an enlightened buddha.
Jia Dao’s Buddhist background started with searching for enlightenment in a monastery in the Heng Mountains (in present-day Hunan province), so he knows how it feels to go on a search for wisdom. The poem seems to suggest that it was a wild goose chase … In any case, Jia left his monastery to participate in the imperial exams and pursue a career as an official. That was not such a good idea, knowing that he didn’t have a successful career and met with big problems (such as being deposed and exiled).
We can read the poem as if it describes Jia’s unsuccessful search for enlightenment, Dao or immortality. Yet, contrary to what a first reading implies, it could also mean the opposite. I prefer to enjoy the poem that way and hope you can understand why it could well be intended to be understood in this way.
The title and the last sentence are about a “negative” experience, expressed by the character “不 bu”, which negates the verb that follows. In the title he doesn’t meet. In the last line one doesn’t know. From the position of someone looking for success, both suggest total failure: not meeting the hermit immediately and not even getting information about his whereabouts is very sad, isn’t it? Maybe not. What a Taoist or Buddhist looks for is often named “虛無 xuwu”, empty nothing(ness). A negative that is very positive if one can attain it.
The hermit is obviously very successful at not being found, but then that’s the way of the hidden one (隱者 yinzhe). We can ask ourselves why this hiding, solitary hermit needs a boy as company. In traditional art a master is often depicted with a boy or girl as a servant. An alchemist, for instance, would employ someone to watch over the fireplace where the elixir is being prepared.
Still, there’s another explanation possible. The poet sketches a scene of a boy underneath pine trees. Pine trees are a traditional symbol of longevity and a boy (童子 tongzi) is a symbol of what the alchemist aspires to: by their practice they not only enjoy long life but their looks return to a youthful condition. That would mean that the boy is actually the hermit and then the author does meet him!
Moreover, the boy lets us share in a real secret: it’s all to do with herbs, that’s what we need to search for. And we need to look for those deep in the mountains. A later, internal, alchemist would certainly read this as a metaphor, the body being a mountain landscape (as illustrated on the Taoist Neijingtu or Chart of the Internal Pathways, in its best known version dating from the nineteenth century).
Since the Tang, Chinese already called alchemist and mountain hermits “xian” (mountain-persons), we may even think that it can also be understood this way in the context of this poem. The herb (藥 yao) is a medicine, making one healthy and immortal. It is taken (swallowed) by the alchemists or (in the internal method) is created inside the body.
A mountain is often covered in (thick) clouds; it’s one of the favorite subjects in traditional Chinese painting. The clouds are qi, the universal breath and transforming force in the universe, and the human breath and its workings as a life-giving force in a person’s body.
Archeology has provided us with bronze incense burners, shaped as a chalice with an ornamental lid that represents a mountain. The lid has holes through which the incense exits the vessel and hangs around the miniature mountain. On this small mountain persons (xian?) can be discerned and its lower part (the chalice) represents the oceans of the world. It’s an image of the macrocosm, but also of the microcosm that was seen as a scale model of 天地 tiandi, Heaven and Earth, the ancient Chinese word for the cosmos.
Seen this way, we have here a description of a method to succeed (and not fail) in the search for mastery of the Taoist/Buddhist way. The title mentions both the first step and the last: one starts out looking for a master to eventually find Nothing (the not meeting).
When looking, but also when meeting a master, you ask questions. The answer is the explanation of the third step: the practice, namely to find, make, and take in the medicinal herb or elixir inside one’s body (the mountain). The alchemical process leads to results, the fourth step: it creates vapors (the thick clouds) and transforms the practitioner's qi, so that it joins with the Great Void, of which ordinary people don’t know a thing and which is actually about not knowing, being without thoughts, not using one’s ordinary mind, etc.
What if … we go and play with this poem?
Tang (and other) poets also liked to play, so indulge me when I take you along for a Spielerei. It’s fun, I promise.
Classical Chinese is a special language and classical Chinese writers delighted in using its creative characteristics. Classical Chinese texts are an uninterrupted flow of characters (no punctuation marks) and only the position of a character and its relation to the characters in its environment determine the interpretation possibilities. That leaves a lot of scope for different ways to understand the same text.
In classical poetry, however, the structure of the lines somewhat reduces the number of interpretations. The several layers of meaning contained in one character still allow for some freedom. And when you write down a poem in a certain order, this doesn’t necessarily restrict the way you read it.
I’ll tell you a story first, one that was told by one of my Chinese taijiquan teachers, to introduce you to the ambiguous nature of classical Chinese.
A man on the market put up a sign next to the fish he was selling. There were four characters: 味變不老. When you see this kind of horizontal short text on a sign or on a board over a door or a room, the first thing you should do is figure out whether you should read this from left to right or from right to left (the more usual way). The meaning of the characters is: 味 taste/smell, 變 change, 不 not, and 老 old.
Read from right to left it means: (the fish) is old, but the taste hasn’t changed; read from left to right you understand it as: the taste has changed, but it’s not old. Whether anyone bought the fish, my teacher didn’t know …
Now, poets sometimes deliberately used similar methods and wanted the reader to try reading their poems in several directions. Of course, this intellectual game was much appreciated by the literati of China.
A published text in China was normally written in vertical lines, from right to left. Jia’s poem would therefore have been written like this:
雲只言松 尋
深在師下 隱
不此採問 者
知山藥童 不
處中去子 遇
If we then read the poem as if it was written in a horizontal way and from right to left, we could interpret it in this way:
The pine trees speak of only clouds,
while the master from below resides in the deep.
I ask should I pick this or not?
The mountain knows about the medicine to become young:
the child should leave the central place.
As I told you before, this is just a play with words. I don’t know if Jia was in a playful mood when he wrote this. But interpreted in this way, it becomes a poem that possesses a definite alchemical taste.
Let me explain what it could convey.
In the alchemical method of the Taoists, qi (clouds) is fundamental. So, to know about longevity (symbolized as pine trees), you should focus on qi. The master of the whole process is hidden (deep) in your abdomen (below): it is the dantian or field of cinnabar, the original locus of the alchemical transformations.
The “elixir” an alchemist produces is also called a medicinal herb, which should be picked at a certain time (when to pick or not to pick is an important question to ask). The herb offers rejuvenation (becoming young) prospects and your body-mountain knows the secret.
Another way to look at the alchemical process is to compare it to a pregnancy. You form an embryo, a child. This child leaves the center of the body in order to be born. This is a pivotal experience in the alchemist’s life and development.
Mind you, I’m just playing with you. Nothing of the interpretation above should be taken seriously. Seriously?
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