Dao, Chan and a Painter’s Sense of Humour
Today I want to share a painting that is a special pleasure for me: Liang Kai’s The Story of Eight Eminent Monks (八高僧故事图卷), in the Shanghai Museum. The museum catalogues it as a Southern Song handscroll, painted in colour on silk.[1] It delights me as a sinologist and art historian, but just as much as a painter. Why does it matter so much to me?
Part of my enthusiasm comes from how the religious stories and the painted world belong together. The figures do not float above their surroundings: trees, rocks, bamboo and water take part in the encounters. That relationship is what first draws me towards a Daoist reading.
The historical context needs care, however. Chan—the Chinese tradition known in Japan as Zen—is a form of Buddhism. Buddhism had reached China during the Han dynasty, centuries before Bodhidharma. He is traditionally regarded as the first Chinese Chan patriarch, not as the person who first introduced Buddhism to China.[2]
Nor did Chan simply decline because of a late split into Northern and Southern schools. Those labels belong to earlier disputes over lineage and teaching. I am interested here in the meeting of ideas within painting, rather than a claim that Daoism, Chan and Buddhism were one interchangeable tradition.
The first episode of the scroll shows Bodhidharma facing a wall, with Shenguang approaching him. The familiar account of nine years of wall-facing meditation belongs to the tradition surrounding Bodhidharma. Looking at the scene, what holds my attention is the relationship between the still, seated figure and the person who has come to ask.
The sweeping monk reminds me of other Chan images associated with Hanshan and Shide. Here, though, the Shanghai Museum identifies the broom-bearing figure as Zhixian, looking back towards a bamboo grove. The association in my mind should not be mistaken for the subject of this particular scene.
The last episode is especially close to my heart: a solitary figure in a fishing boat by a reed-lined bank. I originally called him a scholar, but the museum identifies him as a monk. His presence still evokes for me the quiet, unforced relationship with nature that I associate with wu wei. That is my response to the picture; the scene remains part of a Buddhist narrative.
The skill with which Liang Kai brings the figures and their surroundings together explains my delight better than any label could. On my visits to Shanghai, I have gone to the museum hoping to spend time with this painting again.
The Daoist Talks index brings the other articles in this series together.
Extra: A Daoist Prank
This brings me to another painter—and a story I still enjoy. In 1982, during my second stay at the academy in Beijing, I was collecting material for my dissertation. In my extraordinary naivety, I hoped to ask established painters directly about their understanding of Dao. The Cultural Revolution was only a few years behind them. It was hardly a subject I could assume anyone would discuss freely with a foreign visitor.
My dear friend Zhang Zhizhong 张志忠, himself a painter, arranged some meetings. One Sunday morning, we visited Lin Kai 林锴. I liked him immediately. He showed us work, we talked pleasantly, and eventually I asked: “What is Dao for you?” The word dao 道 can also mean a way or path, which matters to what followed.
He thought for a while. Then he said, as I remember it: “When I go from here to the market to buy vegetables, that is Dao.” A pause. “When I come back from the market, that is Dao.”
That was more or less the answer. I have always appreciated a good joke, and at the time I took it as one.
My friend had brought an album, and I had asked whether Lin Kai might paint something in it for me. The album travelled from painter to painter. Weeks later, it came back with this wonderful leaf among its pages.
The Point of the Joke
I looked through the album many times, but much later, while preparing a lecture on Daoism in Chinese painting, I read the inscription with fresh attention:
面壁十年图破壁 — roughly, “Facing the wall for ten years, intent on breaking through it.”
Ten years? Bodhidharma’s familiar story speaks of nine. My own reading was that Lin Kai had found a way to allude to the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. What an ingenious rascal, I thought. The seal script added another layer: the words were there, but reading them took attention.
There is a further literary layer worth mentioning. The same seven characters occur in a poem Zhou Enlai wrote before leaving for Japan in 1917.[3] The phrase therefore predates the Cultural Revolution. This does not settle what Lin Kai intended in this particular painting; it makes the inscription richer than a simple numerical code. My interpretation remains a personal reading of a work he gave me.
I still hear his answer about the market when I look at it. Perhaps I was so busy asking for a definition that I nearly missed what he had put before me.
Footnotes
[1] Shanghai Museum: Liang Kai, Eight Eminent Monks (Chinese). The collection entry describes the eight episodes and identifies both the broom-bearing monk and the monk in the boat. ↩
[2] For the history of Buddhism in China and the development of Chan, see Chan Buddhism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Bodhidharma’s traditional biography should be distinguished from securely documented history. ↩
[3] The line appears in Zhou Enlai’s poem beginning 大江歌罢掉头东. See the poem and its 1917 context in 青年周恩来诗歌中的报国情怀 (Chinese). This establishes an earlier use of the words, not Lin Kai’s intention in 1982. ↩
Related articles: Zha Shibiao: A Simple Painting and Yet a Treasure · Daoist Talks (III): The Cosmos in One Dot · Daoist Talks: Series Index
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