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ALTHOUGH CLASSICAL Chinese does not entail a metaphysical rupture between a transcendental soul and material existence the way Western languages do, there was nonetheless a rupture, even in a simple word naming the existence-tissue. Such a word would come early in the existence-tissue’s desire to understand itself, would it not, an utterance driven by the wonder that appears in the poem’s first couplet, perhaps, a name for the whole of existence, for the expansive presence of existence and empty awareness as part of that existence. For Stone-Waves that first-word is Tao (道), the central concept from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, which is the seminal work in Chinese spiritual philosophy, its story of existence. Lao Tzu’s Tao means Way, and it describes the existence-tissue as verb rather than static noun, a generative cosmological process, an ontological pathWay by which things come into existence, evolve through their lives, and then go out of existence, only to be transformed and reemerge in a new form.

One of Lao Tzu’s favorite images for Tao is water, because however much its form changes, water remains itself; and in its constant movement, it “enriches the ten thousand things, and yet never strives.” He also uses this image to show how mind is wholly a part of Tao, saying “mind’s nobility is empty depths.” Here, the ideogram for those “empty depths” is 淵, which Lao Tzu no doubt relished because in his era the ideogram was clearly an image of flowing water (streamwater with its ripples) within empty space: . Hence, mind as mirrored emptiness in liquid motion, which appears dark and enigmatic indeed in the ideogram’s early oracle-bone form: .

And there is in Lao Tzu’s story of existence another seminal name for the whole of it: tzu-jan (自然). Literally meaning “self-so” or “the of-itself,” tzu-jan was meant to emphasize the particularity and self-suffciency, the thusness, of each of the ten thousand things that make up the generative process of Tao. And so, it is best translated as “occurrence appearing of itself,” which opens a first description of the Cosmos here in the beginning where the existence-tissue is whole: “from nowhere else, occurrence.”

The expanse of awareness and the expanse of existence: here in the beginning, it is whole, a single tissue. When occurrence rustles, there is nowhere else. Seamist swells through mountain valleys. A rainbow appears over a broken city. Existence wonders about itself here. It breathes. It invents us, these centers of identity, and through us, it whispers names for itself: existence-tissue and heaven, Tao and tzu-jan. It whispers explanation: from nowhere else, occurrence. When we use language like this, we are thinking about something elsewhere, taking existence as a subject of investigation, of knowing. Even in a first name or explanation it has begun. Even these first words whisper our separation from the Cosmos. Even as they argue against that separation, describing awareness and existence as a single tissue, they whisper a center of identity distinct from the world around us. They whisper an elsewhere. And that easily, in a few simple words, the existence-tissue seems no longer whole.

How can it be that a first name or explanation changes everything? From nowhere else, occurrence: that explanation feels like a moment we first glimpse the nature of existence, and yet at that very moment, everything changes. Suddenly we are centers of identity, and the existence-tissue is separated from itself. You can feel it already: existence is out there, and we are here inside this cocoon of thought and identity looking out and naming it, describing it, explaining it. But however precisely we name this tissue of existence, however perfectly we explain it with philosophical insight or scientific description and theory and information, however powerfully we evoke it with poems and stories and grand mythologies—those explanations are always about an elsewhere, a wholly self-contained ontological ground that exists in and of itself, untouched by our words, a vast and elemental mystery that eludes us completely. Existence decorates itself with identity and meaning, just as it decorates itself with mountain ridgelines and sea-mist, cities and rainbows. And yet (how can it be?), as soon as existence begins to know itself, it is lost to itself. Existence rustles. It wants to know itself; and in the end, it cannot. It can only elude itself.

A cairn seems perfect: saying nothing, explaining nothing. A cairn simply orients. It is the existence-tissue complete and still and whole recognizing itself, orienting itself. And petroglyphs seem perfect too: the existence-tissue decorating itself, celebrating itself. Cairn and petroglyph: they seem like enough. And yet, existence rustles. It wants more. It wants to understand itself. It wants to understand its bottomless depths. But understanding, in the form of language and thought, creates an interior realm; and inhabiting that realm through their day-today lives as bureaucrats and artist-intellectuals, lives remarkably similar in their basic outlines to ours today, the Chinese ancients felt a separation between themselves and the existence-tissue. That rupture was the texture of their lives, and it is also part of the story of existence. But there is a profound difference between ancient China and the modern West, for Chinese thought and language do not entail a metaphysical rupture between a transcendental soul and material existence the way Western thought and language do. The West’s metaphysical rupture appears absolute and integral to the structure of reality, but sage wisdom in ancient China considered the rupture a loss of wholeness. It was the existence-tissue lost to itself, which would have felt to Stone-Waves like a boundless dimension of himself was lost. That is why he created the world of this painting, with its figure on a mountaintop gazing wordlessly out at those ridgelines. Self-cultivation in China meant healing that rupture and returning to that part of ourselves we have lost: the existence-tissue, vast and deep, everything and everywhere. It meant dwelling here in the beginning where the existence-tissue is whole.