LI PO

(701 to 762)

THERE IS A set-phrase in Chinese referring to the phenomenon of Li Po: “Winds of the immortals, bones of the Tao.” He is called the Banished Immortal, an exiled spirit moving through this world with an unearthly ease and freedom from attachment. But at the same time, he belongs to earth in the most profound way, for he was also free of attachments to self, and that freedom allowed him to blend easily into that spontaneous burgeoning forth of the ten thousand things. Li Po’s work is suffused with the wonder of being part of this process, and he also enacted it, making it visible in the self-dramatized spontaneity of his life and work. To live as part of the earth’s process of change is to live one’s most authentic self rather than acting with self-conscious intention, one acts with the same selfless spontaneity as flowing water, mountain winds, or a wild summer thunderstorm. This spontaneity is wu-wei (see Key Terms), and it is an important part of Taoist and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist practice, the way to experience one’s life as an organic part of tzu-jan (see Key Terms). Wu-wei was a widely held ideal during the T’ang, appearing most famously in the “wild-grass” calligraphy of Chang Hsü and Huai Su, friends of Li Po who would get drunk and, in a sudden flurry, create flowing landscapes of virtually indecipherable characters; in the antics of Ch’an masters; and in Li Po himself.

Li Po’s life was characterized by whimsical travel, wild drinking, and a gleeful disdain for decorum and authority. This spontaneity is also central to his experience of the natural world. He was primarily engaged by the natural world in its wild, rather than domestic, forms. Not only does the wild evoke wonder but it is also where the spontaneous energy of tzu-jan is most clearly visible, energy with which Li Po identified. And the spontaneous movement of a Li Po poem literally enacts this identification, this belonging to earth in the fundamental sense of belonging to its processes. This selfless spontaneity also allowed him to speak out of all aspects of the Chinese tradition with an effortless virtuosity: folk-poetry (yüeh fu), in which he speaks in other voices; shamanistic poetry; the romantic poetry typical of the feminine tradition; wild rivers-and-mountains poetry; quiet Buddhist poetry; poems of social protest.

Only T’ao Ch’ien is as closely identified with the “sage in the cup” as Li Po, and Li Po put wine to his own unique use. Usually in Chinese poetry, the practice of wine involves drinking just enough so the ego fades and perception is clarified. T’ao Ch’ien called this state “idleness” (see Key Terms: hsien): wu-wei as stillness. But although Li Po certainly cultivated such stillness, he usually ended up thoroughly drunk, a state in which he was released fully into his most authentic and enlightened self: wu-wei as spontaneity.

Li Po’s spontaneous energy is finally nothing other than the unfolding of presence (yu: see Key Terms), which is rooted in the profound stillness of absence (wu: see Key Terms), a stillness often found in his more meditative poems. And according to legend, when the phenomenon of Li Po returned in the end to that stillness of absence, it too was an event replete with that same spontaneity: out drunk in a boat, he fell into a river and drowned trying to embrace the moon.