Key Terms

An Outline of Classical Chinese Poetry’s Conceptual World

TAO

Way

Tao originally meant “way,” as in “pathway” or “roadway,” a meaning it has kept. But Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu redefined it as a spiritual concept by using it to describe the generative ontological process (hence, a “Way”) through which all things arise and pass away. As such, Tao can be divided into two aspects: presence (yu), the ten thousand living and nonliving things of the empirical world, and absence (wu), the generative source of presence and its transformations. The Taoist way is to dwell as a part of this natural process. In that dwelling, self is but a fleeting form taken on by earth’s process of change. Or more absolutely, it is all and none of earth’s fleeting forms simultaneously. See also: here and here, and my translation of Tao Te Ching here and here.

See: passim.

TZU-JAN

Occurrence appearing of itself

Tzu-jan’s literal meaning is “self-ablaze,” from which comes “self-so” or “the of-itself,” which as a philosophical concept becomes “being such of itself,” hence “spontaneous” or “natural.” But a more revealing translation of tzu-jan is “occurrence appearing of itself,” for it is meant to describe the ten thousand things burgeoning forth spontaneously from the generative source (wu), each according to its own nature, independent and self-sufficient; each dying and returning to the process of change, only to reappear in another self-generating form. Hence, tzu-jan is described as the mechanism or process of Tao in the empirical world. See also: here, and my translation of Tao Te Ching here.

See: here, here, here, here, here.

WU

Absence (Nonbeing)

The generative void from which the ever-changing realm of presence (see the following entry) perpetually arises. Although it is often spoken of in a general sense as the source of all presence, it is in fact quite specific and straightforward: for each of the ten thousand things, absence is simply the emptiness that precedes and follows existence. Wu is known immediately in meditation, widely practiced by ancient Chinese poets and intellectuals, where it is experienced as empty consciousness itself, known in Ch’an (Zen) terminology as “empty mind” or “no-mind.” See also: here.

See: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

YU

Presence (Being)

The empirical universe, which has its origin in wu. The ancients described yu as the ten thousand living and nonliving things in constant transformation. See also: here.

See: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

WU-WEI

Nothing’s own doing

Impossible to translate the same way in every instance, wu-wei means acting as a spontaneous part of tzu-jan rather than with self-conscious intention. Different contexts emphasize different aspects of this rich philosophical concept as writers exploit the term’s grammatical ambiguity. Literally meaning “not/nothing (wu) doing (wei),” wu-wei’s most straightforward translation is simply “doing nothing” in the sense of not interfering with the flawless and self-sufficient unfolding of tzu-jan. But this must always be conceived together with its mirror translation: “nothing doing” or “nothing’s own doing,” in the sense of not being separate from tzu-jan when acting. As wu-wei is the movement of tzu-jan, when we act according to wu-wei we act as the generative source, which opens to the deepest level of this philosophical complex, for wu-wei can also be read quite literally as “absence (wu) doing.” Here, wu-wei action is action directly from, or indeed as the ontological source: absence burgeoning forth into presence. This in turn invests the more straightforward translation (“doing nothing”) with its fullest dimensions, for “doing nothing” always carries the sense of “enacting nothing/absence.”

With the exception of the Tao Te Ching, this central term does not itself occur in the poems of this anthology. But it is a constant presence as a spiritual posture that all poets aspired to and most enacted in their poetry, each in his or her own unique way.

See: here, here, here, here, here, here.

HSÜAN

Dark-Enigma

Dark-enigma came to have a particular philosophic resonance, for in the third and fourth centuries C.E. it became the name of a neo-Taoist school of philosophy: Dark-Enigma Learning, a school that gave Chinese thought a decidedly ontological turn and became central to the synthesis of Taoism and Buddhism into Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. Like Lao Tzu, the thinkers of the Dark-Enigma Learning school equated dark-enigma with absence, the generative ontological tissue from which the ten thousand things spring. Or more properly, it is Way before it is named or known, before absence and presence give birth to each other—that region where consciousness and ontology share their source.

It is interesting to note that Hsüan is the name of the bird that gave birth to the Shang people in the very early Shih Ching poem “Dark-Enigma Bird.”

See: here, here, here, here, here, here.

CH’I

Ch’i

The universal breath, vital energy, or cosmic life-force. In its originary form, it is primal-ch’i (yüan-ch’i), which is present in wu and is perhaps the aspect that makes the primordial emptiness of wu pregnant with possibility. Primal-ch’i is made up of yin and yang completely intermingled and indistinguishable. Once primal-ch’i separated out into yin and yang, yang rose up to become sky and yin sank down to form earth. As the universal breath, ch’i is in constant motion, flowing through landscapes, animating all things, and so is a kind of tissue that connects us always to the empty source.

See: passim.

LI

Inner Pattern

The philosophical meaning of li, which originally referred to the veins and markings in a precious piece of jade, is something akin to what we call natural law. It is the system of principles or patterns that governs the unfolding of tzu-jan, or the manifestations of primal-ch’i as it takes on the forms of the ten thousand things. Li therefore weaves absence and presence into a single boundless tissue. But concepts at these ontological depths blur, especially in the intermingling of Taoist and Buddhist thought, and in the hands of various writers, li appears virtually synonymous with a host of other key concepts: even Tao or tzu-jan, and Buddha or prajñā (the Buddhist term for enlightenment, in which emptiness is understood to be the true nature of all things). See also here and here.

See: here, here, here, here, here, here.

HSIN

Heart-Mind

In ancient China, there was no fundamental distinction between heart and mind: the term hsin connotes all that we think of in the two concepts together. This range of meaning often blends into the technical use of hsin in Taoism and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, where it means consciousness emptied of all content, or perhaps consciousness as empty awareness. The recurring terms empty mind and no-mind emphasize this meaning. And at this fundamental level, mind is nothing other than absence (wu), the pregnant emptiness from which all things arise.

See: passim.

K’UNG

Emptiness

This concept resonates in a number of Taoist and Buddhist ways. In general it is essentially synonymous with absence (wu). As such it is often used to describe mind itself—consciousness emptied of all content. When used in reference to the empirical world, it suggests that the ten thousand things are most fundamentally absence, and so “empty.” From this follows the ecological principle that all things arise in their particular forms from the web of being, then dissolve back into it as the material that will reappear in future forms. Hence, there is no permanent selfhood, or self is “empty.”

See: passim.

HSIEN

Idleness

Etymologically, the character for idleness that T’ao Ch’ien used (hsien) connotes “profound serenity and quietness,” its pictographic elements rendering a moon (see note here) shining through an open gate (pictograph showing the two doors of the gate), or in its alternate form, a tree standing alone within the gates to a courtyard (see note here for the resonance in the term “gate”). Later, another character was also used: lan. The pictographic elements of this character are equally revealing: it is made up of the character for “trust” (lai) beside the character for “heart-mind” (hsin). Hence, the heart-mind of trust, the heart-mind of trust in the world. But this is trust of truly profound dimensions, for “idleness” is essentially a lazybones word for the spiritual posture known as wu-wei. Hence, idleness is a kind of meditative reveling in tzu-jan, a state in which daily life becomes the essence of spiritual practice.

See: passim.