Posted April 2, 2019

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One’s nature cannot be spoken of as internal or external.

— Ch’eng I (1033-1109)

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THE WINTER OF OUR DISCOMBOBULEMENT

                                      M. K. Morton

With flights and reservations,
Schools and formal card invitations,
Concerts and presentations–
It was all cancellations.

A season of unwarranted forecasts triggering snowstorm panic-attacks,
But the white stuff didn’t show much in bulk:
So many false alarms
Turned out pretty much signals of Christmas card charms.

For the street-maintenance department anything like a call-to-arms
Gone mute. Meteorologists their credit have maxed
While weather channel folk have been sighted in overcast broad sulk;
Too quick to anticipate a blizzard,

The subsequent immediate thaw strikes them as absolutely wizard,
For the confused fauna in the winking frost have left ambiguous tracks.
Each snowfall update bulletin a quirk,
Commuters regularly on time getting into work.

The kiddies’ sleds unwaxed, very few new snowmobiles taxed.
With the flurries sprinkled like talcum,
Rivers hard-pressed to muster much of a film.
Arena parking lots a collapsed slalom.

Backyard skating rinks
Occult as the sphinx.
Shovels not needed, what’s to shirk?
Since the season indulges in double-talk,

We might as well sleep-walk.
But with winters coming on so tricky, who could refuse
Spot spring sporting its ruses:
Equivocally hinting to how far behind it may lurk,

Wintry matters further confuses.
If we cannot crafty crafting time completely outfox,
We can at least modestly counter his attempts us to flummox.
Eat your hearts out snow-removal crews.

And like us scavenge for clues
As to what climate the absent vernal equinox,
Long-spoon stirring in its lukewarm cauldron, brews.
But don’t expect to see it on the news.

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Change has neither thought nor action, because it is in the state of absolute quiet and inactivity, and when acted on, it immediately penetrates all things.

— I Ching … ‘Book of Changes’ (probably compiled from the fifth or sixth century BCE to the third or fourth century BCE).

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Photo:

Kano Takanobu –with Tetsuzan Sodon (calligrapher)– HOTEI, 1616. Hanging scroll, ink and colour on paper. The Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Curatorial Record:

Hotei (Chinese: Budai), a popular figure in the Zen pantheon, is often depicted as a chubby, good-humored monk carrying a large sack. A semihistorical figure, he is believed to have lived in southern China in the late ninth century and was  eventually recognized as a manifestation of Miroku (Sanskrit: Maitreya), the Buddha of the Future.

The inscription is excerpted from a eulogy by the Song-dynasty Daoist master Bai Yuchan (1194-1229), who integrated Chan (Zen) teachings of enlightenment into his teachings. The inscription reads:

     Hotei’s sack encompasses the Great Emptiness.
Holding a staff, he tramps around 3,000 villages.
Miroka claps his hands, and laughs –ha, ha!
The bright moon shines, the wind disappears.

     The above poem is hy the master
of Sanyin Monastary,
brushed by Tetsuzan Sādonsai, aged 85,
at Dairyū in Temple in Kyoto.

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Only through spirit is there speed without hurry and the destination reached without travel.

— I Ching …  Book of Changes (compiled from the fifth or sixth century BCE to the third or fourth century BCE)

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A massive cultural literacy movement that is not imposed, but which springs from within is called for.

— Edward T. Hall (1976)

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If one extends knowledge to the utmost, one will have wisdom. Having wisdom, one can make choices.

— Ch’eng I (1033-1107)

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Photo:

Joseph Beuys, ‘How To Explain Pictures To A Dead Hare’ –Galerie Schmela, Düseldorf, 26 November 1965.

●  Using honey on my head and face I am naturally doing something that is concerned with thought. The human capacity is not to give honey, but to think –to give ideas. In this way the deathlike character of thought is made living again. Honey is doubtless a living substance.

— Joseph Beuys

●  The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts.

— Marcus Aurelius (d. 169 CE)
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The field of force is the present actuality of a field of possibilities which strive to actualize themselves.

— Kurt Riezler (1940)

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The true words of the absolute truth are that things are neither existent or nonexistent.

— Seng-chao (384-414)

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There is no self-awareness in ecosystems, no language, no consciousness, and no culture; and therefore no justice and democracy; but also no greed or dishonesty.

— Fritjof Capra (1956)

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Posted March 26, 2019

Photo:

120-foot Statue of Mao – Tongxu County,  Henan province, China.

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Julia Lovell (Birkbeck, University of London), 2019:

In the first week of January 2016, a vast golden statue of Mao, rising up out of frozen brown fields, was unveiled in the middle of the Henan countryside in central China. It was paid for by local people and businessmen. Tourists gathered to take selfies, but a few days later, the monument was demolished, apparently for planning regulations. Several locals wept as it came down, among them probably descendants of the multitudes –one analyst puts the figure at 7.8 million– who died in Henan during the famine in the 1960s caused by Mao’s policies.

The golden colossus of Henan evokes the strange, looming presence of Mao in contemporary China. The People’s Republic (PRC) today is held together by the legacies of Maoism. Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long abandoned the utopian turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in favour of an authoritarian capitalism that prizes prosperity and stability, Mao has left a heavy mark on politics and society. His portrait –six by four and half metres– hangs in Tiananmen Square, the heartland of Chinese political power, and in the middle of the square, his waxen, embalmed body lies in state. At the end of 2018, Xi Jinping and his Central Committee abolished the 1982 constitutional restriction that limited the president to only two consecutive terms; like Mao, he could be ruler for life.

The western commentariat has been wrong-footed by Mao’s resurgence. Many perhaps assumed that, as China turned commercial and capitalist since the death of Mao, the country would become “more like us”; that Mao and Chinese communism were history. The opposite has happened. Maoism is the key to understanding one of the most surprisingly enduring organizations of the 20th and (so far) 21st centuries –the CCP. If the party is still in charge in 2024, the Chinese communist revolution will have exceeded the 74-year lifespan of its Soviet older brother. And if the Chinese communist state survives much beyond this point, historians may come to see October 1949, rather than October 1917, as the game-changing revolution of the last century.

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Nothingness haunts being.

— Jean-Paul Sartre (1943)

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The practical men have led us to the edge of the abyss, and the intellectuals in whom acceptance of power politics has killed first the moral sense, and then the sense of reality, are urging us to march rapidly forward without changing direction.

— George Orwell (1946)

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FIRM FOOTING

               M.K. Morton

     This now is … that now–

                       Michael Fray

Why should I act upon a tip simply because it’s current?
Why should I trust–great scarcely mooted,
Self-scooted
Gossamer blossomer–

(Always just) NOW? In its constant vanishing act,
The antithesis of obdurate.
The least suggestion of overflowing most conspicuously
Shirks immediately, pseudo-continuously

And only with tact.
Now, voiding its essence meticulously,
Doesn’t usually bother to appear spontaneous:
Indeed no slipperier a customer

Because now doesn’t stay to post faintest instantaneous.
To put salt on this flighty bird’s tail attempts flounder ridiculously.
Maybe marinated is better spent
Interval that would allow

Me more room to manoeuvre, small cause to furrow my brow.
Hint given long ago or recent:
When best to opt for permanent?
Heed a once-and-future past? unless this passing moment

More credible, though it soon absent.
Despite, cautious before I’ve striven
How much sievin’
I’ve winnowed, for years my ability to assess has in know-how

Not increased. No mere instant seems fat.
Distinguishing a specific time as fit
Or flawed is setting out the sea to plough.
So many obvious decisions turn out aberrant,

Whereas on the other hand, some almost eliminated call,
Hesitantly chosen, doubt fully apparent
(For once dragged out until I could hear time drawl),
Remarkably comes on, full of gift, terse clipped now to richly endow

Sceptical me. Perhaps best of all: an incidental pledge given
Absently, by no strong recommendation driven,
Is what randomly, improbably proves prime tiffin
To leaven the livin’.

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Buddhist monk Budai, China, 17th-18th century. Porcelain with ivory glaze (Dehua ware). H. 6-3/4 in. (171 cm). W. 7-1/4 in. (184 cm). D. 5-1/2 in. (14 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. .

Curatorial Record:

Budai, a tenth-century monk, was known for his laughing face and round stomach. Named after the cloth sack (budai) that he carries under his arm, he is believed to be the incarnation of Maitreya, the future Buddha, who helps common people in the mortal world.
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Jean-Paul Sartre (1943):

All human activities are equivalent … and … all are on principle doomed to failure.

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Photo:

Che Guevara and Chairman Mao (Qingzhen Hall, Zhongnanhai, China),  November 1960.

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Che Guevara/Chairman Mao (excerpt from a two-hour conversation at Qingzhen Hall, 1960):

Chairman Mao: Last year you visited a few Asian countries [didn’t you?]

Guevara: A few countries, such as India, Siam [Thailand], Indonesia, Burma, Japan, Pakistan.

Mao: Except for China, you have been to all major countries?

Guevara: That’s why I am now in China.

Mao: Welcome to you.

[ Note:

As a formal representative of Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba, Guevera also visited North Korea in 1960.

— CAUSA Research Curators ]

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Chou Tun-i (1017-1073):

One cannot penetrate subtlety without thought, and cannot penetrate all without profound thought. Thus the ability to penetrate all comes from the ability to penetrate subtlety, and the ability to penetrate subtlety comes from thinking.

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Posted March 19, 2019

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Lao Tzu (sixth century BCE):

Only when Tao is lost does the doctrine of virtue arise.
When virtue is lost, only then does the doctrine of humanity arise.
When humanity is lost, only then does the doctrine of righteousness arise.
When righteousness is lost, only then does the doctrine of propriety arise.
Now, propriety is a superficial expression of loyalty and faithfulness, and the beginning of disorder.

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James Acton, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2019):

The global stockpile of nuclear weapons is down from an all-time high of about 64,000 in 1986 –but some contemporary weapons are about 300 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

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Mencius (371-289 BCE?):

All things are already complete in oneself. There is no greater joy than to examine oneself and be sincere. When in one’s conduct one vigorously exercises altruism, humanity is not far to seek, but right by him.

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Auguste Comte (1852):

We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. This, the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty.

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KARAIKKAL AMMAIYAR, SHAIVA SAINT, India (Tamil Nadu), ca. 13th century. Copper alloy. H. 9-1/8 in. (23.2 cm); W. 6-1/2 in. (16.5 cm); D. 5-1/4 in. (13.3 cm).

Curatorial Record:

Ammaiyar, a sixth-century South Indian Shaiva saint, achieved her emaciated state after beseeching Shiva to free her from all worldly encumbrances, including her famed beauty. Shiva granted her wish … and she delighted in devoting her life to composing hymns in praise of him. Here, she is seen singing Shiva’s praises, accompanying herself with a pair of cymbals. Her hymns celebrate Shiva’s predilection for cremation grounds and for his wild dancing form as Nataraja.

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DARE WE LET THE FUTURE DOWN?
M.K. Morton

Ancestors, please do leave us something to pollute;
Lest stern history deem us sheer galoot.
Spare our generation an unspoiled spot to soil.
Give post-twenty-first century us a chance.
That, armed with the best of styrofoam and tinfoil,

We’ll ensure no venue left where owl can hoot.
Hail to thee, blight spirits: bards thou never wert.
Nor virtouoso of the dance.
To only your credit ratings alert,
Take our salute.

Leave us a planet we can loot,
Intendng more to crush than a single tender shoot
Designer-shrivelled, awash in boiling like oil finance.
Else we’ll, sole option weighed in history’s balance,
Have but our civilization’s heritage slabs to tear up by the root.

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Confucius (d. 479 BCE):

Absolute sincerity is ceaseless. Being ceaseless, it is lasting. Being lasting, it is evident. Being evident, it is infinite.

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Posted March 5, 2019

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Lao Tzu (sixth century BCE):

Attain complete vacuity,
Maintain steadfast quietude.
All things come into being,
And I see thereby their return.
All things flourish,
But each one returns to its root.
This return to destiny is called the eternal (Tao).
To know the eternal is called enlightenment.
Not to know the eternal is to act blindly to result in disaster.

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SHIVA AS LORD OF DANCE (NATARAJA). India (Tamil Nadu), ca. 11th century. Copper alloy. H. 26-7/8 in. (68.3 cm). Diam. 22-1/4 in. (56.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curatorial Record:

As a symbol, Shiva Nataraja is a brilliant invention. It combines in a single image Shiva’s role as creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe and conveys the Indian conception of the never-ending cycle of time. Shiva’s dance is set within a flaming halo. The god holds in his upper right hand the DAMARU (hand drum that made the first sounds of creation). His upper left hand holds AGNI (the fire that will destroy the universe). With his lower right hand, he makes ABHAYAMUDRA (the gesture that allays fear). The dwarflike figure being trampled by his right foot represents APASMARA PURUSHA (illusion, which leads mankind astray). Shiva’s front left hand, pointing to his raised left foot, signifies refuge for the troubled soul.

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We must distinguish between the image and the messages that reach it. The meaning of the message is the change which it produces in the image.

— Kenneth Boulding (1956)
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STANDING BODHISATTVA MAITREYA (BUDDHA OF THE FUTURE). Pakistan (ancient region of Gandhara), ca. 3rd century CE. Gray schist. H. 31-3/4 in. (80.7 cm). W. 11-1/2 in.(29.2 cm). D. 6 in. (15.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curatorial Record:

Maitreya is the Buddha of the next age, much as Shakyamuni is the Buddha of our age. He resides in TUSSHITA [meaning “realm, contentment”], waiting for his final rebirth. As befits his highest rebirth, he wears the garments and jewels of a prince, though his halo clearly demarks his deified status. He can be identified by the sacred waterflask in his left hand.

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“Until philosophers rule, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, cities will have no rest from evils, nor, I think, will the human race.”

— Plato (ca. 380 BCE)

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David Bohm (1980):

WHAT IS is always a totality of ensembles, in an orderly series of stages of enfoldment and unfoldment, which intermingle and inter-penetrate each other in principle throughout the whole of space.

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Ngo An

(Korea, circa 1090)

True nature is always elusive,
Only the heart of no-heart
can grasp it.
Up in the mountain,
the burning jade stays
brilliant.
And in the roaring
furnace,
lotus blossoms keep
their fragrance.

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TAVERN ETIQUETTE
               M.K.Morton

What if ghosts from demolished houses
Turn up at pubs where a crowd carouses?
Slip in unobserved at a nicely overflowing table,

Where of their garb no one will check the label.
When it’s your round next the gang to enable,
Elbowing back from the bar be sure to check your chair’s stable.

And don’t wonder about that guy under the missing corner gable
Who constantly drowses,
And never over the list of what’s on tap browses.

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Language serves not only to express thoughts, but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

— Bertrand Russell (1948)

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Confucius (551-479 BCE):

Absolute sincerity is ceaseless. Being lasting, it is evident. Being evident, it is infinite.

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Posted March 5, 2019

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SEE, ALL THINGS HOWEVER THEY FLOURISH

RETURN TO THE ROOT FROM WHICH THEY GREW.

— Lao Tzu (sixth century BCE)

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BE TATTERED, THAT YOU MAY BE RENEWED.

— Lao Tzu (sixth century BCE)

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TO KNOW THE ALWAYS-SO IS TO BE ILLUMINED;
NOT TO KNOW IT, MEANS TO GO BLINDLY TO DISASTER.

— Lao Tzu (sixth century BCE)

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The world of language is quite a different place from the world of reality. In the latter, infinities do not exist.

— Arthur Waley (1958)

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Think globally, act locally.

— René Dubos (1977)

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Posted February 25, 2019

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Curatorial Record:

One of the most common mudras in Japanese Buddhist sculpture –an open hand with an inflected index or third finger touching the thumb– symbolizes peace and the exposition of Buddhist teachings. It is most often associated with Shakamuni, the historical Buddha, or Amida (Sanskrit Amitabha), the Buddha of the Western Paradise. The modelling of this carving suggests religious sculpture of the early Heian period, when the styles and iconography of Tang-dynasty Esoteric Buddhism were introduced to Japan from China.

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Gary Lee-Nova, Snowfall on Spanish Banks, Vancouver, February 12, 2019.

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Stephen Chen, SOUTH CHINA MORNING NEWS, 10 January, 2019:

Deep in the heart of southwest China’s mountainous Sichuan province, the military is building a machine to simulate thermonuclear explosions on an unprecedented scale.

It has been described as a Chinese version of America’s “Z Machine” –formally known as the Z Pulsed Facility –a giant wheel-like device developed by the United States to see how particles react under extreme radiation and magnetic pressure.

Z machines have been used in the development of nuclear weapons…. Chinese researchers are trying to build a machine for testing weapons … allowing scientists to delve deeper into the nuclear unknown.
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Hsüan-tsang (596-664):

Before we achieve true awakening, we are perpetually in the midst of a dream. This is why the Buddha spoke of the long night of transmigration, because of our failure to understand that the objective spheres of colour [and so forth] are consciousness only.
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Jonathan Schell (1982)

When an entire community or an entire people is destroyed, most of those who would mourn the victims … or simply remember what occured, are themselves destroyed. When that community is all mankind, the loss of the human context is total, and no one is left to respond.

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Hsiung Shih-li (1883-1968):

From one point of view transformation is closing and opening (hsi-p’i 翕闢). The two terms in this expression merely indicate a difference in tendencies. Opening is merely a tendency, and closing is also merely a tendency.

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Posted February 18, 2019

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ON THE STORK TOWER

Wang Zhihuan
(688-742 CE)

The sun beyond the mountains glows;
The Yellow River seaward flows.
You can enjoy a grander sight,
By climbing to a greater height.

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In order to live with ourselves in instant feedback situations, we have to understand everything.

Our easygoing lolling about in the lap of the unconscious cannot endure … we will have to take over the total human environment as an artifact.

— Marshall McLuhan (1965)

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Jonathan Este –The Conversation UK– 16 February 2019:

It was one of the saddest moments of the week: when Mars rover Opportunity, which has been sending back information about the Red Planet for 15 years, was officially declared dead by NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration]. “My battery is low and its getting dark,” were its last words.

“Oppy” had been supposed to function for 90 days when it originally landed on Mars in 2004 but ended up operating until eight months ago, when it sent that message [via NASA’S Deep Space Network of massive radio telescopes used to communicate with space craft deep in the solar system]. Scientists tried repeatedly to wake Oppy but to no avail.

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Loren Crush –The Verge– 13 February 2019:

[Mars Rover] Opportunity helped uncover clues about what Mars’ climate used to be like billions of years ago, revealing that the planet once hosted oceans of liquid water on its surface. The ancient wet climate may have made it possible for alien life, like tiny microbes, to survive on Mars long ago.
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THOUGHTS IN THE SILENT NIGHT

Li Bai
(d. 762 BCE)

Beside my bed in a pool of light —
is it hoarfrost on the ground?
I lift my eyes and see the moon,
I bend my head and think of home.

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Marshall McLuhan (1968):

The planet is no longer nature, it’s no longer the external world…. The environment is not visible. It’s information.

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Chinese Communist Party Poster –circa 1969.

Caption: “The great leader Chairman Mao’s treasured gift to the WORKERS’ MAO ZEDONG THOUGHT PROPAGANDA TEAMS of the capital –a mango.”

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Malcolm Moore (2013):

It was one lof the most peculiar moments of the 20th century, when millions of Chinese workers started fervently worshipping mangoes in honour of Chairman Mao.

The mango mania began in the autumn of 1968 when Pakistan’s Foreign minister arrived in Beijing and presented Chairman Mao with a case of the fruit.

In turn, the Great Helmsman decided to use the exotic fruit, then utterly unknown in most of China, to make a political statement.

He sent the case, containing roughly 40 mangoes, to a group of factory workers.  [Known as The Worker-Peasant Thought Propaganda Team, they were at that time in the midst of suppressing militant students –Red Guards– who had occupied the Tsinghua University campus.]

Astonished by the miraculous gift, they decided to send one mango to each of Beijing’s most important factories.

The mangoes were held up as a symbol of Chairman Mao’s love for the workers and quickly became holy relics themselves, such was the cult of personality around the Chinese leader.

At the Beijing Textile Factory, “the workers held a huge ceremony” for a single mango … “then sealed it in wax, hoping to preserve it for posterity,”  recorded Li Zhisui, Mao’s personal doctor. “The wax-covered fruit was placed on an altar and workers lined up to file past it, solemnly bowing as they walked by.” When it began to rot, however, it was “delicately peeled and then boiled in a huge vessel of water.” Another ceremony was held. “Each worker drank a spoonful of the water in which the sacred mangoe  had been boiled,” wrote Dr. Li [in his 1994 memoirs].
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Mikhail Bakunin (1882):

In a word, we regret all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even though arising from universal sufferage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interests of the immense majority in subjection to them.

This is the sense in which we are really Anarchists.

Oswald Spengler (1928):

There is only PERSONAL history, and consequently only PERSONAL politics…. Even revolutions are no exception, for the “sovereignty of the people” only expresses the fact that the ruling power has assumed the title of people’s leader instead of that of king…. And even world-peace, in every case where it has existed, has been nothing but the slavery of an entire humanity under the regimen imposed by a few strong natures determined to rule.

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ARHAT (Luohan) –stoneware with three-colour (sancai) glaze. China, ca. 1000 CE. H. 411-1/4 in. (104 8 cm).

Curatorial Record:

This life-size sculpture is part of a group of sixteen figures that have been known in the West since 1913. Thought to have come from a cave in Yixian, Hebei province, they represent arhats (or luohans, as they are known in China).  Arhats were thought to have achieved an advanced state of spiritual development, and were revered as protectors of Buddhism.

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Before we achieve true awakening, we are perpetually in the midst of a dream.

–Hsüan-tsang (596-664)

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What does not exist must be something, or it would be meaningless to deny its existence; and hence we need the concept of being, as that which belongs even to the non-existent.

— Bertrand Russell (1903)

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Lao Tzu (sixth-century BCE):

Let there be a small country with few  people.
Let there be ten times and a hundred times as many utensils,
But let them not be used.
Let the people value their lives highly and not migrate far.
Even if there are ships and carriages, none will ride in them.
Even if there are armor and weapons, none will display them.
Let the people again knot cords and use them (in place of writing).
Let them relish their food, beautify their clothing, be content with their
homes and delight in their customs.
Though neighboring communities overlook one another and the crowing of cockerels any barking of dogs can be heard,
Yet the people there may grow old and die without ever visiting one another.

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“Village people aren’t that much in love with each other, and the global village is a place of very arduous and very abrasive situations.”

— Marshall McLuhan (1977)

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Posted February 11, 2019

TIANWEN TU (Illustrations of Heavenly Questions), illustrated by Xiao Yuncong (1596-1673). National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Curatorial Record:

That Nüwa molded humans [from yellow  clay] is one of the remote Chinese myths…. Nüwa is depicted as a goddess with a snake body and a human head. (And that configuration can transform into seventy different forms in a day.)

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In the text HUAINAN ZI (written in 200 BCE) legend states that poles supporting the world (north, south, east, and west) were broken, causing the nine states of China to endure continental shift and split –with water from the heavens creating a flood.

SHUJING (written 1000 BCE) describes the extent of that legendary flood, noting that its magnitude extended to the sky and flooded all living things. In response to this global calamity, Nüwa appeared: she sealed flood holes with colourful stones, and made breakage repairs (using four turtle legs).  Subsequently, Nüwa used earth to replenish mankind after the flood.

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Leaf from an album of twelve paintings by Chen Hongshou –LANDSCAPES, FIGURES, AND FLOWERS, 1618-1622. Ink and colour on paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curatorial Record:

In the first leaf, the blank scene of an untended garden presents a powerful image of the decay infecting late Ming society just twenty-five years before the dynasty was toppled by the Manchus. In his accompanying inscription Chen remarks: “Does anybody notice?”

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Joseph Beuys, 7000 Oaks (detail), documenta 7 exhibition, Kassel, Germany, 1982. (Photo: circa 1982.)

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“The planting of seven thousand oak trees is only a symbolic beginning…. Such a beginning requires a marker –in this instance a basalt column.”

— Joseph Beuys (1982)

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Louis Auguste Blanqui (1834)

If we examine the source of social wealth, we find that it resides exclusively in intelligence and labour. Indeed it is through labour and intelligence that society lives and breathes, grows and develops, and if these forces were to withdraw from it for even a single moment it would dissolve and all its members would perish as through a sudden catastrophe.

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SILK ROAD IN RECESSION
M.K. Morton

I met an ancient bookie from an antique land,
Who stoppeth one of three with no glad hand.
“It’s been stasis
So long at my oasis,

My betting office has no basis.
Anyone can do the maths:
The caravan routes have given way to flight paths.
Who cares how fast after rare gems the smuggler chases?

Or how much the customs officer skim off the textile cases
If the camel corps is short on baths,
Or whether Bokhara Samarkand outfaces.
Putting Zeno through his paces,

The tortoise-Achilles races
(The last time he begs Gordian tie his laces)
Stop dead in their traces.
Since win defaults, no-show replaces.”
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Rudolph Rocker (1937):

If today there is still a choice, it is not that between facism and “communism,” but the choice between despotism and freedom, between brutal compulsion and free arrangement, between the exploitation of human beings and cooperative industry for the benefit of all.

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“The communist ideological and social system alone is full of youth and vitality, sweeping the world with the momentum of an avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt.”

— Mao Zedong (1940)

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“All aspects of a classsic fascist state are in place in China now.”

— Jonathan Manthorpe (2017)

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BODHISATTVA AVALOKITESHVARA OF THE LION’S ROAR, China, early 15th-century – early 17th century. Wood (poplar) with pigment; single-block construction. H. 42-1/2 in. (107 cm); W. 29 in. (73.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curatorial Record:

Avalokiteshvara (the Bodhisattva of Compassion) and Manjushri (the Bodhisattva of Wisdom) are identifiable by the fact that both, at times, appear atop lions. As such, they are said to assume the form of Simhanda, or the Lion’s Roar, which is a reference to the intensity of the moment of enlightenment.

Depictions of Simhanda Avalokiteshvara developed in India around the eleventh or twelfth century and appeared in China during the twelfth.

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John Logie Baird –Invention of Television (1925):

Funds were going down, the situation was becoming desperate … when at last, one Friday in the first week of October 1925, everything functioned properly. The image of the [ventriloquist] dummy’s head formed itself on the screen with what appeared to me almost unbelievable clarity. I had got it! I could scarcely believe my eyes and felt myself shaking with excitement.

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Posted February 5, 2019

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Huai-nan Tzu (d. 122 BCE):

TAO [the Great Univeral] produced the universe (of space and time)…. The material forces of Heaven and Earth combined to form YIN and YANG. The concentrated forces of yin and yang became the four seasons, and the scattered forces of the four seasons became the myriad things. When the hot force of yang accumulated, fire was produced and the essence of the material force of fire became the sun. When the cold force of yin accumulated, water was produced and the essence of the material force of water became the moon. The excess of the essence of the sun and moon become the stars and planets. Heaven received the sun, moon, and stars, while earth received water and soil.
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There is never a case when the root is in disorder and yet the branches are in order.

— Confucius (d. 479 BCE)
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Shao Yung (1011-1077):

The Great Ultimate is the One. It produces the two (yin and yang) without engaging in activity. The two (in their wonderful changes and transformations) constitute the spirit. Spirit engenders number, number engenders form, and form engenders concrete things.

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BODHISATTVA AVALOKITESHVARA IN ‘WATER MOON’ FORM, China, 11th century. Wood (willow) with traces of pigment; multiple-woodblock construction. H. 46-1/2 in. (118.1 cm); W. 37-1/2 in. (95.3 cm); D. 28 in. (71.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curatorial Record:

After the tenth century, one of the more prominent representations of Avalokiteshvara [who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas] shows the bodhisattva seated with the right knee raised and the left leg crossed before the body. The posture represents the Water Moon manifestation, understood as a depiction of Avalokiteshvara in his Pure Land, or personal paradise.

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Nothing is hard in this world
If you dare to scale the heights.

— Mao Zedong (1965)
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Alex Fox, SCIENCE (Vol. 363), February 1,  2019:

In a first for humankind, plants are growing on the surface of the moon…. Cotton, rapeseed, and potato seedlings have all sprouted inside a canister aboard China’s Chang-e 4 lunar lander, now parked on the far side of the moon.

Yeast, fruit flies, and rock cress were sent aboard Cheng’e 4…. The mission’s architects say the experiments could help lay a foundation for one day establishing a lunar base.
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Without sincerity, one cannot investigate principle to the utmost. Sincerity is the controlling factor in one’s nature. It is beyond space and time.

— Shao Yung (1011-1077)
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 MIXED SIGNALS FROM THE CONTROL TOWER

Posted January 22, 2019

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Bertrand Russell (1921):

The traditional civilization of China based upon Confucianism tempered by Buddhism has worn Itself out, and is no longer capable of either inspiring individual achievement or of solving the internal and external political problems with which China is beset. For the last thousand years or so this civilization has been decaying, slowly losing vigour.

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It is useless in China to approach the economic problem directly; the political problem must be solved first. Until you have a strong and honest state, with incorruptible administration, you cannot institute any form of genuine socialism or communism.

Political reform in China cannot for many years to come take the form of democracy after the Western model. Democracy presupposes a population that can read and write and that has some degree of knowledge as to political affairs. These conditions cannot be satisfied in China until at least a generation after the establishment of a government devoted to the public welfare.
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Oswald Spengler (1922):

Swift and deep changes assert themselves in the history of the great Cultures, without assignable causes, influences, or purposes of any kind…. Every being, active or contemplative,  strides on to its fulfilment by EPOCHS [turning points], and we have to assume just such epochs in the history of solar systems and the world of the fixed stars.
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                           A METEORIC CAREER
                                      M.K. Morton

Finite cadence, a limited engagement, not an extended run:
Who can say from what music of which sphere it’s spun?
Civilization is largely a matter of modest time-exposure;
Dilates between energetic overture

And uncomprehending closure.
Conceived? Heavily filtered undepictably;
Born: unpredictably;
Matured? inimitably.

Peaked? not at all unprecipitately;
Fades away? inevitably.
Muddles through, scrapes by? unmitigatedly.
Hammocks along, never said to run late.

As matrix and surrounding venue for those spot-on gifted to create
Manages to articulate
A distinctively, recognizably specific certain sprawl.
Until the last malls fall.

Hence each era has its playdate: a moment the curtain goes up,
Until shuffle, sidle by–offering at most cracked challenge cup
With arguably suitably unsubtle prompts–raw upstarts who dictate
The antically flagging enterprise

Must the stage vacate.
Civilization doesn’t muster a curtain call.
Though up to the end still good for the especially odd surprise.
Be grateful, during a few of its acts, if to pose and sup

You had your occasion unique,
Before succeeding epochs–even if they don’t regard us as a freak–
Indifferent to one more civilization not making the long haul,
Won’t even wonder what made us stall.

Dismissing as unfit for heritage our last world fair’s top technique,
Subsequent civilizations, long before they peak,
Will tag to-day’s profiles hopelessly, unretrievably antique.
Will forget how many our lingo once did speak.
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Rest to stop motion, and rest will move you again.

— Chien-chih Seng-ts’an, Third Ch’an Patriarch (d. 606 CE)
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Amnesty International Annual Report:
CHINA 2017/2018:

The authorities continued to use “residential surveillance in a designated location”, a form of secret incommunicado detention that allowed police to hold individuals up to six months outside the formal detention system. This form of detention was used to curb the activities of human rights defenders, activists and religious practitioners.
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Xia Chang, BAMBOO IN WIND, ca. 1460. Hanging scroll –ink in paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Curatorial Record:

Bamboo, which bends without breaking, has long been a symbol of integrity and strength. It was also a favorite subject of Ming and Qing scholar-painters.

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The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things.

— Leo Strauss (1958)
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