Posted January 15, 2019

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We hold that if there is any difference between the East and the West, it is the product of different circumstances.

— Feng You-lan (1934)
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Mao Zedong (1957):

By over-all planning we mean planning which takes into consideration the interests of the 600 million people of our country. In drawing up plans, handling of  affairs or thinking over problems, we must proceed from the fact that China has a population of 600 people, and we must never forget this.

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Jessica Batke, CHINA FILE, 8 January 2019:

As journalists and scholars have reported in recent months on the campaign of religious and cultural repression and incarceration taking place in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, a central question has emerged: How many people has China’s government detained as part of the campaign?

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Estimates of one million people detained in Xinjiang “re-education” camps are quite credible. Does that mean they are correct? Only Beijing likely knows for sure. And it’s not telling.
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Ko Hung (d. 343 CE):

The way of XUAN [the mystery of mystical oneness] is obtained within oneself, but is lost due to things outside. Those who employ XUAN are those with spirit; those who forget it are merely [empty] vessels.
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BUDDHA VAIROCANA (Dàrì Rúlái). China, early 8th century. Gilt leaded bronze; lost-wax cast. H: 20.3 cm (8 in.); W: 14.6 cm (5-3/4 in.); D: 14 cm (5-1/2 in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curatorial Record:

The teaching gesture made by the figure, in which the thumb of the right hand touches the little finger of the left, identifies him as Vairocana, a transcendent manifestation of the historical Buddha [awakened/enlightened one] Shakyamuni.

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DOGMATICS 100
M.K. Morton

Although you might hear from them more than a peep
About ignoring, to look for one lost sheep,
The ninety-nine infold,

Since they had substituted belief for faith,
If you didn’t agree with what they told you,
Henceforth barred from their heavenly threshold queue

You were left a spiritual waif.
But, if lucky, struck off unhaloed
Before they could inculcate the talent to scold.

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To arrive at understanding from being one’s true self is called nature, and to arrive at being one’s true self from understanding is called culture.

–Zisi (d. 402 CE)
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Posted January 9, 2019

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The supression of the old by the new is a general, eternal and inviolable law of the universe.

— Mao Zedong (1937)

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In its complex totality, historical change is incapable of reduction except to one concept, that of development: a concept empty of everything that forms the peculiar content of history.

— Benedetto Croce (1922)

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BUSINESS INSIDER, Jan. 3, 2019:

China just pulled off a major feat of space exploration by landing a spacecraft on the lunar far side; a face of the moon we can’t see from the Earth.

Around 2:26 a.m. UTC [3 January] a robotic lander and rover safely touched down on the moon’s surface, according to the China National Space Administration.

The Chinese moon mission is called Chang’e-4. The name “Chang-e” is that of a mythical lunar goddess, and the “4” indicates that this is the fourth robotic mission in China’s decade-long lunar space exploration programme.

No country or space agency, including NASA and Russia, has ever touched the far side of the moon –until now.

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Most people are on the world, not in it –have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them– undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

— John Muir (1890)
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Posted December 17, 2018

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Return to life is perennial; to know the
perennial is enlightenment. Not to know
the perennial is confusion; the confused
cause harm.

— Huang-Lao school of Taoism
(early 2nd-century BCE)

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Soga Shohaku (d. 1780), THE THREE LAUGHERS OF TIGER RAVINE. Hanging scroll, ink on paper. Indianapolis Museum of Art

Curatorial Record:

This allegorical painting features the Buddhist monk Huiyan (334-416) in front, the poet Tao Yuangming (365-417), and the Daoist Lu Xiujing (406-477). Huiyan lived secluded from the mundane world at Donglin Temple on Mt. Lu and had vowed never to cross over Tiger Ravine, which marked the border of the sanctuary. One day the other two visited his retreat. Absorbed in conversation, while seeing his visitors off, Huiyen inadvertently crossed the bridge. The painting captures the moment of realization when the three burst into laughter.

The depiction also emphasizes the unity and harmony of the three characters [Buddhist/Confucianist/Daoist … respectively]. Laughing, joyously, they wrap their arms around and hold onto one another.

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In illusion what is true?
Illusion is from the outset true.
In illusion what is manifested?
The very illusion itself is manifestation.
If this is so, then one can never be apart from illusion?
No matter how you seek illusion, you won’t find it.

— Ts’ao-shan (ninth century CE)
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Even if the U.S. atom bombs were so powerful that, when dropped on China, they would make a hole right through the earth, or even blow it up, that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system.

— Mao Zedong (1955)
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Lu Guang (2012): ‘polluted river’ image …  from an ongoing documentary photography series, CHINA WATER SURVEY.

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The Zhaozhou stone arch bridge is located on the Xiao River –five miles east of Zhaoxian, in Hebei Province. Built in 610 CE, it is the world’s oldest intact stone bridge and is classified as a national monument. But the arch bridge is now threatened by corrosion at its foundations because of severe pollution.

— Jean Loh, Trans Asia Photography Review (2015)

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the earth is not a fresh-air resort and the idyllic prospectuses of the earth tell lies. nature does not run along the little thread on which reason would like it to run.

— Jean Arp (1932)
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Posted December 9, 2018

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“The present should embrace all the best of the past.”

— Fung Yu-lan (1982)

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Mao Zedong (1940):

A splendid ancient culture was created during the long period of China’s feudal society. To clarify the process of  development of this ancient culture, to throw away its dross … is a necessary condition for the development of our new national culture.

Since knowledge must come from practice, all abstract concepts, idealistic theories, and subjectivism of any kind are considered feudalistic and are to be totally rejected. Philosophy acquires its true meaning only in the discovery and solution of practical problems. Therefore the chief lesson of  philosophy is the concrete development of society.

Philosophy is to be identified with the masses. To be sure, there are many teachers of philosophy and many writers on it. Among them Fung Yu-lan (b. 1895) is still the most outstanding. Evidently he is not yet completely converted to Marxian philosophy, and therefore he has been the chief target of attack. The constant demand is that he must forsake the capitalist camp and serve the masses.
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Fung Yu-lan (1895-1990):

What is considered to be the philosophy of the East has existed in the philosophy of the West as well –and vice versa.

Mankind has the same essential nature and the same problems of life.
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Hsiung Shih-li (1956):

Opening is merely a tendency and closing is also merely a tendency. We should not say that each has a substance of its own, nor should we say that closing comes first and then opening. In another respect, transformation means that as soon as there is coming-into-existence, there is going-out-of-existence. In other words, as soon as closing takes place, it disappears, without preserving its former tendency in the slightest degree but at all times destroying the old and producing the new.

Perpetual transformation is formless and is subtle in its movement. This movement is continuous without cease. This kind of unceasing movement is of course not a simple tendency. In each movement there is a sort of integration. Without it the movement would be aimless, drifting, and baseless. Therefore when the tendency to act begins, there is at the same time a sort of integration. This tendency to integrate is positive consolidation. Consequently, without anyone’s intention, an infinite number of “physical becoming” come into being from which the physical universe is formed. The tendency from integration to physical becoming is called closing.

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The reality is that the global village will have its village idiots, and we can tolerate them less because they could have global range.

— Martin Rees (2018)
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Posted December 4, 2018

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When militarists are strong, they do not win; when trees are strong, they are resistant.

— Anonymous/Huang-Lao school of Taoism (early 2nd-century BCE)
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CBC/CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION RADIO (November 30, 2018):

According to Sophie Richardson, China director at HUMAN RIGHT WATCH [an international non-governmental organization based in New York City],  Venezuela is just one of many countries importing Chinese-developed state surveillance technology.

Having perfected the art of state surveillance, China is now pushing its technology to like-minded governments around the world. “It’s like Christmas for repressive regimes.” Richardson says. “This is a new line of business in Beijing.”

A recent report from the FREEDOM HOUSE [an independent watchdog organization “dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy around the world”], 18 countries have imported artificial intelligence surveillance systems from China in the past year. The report accuses China of “remaking the world in its techno-dystopian image.”

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Jin Chusi (Chinese, active late 12th century), TEN KINGS OF HELL (one of a set of ten hanging scrolls) –ink and colour on silk– before 1195. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curatorial Record:

This is one from a set of scrolls illustrating the theme Ten Kings of Hell, which developed during the second half of the Tang dynasty (618-907). The theme transforms the Indian Buddhist view of judgment after death into a typically Chinese bureaucratic process. Before being permitted to transmigrate into the next life, a soul is tried by a different king each week for seven weeks; it is sent to the eighth king on the hundredth day, to the ninth after a year, and to the tenth the third year after death.
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A dynamic force seems to be drawing Western society, then the rest of the world, toward a state of relative indifferentiation never before known on earth, a strange kind of nonculture or anticulture we call modern.

— René Girard (1972)

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Ba Jin (1904-2005):

A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976 [during the ‘Cultural Revolution’]. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself.
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