Dear LO
"The Stone can only be found when the search lies heavily on the searcher.
- Thou seekest hard and findest not. Seek not and thou wilst find."
(Koestler, quoting an old Alechemist's Rosarium, whose author's name he'd
fogotten) And in the cases that that be too metaphysical or unscientific,
"To invent you must think aside." (Poincare quoting Souriau).
I was going to dedicate this contribution to the whole of the LO - but I
will not do that; I will instead dedicate it to my dog, 'Bucket'. Poets
however occasional, like American Presidents, should always have dogs for
'best' company.
When I was an artist, or before that when I worked in a car factory, or
before that in a transportation company, or before that in a shop, or
before that at a railway station, or before that as a servant in a college
at Oxford, or after that as a learner in publishing, or a salesman ...-
that is to say before I started to work with or for people who continually
of themselves use terms like, 'leader', 'executive', 'manager',
'consultant', 'expert' or the almost unworldly one amongst us, the 'guru'
I never heard people commend 'humility' as part of the 'living' to do
with, well, 'living'.
In Confucian terms, one might say that the 'windy' ones are at heart
unconvinced, often unconvincing in the wherewithall of their own 'windiness'
- hence the needsomeness of some direful;-) 'humility'- that the grass be
more supple in the presence of them who toil to do what the little flower
does, without even waking.
Back to 'dogs' for 'company'. Now you must do an act of envisioning if you
will;-) Envision you are my friend, Lin Yutang, and you are reading his
writing directly. But you do so from a distance - so to say. Lin Yutang likes
nothing better than a good 'meander', much like my dear LO friend Leo.
Listen, "Andrew, when I say dialogue, I really do mean a good long, leisurely
discourse extending several pages at a stretch when written ;-) with many
detours, and coming back to the original point of discussion (sic) by a
shortcut at the most unexpected spot, like a man returning home by climbing
over a hedge."
Lin Yutang expresses himself as unoriginal ;-) "What I borrow from the East
are hackneyed truths there. Nevertheless, they are part of my being. That
being so they express something original in me, when I first encountered them
my heart said, Yes. I will use the ideas of great philosophers and those who
are quite obscure. I like the idea of finding a small pearl in an ashcan more
than a large one in a jeweller's shop." A favourite philosopher of his is Mrs
Huang, a Soochow boat woman who uses many expletives ;-), and another...a
lion cub in the local zoo and a squirrel he once met in Central Park. This is
not to think that Lin Yutang is not kindred with Plato or Confucius, he is.
Chuangtse is but one you will not have heard of.
Pause for thought while the author is 'out'. "Only those who take leisurely
what the people of the world are busy about can be busy about what the people
of the world take leisurely." Chang Ch'ao
I am mindful of the bigger picture now.
"It has seemed to me," Lin Yutang writes to me a few whiles ago, " - that the
final test of any civilization is, what kind of mothers, fathers and children
does it turn out? Besides the austere simplicity of this question, every
other achievement of civilization - art, philosophy, literature and material
things - pales into insignificance. This is a dose of soothing medicine that
I have always given to my countrymen engaged in the head wracking task of
comparing the Chinese and Western civilizations, and it has become a trick
with me, for the medicine always works. It is natural that the Chinese
student of Western life and learning ;-), whether in China or studying abroad
( as many now do) is dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the west, from
medicine, geology, astronomy to tall skyscrapers, beautiful motor highways
and natural colour cameras. He is either enthusiastic about such achievements
or ashamed of China for not having made such achievements. An inferiority
complex sets in, and in the next moment you may find him the most arrogant,
chauvinistic defender of the Oriental civilisation, without really even
knowing what he is talking about. Probably as a gesture, he will condemn the
tall skyscrapers and the beautiful motor highways. (I haven't yet found one
that condemns a really good camera ;-) His plight is somewhat pathetic,
Andrew. He is disqualified now from making a sane and dispassionate
judgement. Perplexed and dazzled and harassed by such thoughts of inferiority
he has great need of what the Chinese call a medicine for 'calming the heart'
to allay his fever."
Now, I have come to know this Chinaman well enough to see a quantum leap upon
the event horizon. So it comes and he leaps backward into a future of
creative collapse.
"Andrew, the Americans have come to such a sad state that they are booked up
not only for the following day, not only for the following week, but months
in advance. In China, if we receive an invitation we have three ways to
reply, "Coming", "Thanks" or "Know" respectively and politely 'Yes', 'No' and
'Undecided'. Americans do not allow themselves to loaf. Sometimes I have a
prophetic vision that comes to me, a beautiful vision of the millennium when
Manhattan will go slow, when an American 'go getter' will become an oriental
'loafer'. Policeman will exchange a word of greeting with the slow devil at
the crossings, and the drivers themselves will stop and accost each other and
enquire after their grandmother's health in the midst of all the traffic. - A
glass of orange juice will last a whole afternoon, lunch counters will be
abolished, and people will learn to sip wine in slow mouthfuls, punctuated by
delightful and witty remarks. Emergency Wards will be unknown and patients
will exchange philosophy with their doctors. Fire engines will proceed at a
snails pace, their staff stopping on the way to gaze at and dispute over the
number of wild geese passing by in the sky. It is too bad that there is no
hope of this kind of millennium on Manhattan ever being realized. There might
be so many more perfect afternoons realized."
Confucius never knew his father. He came to learn of his father through
speaking with a local old woman years after he'd buried his mother. Learning
that much (the whereabouts of his father's grave) he had them reburied,
together ;-). His grandson wrote this celebrated wisdom.
"What is God-given is called nature; to follow nature is called Tao (The
Way); to cultivate The Way is called culture. Before joy, anger, sadness and
happiness are expressed, they are called the inner self; when they are
expressed to the proper degree, they are called harmony. The inner self is
the correct foundation of the world and harmony is the illustrious Way. When
a man has achieved the inner self and harmony, the heaven and earth are
orderly and the myriad things are nourished and grow thereby.
To arrive at understanding from being one's true self is called nature, and
to arrive at being one's true self has thereby understanding and he who has
understanding finds thereby his true self. Only those who are their absolute
selves in the world can fulfil there own nature; only those who can fulfil
their own nature can fulfil the nature of others; only those who can fulfil
the nature of others can fulfil the nature of things; those who fulfil the
nature of things are worthy of the help of Mother Nature in growing and
sustaining life; and those who are worthy of the help of Mother Nature in
growing and sustaining life are the equals of heaven and earth."
Americans - Wasn't it Thoreau, or Emerson, who wrote that, all the time
nature is trying to heal you. That means, to make you whole.
Do all the gurus, experts, analysts and authors of the twentieth century add
anything to the wisdom given by one Mr. William Shakespeare? Do they? The
Chinaman with his three thousand years of unbroken civilisation said, "He
merely lived, observed life and went away." - I agree, but not with the word
'merely'.
Love,
Andrew
Angular Meadow
Oxford
"It is not truth that makes men great, but man that makes truth great."
Attributed to Confucius ;-)
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