Garden Without an East (Part 11)

Hipatija looked at her and asked, “And do you feel it?”

Wei Huacun placed her palm on the ground and turned her face towards the sky.

“Much more. What I cannot see or hear, I perceive in another way.”

Silence fell.

“What is it that you perceive?” Kuzanski asked.

Wei Huacun kept her palm on the ground and quietly replied:

“The eternal flow of transformations.”

***

Wei Huacun still held her palm against the ground, and those gathered fell silent. Each in their own way accepted the fact or contemplated the Human as a phenomenon. Not as the master of the world, nor as its mistake, but as part of the manifold, continually arising and disappearing in the flow of transformations. Wei had simply voiced the thought that a human being could also be viewed differently: as part of the phenomenal, among the multitude of phenomena and relationships; as one transformation among ceaseless transformations; as something that is not outside what it seeks to understand. The water before them was still, and dry needles fell from the pine.

Hipatija looked at Wei.

“And is there bitterness in this harmony as well?”

Zhuangzi looked into the water.

“The same water that, in a clear pool, is a source of play and joy for children and a home for fish becomes a source of misfortune for a farmer during a flood.”

Wei Huacun looked at a fallen pine needle and said: “Perhaps something new has just begun to arise.”

“What?” asked Kuzanski, who was still sitting some distance away.

“The need to give the same name to all these different human experiences. Discomfort, difficulty, bitterness, pain, burden, anguish...” Wei continued: “When it is cold, a person simply says that they are cold. When they hurt themselves, they say that it hurts. When they lose someone to whom they were attached, they speak of grief. When they remember hunger caused by a poor harvest or war, they say, ‘We went hungry.’ When their desires are not fulfilled, they express anguish. When they fear what exists because it is impermanent, they speak of fear.”

Some distance away sat a man whom they had not noticed before. A scroll lay before him. It bore Chinese characters and another kind of script. The man held a brush but was not writing. He merely stared ahead, lost in thought.

Hipatija noticed him.

“What are you doing?”

The man looked up.

“I am trying to translate.”

“What?”

“Thoughts, from one set of words into another.”

Zhuangzi looked at the scroll and said:

“Yán zhě suǒyǐ zài yì, dé yì ér wàng yán. Wú ān dé fū wàng yán zhī rén ér yǔ zhī yán zāi! 言者所以在意，得意而忘言。吾安得夫忘言之人而與之言哉！Words are what we use to express meaning; once we grasp the meaning, we forget the words. Where can I find a person who has forgotten words, so that I may speak with them?”

The man smiled.

“That is why I have not yet finished.”

Hipatija stepped closer to his words.

“Who are you?”

“Kumārajīva.”

Wei Huacun observed him for a while, then asked, “What are you translating?”

Kumārajīva looked at the scroll before him and replied, “I am translating Nagarjuna’s Prajñānāma-mūlamadhyamakakārikā into Zhōnglùn—the Treatise on the Middle Way.”

Konfucij raised his eyebrows and asked, “And what does the treatise discuss?”

Kumārajīva was silent for a while.

“That what we seek often has no inherent nature.”

Hipatija sat down.

“Then you are in good company.”

Kumārajīva said thoughtfully, “But there is something I cannot find,” and placed the brush back on the stone.

“What?” Echkard asked him.

“Duḥkha,” said Kumārajīva. “I cannot find an equivalent for it among the characters.”

Laozi merely smiled. Zaratustra asked, “And what is Duḥkha supposed to mean?”

“It is the fundamental content of the Four Noble Truths.”

“Fundamental?”

“Yes, fundamental. Human existence is permeated by duḥkha,” he replied.

“By what?” Bruno asked him.

“When someone you love dies, that is duḥkha. When you fall ill, it is duḥkha. But duḥkha is not only pain, and it is not only loss. Even something pleasant can be duḥkha if it is transient and we cannot rely on it permanently. We obtain what we wanted, yet we know that we will lose it. We love, yet everything we love changes. We wish to hold on to what is dear to us, but nothing conditioned remains the same. Nothing conditioned can give us final and lasting satisfaction; that too is duḥkha. So duḥkha is not merely what hurts.

He looked at the scroll.

“In Sanskrit, I can leave the word open. But in Chinese, I cannot find a suitable character for it. Every character already means something. Once I write it down, I have already chosen.” Kumārajīva looked at the brush and murmured, “That is precisely my difficulty.”

Echkard looked at Kumārajīva.

“We too know these states. We called them suffering.”

Kumārajīva looked at his scroll, then at Echkard, and asked, “And where do you find salvation?”

“Among us, it is sought in love that does not possess,” he replied.

Kumārajīva was silent for a long time.

“That is not quite the same.”

Echkard smiled. Zaratustra, who had remained silent until then and had listened attentively, spoke:

“In the Avesta, we have something similar.”

Kumārajīva looked up.

“What?”

“Druj.”

“Is that your word for suffering?”

“No.” Zaratustra shook his head. “Druj is the opposite of Asha. Asha is truth, the proper order of things. Druj is what distorts truth, what turns the human being and the world away from their proper order. For us, suffering is merely a consequence of this distortion. You are looking for a character that would correspond to the inadequacy of everything conditioned and transient. I am speaking of the distortion of truth and order.”

“For you, then, suffering is connected with a person moving away from truth and order?” the newcomer asked.

Zaratustra nodded.

“We describe creation differently... through the shattering of the vessels—shevirat ha-kelim,” said the man.

Kumārajīva remained thoughtfully silent for a long time, then asked, “Then do you see suffering as brokenness?”

“Not quite. What remained from the shattering are shells that we call Qelipot. Divine sparks are trapped within them. Suffering is therefore not merely something from which a person must escape; it is a sign of the world’s brokenness. Nor is salvation an escape from what is shattered, but participation in restoring cosmic order.”

“Can even that from which all order arises be shattered?” Zaratustra asked.

The man smiled faintly.

“I do not know where your order comes from. For us, the Infinite is not shattered. What is shattered is that which is imperfect, created to bear its light.”

“What is your name?” Hipatija asked with interest.

The man looked at her.

“Yitzḥak. Yitzḥak Lurya.”

Liezi raised his eyebrows.

“And what are you doing here?”

Lurija looked at the garden.

“I am here for restoration—for Tikkun.”

Demokrit looked around.

“There is only a garden here.”

Lurija smiled and replied, “And what do you see?”

“Earth, water, trees, stones... bodies that come into being and disintegrate.”

“And nothing more?”

“Nothing beyond that,” Demokrit replied.

Lurija was silent for a while, then said, “Then you see the shattering, but not the sparks.”

Demokrit shrugged.

“If the sparks are hidden, how am I to know they exist?”

“You cannot, if you seek them only where you expect light.”

Demokrit looked at him.

“And how do you seek them?”

Lurija looked at those gathered and then at the garden.

“By not declaring any part of what is shattered worthless.” He paused for a moment. “For if I believe that the world is broken, I must not use that as a reason to go on breaking it further.”

Demokrit did not reply.

Lurija looked towards the water and quietly said, “Restoration does not mean dividing the world into shells that bear light and those that do not. If the sparks are scattered, then we can seek them everywhere. And if anyone, in the name of holiness, truth, safety, or the protection of their own interests, creates new brokenness, their action runs counter to the very principle of tikkun.”

A deep silence settled over the garden for a moment. At the water’s edge, a small lizard emerged from the grass. It stopped on a warm stone and observed those gathered with its head slightly raised. It did not understand their words and did not know why they had fallen silent. Among the branches, a squirrel slowly climbed lower. For a moment, it looked towards the gathering, then returned to what it had been doing. On the opposite side of the garden, a doe stepped out from behind the trees. It listened, then stood still. Its eyes moved calmly from person to person, as though appraising them. Dragonflies with beautiful wings appeared above the water. A snail slowly crawled across a stone towards a fresh leaf. None of the animals knew what brokenness was. None sought light within the shells. None contemplated the restoration of the world. They simply existed and watched. Almost unnoticed.

Kumārajīva placed his hand on his scroll and said, “And I am still looking for a character for duḥkha.”

Eckhart looked at the garden and remained silent. Kumārajīva took the brush in his hand again. With visible uncertainty, he wrote the character ku苦.

Hipatija watched him.

“What does that character mean?”

Zhuangzi looked at the character, chuckled, and said:

“Ku. Bitter... Rén zhī shēng yě, yǔ yōu jù shēng. Shòu zhě hūnhūn, jiǔ yōu bù sǐ, hé kǔ yě! 人之生也，與憂俱生。壽者惛惛，久憂不死，何苦也！When a person is born, care is born with them. Those who live long are dazed and confused; they remain worried for a long time, yet do not die. How bitter it is!”

Kumārajīva nodded.

“Also difficult. Tormenting. Bitter.”

“But it does not mean what you are seeking,” said Zhuangzi. “Kǔ says that a person experiences something as bitter, difficult, or painful. But it does not say that difficulty is a property of existence itself.”

Kumārajīva replied, “Duḥkha is not only that, but I cannot find a more suitable character.”

Zhuangzi smiled again.

“Then you have found a character but lost the meaning.”

Kumārajīva looked at him but did not reply. A bird flew across the garden. For a moment, it cast a shadow over the light on the water, then flew above the treetops and disappeared into the distance. No one spoke. The wind moved the dry needles on the ground. Some became lodged between the stones, while others were carried towards the water. For a moment, their image appeared on the surface, then a gentle current broke it apart. The garden was silent, but the silence was not empty. It was full of small events. A leaf turning over. A drop slipping from a needle. An ant crossing a stone. The barely perceptible movement of a branch...  The water touched the bank, withdrew for a moment, and revealed part of the muddy bottom. Then Eckhart quietly asked those gathered a question.

“Can a lost meaning bring someone salvation?”

Kumārajīva looked at him.

“Perhaps.”

“Then we cannot simply reject it.”

Hipatija asked:

“How?”

“If I say, ‘My life is suffering, and so I seek salvation,’ I create a story about a path that leads somewhere,” he replied.

Wei looked up.

“But could we not first let unpleasant states be exactly as they are? Without immediately deciding what they are supposed to mean and where they are supposed to lead?”

Kumārajīva considered this, then said, “Then you do not deny them.” 

“No,” said Wei, “but I do not try to turn them into a doctrine.”

“And what remains then?” Hipatija asked.

Wei looked towards the water.

“Direct experience that has not yet become an explanation.”

Zhuangzi nodded almost imperceptibly. “Transformation needs no salvation,” he said.

Eckhart and Kumārajīva looked at him.

“But a person needs hope,” Kumārajīva whispered.

“For what?”

“That their pain is not the final word. That some path of salvation is possible.”

Zhuangzi was silent for a while.

Then he pointed towards the water.

“The water does not have the final word either.”

“What does it have?”

“The next transformation.”

A pine cone fell among them. Seeds were hidden within it. For a while, the garden remained wordless. Light slipped through the treetops and spread across the water. The image of the sky appeared on the surface, rippled by the wind. Nothing happened, and yet nothing remained the same. The water washed over the stones and receded. The grass bent beneath the weight of the wind and rose again. Flowers shed their petals. Somewhere in the treetop, a bird moved from one branch to another. What had been in sunlight a moment before slipped into shadow. What had been hidden appeared for an instant. The garden awaited nothing. It was neither returning nor arriving. It simply passed from one moment into another.

Looking at the garden, Wei Huacun spoke.

“Perhaps we are not asking the right question.” Everyone turned towards her.

“Which one, then?” Eckhart asked curiously.

Wei looked at the sky.

“A person wants transformations to have a purpose or meaning.”

“And they do not?” Spinoza asked.

“I do not know. I only know that they keep happening,” Wei replied.

Kumārajīva looked up from the scrolls and said, “That is an almost unbearable claim.”

“Why?” Liezi asked him.

“Because it allows no consolation.”

Eckhart quietly said:

“But if there is no consolation, what remains for us?”

Wei looked at the pine.

“Balance.” She paused for a moment, then continued: “Not a balance that exists somewhere beyond transformations. A balance that is re-established within them, again and again.”

Kumārajīva looked again at the character he had written and said, “But a person who suffers needs more than an understanding of what is happening. They need awakening.”

Zhuangzi smiled. “You need four truths to awaken from the dream, but the dream itself is transient.”

“What if someone cannot wake up?” Kumārajīva objected.

“Then I do not wake them.”

Kumārajīva laughed.

“That is not exactly compassionate.”

“Or perhaps it is,” Liezi interjected, then continued: “Who gives us the right to judge what compassion is appropriate?”

Eckhart rose, walked to the water, and murmured to himself, “Perhaps the difference lies in what we understand as salvation or awakening, and what we turn into doctrine. A doctrine of salvation can become a tool of rulers.”

Wei, who had been listening to Eckhart, asked him, “Then even mandated salvation can very quickly become the suffering of the many.”

“Not only salvation,” Eckhart said thoughtfully. “Love as well.”

“Not only love,” Luria added, “but also the idea of chosenness without an understanding of responsibility.”

Silence fell. Wei slowly said, “Then doctrine begins where real life ends. And when a doctrine demands obedience and identification with it, it becomes absurd.”

“And if it demands this through violence?” Hipatija asked.

Spinoza looked up and said, “Then suffering merely compounds itself.”

Bruno nodded, and Eckhart quietly added:

“Even in the name of a chosen truth.”

Kumārajīva stared thoughtfully at the carefully written character ku苦, which had begun to fade.

Wei said: “Perhaps all a person needs is to recognize what is happening within and around them.”

Laozi smiled and said, “That will become increasingly difficult for everyone.”

The garden remained silent, but the water flowed on. And the pine remained. Those gathered said nothing.

 

(to be continued)

Rector of the SDT; Yuan Weiqi