MISTY RAIN
Indistinct Shadows of the True Man With No Title
This is the first installment of MISTY RAIN, a book that is largely just a concept and not yet a reality. The journey should be of some interest, at least for me. You are welcome to come along.
THE MASKS WE WEAR
Mount Lu’s misty rain and the tides in Zhejiang,
Before getting there, my countless regrets wouldn’t relent.
I went, I came back, it was nothing special,
Mount Lu’s misty rain and the tides in Zhejiang.
The Chinese of old were apt to change their names on a whim. Circumstance or location usually provided the motive. Most Chan monks took the name of the mountain on which they settled. Su Tong Po (1037 - 1101), who wrote Misty Rain On Mt Lu, was known as Su Shi to family and friends. This 11th century Chinese poet was a man of many talents which included calligraphy, gastronomy, pharmacology, and political rabble rousing. An important figure in the government of the Song dynasty, he was outspoken about the social ills of his day, and suffered banishment for his pains. His many written works utilized both prose and poetry, often combined, which he fashioned into erudite commentary on social ills, authoritative pieces on his travels throughout China, and a knowledgeable monograph on the early days of the iron industry in Asia. His name lives on today for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that a popular dish found in Hangzhou cuisine is called Dongpo pork.
Of Su Tung Po’s 2700 poems, many consider Pu Suan Tzu to be his most evocative:
A fragment moon hangs from the bare tung tree
The water clock runs out, all is still
Who sees the dim figure come and go alone
Misty, indistinct, the shadow of a lone wild goose?
Startled, she gets up, looks back
With longing no one sees
And will not settle on any of the cold branches
Along the chill and lonely beach
Misty, indistinct, the shadow of a lone wild goose … There we are. All of us. Shadows. Alone and indistinct. Leave it to a poet to capture the human condition in a few lines of verse.
This essay and those that follow may run for 50,000 words; this is obviously an literary exercise in hubris. Using both fact and fiction, the essays will tell of my journey to China, my visits with my old friends here and there, and on any conclusions that I may draw. I have never been to China. My old friends have been dead for 1500 years. I do not speak, read, or write Chinese.
No matter. I go to seek the True Man with no title.
Like I said, hubris. And presumption.
The first necessity is to clear some of the underbrush. A path will emerge:
Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence, coupled with the greatest possible freedom of self-determination.
So wrote C.G. Jung (1875-1961) in THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY, 1932. Through his work and research, Jung developed the field of psychodynamics and helped to reshape the direction of social history.
Carl Gustave, one might say, was not quite on the mark.
‘Persona,’ taken directly from the Latin persona meaning ‘person,’ is a term that Jung used in 1917 to designate the ‘outward or social personality.’ American poet Ezra Pound, it seems, got there first in using the term to denote a ‘literary character representing the voice of the author.’ A persona is the mask we don to face the varied circumstances of our daily life. We are not the same person sitting in a church pew reciting hymns as we are when out with the boys crushing beer cans on our foreheads. Most humans are incapable of being who they are for the simple reason that they have no idea who they are.
Hence, personas. We are who we pretend to be.
Once upon a time a millennium or so ago, Chan master Lin Chi was expounding in the Dharma Hall on his metaphoric True Man with no title. A monk, quite confused, went up to him later and asked, What is this fellow, this true man of no title? Lin Chi grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and yelled, Speak! Speak! The monk, dumbfounded, could not manage a peep. Lin Chi let him go and said, What worthless stuff is this true man of no title.
That is all well and good; a parable perhaps. But just what (who?) is one to make of this fellow, this true man? Drop your mask, Cup Cake, and have a good look in the mirror. There, before you, if you will but see, is the true man (or woman, as the case may be) naked and exposed, warts and all.
And what of Jung and his persona that is ‘...the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence, coupled with the greatest possible freedom of self-determination’? How does this lofty personage square with the true man of no title? And if free will is an illusion, what then? Self-determination, in Jungian terms, goes out the window.
Through the tumult of words thrust upon us by family, by education, by church and state, by Jung, by golly, reality becomes abstraction; and so we are tricked into the belief that our minds are inside our heads telling us who we are and what we should be doing. We become trapped in contradiction creating one artificial persona after another in a vain attempt to find ourselves. But the reality of who we are is forgotten: misty, indistinct, nought but shadow.
Here then is a major contradiction in the rules of the social game. The members of the game are to play as if they were independent agents [as Jung would have it-gvs], but they are not to know that they are just playing as if. It is explicit in the rules that the individual is self-determining, but implicit that he is only so by virtue of the rules.
Alan Watts
(from Games Zen Masters Play, 1976. p9)
Many are convinced that they are individuals who are the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence, and who possess the greatest possible freedom of self-determination. Isn’t it pretty to think so. Many wallow in ignorance. Some few seek alternatives.
My trip to China? If alternatives there be, who better to consult than the true men or women themselves. And if true men exist, what better place to seek them out than the mountain retreats of ancient Zhōngguó (中國).
Wanderings of a lifetime – what do they resemble?
A winging swan that touches down on snow-soaked mud.
In the mud by chance he leaves the print of his webs,
but the swan flies away, who knows to east or west?
NOTES:
Misty Rain on Mt Lu. Translation: Steve Lipscombe, https://stevelipscom.be/
Pu Suan Tzu. Translation from: allpoetry.com/Pu-suan-tzu
Wanderings (title: Remebrance): Translation by Burton Watson, SELECTED POEMS OF SU TONG-PO. Copper Canyon Press, 1965
Henry Ford was a clever man. He wanted to build the first people's car. Affordable. Reliable. Easy to work on. And so he did: the Model T. In his autobiography, he wrote: Any customer could have a car painted any color he wanted, as long as it was black.
Hobson's Choice in spades. 'Take it or leave it' became proverbial, and continues to be a favorite device of parents and principals, preachers and presidents.
The phrase is often used incorrectly. It is not a dilemma, otherwise known as Morton's Fork. A dilemma, of course, is a choice between two equally undesirable outcomes: the devil and the deep blue sea; a rock and a hard place. It is not a matter of no choice at all, as it is sometimes defined. In a sense, no real choice is offered, no choice between this, that, and the other thing; but choice there is all the same. What it does mean is 'take what ya get, bud, or take a walk'.
Thomas Hobson was a man with a livery business in Cambridge, England, during the early 17th century. Though he had many horses to choose from, only the one currently nearest the stable door could be rented. That one horse or no horse at all. The wags from Cambridge University dubbed this Hobson's Choice. By the turn of the century Mr Hobson was enshrined in a poem by Milton, given a mention in 'The Spectator' No. 509 of 1712, and was on the lips of both plebians and plutocrats.
Hobson made enough prescient choices during his lifetime to mark himself as a worthy patron of the city of Cambridge. His support of a system of waterway runnels to improve sanitation and provide clean drinking water earned him a cenotaph etched with his name still standing over Hobson's Brook.
Choice, with its many difficulties, seems to foster aphorisms: If you get a lemon, make lemonade; It's all six of one a half dozen of another; Twain's 'you pays your money and take your choices'; and Frost's the path less taken. Catch-22, the title of Joseph Heller's novel, has been so well used it seems a cliche. Buridan's Ass, an obscure phrase named for an equally obscure Frenchman, was often used by Samuel Beckett as an apt analogy for the human condition. It posits an ass placed equal distance between a pile of straw and a pail of water. Unable to decide, the ass dies of inanition.
And the choices offered by the world wide web?
Henry Polk sat before a fire with his arms outstretched, palms offered to the tickling warmth of little tongues of flames. (Though his name might well be Harold Pollard. This is not the important thing.) The man sat on a large flat stone before a small rock-encircled pit where pieces of wood---a chest it was, smashed and pulled apart, a chest of drawers, the drawers, too, smashed and pulled apart---where pieces of wood, yellow-white, were splintered and black where lacquered---turned to ash. (The chemistry of this simple business is quite something if one were the least bit inclined to expend some effort on chemistry. Bit too daunting for most, though. Besides, the fire's the thing. What matters chemistry?) On top of this merrily crackling kindling, a wooden bust has been placed, and it, too, now fed the flames.
It is winter, clearly, as snow remains in gritty patches in the shady north side of the large rhododendrons, and in the shadow of the large, gray erratic that defines the site. Conifers, both Douglas fir and red cedar stand deep green as background to the site. The ground about the fire pit was tamped hard with the passing of many feet. It was winter. (This is what I mean: clearly we have located Herman in the northern hemisphere. It is winter; take my word for it, although early spring is certainly possible. These details are not important. It is cold and most would say dreary. That is what I mean.)
A cold dawning. A frigid waft of air came off the talused hillside at the man's back. No matter. His face is composed. Put together. No signs of discomfort, dismay, disingenuousness. He sat, absently warming his hands.
The sun rises.
He is a strange old man. He wears a long, wool topcoat, thread bare at collar and cuff. His hair is cropped short and grayed; his neck is thickly wrinkled; his face is ruddy, bearded; his hands are ingrained with dirt; his fingernails are yellowed and broken. As he inhales a lungful of air, his shoulders straighten and his head lifts and his eyes dance in the firelight.
(The scene is now set, yes? There is some understanding of the basic conditions? Simple enough: an old man, rather odd fellow, sitting in some clearing in the mountains [though mountains are not explicit, one hopes they came to mind] sitting before a fire in a clearing on what has become a chilly day a dawning.)
Hank reaches out, gingerly takes the base of the little statuette, and turns the blackened side up. He considers the face of Gautama.
Is it sacrilege?
Hank breathes in, breathes out. Perhaps he sighs, however unlikely that might be. He breathes in; he breathes out.
Why do men engage in such meaningless inquiry?
Am I cold? he asks himself. If I answer, yes, I am cold, I am cold. If I answer, no, I am not cold, I am not cold. Although the mind is quite perverse enough to invert the logic.
Am I alone and suffering (that ubiquitous human condition!)?
Listen carefully for the answer.
Wait for it now.
Wait.
Listen.
(Just as I thought. What nonsense. Beckett made a career explicating such nonsense. The Sam Spade of Angst. The poor pitiful creature. Generous, though.)
Harry sat waiting.
The dawn succumbed to heavy cloud pulsing into the low hills, into the mountains, challenging the light.
Harry sat not waiting.
The snow fell as thick fat flakes; and the man has drawn back his hands, arms crossed over belly, body now rounded slightly over arms. He was a shade in the snowfall.
Waiting.
Or perhaps not.
(The sense is that Harvey seems perfectly at ease.)
The fire hissed. The snow fell in large, fat flakes, straight down, down. The breeze off the hillside at the man's back had died. (Some consolation in that, considering the wind chill factor and all. It is to be assumed, hopefully, that one would understand that Harold doesn't give a tinker's damn for the wind chill factor. Perhaps I should omit the wind chill factor? Consolation doesn't seem to be the name of the game here. Strange old fellow. I rather like him though. He's a tough, old goat. Brings to mind one of my heroes. [No objection, I hope, to a short, tangential, aside.] Walter Bonatti and his India Indian porter were high in the death zone, attempting to a put a first ascent up K2. Benighted, storm bound, they sat through the night on a bit of rock shelf waiting for the dawn, waiting for the storm to abate. Bonatti sleeping, finally. Bonatti waking in the morning. Bonatti trying to rouse his companion. Bonatti finding, to his dismay, that the man was dead.)
Cold.
Not cold.
Perverse machinations of the intellect, the emotions.
Add them to the fire, will you.
Henrik has spoken?
Snowing harder. Nasty turn, this weather. Before our eyes the snowfall engulfs the scene and all that remains is the hissing of the fire in an impressionistic whiteness or grayness or some combination thereof (the way televisions go awry, or use to, remember? Signal lost?) And then
Silence
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