A Zen Journey in Zhangjiajie
A Zen Journey in Zhangjiajie by Liu Qiang. I have been to Zhangjiajie several times. Each visit required total devotion, achieving a harmonious union with it, dissolving the separation between self and nature, mind and body, so that there was always some Zen insight. Stepping into Zhangjiajie, I felt as if I had entered another world. Every time I went up the mountain it was dusk. At first, I saw only steep peaks rising, trees gathered like screens, everywhere misty, deep green, dark and pressing, giving one a confused...
Zen Wanderings in Zhangjiajie
by Liu Qiang
I have been to Zhangjiajie several times, and each visit demanded my wholehearted devotion, until I reached a harmonious union with her, dissolving the separation between self and nature, mind and body, so that I always came away with some Zen insight.
Stepping into Zhangjiajie, I felt as if I had entered another world. Every time I went up the mountain it was dusk. On first entering, I saw only steep peaks rising abruptly, trees massed like screens, mist everywhere, deep green, dark and pressing, giving one a sense of chaos. Then I remembered Laozi: “There is a thing confusedly formed, born before heaven and earth.” I seemed to have entered the world's original beginning, with time and space wholly transformed. Lodging at the Golden Whip Rock Hotel felt like a kind of enjoyment—not the food and lodging, but the enjoyment of an immense sense of oppression. The two rock peaks before me soared abruptly; looking up, they seemed to lean and press down upon my body. And in the black night, with a few distant stars flickering uncertainly, a chill emerged from behind, making one shudder. Yet what I felt was not being crushed breathless, but a taste rising in my heart of carrying the universe on my shoulders, as if the whole world rested on me alone, and I could not help but summon the courage to “open the primordial chaos.” This mysterious atmosphere made me quite naturally think myself Pangu, and I suddenly understood Hakuin's “sound of one hand”—what a giant's hand that must be!
Hakuin, founder of Japanese Zen, had a verse: “Two hands clap and there is a sound; with no two hands, one hand also makes a sound.”
Oppression can create sound. The greatest sound is scarcely heard; that sound can only be heard by the spirit.
I very much like the valleys of Zhangjiajie: stone peaks stand steeply on all sides, trees lush, clouds and mist winding, ever-changing. Walking deeper along the valley, one feels only serenity, seclusion, clarity, and mystery—truly a place to cultivate the ears, eyes, body, and nature, where one can both grasp a profound worldly spirit and stand aloof beyond the universe. Through the valley winds a stream—this is the Golden Whip Stream. It crosses rugged stones and bares its clear purity; some say it has the robust beauty of a barefoot mountain village girl. This, of course, is only an external impression, revealing merely a attachment to this mountain stream. Such ticklish metaphors can especially dazzle the eye; but another kind of naming of landscapes becomes shackles on people's understanding, adding burdens. Names like “Cleaving the Mountain to Save the Mother” or “Monkey Gazing at the Pacific,” and so on, are mostly the product of the crude habit of preconception, and should not be taken as so. People come to Zhangjiajie and should engage all senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste—to achieve harmony and oneness with nature. Man himself is also the universe. When I walked into the Golden Whip Stream, I did not merely see the towering strange peaks and rocks on both banks; I felt that the deep woods and the slender, beautiful stream were endless, with no destination. When I glimpsed macaques leaping among the vines and trees, when I found the footprints of herb gatherers by the stream, when I searched for the marks of hunters' forks on gnarled old trees, when I admired clusters of wildflowers blooming in rock crevices, I seemed to understand everything in the universe, including all its mysteries. I know well that man is not the slave of mountains nor the servant of waters, and need not be bound by fixed logical concepts. Look: the Golden Whip Rock thrusts more than 300 meters into the sky; standing before it and observing its shape, one may find it merely a dull, limited thing, not worthy of envy. But examine it closely, and I think it is a nose of the universe, by which the whole universe can be led. Unbelievable? Zen says, “Just because it is unbelievable, therefore it is true.” As the saying goes, looking east one sees the western mountain; facing south one observes the Northern Dipper. Only a great violation of logic accords with reason.
About 380 million years ago, this place was a vast ocean; later, through several great mountain-building crustal movements, the land rose greatly. The Golden Whip Rock is not a false whip left by Qin Shi Huang when he drove Mount Emei to fill the East Sea, but was formed by crustal rupture and the gravitational action of seawater cutting. What unfolds before me is no longer a set of rocks, stone peaks, stone arhats, nor golden whips and jade pillars, but a chaotic natural origin. The true founder of Zen, China's Huineng, had a verse known throughout the world:
Originally there is not a single thing,
Where can dust ever cling?
This verse purely expresses the faith of Zen, and in one phrase lays bare Laozi's “nothing.” Laozi said: “All things in the world are born of being; being is born of non-being.” “Non-being” is not nothingness, but the all. Zhangjiajie is the realm of the all. If one can recognize Zhangjiajie as the realm of “non-being,” one may be considered thoroughly enlightened. The photographer Chen Fuli, photographing the scenery of Qingyan Mountain with the Golden Whip Rock as the main subject, may be said to have attained an insight. The poetess Zheng Ling discovered “Balzac” among the rocks and recognized Zhangjiajie as a “Human Comedy,” touching the hologram of society and nature—also an insight. The essayist Guo Feng, in “Four Subjects of Zhangjiajie,” not limited by logical fixed patterns, thought the Golden Whip Rock “does not seem to be shaped like a golden whip,” and from the stone image of the Couple Rock discovered that the man “seems to be a philosopher, his whole body wrapped in a great cloak,” as if forever facing the eternal dawn in the mountains, pondering some life question—this is even more an insight. Guo, Zheng, and Chen all broke through the circle of old logical concepts. Zhangjiajie is thus a “non-being” that is the all; it cannot be defined and is not bound by any logical concept. Whoever faces it can have their own spiritual discovery, and should keep their inner spirit alive. People who come to Zhangjiajie must each open their own path; blindly following or imitating others' understanding is clumsy. Zen admonishes people to “not establish words, directly point to the human heart,” and never be fettered by external established symbols. The “non-being” of Zhangjiajie is the whole universe; when the vastness of life embraces the whole universe, then in one's enlightenment there is something extremely precious, worth pursuing at the cost of one's life!
From the Golden Whip Stream, going forward, crossing Zicao Pool, entering Shedao Valley, climbing by clinging to vines and pulling oneself up by creepers, one reaches the Number One Bridge under Heaven. The bridge is naturally formed, not artificially built; it uses two independent giant peaks 350 meters high as piers, with a huge natural stone slab suspended above the sheer cliffs of the two peaks, shaded by green pines. Standing on the bridge and looking down, the depths below are unfathomable, with mist rising and clouds and smoke winding, and the whistling of pines. The stone bridge seems also to tremble and sway, and in an instant one is struck with awe. At this moment, one truly does not know whether the pine waves are rolling beneath one's feet or the bridge itself is flowing. The famous verse of the Southern Dynasties' Great Master Shanhui says:
Empty-handed, I hold a hoe; walking, I ride a water buffalo.
A man crosses the bridge; the bridge flows, the water does not.
Only in this extremity did I truly enter the Zen state of “the bridge flows, the water does not,” and devote myself wholly to this realization! I felt I was in a state of complete involuntariness. At this moment, perhaps I had already turned into a pine needle, or a speck of dust; I deeply felt that my spiritual need had reached its greatest satisfaction. When the sun rises in the east, will I have become luminous throughout, my soul transparent?
Man and nature, man and the universe are holographic; human society, the human spiritual world, and the universe are holographic. Fixed or superficial logical concepts are shackles and fetters; breaking free of these shackles and fetters, going deep into the interior of things, and observing from their mutual inner connections, can one truly grasp the key to the mysteries of life and the universe, and finally discover that man and nature share one pure “original heart”!
September 9, 1990, Wuji Residence