peter nesteruk
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Chinese Gardens IV (In the grounds of the
Away from
the dust and clamour of the street. The second gate once crossed, the stairs
mounted, a vision of repose and contemplation is set before. A courtyard
dedicated to quiet thoughts. A grove of trees joins the overhanging wooden
eaves to provide welcome shelter from the sun; the offering of a shadow whose
protective shade may permit the light of learning to be discerned and hence
allowed to grow. In such a place the tree of thought branches out, its light
leaving the world illuminated in a way different from that the shadows cast by
the harsh light of the sun.
(…the shadow cast by the branches of the
tree of thought brings respite from the glare which is the unwelcome gift of
the harsh light of the sun…)
In a peaceful courtyard, old trees look
down upon a forest of stele, gnarled bark argues history with the smooth
surfaces of weather-worn ideograms. A stone spring presents the thirsty scholar
with the promise of inspiration.
The
well-spring of Confucianism (its ‘secret’…) might be found to lie in the balance
it maintains between the role of the rational (in attitude, in organisation, in
the life style of the scholar) and the retaining of ritual (in belief or its
appearance in theatre and in the repetition of this theatre). The walking of
this tightrope, or contradiction, like the oil and water symbol of Ying and
Yang which symbolises Confucianism’s sister religion of Daoism, signals an
intertwining of elements that will not mix - that will not become one. Once
such a refusal of unity, the acceptance of the presence of such a parallelism,
was taken for intellectual laziness or superstition. No longer. We now realise
what Confucius had realised all along. Such a refusal of unity is a sign of the
presence of discrete aspects of the human condition. It is prompted by, and itself prompts, the
recognition of the necessity of both. Of the necessity of the recognition of
both. Their irreducibility. And so their tendency to return unbidden, to be
found unsought, to haunt, to drive and propel, those who believe they have
transcended them. Rocks are present in the water and we can not wish them away.
Better to set down a brightly-coloured marker and allow the dance of the waves
to carry us past. The return of the real; the inescapability of both the
rational and the ritual in the fractured stratification that is the geology of
human existence.
Copyright
2005 Peter Nesteruk