Thinking "the unthinkable" and teaching "the impossible": East-West dialogue through "chaos" of aesthetic formulation, butterfly effect of sagely action, and responsive and responsible Wuwei of De.

Chen, Shudong

It was [Dr.] Gray at [a certain] College. The question was one on a final exam in East-West Philosophy. I think we were supposed to pick one question from the pages of questions Dr. Gray had prepared and then write for the whole exam period on it. (Can't remember if [the college] had one-hour or two-hour final exam periods.) The question went something like this:

You are a Zen monk. It is early autumn. You are walking. You pause on a footbridge over a small stream and watch a single fallen leaf that floats under the bridge and passes on down the stream, eventually going out of sight. What goes on in your mind at this time? [Or it may have been what do you think/feel at this time?]

I wrote "Alone" and turned in my final exam blue book. Gray summoned me to his office as soon as he returned there after the exam period was over. He wanted to know if I really wanted to fail the final exam. I told him that the way the question was presented the only non-failing answer had to be mine or something very like it. If the answer is to come from a Zen monk, it can't have sentence after sentence of explanation. The explanation would indicate that the monk had not become one with nature, was not 'in the experience'--or something like that; I've forgotten most of what I knew about Zen back then. The answer also couldn't be "lonely" or anything else that carried a negative connotation about the experience. It had to be something that just was, neither positive nor negative.

Anyway, Dr. Gray bought it, gave me an A for the final, and removed the question from the final exam options the next time he offered the course.

So what is the ultimate implication of the story? How or how much does it illustrate the difficulty that we encounter on a daily basis as teachers of different cultures? Should Professor Gray stop using the test question or keep the same test? Yes, indeed, after knowing what had happened, many my friend's schoolmates did expect for the same luck but never were so lucky. But does Professor Gray thus consider this incident a testimony of his teaching success or failure? Does he realize how absurd the question ultimately is? Or does he himself recognize that he is the one who is enlightened by the student, however hurt he may feel about the way it occurs? Does he really consider that it is absurd to teach and test Zen experience this way? Does he really succeed in this seemingly bizarre situation but simply does not realize it? Does my friend give the right response to the question? Does he just explore the "perceived" pitfall of the question and thus take advantage of it or make fun of it? These are the questions that must have been lurking in my mind for a while, as they are analogous to many that I have experienced myself. They instantly surfaced, as if with a vengeance, when I came across David Jones and John Culliney's paper on Daoism and chaos, which also inspired me for a re-visit with Roger Ames's argument for a further mind readjusting rumination regarding how and why we should "Putting the Te back into Taoism" in the eponymous article, to tackle problems such as above.

(1) Understanding the indispensable mediation of teacher as "sagely"

Of both articles, I see certain coincidental but quite sagely coordinated alternative view of the Dao, wuwei, and ethical mediating subjectivity. At the first sight, Jones and Culliney essay does not seem to offer many substantially new ideas, but upon a closer look, it indeed brings me a mind-refreshing chance to re-think various philosophical and pedagogical issues. I am particularly interested in what they suggest as theoretically myriad or infinite ways, opportunities, and responsibilities befitting a sagely role or contribution, which, however, not unlike Ames' "te," should not be viewed in any narrowly anthropomorphic or anthropocentric terms. I am also interested in their treatment of these vital but hard-to-grasp notions, such as the self, sage, Dao, and wuwei as a set of mutually illuminating factors in conjunction with chaos theory. The self, according to Jones and Culliney, for instance, is emphatically relational as well as contextualized, because, they argue, "[Daoists'] approach has always yielded a contextualized self, a self that realizes its being as a self through its integration with the other myriad creatures and thing." Therefore, "the self in Daoism," as the authors stress, "is relational; it is defined in relation to all other things. The relational self inseparable from the larger structure of society, nature, and the universe" (1999, 644). With its emphasis on the unusual intimacy and interdependence among things, the self of Daoism in Jones and Culliney's article, becomes further relationalized and contextualized. It is particularly so as the authors bring in chaos theory with its central, tenet-setting metaphorical image of "butterfly effect," which is almost instantly attention catching or tenet-setting as the Kuan and Peng in the Zhuangzi.

 A central tenet of chaos theory is sensitive dependence on initial
 conditions, often called simply the butterfly effect. The classical
 example involves the local weather. In stimulating weather patterns
 on supercomputers, meteorologists find that the slightest variation
 in a factor such as wind speed, temperature, humidity, or barometric
 pressure cause drastically different virtual weather patterns to
 emerge.... Amplification of the tiny change in the system caused by
 the butterfly is possible if the butterfly becomes fractally
 congruent, or resonant, with the prevailing air currents at the
 scale of its wingbeats, and then if the system remains seamlessly
 connected from small scale to large. (648)

While "analyses of chaos and complexity provide us with a new language for interpreting and giving meaning to the worldview of Daoism" (Jones and Culliney, 644), Ames' aesthetic view of the Tao not only brings back the sagely agency of de but also further emphasizes interconnection of participatory elements within a given system or composition. In the article, Ames proposes his view of an "aesthetic composition," in which de and wuwei could have myriad ways of function. Like Jones and Culliney, what Ames searches is also a system or model, which is "immediately distinguishable from transcendent formalism in that there is no preassigned pattern" (Ames 1989, 117). Within this system, "the organization and order of existence emerges out of the spontaneous arrangement of the participants." With this aesthetic model, Ames tries to explain his view of the intricate and intimate relationships of the Dao, de, and wuwei, which he considers as "the work of art" and an illuminating "example of the aesthetic composition" that embodies and enlivens "the intrinsic relatedness of particulars" (1989, 117). It is because "given the uniqueness of each aesthetic composition, this conception of order is more complex than that of the logical construction" and "where its 'rightness' lies in large measure with comprehension of just those particular detail constituting the work" (1989,117). Indeed, it is within this system of aesthetic composition that Ames stresses the great agency of de, which often means in "the Taoist texts, like their Confucian counterparts the dissolution of discriminating ego-self as a precondition for integrative natural action and the concomitant extension of te," while wuwei means "the activity which integrates the particular te with the Tao" (1989, 128). For Ames, "When te is cultivated and accumulated such that the particular is fully expressive of the whole, the distinction between tao and te collapses and te becomes both an individuating concept and an integrating concept" (128). Together, these authors propose, as I see it, a refreshing view of Daoism with a more positive, modern tenet, a kind of "can-do" theory, regarding the ancient philosophy, which is indeed often accepted and appropriated as a special form of quietism and out-of-system freedom or independence, wushi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], wudai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], and wuji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], for very good reasons.

(2) Perceiving Dynamic Wuwei and Participatory Absence

With emphasis now on self-organization, self-recreation of systems as in chaos theory and "aesthetic composition," to flow with the flow is no longer merely for the purpose to "fit in" but to transform, or to effect changes within, the system that one fits in. Fitting in thus becomes simultaneously the means and ends itself for transformation. In this case, "the self in Daoism is a fractal self, one that potentially can seamlessly interweave its being with affinitive systems, or attractors in the world, whose organization is now recognized to transcend classic dimensionality" (Jones and Culliney, 644). Indeed, more often than not, anyone reading Daoism would inevitably acquire the impression of how little that we humans can do in the world because, whatever we do, we tend to blindly undercut our own endeavor one way or another since things are so intimately intertwined beyond our best knowledge. Thus it is natural for people, including, as Ames points out, "even the most prominent commentators to read Taoism as a passive and quietistic philosophy: 'a Yin thought--system' in which the particular capitulates to the demands of its environment and "flows with the tao" (1989, 138). Wuwei then becomes literally "doing nothing."

 With such a positive spin on intimate interdependence of
 participatory elements, however wufeng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
 ASCII.] (no-differentiation), wushi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
 ASCII.] (no-dependence), wudai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]
 (no-expectation), and wuji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]
 (no-self) are still the Daoist ideal at least for Zhuangzi, (1) the
 concept of wuwei now comes to suggest not how little we can
 ultimately accomplish but how much we can accomplish with whatever
 slight adjustment we may need to make. As there are myriad
 enlightened ways that befit a sagely participation or
 "participatory match," everything we do as teachers or students
 could have enormous sagely effects, no matter how trivial or
 frivolous as they might strike us at the first sight. As teachers,
 we may effect sea changes on a daily basis, however often
 involuntarily in ways that beyond our consciousness. Such a view of
 sagely action and responsibility brings us consciousness and
 confidence regarding who we are and what we do as teachers. It
 encourages us to pay adequate attention to minute detail because
 every little thing matters.

With sagely action metaphorized as "butterfly effect" in Jones/Culliney's article and the de analogized in the concept of "aesthetic composition" to emphasize its indispensable agency, both articles thus suggest an alternative view of wushi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] (no-concern), wudai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] (no-dependence), wuji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] (no-self). As can be inferred from Jones/Culliney's reference to Cook Ding, why "amplification of the sage's participation is potentially infinite" (649), it is because there are myriad ways that befit a sagely participation. If the Cook Ding is sagely, it is because he is no longer Cook Ding, but the very knife itself that swims within the maze of carcass. It is the knife that is dancing with the Tao, defining wuwei, and personifying his sagely action. With Cook Ding's absent participation or participatory absence, the sagely knife maneuvers itself freely [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] in the labyrinth of carcass, which appears musically responsive to its spirited touch. Cook Ding's participation thus becomes de-personalization "wuji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" or "xuji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]." At this moment, his self disappears and his sagely spirit emerges--like Nanguo Ziqi in the Zhuangzi, who loses his own self but hears heavenly music, or Yen Hui, who sits and forgets to "let organs and members drop away, dismiss eyesight and hearing, part from the body and expel knowledge, and go along with the universal thoroughfare," Cook Ding's sagely presence means absence of his "self." (2)

So is the sagely absence of Cao Can [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], the wise but eccentric second prime minister of Han dynasty, who chooses not to show up neither in court nor in office to fulfill his expected official duties there but stay home having drinking parties day and night after he took the office. But his official duties, as the prime minister later explained to his bewildered but soon enlightened colleagues and boss, the Emperor Hui, is to stay dutifully aside or absent "[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]," to let his predecessor's good policies that are still working well continue to bring out its utmost benefits--without any unduly willful interruption or wishful improvement. In other words, he acts in this way to allow the state and people the indispensable breathing space and time to rest and prosper after the heavy-handed rule of Qin dynasty, according to Sima Qian, who praises the prime minister for his Daoist wisdom and practices. (3) Why "man is also great" for Laozi? It is because man can de-personalize [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] to broaden his presence and become sagely transmitter, mediator, conduit, or container. It is also because through wuwei that a sage's appearance or sagely presence may not necessarily be anthropomorphic. We could be things as they become so "transformed" (Wu Hai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) under the influence of sage. Participation thus means depersonalization and "presencing" absence.

Now back to the story about Dr. Gray and his student, I see this incident reminiscent of the dialogue between Zhuangzi and Huizi on the river of Hao, the highly comic but profoundly thought-provocative situation regarding human's ability to know and to express him/her self through pure logical reasoning. (4) But with all the possible suggestions from Daoism and chaos theory thus discussed, we may take a fresh look at this old problem. For me, Dr. Gray is indeed a sage, so is his student. Literally, they each turn the other into a sage through the process of mutual engagement or dialogue with the ambiguous question, which demands the absence of a rational "fractal" self--to let go one's imagination without the presence of a reflective "fractal" self, to request a rational or reasonable explanation only as an elaborated afterthought, thus to make an unique aesthetic composition that absorbs both fractal selves however temporarily. But ironically, neither of them seems to be fully conscious of the butterfly effect that they each generate on the other, and then on me, through them.

(3) Appreciating Fluidity of Our Being, Language, and Understanding

But, as suggested in both Jones/Culliney' and Ames's article, the sagely being is more often than not actualized through sagely exploration of language. Fluidity of sagely being is also embodied through the fluidity of sagely language. What characterizes the Daoist discourse is its fluidity of language, which is not only metaphorical but also musical, especially in Zhuangzi. The eponymous book inspires ideas and imaginations not just through the meaning of the word but via the actual being of musical quality inherent in each word through its dynamic yet subtle relationship with other ones in a closely knit aesthetic composition or system that, as both personalized content and context, attracts and absorbs participatory attention. "Ye ma ye, chen ai ye, shen wu zi xi xiang chui ye, tian zhen chang chang, qi zhen se ye? [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]?" (5) The sentences from the Zhuangzi, for instance, are not only metaphorical but also musical, which adds the rhythmical, poetic fluidity of the expression. The story of the Cook Ding, indeed, not only instructs but also inspires musically. It embodies the Dao in such metaphorically suggestive and rhythmically fluid way. Although impossible to translate the original flavor, the following pieces of translation by Burton Waston and A. C. Graham, reflect quite analogously the musical fluidity of the original. (6)

 Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of
 his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet,
 every thrust of his knee--zip! Zoop! He slithered the knife along
 with the a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were
 performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to
 the Ching-shou music. (Watson 46)

 Cook Ting was carving an ox for Lord Wen-hui. As his hand slapped,
 shoulder lunged, foot stamped, knee crooked, with a hiss! With a
 thud!. The brandished blade as it sliced never missed the rhythm,
 now in time with Mulberry Forest dance, now with an orchestra
 playing the Ching-shou. (Graham 63).

For Chad Hansen, who does not believe that Dao, or daos, ever transcend language or the ways we use language, which are often of the most intuitive and performative nature, Zhuangzi's lyricism in using language is not only meaning-making but also "way-making" or "world-making," as Ames and David Hall would agree here, (7) especially with regard to his creative use of "onomatopoeia" in account of Nanguo Ziqi's experience with Dao.

 Zhuangzi's lyricism flows into his answering description, filled
 with creative onomatopoeia. He mentions a clod, recalling Shendao's
 clod that can not miss dao. The piples of earth are the physical
 structure through which the winds blows to produce all manner of
 natural sounds. He illustrates it richly with invented characters
 for whee, cooh, and the like. This he contrasts with the sound of
 haunting silence when the wind ceases. (Hansen, 1992, 274)

Thus to be sagely with our being through subtle but significant adjustment, which is our action of wuwei, we need more than "clear" language. We need also "strong" language, as Edmund Burke would argue, to show the butterfly of our feeling and our state of being through as the immediate indispensable agency of our understanding. In On the Beautiful and the Sublime, emphasizing the importance of passion in human cognition particularly under the influences of words, Burke argues how "often [men] act right from their feelings, who afterwards reason but ill on them from principle; but as it is impossible to avoid an attempt at such reasoning, and equally impossible to prevent its having some influence on our practice, surely it is worth taking some pains to have it just, and founded on the basis of sure experience (Burke 1958, 53). In section titled "How Words influence the Passions," he also emphasizes why understanding often becomes a problem it is "because we do not sufficiently distinguish, in our observation upon language, between a clear expression, and a strong expression," which are, according to Burke, "frequently confounded with each other, though they are in reality extremely different." For Burke, "the former regards the understanding; the latter belongs to the passions" and while "the one describes a thing as it is; the other describes it as it is felt" (Burke 1958, 177). Also for Burke, "the truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that it could scarecely have the smallest effect, if the speaker did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a strong and lively feeling in himself" (Burke 1958, 175). For the fluidity of our thought, we thus also need authentically emotional language, which is metaphorical by nature, but often authenticates not only our meaning but also our being, as suggested by Paul de Man referring to Rousseau's Origin of Language. As de Man points out, when one man encounters another fellow human, out of fear, he utters such a false statement, "This is a giant," because the other is literally by no means of being taller and bigger than him. But this false statement of fact reveals the truth implying how scared the person is. Thus factual misstatement become metaphorical truthful. (8)

Indeed, sage's way of affecting our world is often thus metaphorical, suggestive, circular, "to convey a knack, an aptitude, a way of living" (Graham 1989, 199), rather than direct and forcefully straightforward. The way that sage affects us is metaphorically enriching. So is the language that we use to respond to their visions. As we've already discussed, Daoist languages are thus often metaphorical by nature, particularly in the Zhuangzi by the eponymous "master of sophisticated argument, aphorism, anecdote, lyrical prose and gnomic verse" (Graham 1989, 199). Sages speak in metaphor that engages and inspires. Sages are themselves metaphors of the Dao, the enlivened embodiment of de and active personification of wuwei. "The Sage," as Jones and Culliney emphasize, "carves the uncrated block ... carves Dao, the possibility of emergent worlds and their immanent patternigns" (647). It is because the sages also know how to flow with the language and speak to our mind and appeal to our emotion. Sages speak factual as well as emotive language. Their sagely languages are metaphorically fluid and open-ended and, as a result, we become metaphorically responsive in reply. Jones and Culliney, for instance, appear quite simultaneously inspired and inspiring, as they themselves become fluid while responding to the text on Cook Ding, "as the sage achieves fractal integration with the system, the carcass becomes dinner worthy of a king, the game becomes a signature even that may be long remembered, and even the way may become legendary, having met for a moment the participation of the sage" (647).

This sagely quality of language is perhaps also what C. K. Odgen and I. A. Regards suggest, because they are sensitive not only to what we say but also to what we say with. Both Odgen and Richards definitely see the emotive use of language as important as symbolic use of it. For them, who believe that "words or arrangement of words evoke attitudes both directly as sounds," there is clear difference between "the presentation of an object which makes use of the direct emotional disturbances produced by certain arrangements, to reinstate the whole situation of seeing, or hearing, the object, together with the emotions felt towards it" and "a presentation which is purely scientific, i.e., symbolic" (236). "The attitude evoked," they emphasize, "need not necessarily be directed towards the objects stated as means of evoking it, but is often a more general adjustment" (236). Like what has been suggested in chaos theory, "the effect of words due directly (i.e. physiologically) to their sound qualities," as Ogden and Richards see it, "are probably slight and only become important through such cumulative and hypnotic effects as are produced through rhythm and rhyme" (236). As a result, they call to our attention, "As sound, again as movements of articulation, and also through many subtle networks of association, the contexts of their occurrences in the past, they play very directly upon the organized impulses of the affective-volitional systems" (236).

(4) Activating Synaesthesia and Authenticating Silence: thinking "the Unthinkable" and Teaching "the Impossible"

With all these rich implications aroused along with the old thoughts, it is clear that we should reassess our approach to the "unteachable" materials through the fluidity of our being and our language for the infinite constructive interaction in ways suggested in the Daoist perception of the world, chaos theory, and "aesthetic composition." As teachers, we should probably find ways to transform ourselves metaphorically, as much as we can, like the musical notes of the emotive/evocative language, a dancing knife, to let our fluid being meld with the system of the text and the collective mind of our students. Like Professor Gray, who encountered the problem of testing and communicating with his students in terms of their experience of Zen, I also ran into difficulty of teaching Japanese haibu, because it is as challenging as writing about Zen expedience. Is it possible to teach through verbal description, orally and in writing, about the incommunicable, which seem to encourage silence rather verbal communication?

 The ancient pond
 A frog jumps in--
 Sound of water.

Is it possible to describe the feeling that is evoked by this well-known piece by Matsuo Basho? Does it convey a meaning of love of nature or capture the fleeting and fragile moment of our life? Why is this good poem?

As we may try to explain not only to the students but also to ourselves, this is a good poem because it captures the extraordinary moment of human experience that defies or deters ordinary distinction of things and our feeling about them. It captures the "dramatic" moment when our fractal self slip into the watery universe of the pond following the sagely action of the frog and become part of the system of nature. We are led to lose of grip on our "self" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) and become "transformed," "naturalized," or "eternalized" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) into the world of profound silence following the momentary "sound of water." It is also the rare moment that we are enlivened to the beautiful silence through ripple or echoes of "sound of water" that concurs both audibly and visibly in the form of ripples in the pond and in our mind. With sagely frog, there emerges perfect union between the audible silence and visible echoes that defines and refines a universe that defies usual human sense experience. It is the moment that our physical and psychological world, our imaginative response and intellectual reasoning, all are emerged or blended into one another to suggest an aesthetic composition that elevates ourselves. It is the rare moment, the seventeen syllabus become lyrically profound or, as Montaigne would imply, "accidentally philosophical."

As if quite accidentally or matter-of-factly, the simple lines touch off a chain of visual and audible ripples/echoes of philosophical reflections in the reader's mind--with a mixed existentialist and Buddhist flavor and touch. The very moment that the frog jumps into the "ancient" pond, it becomes a sage, and so do the poet, the poem, and we as responsive readers. Indeed, following the sagely frog and equally sagely audible ripples and visible echoes, our fractal self enriches itself where we see opposites unite, paradoxes dissolve, sense experiences transgress, and silence communicates. This is where yin and yang complements or the extremes mellow. The different systems we each represents or personifies psychologically or culturally become perfectly merged into a meaningful world, symbolized by the "ancient" pond, the immeasurable depth and beauty of which, like that of Walden, as Thoreau would suggest, depends on where it is. Translated or original, the language here becomes no longer just the tool or barrier but the carrier for the extended self. It is now the thought-enriching metaphor of the beauty of systems. Language became the "tongue" of the universal Dao or the harmonious chaos in being.

Such "way-making" or "Dao-carving" quality of language could be particularly explored and appreciated as "synaesthesia," a rhetorical term that, indeed, suggests the unusual (but undoubtedly universal) aesthetic or live human experience where ordinary sense experiences dissolve, as the audible becomes visual while the visual becomes audible. (9) In his poem "London," William Blake, for instance, suggests that he not only hears but also sees "... the hapless soldier's sigh/Runs in blood down palace walls." (10) In Nostormo, Joseph Conrad describes how "the solitude appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin, cord to which [Don Martin Decoud] hung suspended by both hand," and how "the cord of silence snap[s] in the solitude of the Placid Gulf" with the self-inflicted gunshot that ends the passionate misanthropic or nihilist's life (498-9). In "Tong Guan," Qian Zhongshu discusses how much a little flower of apricot sticking out the wall of yard suggests noisy color of the coming spring "[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" and how severely this wonderful choice of word "noisy" is ridiculed by straight thinking critics, such as, Li Yu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], as "illogical" (Qian 21). Qian also refers to mystics like Saint-Martin, who confesses, "I heard flowers that sounded and saw notes that shone" (28). In both "Tong Guan" and Guanzhui Bian, Qian mentions about interesting cases in Liezi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] regarding how one's eye can hear like ear, how one's ear can smell like nose, and how one's nose can taste like mouth, as nothing is not interconnected with one's mind and heart in concentration and with forms of things dissolved "[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" or how a disciple of Laozi can hear and see the Tao after being enlightened "[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]". With our understanding of the infinitely interconnected, interacted universe as suggested in the verse of Daoism and chaos theory, the ancient rhetoric seem to suggest a world, an experience, more than it signifies.

As a result, our students should be encouraged to talk about their experience with images created through the enriched image-making, way-making, world-creating, or Dao-carving language that should produce as much meaning-making ripples as it would be with any thought-provoking flapping of the butterfly. We should encourage them to describe in as much detail as possible not just for correctness but relevancy, not just for clear language but strong language, not just for denotation but evocativeness as well. We should let the vibration of their mind go. We should let "butterfly" of their feeling transform with the echoes and ripples of the pond, the evoked rhythm and pulses of their lives. We should actively employ theories that emphasize non-cognitive function of language with the implication of the Dao, the chaos theory, and "aesthetic composition" for the dynamic and broad vision of life. Through exploring the evocative and metaphorical nature of language for such live flow of mind, we may quite ironically live up to our subjectivity or any momentary revelation regarding our fragile, fleeting, fluid, and fractal being. So should we, or is it possible for us to, ask students to write a five hundred word paper describe their "feeling" of the haiku? Why not? For me, this is one of the most effective ways for students to enrich or invigorate their "self" through sagely mediation of language, evocative silence, communicative illusion, tangible pulse in words.

As is also vividly implied in James Wright's poem "A Blessing," our life or being will be infinitely enlivened and enriched through such authenticating fluidity of language that may carry us and our students further for a more enlightened response to our world, which is, however, often segregated by various "barbered wires," inside and outside us, physical and psychological. But once we are tempted by the pair of sagely Indian ponies, enlightened by the simple and innocent beauty of nature that they personify or incarnate, we ourselves will become sagely after the indispensable "trespassing" across the "barbed wires" and then "stepp[ing] out of [our] body [...] break Into blossom." With the fluidity of the rhythm and images, what the poet has done for us is also very much sage-like or sagely. So should we as teachers. The sagely ponies that triggers a sea change or butterfly effect that crosses out the boundaries to finally reveal the intimate bond that has long been overlooked and violated between man and man, man and nature, and man and himself. The bond means a perfect "aesthetic composition" that encourages and nourishes spontaneous sagely action for a subtle but significant transformation with every little detail that accounts.

 Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
 Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
 And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
 Darken with kindness.
 They have come gladly out of the willows
 To welcome my friend and me.
 We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
 Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
 They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
 That we have come.
 They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
 There is no loneliness like theirs.
 At home once more,
 They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
 I would like to hold the slender one in my arms,
 For she has walked over to me
 And nuzzled my left hand.
 She is black and while,
 Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
 And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
 That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
 Suddenly I realize
 That if I stepped out of my body I would break
 Into blossom (Wright 1991, 1029)

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LEGGE, JAMES. TRANS. 1971. Chuang Tzu: Genius of the Absurd. ARRANGED FROM THE WORK OF JAMES LEGGE BY CLAEWALTHAM. NEW YORK: ACE BOOKS.

OGDEN, C. K. and I. A. RICHARDS. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH.

WATSON, BURTON. TRANS. 1964. Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. NEW YORK: COLUMBIA UP.

WRIGHT, JAMES. 1991. "A BLESSING." in Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. 3rd ed. ED. KIRSZNER, LAURIE G, ET AL. NEW YORK: HARCOURT.

REFERENCES IN CHINESE

CAO CHUJI. 1982. Zhuangzi GIANZHU, BEIJING: ZHONGHUA SHUJU ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]).

CHEN GUYING. 1987. "DEVELOPMENT of THEORETICAL STRUCTURE OF Qi Wu Pian." QILY PRESS, ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.])

LU ZONGDA. 1983. Xungujianlun, BEIJING: BEIJING CHUBANSHE ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]).

QIAN, ZHONGSHU. 1984. "SYNAESTHESIA." IN Comparative Literature Studies: A Collection. ED. ZHANG LONGXI AND WEN RUMIN. BEIJING: PEKING UP ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.])

SIMA QIAN. 1959. "CAO CAN LIEZHUAN," Shiji. BEIJING: ZHONGHUA SHUJU ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.])

ZHANG SONGRU, "ON DREAM OF BUTETRFLY," IBID. ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.])

Shudong Chen, Johnson County Community College

NOTES

(1) Without depersonalization or losing one's self "wu shang wo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]," there is no genuine transformation "wuhua [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" which may suggest changes and differences but, as Chen Guying emphasizes in his analysis of the first chapter of the Zhuangzi, ultimately implies nothing but everything as one. No matter how "idealistic" as it might appear, "wu shang wo" through "wuhua" indicates in the end "wu feng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]," "wu dai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]," "wu shi, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" as thus analogized with the kind of freedom "xiao yao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" and "transformation" of "Kuan-Peng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]," which are after all just ironical images that Zhuangzi creates to show what perfect freedom and "transformation" are not. However free or independent the mythical creature may strike us as it travels and transforms itself, its freedom and independence is nothing but illusion, as its seemingly perfect freedom and independence depends so much on the invisible and indispensable flows or currents of air, because, what Zhuagnzi also argues in the second chapter of the Zhuagnzi, according to Zhang Songru, is to show how difference or distinction is just phenomenon and how the real and essential is non-differentiable; and how things in the world are differentiable but not the Tao, which is beyond differentiation "[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" (Zhang 223).

(2) See Chuang Tzu Chapters 2 and 6. A.C. Graham, 48, 92.

(3) This is not a word by word translation but rather a general paraphrase. See Sima Qian, "Cao Can Liezhuan," Shiji. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1959 ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], 1959).

(4) See chapter 17 of the Chuang Tzu.

(5) Even though none of the translators, Watson and Graham, refers to image of "wild horses (yema ..)" that may convey vivid image of flying dusts by suggesting the thousands of wild horses running afield, the two translations do miss the musical quality of the original.

 Wavering heat, bits of dust, living things blown about by the
 wind--the sky looks very blue. Is that its real color, or is it
 because it is so far away and has no end? (Watson 23)

 Is the azure of the sky its true colour? Or is it that the distance
 into which we are looking is infinite? It never stops flying higher
 till everything below looks the same as above (heat-hazes,
 dust-storms, the breath which living things blow at each other
 (Graham 43).

Unlike James Legge, who translates this passage as "Similar to this is the movement of the dust that quivers in sunbeams, and of living things as they are blown against one another by the air," both translators seem to be aware of the serious mistake that Sima Biao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] of Jin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] Dynasty made when he mistakes "ma" as "horse" not knowing that, as Lu Zhongda ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) points out, in early classic Chinese "Ma [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" and "chen [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]" (dust) are interchangeable in meaning and pronunciation. For James Legge, see Chuang Tzu: Genius of the Absurd. Arranged from the work of James Legge by Clae Waltham (New York: Ace Books, 1971) 39. For Lu Zongda, see Lu Zongda, Xungujianlun, Beijing: 1983 ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], 1983) 108.

(6) The Chinese program I use does not have large enough vocabulary to transcript the original passage here.

(7) For discussion of dao as "way-making," see Ames and Hall, Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine, 2003) p. 77. For discussion of "world-making," see Hall and Ames, Thinking through Confucius (Albany, SUNY, 1987) p. 229.

(8) Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979) 149.

(9) Even in everyday situation, we often run into expression, such as "it looks hot" or "it sounds cool." For vivid discussion of cases concerning "synaesthesia" in classical Chinese and western literature, see Qian Zhongshu, "Synaesthesia" Comparative Literature Studies: A Collection. Ed. Zhang Longxi and Wen Rumin. Beijing: Peking UP ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], 1984).

(10) Laurie G. Kirszner, et al. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. 3rd ed (New York: Harcourt, 1991) 899.