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"Girl"
Kuang Jian 2000 Oil on canvas 30" x 24" KJ_0006 Kuang Jian Kuang Jian had long been curious about
the minorities of the Pamir region in far Western China. He studied
them in history books and when he was able to go there he found the
people very calm and friendly and was attracted to them. He has used
the young girl from "Sunshine of Pamir" in a few paintings and he
especially liked her eyes and the way she seemed to look beyond any
problems she might have. Her costume in this portrait is actually Han
Chinese, not typically Pamir, but he liked the way she looked in it.
Inventory #: KJ-0006 © Kuang Jian lisenced one time use only |
| Stanford Studies on Daoism Dao (Way, Guide, Road) Is ‘speak’ the right way to translate these verbal uses of dao? It is in some ways too narrow and in others too broad. We can write, gesture, point, and exemplify as well as speak daos. On the other hand, not all speaking (writing etc.) is dao-ing -- particularly not if we think of language as describing, representing, picturing, expressing, defining, or "capturing" some reality. The Chinese verbal use, is more accurately translated normatively as "to guide" or to "recommend." The activity of dao-ing is primarily giving advice. To dao is to put guidance into language -- including body language. Consider, again, the concrete translation for dao: ‘road’ or ‘path’. A woodsman with an ax daos when he chops bark from the trees as he enters the forest; He is dao-ing when "blazing" the trail. We must avoid regarding roads as simple natural objects -- they are, like the woodman's blazes, akin to texts that we "read" for guidance as we proceed on our way. Roads or paths are embodied in physical reality, but are not simply the reality. They are normative guides and "invitations" to "pass this way". One feature that dao and speech share is the need for interpretation. But with dao the interpretation is in xing conduct, not in a theory or a belief. In this respect, the relevant notion of interpretation is the aesthetic one -- as when a conductor interprets a score or an actor a character in a play. A complete metaphysics of dao involves a distinction between normative way types and interpretive tokens . Daoist theory does so most dramatically with Shen Dao who focuses on the great way -- the actual history of the world past, present and future. That image draws our attention to a purely descriptive way -- a way that is not a way (not a guide). To talk, however, about a way of interpreting a way, is to remind ourselves of Zhuangzi's point. That we can never make ways purely objective. In selecting it from the alternative "invitations" open to us, and then in interpreting in our actual "walking" we have relied on still some other dao from the one that has our attention. We forget we are in a sea of dao . Besides the actual dao, we can speak of tian nature:sky ways that are also descriptive. We still presuppose dao in choosing not to "reform" or "compensate" for our nature (as we do in choosing to follow it). Whichever dao we rely on is, presumably, itself natural at least in the sense of being naturally available ways of choosing and interpreting -- as are all the real alternatives. |
