Playing Ducks   Kim Hong-do

Make the crooked straight,
Make the straight to flow.
Gather water, fire, and light.
Bring the world to a single point.
 

If we have devotion -- total faith and commitment to our spiritual path -- our determination will naturally build momentum.  Fewer and fewer obstructions will come before us.  Our path becomes like a crooked one made straight.  No matter what tries to keep us from our purpose, we will not be deterred.

Proper devotion lies not simply in a headlong course.  It also requires fortitude.  Our bodies, our hearts, and our spirits must be totally concentrated upon what we want.  Only by uniting all our inner elements can we have full devotion.

If we see our path clearly and our personalities are completely unified, then there is no distinction between the outer world and the inner one.  Nothing is faraway anymore, nothing is not open to use.  That is why it is said that the world is like a single point: So strong is devotion that there is nothing that is not a part of it.

devotion
365 Tao
Deng Ming-Dao
Daily Meditations

 

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Playing Ducks
Kim Hong-do (1745 to 1806?)
Choson Dynasty, 1796
Ink and light colors on paper
26.7 cm x 31.6 cm

This realistic bird-and-flower painting,  from an album dated 1796, portrays a peaceful and cozy scene centering around two ducks playing in a softly rippling stream. The charming ducks, along with the combination of translucent pale green and orange pigments, evoke a lyrical sensation that reveals one feature of the Korean esthetic sensibility. Although it illustrates only a fragment of the stream, the painting conveys a sense of expanded space as the heron in the upper-left corner and the small water birds in the lower-left corner appear to be flying in and out of the picture frame. Kang Se-hwang noted that Kim displayed extraordinary skill in various genres but excelled even more in Taoist paintings and flower and bird paintings.