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Purity is light.
We forget purity too much. We make compromises with our hygiene in the name of expediency. We allow our mountains and seashores to be polluted for the sake of the marketplace. We allow our minds to be sullied with frivolous entertainment. War is thought to be a viable option, principle is considered a negotiable quality, our children are victimized by strangers, and obscenity is considered a valid subject for art.Where is the purity in our lives?
We marry. We divorce. We don't care whom we hurt in life. We think loyalty is a charming but meaningless virtue. We sacrifice the values of our youth to purchase the glory of our later years.
Where is the purity in our lives?
We think that if we can triumph in one golden moment, that will dissolve all the other filth we preoccupy ourselves with. We uphold the greatness of athletes who want to have that one moment of triumph. We laud the battlefield hero* as the redeemer of our guilt over the horror of war. We have fostered madmen who think that shooting a gun, hunting down animals, committing suicide, or slashing prostitutes in the street is their means of purity.
Where is the purity in our lives.
Seek purity. It may not be easy. It may not be common. But it is the one state that we can attain that is without compromise.
purity
365 Tao
Deng Ming-Dao
Daily MeditationsPlaying Weiqi at the Water Pavilion
Fu Baoshi (Chinese, 19041965)Hanging scroll; ink and color on Korean paper
49 3/4 x 29 1/2 in. (126.4 x 74.9 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of ArtDescription
The intensity of man and nature are matched in this masterful painting by Fu Baoshi depicting scholars playing weiqi (a chesslike game) in a pavilion by a stream. Fu's rich ink, deep jewel-toned colors, and characteristic scumbled surface are combined with fine-line figure drawing at the heart of the picture, where order prevails: tea is served, and a white screen imposes tranquillity.
This painting was done during the Second World War, from 193946, when Fu lived in Sichuan, near the wartime capital in Chongqing. The poetic mists and rolling hills of the region informed his landscape style. The artist's seals at the bottom of this painting are a compendium of his personality and aspirations.
"All orbits in the universe" reflects his intellectual pluralism. "Always when drunk" reveals his habit of painting when intoxicated. "My mission is only to create the new" speaks for itself.