The notion of the self as the window to the sacred was more or less nonexistent in the West until the early Renaissance. In India as well as China there was never the strict Western division between the natural and supernatural worlds. While the Christian West distinguished the supernatural from the natural, and condemned the fragile body to the corruptible, natural world, Asian cultures accepted the body and the self as the ephemeral vehicle through which one could attain enlightenment — even if insight was non-attachment to self. While those in the West believed in an eternal soul, in Asia there was no eternal self, because the self was as fleeting as everything else in the world. Even so, through the self one found the Buddha nature, the insight or satori, or the Enlightenment experience of Nirvana that could inform the rest of one’s life.

The notion of the self as the window to the sacred was more or less nonexistent in the West until the early Renaissance… While the Christian West distinguished between the supernatural and natural worlds, and condemned the fragile body to the corruptible, natural world, Asian cultures accepted the body and the self as the ephemeral vehicle through which one could attain enlightenment — even if insight was non-attachment to self.

Chinese traditions such as Taoism are bound by materiality or physicality in their understanding of the world. Matter becomes metaphor. Matter and metaphor were indistinguishable and formed forceful poetic associations in Chinese medicine and poetry. For the ancient Chinese artist/monk, materiality carried both a physical and a spiritual potency. This is the basis of Chinese medicine (herbalism) where the essence of a plant or herb is extracted through a process of reduction via boiling. These physical properties also act spiritually; the body-mind connection was apparent to the Chinese in their understanding of food, water, placement of objects, the location of a house, or the orientation of a doorway. All of these things express the flow of chi — the vital energy that animates all things. This is, of course, bigger than libido.

Taoism, the tradition of which we speak, is by turns, playful, paradoxical, and solitary. Taoism, and its later expression in Ch’an Buddhism, seeks the solitary illumination. Through this solitary, individual struggle the Chinese artist uncovered his or her creativity. Many Ch’an Buddhists were also artists or poets. The brush strokes, both material and spiritual, expressed “chi” — energy. The subtle tones suggested a dreamy state of suspended time. The practice of looking at something was based on the meditative ideal of becoming that thing. To paint something with integrity, the artist must meditate on it, conduct many studies, and then execute their work in one stroke. The connection between master and pupil is a special relationship—a “secret tradition of knowledge outside books or words.” The knowledge, the insight, is not formal or sequential — it appears in a moment of extended time and then vanishes, leaving a changed being. Chinese scholar/artists were much more attuned to perceptual psychology than their medieval counterparts, who labored as artisans under the patronage of the Church or State. This fundamental difference prevented a unified understanding of art as insight until the 19th century romantic artists pulled away from the formal structures of power.