by Li He
The witch pours out a libation of wine
And clouds cover the sky,
In a jade brazier charcoal burns—
The incense booms.
Gods of the sea and mountain demons
Flock to her seat….
Exorcism often involved the eradication of zoomorphic demons, dangerous spirits masquerading as animals which could only be destroyed by magical practices:
Blue racoons are weeping blood
As shivering foxes die.
The shaman’s role, however, was not limited to exorcism, rain-making, or other goetic practices. As in other shamanistic cultures, the shaman’s power lay in the ability to call down a number of supernatural entities, some of them demonic:
She calls down stars and summons demons
To savour meat and drink,
When mountain-goblins come to eat
Men are breathless and hushed.
Sometimes the shaman could summon a higher entity who would take possession of her and speak through her mouth before returning:
The Spirit’s anger, the Spirit’s delight
Shows in her face
Ten thousand riders escort her back
To the emerald hills.
Li He’s verse abounds with references to the Chu Ci, which he may well have understood as shamanistic in inspiration, even though traditionally Chinese poets have interpreted its romantic and erotic verses as political allegories rather than as the longing of the shaman for the embrace of the god. The wild, ecstatic cries of the shaman are echoed in He’s verse time and time again, leading one to believe that he may well have been a shaman by temperament. Certain critics, ever eager to invest our poet with a temperament they would find congenial, have seen him as a sceptical rationalist, believing passionately in social reform but far too Confucian to lend a credulous ear to the supernatural. This represents a flagrant, modernistic misreading of He’s character. Everything about him, from his lifelong preoccupation with gods, ghosts, and demons to his final deathbed vision indicated that he possessed a highly psychic nature, perfectly at home in the world of shamanistic and Taoist ritual in which he appears actively to have participated.
Unusual as He’s work undoubtedly is, he is nevertheless very much of his time. He does not stand apart from it in the way, say, Blake and Smart stand apart from the eighteenth century. In a sense, his verse simply carries to an extraordinary degree qualities of intensity, floridity and deep-grained pessimism already highly characteristic of Tang verse. Only in his development of Chu Ci tradition, especially that of the Nine Songs and The Summons of the Soul, can he really be called unique. Take for example the prevailing pessimistic tone of his verse. From the Han dynasty onwards Chinese poetry is on the whole deeply melancholic in tone. Tang poetry was no exception to this, and even poets like Du Fu and Li Bo (699–762) write verse steeped in sadness. It was not until the Song dynasty (960–1279) that Chinese poets rid themselves of the burden of sorrow, as the great Japanese critic Yoshikawa Kōjirō has pointed out. In this respect He is typical of his age, for much of his verse is so imbued with melancholy that the pages seem to darken as one reads. As Ryosuke Kamio avers, He was “essentially, a poet of night” whose true poetic genius blossomed to the full only in the darkness.
Any thorough study of He’s verse would attempt to explain this fully. In doing so, it would have to account for the whole shift in outlook which took place in the poetry of the ninth century, the movement away from the outgoing, assertive verse of Du Fu to the esoteric, withdrawn poetry of Li Shang-yin. This introduction is no place to attempt such a feat. But I should hazard a guess that the basic factors involved were the decline of the empire after the rebellion of An Lu-shan, the weakening of the central government, the increasing dominance of the eunuchs, and the dissociation of literary men from political power. All of these—and especially the last—resulted in what Toynbee would call “a failure of nerve on the part of the creative minority.” This would account for the pervading sense of melancholia, nostalgia, and regret that so characterizes most of the poetry of the Yuan-he period (806–21). Furthermore, this was an age when none of the traditional remedies seemed to make sense any more. Taoism had degenerated into superstition; Buddhism was on the verge of collapse—the persecution of 845 finally struck it a mortal blow; and even the most ardent Confucian reformers found that the time was not yet ripe for revival of the Master’s teachings.
What is peculiar, then, about He’s verse is not his melancholy but the extent of it; not the sentiment itself but the symbols he used to express it. Wada Toshio has analysed He’s verse statistically and found that expressions hinting at death occur 198 times, expressions of sadness 131 times and expressions of anxiety and fear 262 times—a total of 665 in all. On an average there are three expressions concerned with death or unhappiness in every poem. Wada’s analysis simply lends statistical support to what the reader had already felt in his senses; namely that He’s verse is extraordinarily melancholy even by Tang standards. Furthermore, the images he persistently draws on, those of ghosts, demons, spirits, bones, blood, tombs, corpses, will-o’-the-wisps, and so on, are normally studiously avoided by Chinese poets, as they are avoided by ordinary Chinese, on the grounds that they are unlucky. Admittedly, during Tang the weird tale or ghost story (quan-qi) enjoyed a great vogue; but these stories are certainly not obsessed with death and decay as is He’s verse.
He’s “death-wish,” as we should style it today, has been noted by the contemporary writer, Hong Wei-fa, who remarked that He was afraid of death, yet longed for it, for since he was sick of the world of men, he yearned for heaven. He’s longing for death is certainly understandable. For a start, he stemmed from that most pessimistic of classes, impoverished aristocracy—people for whom the past recedes ever further in a golden haze. Secondly, he was unlucky in not being allowed to take an examination which would almost certainly have led to fame and fortune—and for a Chinese to think himself unlucky is to have lost all hope. Finally, he was a man ravaged by disease, constantly in failing health and—to cap all this—poor, at least in comparison with his friends. Small wonder then that he found life a burden which he would gladly shake off. He would fain have fled the world—but to what?
Classical Confucianism admits of no life beyond the grave, beyond the squeaking and gibbering of ghosts. In this it is as comfortless as the religion of the ancient Greeks. Hong Wei-fa’s assertion that He “longed for heaven” must therefore refer to his belief in either Buddhism, or Taoism, or both. Ostensibly He was no Taoist, at least in the conventional sense, for many of his satirical poems are attacks upon Emperor Xian-zong, who spent a great deal of time and money which could have been better employed in the business of government in seeking for elixirs of eternal life. On the other hand, there can be no denying that He was fascinated with the concept of Heaven, which recurs constantly in his poems as a place of exquisite beauty, where immortals dwell.
Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.
It seems to me highly probable that at one level of belief He was convinced of the reality of the Taoist heaven. This would help to explain the stories about his deathbed:
When Chang-ji was at death’s door, suddenly, in broad daylight, he saw a man in purple raiment driving a red dragon and carrying a tablet with characters on it like ancient seal script or “peal of thunder” inscriptions….who said: “I am here to summon Chang-ji”…He could not read the inscription. He at once got out of his bed and kowtowed saying:
“Mama is old and ill. I don’t want to leave her.” The man in purple raiment said with a smile: “The Emperor (of Heaven) has just built the White Jade Tower and summons you to come at once and write a description of it. Life up in Heaven is delightful; there is no hardship there.” Chang-ji only wept the more. All those attending him witnessed this. In a little while He drew his last breath. From the window where he was wont to sit, a mist rose into the air and the sounds of fl
utes and carriages were heard.
Li Shang-yin goes on to state that this story was narrated to him by Mrs. Wang, He’s sister, who was present at his death, adding that her veracity was undoubted.
Now if, in fact, He really believed in Heaven, then it is highly likely that during his final moments he actually saw and described the events that his sister spoke of. What we have here, indeed, is a graphic account of He’s deathbed vision—a consoling truth as touching and as vividly colourful as many of his poems. But how can this Taoist belief be reconciled with He’s avowed Buddhism, for he states quite plainly in his poem Presented to Chen Shang that the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra is his constant companion, along with the Chu Ci? The importance of this statement, which must be taken in conjunction with another verse in which he refers to “listening to a sutra” can hardly be overestimated. The Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra, a work of notorious difficulty and profundity which had been translated into Chinese three times by the eighth century A.D., was the principal sutra favoured by the Chan (Zen) school during the Tang. He probably read Śikshānanda’s translation of 700–04, which had been sponsored by Empress Wu and revised by the monk Mi-to-shan and the great master Fa-zang.
There were no less than ten major schools of Buddhism flourishing in China during Tang, six of which were Mahayana (Great Vehicle) schools. Of these the most important were the Lotus, or Tian-tai, whose basic scripture was the Saddharmapundiarīkasūtra (Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law); the Flower Garland or Hua-yan school, whose basic scripture was the magnificent Avataṁsaka-sūtra? the Pure Land or Jing-tu school, which emphasized salvation through faith and ejaculatory prayer to Amitabha Buddha; and the Meditation or Chan school, which relied not on the scriptures but on direct transmission of teaching from master to disciple and the development of intuitive wisdom (prajñā).
A Japanese authority on the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, has pointed out that though this sutra is a veritable compendium of Buddhist doctrine, noting down “in a somewhat sketchy fashion almost all the ideas belonging to the different schools of Mahayana Buddhism,” it has always had a very special relationship to the Chan school. We are therefore immediately confronted with the question as to whether Li He was an adherent of the Chan school. If he were, this would help to explain the otherwise puzzling lack of overt Buddhist allusions in his verse, since this school attached only secondary importance to the scriptures. But even if he were not a devotee of Chan, the very fact that he was accustomed to read the Laṅkāvatāra indicates the seriousness of his interest in Buddhism. Some critics have denied that He was a Buddhist at all, on the ground that his poetry is sensuous and worldly and abounds in Taoist and shamanistic references. Against this we may point out that he mentions the Laṅkāvatāra in conjunction with the Chu Ci, a work which all critics admit to be of the first importance as an influence on his thought and sensibility. The Laṅkāvatāra, being mentioned in the same breath as the Chu Ci, can therefore reasonably be considered as a work to which he attached the highest value. Furthermore, his attachment to this sutra indicates a real seriousness in his attitude towards Buddhism, for it is arguably the most difficult in the whole Buddhist canon. As another great poet, Su Shi (1036–1101), also an admirer of this scripture, remarked in his preface to the edition of 1085: “The Laṅkāvatāra is deep and unfathomable in meaning, while in style it is so terse and archaic that the reader finds it troublesome even to punctuate the sentences correctly, let alone understand their ultimate spirit and purport….”
Suzuki confirms this verdict, pointing out in his Studies in the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra (London and Boston, 1930), that “the sūtra requires a great deal of learning as well as an insight to understand all the details thoroughly.” In fact Suzuki himself was driven to give an interpretation rather than a translation at times, since the latter “reproduced as it stands in the original” would be quite unintelligible to the average reader. Consider, for example, the following representative passage, translated from Śikshānanda’s Chinese version of the Sanskrit original:
[The wise] too see the aspect of [self-nature] in all things, for it manifests itself as if characterised with false attachment. They do not talk about causation and no-causation, they fall into the view of [self-] aspect in all things. World-honoured One, [thus they say that] this belongs to another realm, and is not like such [as is maintained by others]. If so, this is the fault of non-finality. Who can then have a clear understanding as regards the aspect of [self-] nature in all things? World-honoured One, the aspect of [self-] nature in all things is not dependent on discrimination; why do you say that all things exist because of discrimination?
Since the sutra abounds in passages of such difficulty it is clear that He’s attitude to Buddhism could hardly have been that of a dilettante. If he was prepared to grapple with the Laṅkāvatāra he must have had a very serious commitment to Buddhist doctrine, serious enough to induce him to wrestle with a text which even in the best of the Chinese translations is still one of quite extraordinary difficulty.
But what was it that drove this young and unhappy poet to delve into such a scripture? The principal theme of the Laṅkāvatāra is that “all things have no self-substance, they are like a cloud, like a circle traced out by a revolving fire-brand…like māyā, or mirage, or the moon in the water or a dream.” Thus the universe is essentially only an illusion formed by the false discrimination (vikalpa) of the mind.
The doctrine of “Mind-only” forms the very heart of the sutra. Again and again we are told that “The triple world is Mind itself” and “All is Mind.” As Suzuki points out, “The doctrine of ‘Mind-only’ runs through the Laṅkāvatāra as if it were warp and weft….To understand it is to realise the ultimate truth and not to understand it is to transmigrate through many a birth-and-death.” The pure idealism of the sutra insists that the entire universe, the whole fabric of the space-time continuum, and even Nirvana itself, which is by definition beyond Being as we know it, are no more than the creation of our own mind. “O Mahāmati, when a man sees into the abode of reality where all things are, he enters upon the truth that what appears to him is not other than mind itself.”
The essential purport of the sutra is that enlightenment is reached when we realise that the universe is unreal and uncreated. What we take for reality is due to false discrimination (vikalpa), which in turn arises from impressions (vāsāna) inherited from all the thoughts, words, and deeds of countless past incarnations. As long as we cannot free ourselves from such impressions we are cut off from Reality (dharmatā) and condemned to revolve endlessly on the Wheel of Birth and Death. But once we have cleansed out Intellect (prajñā) freeing ourselves from hate, anger, greed, lust, and other passions, then a revulsion (parāvṛitti) takes place in our minds, enabling us instinctively to grasp the truth that there is nothing but Mind. This is what the sutra calls “inner realisation” (pratyātmāryajñānagocara), the direct presentation of truth to the mind.
Such pure monistic idealism contrasts oddly with Li He’s passionate interest in the world of colour, sense, and form. His sensuous apprehension of reality stands in vivid contrast to the Laṅkāvatāra insistence on the delusory nature of the senses. Most important of all, his poetic genius found itself at complete variance with the sutra’s insistence on the inadequacies of language itself.
Language, O Mahāmati, is not the ultimate truth; what is attainable by language is not the ultimate truth. Why? Because the ultimate truth is what is enjoyed by the wise; by means of speech one can enter into the truth, but words themselves are not the truth. It is the self-realisation inwardly experienced by the wise through their supreme wisdom, and does not belong to the domain of words, discrimination, or intelligence; and, therefore, discrimination does not reveal the ultimate truth itself. Moreover, O Mahāmati, language is subject to birth and destruction, is unsteady, mutually conditioning, and produced according to the law of causation; and what is mutually conditioning and produced according to the law
of causation is not the ultimate truth, nor does it come out of such conditions, for truth is above aspects of relativity, and word are incapable of producing it….
In view of his attachment to this sutra, it seems clear that He must have realised the ultimately hallucinatory nature of the world on which he lavished so much of his art, as well as the limitation of the world of words to which he had devoted his short life. Knowing as he did that “the truth (tattvaṃ) is beyond words,” he must have been ironically conscious of the ultimate futility of his efforts to seek to paint a mirage on the mists of an illusion.
To understand He’s passionate concern with social and political issues one must realize that China was then going through a period of great turbulence involving nothing less than the restoration of the imperial sway. Since the rebellion of An Lu-shan (A.D. 755) the central government had been losing power to the provincial military governor, who had been steadily encroaching on the prerogatives of the emperor. When Emperor Xian-zong (regnet 805–20) came to the throne he was determined to restore the power of the imperial house and demonstrate the strength of the government in Chang-an. In this he was to evince remarkable success. In the fifteen years of his reign he brought his rebellious satraps to order by launching punitive expeditions against them whenever they refused to come to heel when called. In 806 he defeated Liu Pi, a rebellious general who had attempted to seize the vital region of Sichuan. The following year he overthrew Li Qi, a recalcitrant governor of a southern province and then, emboldened by his victories, decided to challenge the powerful Wang Cheng-zong, military governor of Cheng-de, Hebei, who had long been a thorn in his flesh. Unfortunately, Xian-zong made the mistake of appointing a eunuch, Tu-tu Cheng-cui (d. 820), as commander-in-chief of the imperial armies, probably to placate the powerful eunuchs at court, and was eventually compelled to call off the campaign in 810. In an early poem Li He attacked this singularly incompetent general in biting, satirical verse.