Source: "Taoism, the road to Immortality",
by John Blofield, Shambala Publications,
Boston, 2000, pp 174-186.
A Visit to a Taoist Hermitage --1935Their manner of life can be most satisfactorily conveyed by an account of a visit paid to one of the hermitages on Hua Shan; for, at the time, the ways of Taoists still had some novelty for me, so my senses were unusually alert to the impressions that came crowding in. To make the description more representative of the hermitages as a whole, I have woven into the narrative some details and characters encountered during subsequent visits to other holy mountains. The ex-general and ex-banker, both of whom belong to this category, may seem unusual and perhaps they were, but retired men of the world were by no means rareties in the smaller and more exclusive com- munities. In the winter of 1935 I happened to be in the neighbourhood of Hua Shan and decided to explore it. A northern Chinese winter is not the best of times for such expeditions; ice lay upon the precipi- tous paths, glazing the flights of steps hewn from living rock, and a cutting wind howled about the exposed upper slopes. Here and there clumps of trees stood close to the shrines of deities or fox- fairies, most of them looking as forlorn and in need of warm shelter as myself; otherwise the slopes were bare, having been denuded of their forests by generations of fuel gatherers from the teeming plains below. I never did succeed in reaching the temple that crowned the peak of what must be one of the most spectacular precipices in the world; as dusk approached, a chill mist blotted out the path and I sought refuge in a modest wayside hermitage, feeling hungry and miserably cold. All I could see of the place was a cluster of grey moss-encrusted roofs peeping above the high surrounding wall, also grey but showing less signs of poverty and neglect than many of the other hermitages. The ponderous lacquered leaves of the moon-gate were closed and unyielding. The young man I had met in the fields below and engaged as a guide, only to find that he had never set foot on the mountain in a life passed within a few bow-shots of its foot, suggested knocking as loudly as we could. So we pounded our fists against the smooth lacquer and shouted at the tops of our voices, but there came no answering voice. It was bitterly cold and, if no one heard us, darkness might fall before we had found refuge else- where. Dismally our voices echoed among the rocks. Knuckles sore, arms aching, thoughts close to despair, we were about to give up when a voice, muffled by the thickness of the gate, cried: 'Pu yao chi. An-men pu shih lung-tzu!' How comforting that sound, for all that we were being scolded for supposing the inmates their Church require affirmation of belief in something very similar to flesh-and-blood transmogrification? Conversely, is the popular Taoist belief in the necessity to create a spiritual body prior to death or else suffer extinction really more 'grossly superstitious' than the popular Christian belief that only those who are 'saved' will have the felicity of dwelling eternally in the presence of God, all others being 'cast into outer darkness' ? Is it not more admirable and consonant with reason to suppose that immortality has to be won by cultivating and nurturing one's spiritual faculties rather than by a mere act of faith performed, perhaps, on one's death-bed ? The Taoists I had the good fortune to encounter were not over- superstitious. They included men both simple and urbane with a partly mystical partly humanistic philosophy. Though I do not re- member hearing any of them deny the existence of gods and spirits, I did not find them unduly concerned with rituals. Like Buddhists, they understood that spiritual development lies with oneself, that neither gods nor sacraments help or hinder in the gradual refining or coarsening of man's essential being. Given the likelihood of en- joying a lifespan of from sixty to seventy or more years, they set out to achieve within that space of time an inner development capable of negating the effects of man's departure from the ways of nature and enabling them to eradicate evil propensities - acquisitiveness, passion, inordinate desire - which lead to selfishness and callousness if not to deceit and downright cruelty. They longed to refine their spirits. What does it matter if their concept of the goal was in some cases naive ? Doubtless that concept became more elevated as culti- vation of the Way proceeded. To me they proved charming com- panions who added to the joy of spending a few days or weeks in superb natural surroundings. They provided me with opportunities to glimpse facets of a venerable civilisation which they alone among the educated Chinese of my generation had preserved more or less intact. Besides an engaging kindness, simplicity and candour, they had an enchanting gaiety. The sound of their laughter echoed through courts where, had they been within the precincts of a Western monastery, joy would have been swallowed up in a sanctimonious hush. One of the great secrets of their charm was their philosophy of 'not too much of anything', which taught them to combine spiritual aspiration with warm humanity. Their manner of life can be most satisfactorily conveyed by an account of a visit paid to one of the hermitages on Hua Shan; for, at the time, the ways of Taoists still had some novelty for me, so my senses were unusually alert to the impressions that came crowding in. To make the description more representative of the hermitages as a whole, I have woven into the narrative some details and characters encountered during subsequent visits to other holy mountains. The ex-general and ex-banker, both of whom belong to this category, may seem unusual and perhaps they were, but retired men of the world were by no means rareties in the smaller and more exclusive com- munities. In the winter of 1935 I happened to be in the neighbourhood of Hua Shan and decided to explore it. A northern Chinese winter is not the best of times for such expeditions; ice lay upon the precipi- tous paths, glazing the flights of steps hewn from living rock, and a cutting wind howled about the exposed upper slopes. Here and there clumps of trees stood close to the shrines of deities or fox- fairies, most of them looking as forlorn and in need of warm shelter as myself; otherwise the slopes were bare, having been denuded of their forests by generations of fuel gatherers from the teeming plains below. I never did succeed in reaching the temple that crowned the peak of what must be one of the most spectacular precipices in the world; as dusk approached, a chill mist blotted out the path and I sought refuge in a modest wayside hermitage, feeling hungry and miserably cold. All I could see of the place was a cluster of grey moss-encrusted roofs peeping above the high surrounding wall, also grey but showing less signs of poverty and neglect than many of the other hermitages. The ponderous lacquered leaves of the moon-gate were closed and unyielding. The young man I had met in the fields below and engaged as a guide, only to find that he had never set foot on the mountain in a life passed within a few bow-shots of its foot, suggested knocking as loudly as we could. So we pounded our fists against the smooth lacquer and shouted at the tops of our voices, but there came no answering voice. It was bitterly cold and, if no one heard us, darkness might fall before we had found refuge else- where. Dismally our voices echoed among the rocks. Knuckles sore, arms aching, thoughts close to despair, we were about to give up when a voice, muffled by the thickness of the gate, cried: Tu yao chi. An-men pu shih lung-tzu!' How comforting that sound, for all that we were being scolded for supposing the inmates deaf! Now a heavy leaf creaked open, but beyond the lintel stood a sturdy old greybeard, cudgel in hand, who yelled: 'Honest men don't come calling at this hour of an evening!' Suddenly the old fellow's grim expression changed to one of vast astonishment. 'Old Father Heaven! A foreign dev-, er, er, a foreign guest!' Now he was all smiles and bows, pumping his clasped hands up and down in generous welcome, his eyes alight with smiling apology, his face aglow with human warmth. Taking the bag from my so-called guide and inviting him to go and sit by the kitchen fire, he led me across a modest courtyard to a room which appeared to be his own for, though no one was there, it was heated by a glowing brazier and rather stuffy. Motioning me to a couch, he hurried out and soon returned with a basin of hot water, soap and face-towel. Next he set about brewing tea and soon we were facing each other across the brazier chatting like long separated friends. Like many denizens of isolated places, he seemed glad of new company and brimming over with talk. Within an hour, besides having learnt something about their little community of five recluses and two serving lads scarcely in their teens, I had come to know most of the salient facts of his life. The son of an impoverished ironmonger, he had had scarcely three years of schooling before being compelled to pad the streets of his native Sian vainly hoping to find someone in need of a barely literate clerk. In despair he had entered the service of a city priest who made such a poor living by divination and selecting sites for houses and tombs in the light of the science of feng-shui that he could afford to pay no wages, only to meet the bare cost of the boy's keep. Happily he had no objection to letting his new assistant make whatever use he liked of the books left behind by a more scholarly predecessor and gradually the latter became enthralled by works set- ting forth all aspects of cultivating the Way. Two or three years passed; then the youth set off for the mountains and, after wandering for several more years, settled on Mount Hua. At the time of our meeting, he had been doyen of the tiny community in that hermitage for at least a couple of decades. 'Your honourable abode must be lovely in summer,' I remarked, 'but are you never weary of it ? Does time never lie heavily on your hands ?' 'No, no, no!' he answered vehemently, his old face lighting up with mirth. 'You talk as though this were a mansion crowded with noisy womenfolk with never a thought in their heads beyond buying clothes, dining off bird's nest and shark's fin, and playing mahjong for heavy stakes. That sort of thing, I have heard, makes many a man wish life were shorter. Here we have no time to be bored and, of course, you can have no idea of the beauty of this place. Winter is lovely on the whole. Had you come a day or two earlier, you would have seen the sky from this level as an inverted bowl of flawless turquoise. On most days, in the clear light of morning the peak rises like an island from a sea of mist that blots out all the world below. Bleak though it is today, if the fog lifts before tomorrow morning, you may feel embarrassed to find yourself floating above the clouds in what must surely be the court of the Jade Emperor, without having changed your workaday clothes in his honour, let alone your mortal skin! On clear nights both in winter and summer the moon is enormous. As for the stars, you can almost brush them with your hand. If you like plenty of company, come in spring or autumn when, on festival days, the path to the summit is so thick with pilgrims that it looks like a writhing serpent. Some bring flutes and jars of wine to pay honour to our mountain deity. Ah, you prefer peace and quiet? Then come back in summer when the lower slopes are so densely carpeted with flowers that you might suppose someone had brought a giant Mongolian carpet to make a collar for our mountain god, from which his craggy neck rises not a hundred feet below where we are here. Behind our hermitage there is a pool fed by a hidden spring where the water is deep and crystal clear, the silence so awe-inspiring that you are afraid to dive lest the splash disturb the local genie. They say he is a dragon, by the way, but I cannot be sure of that, for no one is known to have encountered him since - when was it ? - shortly before the fall of the Ming dynasty, I believe. Even so, he might graciously manifest himself to you, a distinguished foreign guest.' 'How lovely you make it sound. Your Immortality. You seem to have no worries in this holy place. I suppose offerings made by the pilgrims are sufficient for all your needs ?' 'I would not wish to depend on them,' he replied. 'Ours is a small hermitage and we seldom have people coming to pass the night here, except during the great festivals when the temple at the peak and larger hermitages are filled to overflowing, but we prefer not to have too many visitors, though we should be sorry indeed to have none, for we enjoy the conversation of widely travelled and learned guests like yourself, if I may presume to say so. Without offerings, we could manage. Our needs are simple and two of our colleagues were once well off; though they abandoned their wealth when they left the world, you may be sure their families would help us if ever we were in dire need. For the most part we live off the proceeds of medicinal plants gathered on the mountainside. For example, we have . . .' He mentioned a dozen or more names of plants that meant nothing to me, adding that there was a steady demand for them from Chinese physicians and medicine shops. Though most varieties brought in no more than half a silver yuan (little more than three pence) per basketful, that sum was enough in those days to feed a community of seven for a couple of days or so. 'But how do you pass your time in winter when it is windy and cold like today ?' 'Ah well, it is true that fog or heavy snowfalls sometimes isolate us for days at a time - but you see how snug we are. There is charcoal enough to last us. We have our books, some good tea, a mouthful or two of wine with evening rice to keep out the cold. Is all that not enough, do you think ? Though we have two boys to help, household chores keep us on the move a good deal, especially in the mornings after we have warmed ourselves with hot tea and some vigorous t'ai chi ch'uan exercises. There is much to read and we have many books that repay rereading many, many times. We are fond of music, too, and have preserved some flute melodies so ancient that they may not have been heard elsewhere for centuries, as far as we know.' 'Do you write. Immortality, or paint perhaps ?' Blushing endearingly, the old man murmured 'No, no' in a tone that surely meant 'yes'. 'You cannot expect - well, you could say I like the fragrance of fine ink and the sha-sha-sha of a writing brush sweeping over paper made in the old way on this very mountain from barks and leaves that give it a pleasantly rough texture. My "writing" scarcely amounts to more than that, but two of my colleagues write fine verses. As to painting - ha-ha-ha - of course not. That is, I do sometimes just try my hand at it, brushing crude land- scapes with wavy strokes for mountains, mere dots and blobs to indicate clumps of trees or shadowed rocks. People ? Animals ? How could an illiterate old creature like me dare ? Well, a long narrow blob perhaps with a suggestion of white upturned faces to suggest a line of pilgrims gazing up at the peak. Eh ? No, no, you cannot wish to see such trifles' - but he was already on his feet, a delighted expression giving something like youthful charm to his old face, and within a few minutes he had brought over quite a pile of unmounted ink paintings. I knew little enough of Chinese art in those days, but it seemed to me that some of his paintings were really beautiful. Mostly they were impressions of mountain vistas seen at different times of the year, each with a couplet or four-line poem of his own composition in running grass-characters brushed on a corner of the page, relevant of course to the scene depicted. It may not have been great art, but it was certainly attractive. Years later I came to realise how lucky such recluses were to have escaped the kind of education available in government-run schools. Instead of having their minds corrupted by the usual second-hand versions of materialist ideas imported from the West, they had for their only models the masterly poems, essays and paintings in traditional style that one would expect to find in monastic libraries which had gradually been built up over the centuries. No wonder recluses who so often came from illiterate or barely literate families had, at least in some cases, accomplishments superior to those of a good many university students of the period! Having expressed my admiration of his poems and paintings in glowing terms worthy of the occasion, I asked how he managed to find time amidst his manifold pursuits for self-cultivation. 'Where is the conflict, young sir ? All we do is part of cultivation. As to formal yogas and meditations, we perform them mostly during the first hour or two of the day and also late at night. We make no rules, so there are none to break and cause self-dissatisfaction. The secret is to sense when actions are timely and in accord with the Way or otherwise. It is a matter of learning to - to - how shall I say ? Of, of- ah, now I have it - of learning how to be!' 'Have you no worries, no anxieties at all ?' 'Young sir, you must be joking! We are humans. Ills happen. But we have learnt that calamities pass like all things. When we are sick or short of money to buy necessities, we naturally feel anxious, but, when this has happened many times, one learns to accept the bad with the good, to see them as they are - a part of being and not to be dispensed with without damage to the whole.' 'When you are sick. Immortality ? It is hard to imagine an im- mortal with a cough or hiccups! I should have thought - ' He chuckled heartily. 'Worse than that, young sir. Immortals not only break wind or belch like other people, they die ! Can it ever have been otherwise ? Becoming immortal has little to do with physical changes, like the greying of a once glossy black beard; it means com- ing to know something, realising something - an experience that can happen in a flash! Ah, how precious is that knowledge! When it first strikes you, you want to sing and dance, or you nearly die of laughing! For suddenly you recognise that nothing in the world can ever hurt you. Though thunder roar and torrents boil, though serpents hiss and arrows rain-you meet them laughing! You see your body as a flower born to bloom, to give forth fragrance, to wither and to die. Who would care for a peony that stayed as it was for a lifetime, for a thousand or ten thousand years ? A mere cabbage would be worthier of attention. It is well that things die when worn out, and no loss at all, for life is immortal and never grows with the birth of things or diminishes with their death. A worn-out object is discarded, life having ample materials to supply the loss. Now do you see ? You cannot die, because you have never lived. Life cannot die, because it has no beginning or end. Becoming an immortal just means ceasing to identify yourself with shadows and recognising that the only "you" is everlasting life. Ah, what nonsense I am talking; they'll be waiting for us to join them at evening rice. Come.' In those days my Chinese was less fluent than it afterwards became, so I cannot be sure I have reported the substance of his memorable words correctly, the more so as forty years have passed since then. Yet what he said was at once so striking and so simple that I am sure I got the hang of it and that not too much has been lost in the retelling. For the first time in my life I realised that a man may have no faith in personal survival and yet recognise that, in losing himself, he loses nothing. I saw that, to a man in his blissful state of mind, the loss of his spectacles would seem a greater inconvenience than merely dying! He had used the Chinese equivalent of'want to sing and dance' with reference to a sudden perception of death's real nature! There was in him an abundance of joy not to be accounted for by anything within my understanding at that time; and it may be that this belated report of his conversation is more true to the spirit of his words than anything I could have written down on the spot. To see his smile was to sense his invulnerable serenity and I wonder now if the famed immortals of old attained to anything higher. Is there anything more, anywhere further to go than the direct intuitive perception that life holds no terrors, that death - like Cinderella's fairy godmother - holds out to us a new and shining garment, that the 'red slayer' never slays because there is no one to slay and no such thing as slaying? Clearly the old gentleman had long ago reached a point at which the word 'I' had no more than a con- venient functional meaning like the word 'home' in a game of ludo. Yet, far from passing his days in a trancelike state waiting for death's liberation, far from being lethargic and withdrawn, as though his present life were of no importance, he was keenly alert, sipping his tea with evident enjoyment, revelling in the brazier's warmth, but also quick to see to practical matters, as when the charcoal embers needed stirring. Though clearly a holy man in the best sense, he had not a touch of the solemnity we in the West are apt to associate with the saintly. The strongest lines in his face were those that come from ready smiles and laughter. Even his little weakness, an innocent vanity in having made himself into something of a scholar and a painter, was lovable. His qualities, I was to discover, were typical of cultivators of the Way. Evening rice, shared with the five recluses and with the two little boys who, having served us, sat at table and gobbled lion's shares, was a delightful meal. Though so very much junior to my five hosts, I was literally dragged into the seat of honour opposite the door. The food consisted mostly of vegetables and bean curd, but with slivers of ham and dried fish to give them flavour. Instead of rice, we had piping hot millet dumplings - coarse fare and cheap but tasty. From a pewter jug kept standing in hot water a delicious yellowish wine was poured into cups with about half the capacity of an egg-cup. Everyone drank several cupfuls, just enough to add to our conviviality. It appeared that they had no abbot, but my friend was treated with special deference, probably because, though far below some of the others in social standing and scholarship and rather younger than at least one of them, he had long been the doyen of their community. Of the others, the Miraculous Moss Recluse, an octogenarian, had once been a farmer, but had sold his plot of land to buy food for his family during a famine. The Cloud Mother Recluse, a burly and rather handsome black-bearded man in his middle forties, had run away from home to enter a hermitage as serving boy while still in his teens. The Fragrant Sesame Recluse, now sixtyish, described him- self as a poor soldierman, but turned out to be an ex-general risen from the ranks in the army of Marshal Wu Pei-fu. Finally, the Tranquil Wisdom Recluse, a pot-bellied, jolly fellow also in his sixties, had until about ten years previously been a silk merchant in Chengtu, but had tired of the quarrels among his ladies and, re- nouncing his wealth (except for a slim of money spent on restoring the hermitage and adding to its amenities), had joined the community on an impulse born of a two-day stay there during the festival of the Pole Star Deity. Naturally, not all these details were forthcoming at dinner and I owe most of them to the Moon Rabbit Recluse, their doyen; even so, they were cheerfully unreticent and most willing to answer whatever questions I chose tO3Lsk- (Had only one, rather than two, of the five once been a man of substance and standing, the proportion would have been more typical of such communities in general.) Despite spiritually unpromising backgrounds, all were now de- voted followers of the Way and could properly be described as adepts. Living in a place so remote from ordinary life and spending many hours a day in study or in contemplation with the mind turned in upon itself, they had been weaned from the world of dust and were as full of gaiety and laughter as a party of undergraduates, with some- thing of an undergraduate's fondness for prankish humour. For over twenty years, three of the five had been living together in what, until the ex-silk merchant's arrival, had been a ruinous hermitage. The former general had been with them only tor a year or so, having 'left the world' in his native Kiangsu province after the defeat of the scholarly Marshal Wu during the civ" wars of the 1920s. The two little boys were the sons of local farmers who had welcomed the opportunity of placing them in service with people able to make scholars of them. None of the five reuses had received much of an education in the modern sense, the general having risen from the ranks and the silk merchant having inherited his father's business while still a high-school student. Tt¯e lifelong Taoist had left the world as an illiterate teenager; my friend and the So-year-old had neither of them completed their primary education. Now, all except the ex-general were scholars in the traditional sense, and even he had discovered a flair for witty extempore doggerel. This was a common state of affairs not often taken into account by the critics of Taoism, who seem to be under the misapprehension that to be without a high- school or university education was a grave disadvantage; that may be so generally, but not in circumstances such as these. Ignorant no doubt of matters outside their chosen field, the inmates were often erudite in the subjects that mattered for cultivation of the Way. All were steeped in the words of Lao and Chuang, in those of sages like Wei Po-yang and Ko Hung, and in the poems and essays of lovers of mountain solitudes. Their conversation, even when light and jovial, betrayed such learning. Their manners and attitudes were more redolent of what the Chinese mean by a background 'perfumed by books' than those of modern university students. It was their custom to rise at dawn, summer and winter, there being no clock or watch within the walls. Breakfasting in their cells on tea and millet gruel with scones or fried twists of dough, they usually remained in seclusion for the greater part of the morning, each performing such meditations, yogas or studies as seemed best to him, except on the days appointed for visits to their current teacher, an elderly recluse who resided further up the mountain. The stocky Cloud Mother Recluse, being younger than the others, had taken on the tasks of overseeing the serving boys, attending to the housekeeping and to the tiny patch of garden. He could be said to run things, to the small extent that running was needed, and could count on help from his elderly colleagues, of whom all but one were capable of carrying and lifting, etc., when necessary. Several of them took it in turns to go down the mountain or even travel to the pro- vincial capital, Si-an, when such journeys were needed for stocking up supplies or selling the herbs they had gathered. Lunch was a communal meal, eaten with a good appetite and plenty of conviviality. Weather permitting, the afternoons were spent out of doors, either in the garden and tending the shrubs in the courtyard, or going further afield in search of herbs, or just walking about in what, during most of the year, must have seemed like fairyland. Besides their yogic exercises, they practised t'ai chi ch'iian under the general's expert guidance; and the two boys received instruction in wrestling and swordsmanship from him. Around sunset, they returned to their rooms and continued the serious cultivation practised in the mornings. Some passed much of the night in meditation. When pilgrims came for the festivals, these pursuits were interrupted and various rituals performed, which the old gentlemen enjoyed because it gave them opportunities to indulge in stately dance movements and show off their expertise with flutes, hu ch'in viols, and all kinds of percussion instruments. When the weather was inclement, they had amusements for whil- ing away the afternoons. Besides painting, calligraphy, composing poems and reading, they enjoyed preparing charms for the pilgrims (an additional source of income), employing the picturesque magic scripts which are so suggestive of nature's flow, of the passing of one thing into another. Also, the ex-general had grown very fond of the kind of chess known as wei ch'i, an exceedingly ancient game played with white and black stones, one hundred and sixty or more on each side. Popular among military and naval men in China and Japan, as well as among scholars, its 36i-square board may be regarded as a battlefield, whether for a contest between two armies or between the opposing creative and destructive forces of nature. (It is said that in the cloud realms of immortals this game is played with the lives of human beings for stakes, each white gain saving a life, each black gain costing one.) Wei ch'i is Taoistic in character, for the skilful player learns to build up his strength wherever his opponent is weakest, thus emulating the action of water. Finding no worthy opponent among his colleagues, the general used to visit other hermitages in search of good players, for often the recluses would exchange visits and pass an afternoon sipping tea and nibbling melon seeds in hermitages at a comfortable distance from their own. Summer pastimes included visits further afield, picnicking at various beauty spots, swimming in the clear mountain streams and pools, holding contests in extempore verse making at places specially noted for views of the rising or setting sun, the full moon and so on. Some of the neighbouring communities included skilled gardeners expert in helping nature to excel herself, although, as if to redress the balance, one of their pursuits was as artificial as could well be imagined, for they loved to train shrubs to resemble birds and animals, including dragons, unicorns and phoenixes. There were also experts in the growing of dwarf trees and I have seen cedars or pines less than a foot in height which showed signs of being between fifty and a hundred years old. In most hermitages could be found miniature landscape gardens complete with mountains, pools, caves, trees and little houses and men, each garden rising from an oblong earthenware container about two foot long and one foot wide, or even smaller. When it was time for me to say farewell, collect my worthless 'guide' and go down the mountain back to Si-an and thence to Peking, the Moon Rabbit Recluse begged me to return one day. 'You must come in spring or autumn for one of our festivals, since you are fond of the sound of flutes by moonlight. You will hear some ancient melodies sacred to just one day of the year. In summer there are the wild flowers I spoke of and a pool so clear that you can peer down at a miniature forest of waving plants growing deeper down than a man can dive. Who knows but that its genie, the dragon I men- tioned, will not emerge to make the acquaintance of a distinguished young foreign gentleman ? At least you will see fish darting in and out of the "forest" like tigers stalking their prey. If you insist on coming again in winter, choose the First Moon (February), it will be even colder than now, your teeth will chatter, but imagine how splendid this great mountain looks when everything is blanketed by snow! That will inspire you to write poems filled with the spirit of the Way. The sky will be blue as sapphire, the sun red as persimmon. Seeing its light shining upon a universe of dazzling snow, you will understand what is meant by the "glistening void". Contemplating such a sight, you may well win suddenly to full attainment and thenceforth laugh your way through life, never having further cause for tears!' I hope my picture of those honorable immortals is worthy of them. Men of shy elusive wisdom, too simple to hold their own in scholarly debate, they had intuitive perception of a world of tranquil, joyous beauty far beyond my, in some ways more sophisticated, understand- ing. Nothing extraordinary was likely to happen in their company; there was none of the atmosphere of awesome and perhaps dark mysteries that one senses in temples where the folk religion predom- inates, no talk of conjuring up or subduing demons, nothing exciting or dramatic, nothing that can easily be caught in words. Apart from the beauty of the mountain scenery (which on that occasion was lost in mist) and a manner of life belonging to an ancient world then rapidly vanishing, there were no marvels. And yet such a hermitage was a place of miracles - miracles unspectacular but profound and light-bestowing. Outwardly jovial and relaxed, often engaged in pursuits that seemed irrelevant to mighty spiritual endeavour, the recluses lived and had their being perpetually on holy ground (by which I do not mean merely that they inhabited a holy mountain). Some no doubt were close to or had already attained true immortality; they had passed safely beyond the realm of passions and desires; but such was their modesty that a traveller who came upon them knowing nothing of their inner life might have enjoyed their hospitality and returned to the plains below unaware of having done more than pass a day or two in the company of cheerful and amusing old men! It would not have occurred to them to speak, even to one another, of having attained anything at all. If one asked them such questions as whether they felt they still had far to go before reaching the end of the Way, their answers might lead one to suppose them idle creatures, pleasantly touched with madness. They would be sure to burst out laughing and protest that they had not thought of going anywhere at all, or do something unconventional such as moo- ing like a cow or dancing a few steps to indicate the folly of the question. They loved to refer to themselves as idlers or wanderers 'loafing about the world' and their eyes would twinkle if they found someone gullible enough to take them seriously. |