China
Yang Xiong, the famous Chinese poet and scholar who lived two thousand years ago in Han Dynasty, once wrote, “Words are the voice from the mind while calligraphy is the painting of the mind.” in the volume of “wen shen” [A request to god] in his masterpiece Fayan [The Yang Tzu discussion on legalism], which means that our spoken language expresses our mind while our handwriting depicts the images of mind. As a sort of self-derived writing, Chinese characters come from hieroglyphics that symbolize different things. As we all know, ancient Egyptian writing also comes from hieroglyphics. However, the former is abstract whereas the latter is concrete. Thus, the scope of application of characters is wider than Egyptian writing, which may be the key point why characters are still used today. Since the chaos in Babel Tower, all nations lost their own languages and writings. Language can be seen as a symbol of our inner experience and, for people all around the world, inner experience is similar in itself and in its origin.
I’ve always been focusing on the shape, experience and feelings of my body. Our body can sense stimulation, numbness, desire and pain. But I am wondering what on earth supports the existence of life? Those ascetic monks who refuse material and carnal temptations tolerate severe pains, such as hunger strike, sleeping on beds full of nails and walking on scalding charcoals, in order to control and chasten themselves. They regard these actions as shortcuts to get oracles or the scriptures that can help them go beyond the circle of life and enter paradise.
At first, I wove with needles and threads on various materials like cloths, packaging films and paper. What attracted me most was the space and shape formed by threads after they impaled the paper. Then, I wrote a letter to my deceased father in this way. Later, I started to transcribe the sutras. I chose to read and transcribe the sutras with embroidery. When needles impaled the paper, the scriptures also stimulated my soul. The impalement and coil of needles and threads were connected closely with the desires and pains of my life. Having repeated this action, I felt physically fatigue, but calm down and released temporarily at the mean time.
However, to be relieved is not the meaning of life that the sutras truly express. “Should one set out in the Bodhisattva-vehicle stand, how progress, how control his thoughts?” How should our mind be restrained? The answer is that mind does not abide in form. If our minds abide, the persistence in itself may cause painfulness. “As stars, a fault of vision, as a lamp, A mock show, dew drops, or a bubble, A dream, a lightning flash, or cloud, So should one view what is conditioned. ” This is the last gatha extracted from The Diamond Sutra which means do not set up the perception of things in mind nor abide the mind. We should neither be addicted to certain materials or desires nor regarding everything as nothingness. According to Zen, the first principle of the sutras is: “It cannot be talked about.”.
