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Magical Mountains of China: Yangshuo

The Masks of Sichuan

Sanxingdui is situated in Southwest China in the province of Sichuan. In the times of late Shang Dynasty a mysterious culture was developed in China. There strange rituals were made with these masks and statues. To know more, click HERE and HERE.

Crops

Click to enlarge it. This picture was taken in Pewsey, Wiltshire (UK).

Wuji-Taiji

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Wuji (Wu-chi) Taiji (T'ai-chi)

"1. Wuji: The open circle at the center has no divisions. It represents the great limitlessness that is our origin.
2. Yin and Yang: The solid line represents yang, and the broken line represents yin. Yin and yang are the first separation after limitlessness.
3. The Four Images: Yin and yang take on their first pairings with one another, forming four combinations.
4. The Early Heaven Eight Trigrams: This is Fu Xi's arrangement of the Eight Trigrams. The arrangement is read counter clockwise. Opposite trigrams are arranged across from one another.
5. The Early Heaven Sixty-Four Hexagrams: This arrangement is read from the top and center outward on either side. One begins from heaven (at the "top" of the circle) and meets the other side at the "bottom" on earth. One can begin from heaven, only to find all lines reversing themselves after passing the point marked by earth. A blank band between the fifth and sixth circle marks King Wen's revolutionary rearrangement of the Eight Trigrams and the Sixty-Four Hexagrams.
6. The Later Heaven Eight Trigrams: King Wen's Eight Trigrams pattern, expressing the cyclical, seasonal, and directional nature of change. This pattern unites the Five Phases and the Eight Trigrams. It is read clockwise.
7. The Later Heaven Sixty-Four Hexagrams: The sequence is read clockwise. Odd-numbered hexagrams generate the following evennumbered hexagram by reversing their lines in a yin-yang exchange. Thus, every other hexagram is the inverse of the preceding one. In turn, even-numbered hexagrams are linked to subsequent hexagrams. Each hexagram is built from six lines, and these lines symbolize time and position. The lowest line is early in a situation and subordinate in position. The highest line is late in a situation and retiring in position. By the logic of the Changes, that which is late in a cycle changes to its opposite, and generates a new cycle. Thus, each hexagram represents a cycle."
Deng Ming-Dao

Camel in a White Shade

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Photo by Sergei Reautov. You can find it alt National Geographic:
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/

Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove

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"The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove were a group of Chinese learned men from the third century CE. During a time of political upheaval, the group distanced themselves from governmental service, choosing instead to spend time engaged in Daoist-inspired discussions, poetry, and music, sometimes while inebriated. At least one member of the group abandoned his government position after becoming disheartened by corruption, and the group as a whole became associated with retreat from public life.

References to the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove are abundant in Chinese and Japanese art and literature. The earliest extant visual representations of the group date to the fifth century CE. Over time the theme gained popularity in Chinese painting and decorative arts, particularly from the late Ming (1368–1644) through the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). In Japan, the motif of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove was known as early as the ninth century. It was widely represented in Japanese art from the sixteenth century to the Edo period (1615–1868).

Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, featuring traditional works of art from China and Japan, has been organized to accompany and provide some cultural context for Asia Society’s exhibition of Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest, the contemporary video work by Chinese artist Yang Fudong.

Who Were the Seven Sages?

Xi Kang (Ji Kang; 223–262) is identified through historical references and tomb inscriptions as a poet and musician, author, and Daoist philosopher and alchemist. His oeuvre includes compositions for a stringed instrument called the qin and writings on music theory, politics, ethics, and longevity. A critic of Confucianism, he is recorded as having challenged many of the social conventions. At a young age he retired from official life and a desire for fame and success, removing himself from the political corruption that he felt he could not endure, and became a proponent of wuwei (inaction). We know he was executed by the military general Zhong Hui, although the circumstances leading to this action remain unclear.

Shan Tao (205–285) was a good friend of Xi Kang. Shan Tao was an official who ultimately reached the rank of Director of Instruction (situ), one of the three highest offices in China. At one point Shan Tao put Xi Kang’s name forward as his successor. This recommendation only alienated the latter and irrevocably damaged their friendship, because the act suggested that Shan Tao did not fully understand Xi Kang’s character and his rejection of governmental service.

Xiang Xiu (228–281) was also a good friend of Xi Kang. He wrote a memoir of Xi Kang, as well as a refutation of Xi Kang’s essay Yangsheng lun (Essay on Nourishing Life). He is also said to have written a commentary on the major third-century BCE Daoist philosophical text the Zhuangzi.

Ruan Ji (210–263), the son of an official, was a member of a famous literary group and a talented writer and poet himself. He held the official position of Infantry Colonel (bubing xiaowei), but has gone down in history as being unrestrained and reckless, perhaps because of his excessive drinking habit. Correspondence also relates that he was an acquaintance of Xi Kang.

Ruan Xian (230–281) held office as Junior Chamberlain (sanji shilang) and Grand Warden (taishou), and is said to have possessed musical skill.

Liu Ling (ca. 221–ca. 300) wrote the poem Ode to the Virtues of Wine. There are a few anecdotes about him published after the fifth century. One of these notes:

On many occasions Liu Ling, under the influence of wine, would be completely free and uninhibited, sometimes taking off his clothes and sitting naked in his room. Once when some persons saw him and chided him for it, Ling retorted, “I take heaven and earth for my pillars and roof, and the rooms of my house for my pants and coat. What are you gentlemen doing in my pants?”

Wang Rong (234–305) remains largely an enigma, though we know that like Shan Tao he held the high ranking post of Director of Instruction."
Asia Society
©2009 Asia Society | 725 Park Avenue at 70th Street New York, NY 10021

Mu

On the lost continent of Mû, you can read something if you click the word HERE
The twelve books of Corto:
1. 1904-1905: La Jeunesse (1983); 2. 1913-1915: La Ballade de la mer salée (1975); 1916-1917: 3. Sous le signe du Capricorne (1979); 4. 1917: Corto toujours un peu plus loin (1979); 5. 1917-1918: Les Celtiques (1980); 6. 1918: Les Éthiopiques (1978); 7. 1918-1920: Corto Maltese en Sibérie (1979); 8. 1921: Fable de Venise (Sirat al Bunduqyyiah) (1981); 9. 1921-1922: La Maison dorée de Samarkand (1986); 10. 1923: Tango (1987); 11. 1924: Les Helvétiques (1988); 12. 1925: Mû (1992).
We can also find books with short stories: 1. Suite Carïbéenne; 2. Sous le drapeau des pirates; 3. Lointaines îles du vent; 4. La Lagune des mystères.

China - 中国

Last Painting

Van Dog

Click to read it (in Portuguese)

Blake & Mortimer

If you love the work of Blake & Mortimer and you know how to read French, you'll love this site. Please click HERE.

Van Dog

Click to read it (in Portuguese)

Beckett

"Directed by Charles Sturridge, Ohio Impromptu, written in 1980,by Samuel Beckett opens with a figure clad in black with long white hair hiding his face and sitting on a white chair at a white table. There are two characters, the Reader and the Listener."

12 Chinese Zodiac Animals

Good friends

Van Dog

Click to read it (in Portuguese)

Amazing Fox!

Amazing archaeological discovery! In Turkey, German archeologists found what looks like a "sanctuary", the first sanctuary built by men, thousands years before Stonehenge or Newgrange... It was built 11.500 years ago and it is known by the weird name of Göbekli Tepe (it means "Hill with a potbelly"). It's amazing because it was established by hunter-gatherers, nomadic people, before the advent of sedentarism, long before the first cities.
And you can predict by the following image that they like foxes.
It is really an old fox! :)



To know more about the subject click HERE (Smithsonian mag) or in Wikepedia.

Oriental Studies/Estudos Orientais

For more information (in Portuguese), click HERE.

Van Dog

Click to read it (in Portuguese)

Charm

I'm thrilled because this blog received the Charm Prize. Thanks to the blog Through the Window.
An now the prize goes to:

Azul Porcelana
blog@conceição
Folhas Perdidas
Imagens com Texto
Traços e Cores
Van Dog

and last, but not the least:
Through the Window

Van Dog

Click to read it (in Portuguese)

Across the Universe

Macedonia

St. George's Island in Macedonia (Republica of Macedonia). As you can see, this beautiful island is the real motive of the painting "Isle of the Dead" from Arnold Böcklin. See my last post on Böcklin (May 31th)

An Idea...

USA vs UK

Jon Stewart Schools John Oliver: US Elections Are Better Than UK Elections
- Watch more Funny Videos at Vodpod.

Nirvana

"There is a realm, where there is neither the solid (earth), nor the fluid (water), neither heat (fire), nor motion (wind), neither this world, nor any other world, neither sun, nor moon. This I call neither arising, nor passing away, neither standing still nor being born, nor dying. There is neither foothold, nor development, nor any basis. This is the end of suffering.
There is an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed. If there were not this Unborn, this Unoriginated, this Uncreated, this Unformed, escape from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed, would not be possible.
But since there is an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed, therefore is escape possible from the world of the born, the
originated, the created, the formed."
The Buddha (Udana)

The Power of our Imagination

Click it!

The German painter Stephan Lochner (1440-1451) never had seen a lion in his life. But as a mediaeval painter (school of Cologne, gothic art) he was familiar with the topic, Saint Jerome and the Lion. So he decided to paint one with his own imagination... This story is narrated by Tom Regan to exemplify the difference between our knowledge of animals in the past and in the present. And how this knowledge matters...

Van Dog

Click it (the comic strip is in Portuguese).

Isle of the Dead

When I saw for the first time these two paintings, I thought to myself: "it is impossible to know by the Internet how a painting really looks". But then I realise that there are five versions of this famous symbolist painting, and we're seeing in this post the first (1880) and the fifth (1888). Arnold Böcklin is also the author of the painting: Isle of the Living (Die Lebensinsel, 1888), but it is not so beautiful as "Isle of the Dead" (Die Toteninsel). Lost fans, please be aware of the driver from Oceanic (last episode) with the name "Bocklin".

Egyptian Senet with an Irish Flavour (Flavor)

Please look to the symbols on the right...

And you'll find in this Egyptian board game the same symbols from Newgrange

On Senet, click HERE.

Newgrange, one of the most magical places I have been (inside).
And inside the cave I saw the Light... really

On Newgrange, click HERE

Happy Vesak

Live together and you won't die alone

Click it (© picture from Lostpedia)
The Island is a metaphor, a symbolic narrative of our lives (where Lost is the keyword); the Flash-sideways, a touching metaphor of our afterlives (where Found is the keyword). But if you prefer, everything can be the last dream of a dying man near his dog. It's up to you to decide...

Tulasi

Templo de Ratazanas

Alguns dos meus leitores podem ficar um pouco incomodados com a ideia deste templo; afinal associamos as ratazanas à peste negra e a doenças terríveis. Como sublinha Gilbert Durand, provavelmente o medo humano dos ratos deriva do facto de se movimentarem a uma enorme velocidade, o que nos faz sentir que não temos controlo sobre eles. E o que os seres humanos gostam é de controlarem, o que quer que seja... Este templo na Índia é um belo exemplo do respeito que o Dharma da cultura indiana tem pela Vida em todas as suas formas. Fica situado em Deshnoke no estado do Rajastão. O templo chama-se Karni Mata e baseia-se na seguinte história medieval (séc.XIV): Karni Mata, incarnação da deusa Durga, implorou ao deus da morte, Yama, que não levasse com ele o filho de um narrador. Como a Morte recusou, a deusa, ela própria, incarnou o próprio jovem morto como uma ratazana.

What they died for

Joy to the World

Clique na fotografia para a ver em boas condições.
Thanks to Kathy!

A passo de tartaruga

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Tartaruga tibetana conduzindo o quadrado mágico associado ao Lo Shu.
Uma representação moderna do mesmo:

Basta fazer as contas em todas as direcções...

Borobudur

Clique na fotografia para a ver em boas condições.

Ego

"Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just gimme a break. But the more you think that way, the more you try to get life to come out so that it will always suit you, the more your dear of other people and what's outside your room grows. Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home."
Pema Chodron

Van Dog

Clique na tira de Van Dog para a ler em boas condições.