The edge of the world

Where shall there be an end of old and new?
A thousand years have whirled away
in the mind.
The sounds of the ocean change to stone.
---Tu Fu.

'Although Taoist-Buddhist painting does not indicate the source of light and shade, its landscapes are nonetheless filled by a light that permeates every form like a celestial ocean of pearly luster. It is the beatitude of the Void (shunya) shining in the absence of all darkness.

[The painter does not] represent the world in the likeness of a finished cosmos, and in this respect his vision is as different as possible from that of the Western artist whose conception of the world is always more or less "architectural".

A Far Eastern painter is contemplative, and for him the world would appear to be made of snowflakes, quickly crystallized and just as quickly dissolved. The less solidified conditions, the nearer they would be to the Reality underlying all phenomenon...

Taoist painting [unlike impressionism with its subjective impressions as fleeting as can be] avoids in its methods and in its intellectual orientation, the supremacy of mind and feeling, both avid for individualistic affirmation; in its eyes the instantaneity of nature is not in the first place an emotional experience; the miracle of the instant, immobilized by a sensation of eternity, unveils the primordial harmony of things, a harmony that is ordinarily hidden under the subjective continuity of the mind. when the veil is suddenly torn aside, hitherto unobserved relationships, linking together beings and things, reveal their essential unity.'

---Titus Burckhardt.

On the edge of the world there is a place where the world is the world no more. There shall we sit and watch stars fall and the snow gently return to the earth. And the starred heart melts as well. And there, deer shall freely roam in Spring sunshine; there will be no heaviness in our steps, no second thoughts. At times I will not be I, and you will not be you, but I will be a cloak around you, and you around me. Everything in nature will be open once again, a flower in bloom. As fragile as on the First Day, without shadow.

We will clearly see our lineage, our blood-rootedness, how we were related to one another from the beginning, the blue and the red. And recall old times. Still, there will be the hint of deathly sorrow in your eye, but only because it added lustre to your beauty.

We must cross the stone bridge to get there. Remember it well!