Painting the Dao

15 the master of the water , p ine and stone retreat Joan Stanley-Baker A rt reflects the state of the artist’s soul. Individually and collectively, states of consciousness evolve through time, experienced by humans as the passage of events, internal and external. Historians of art looking at painting across the world over the centuries look not only for differences in content, style and technique, but for gradual shifts in world view and collective consciousness in specific cultural groups. This has been called ‘Period Style’, seen in the visible but silently felt in the invisible feeling that transcends visual details and generates particular qualities of energy that radiate through the visible forms and movements. In the evolution of Chinese painting, for instance, works of tenth- and eleventh-century art that survive in the world exude the highest sense of spirituality not only in the history of Chinese painting but in painting his- tory worldwide. Specifically, paintings of the Five Dynasties and Northern Song periods produced breathtaking works that inspire in the viewer a deep sense of awe as well as profound reverence unmatched by paintings of other times or places. What is this special quality we call ‘spirituality’? It is seeing with inner eyes the infinite space that is alive, feeling over one’s skin, with hairs on end, the gentle chill of the living universe breathing. The self is instantly reduced to a tiny speck in the all-embracing immensity, lost in wonderment and veneration by just being in creation. Not by coincidence did the Chinese cogitate upon the structure of the universe and its operating system (called li 理 ) even as the devout in Europe were expending decades on the construction of stone cathedrals in which pews resembled rows of ants in a forest of giant trees. Clearly, European con- sciousness was moving towards a high point of spirituality in which the Lord, like nature in China, was revered as the highest consciousness by far, humanity held as part of creation and reduced to minuscule dots in the arched and vaulted cosmos of divine presence. ak24.20 130–1