Palestinian PM calls for unified government after Gaza ceasefire
Xinhua, July 11, 2024
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa on Wednesday called for a unified Palestine under a single authority and government once a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.
During a meeting with UN officials, consuls, and ambassadors in Ramallah, Mustafa emphasized the need for unity and cooperation.
"The day after the war ends, Palestine must be unified under one authority and one government, working with partners as one team with one plan. There can be no undefined transitional period that would create more complexity and chaos," Mustafa said, according to a statement from his office sent to Xinhua.
Mustafa urged international partners, donors, and UN institutions to closely coordinate with the Palestinian government to ensure swift recovery and address urgent humanitarian needs resulting from the conflict in Gaza and its repercussions in the West Bank.
He highlighted the Palestinian Authority's longstanding responsibility for providing essential services such as healthcare, education, water, and electricity to Gaza residents despite Israeli deductions from Palestinian funds.
Delegations from Egypt, the United States, Qatar, and Israel met on Wednesday in Qatar's capital Doha to resume the Gaza truce talks.
Also on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed his country's commitment to a potential ceasefire agreement during a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden's special envoy to the Middle East, Brett McGurk, in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu assured McGurk of his "commitment to the deal as long as Israeli red lines are maintained," according to a statement from his office.
Thursday, July 11, 2024
Police dismantle pro-Palestinian encampment at Canada’s McGill University
McGill University closed its downtown campus on Wednesday as Montreal police descended in large numbers to help clear a pro-Palestinian encampment that has been there for weeks.
McGill president Deep Saini called the encampment at the Canadian university, one of many that had sprung up on campuses across North America since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, “a heavily fortified focal point for intimidation and violence, organized largely by individuals who are not part of our university community”.
Under pounding rain, pro-Palestinian protesters carried their belongings off campus, as bulldozers and security forces dismantled the encampment that had been on the school’s lower field.
“That was officially the last stand. There’s nobody in the encampment anymore,” said protester Félix Burt, 20, standing a block from McGill’s lower field, where a pile of tents and wooden pallets were what remained of the protest site.
A Montreal police spokesman said one person was arrested on Wednesday for assault on a security agent.
In Quebec City, Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry told reporters “it was time” to remove protesters from the encampment.
Déry said the atmosphere on campuses has become “toxic”, and expressed hope that things would be calmer by the time fall classes begin.
Zaina Karim, a McGill student who wasn’t inside the camp when the dismantlement began, said protesters will persist until the university discloses and cuts its ties with Israel.
“This is not the end at all," Ms Karim said.
Campus protesters have demanded the university end its investments connected to Israel’s military and cuts ties with Israeli institutions over the offensive in Gaza.
Over the last few months, students on campuses across North America have built encampments, occupied buildings and led protests to call on colleges and universities to divest their endowments from companies doing business with Israel or which support its war in Gaza.
McGill University closed its downtown campus on Wednesday as Montreal police descended in large numbers to help clear a pro-Palestinian encampment that has been there for weeks.
McGill president Deep Saini called the encampment at the Canadian university, one of many that had sprung up on campuses across North America since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, “a heavily fortified focal point for intimidation and violence, organized largely by individuals who are not part of our university community”.
Under pounding rain, pro-Palestinian protesters carried their belongings off campus, as bulldozers and security forces dismantled the encampment that had been on the school’s lower field.
“That was officially the last stand. There’s nobody in the encampment anymore,” said protester Félix Burt, 20, standing a block from McGill’s lower field, where a pile of tents and wooden pallets were what remained of the protest site.
A Montreal police spokesman said one person was arrested on Wednesday for assault on a security agent.
In Quebec City, Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry told reporters “it was time” to remove protesters from the encampment.
Déry said the atmosphere on campuses has become “toxic”, and expressed hope that things would be calmer by the time fall classes begin.
Zaina Karim, a McGill student who wasn’t inside the camp when the dismantlement began, said protesters will persist until the university discloses and cuts its ties with Israel.
“This is not the end at all," Ms Karim said.
Campus protesters have demanded the university end its investments connected to Israel’s military and cuts ties with Israeli institutions over the offensive in Gaza.
Over the last few months, students on campuses across North America have built encampments, occupied buildings and led protests to call on colleges and universities to divest their endowments from companies doing business with Israel or which support its war in Gaza.
Canada takes step to acquire up to 12 submarines to guard Arctic
DON'T BUY USED OR DIESEL SUBS
Euractiv.com with Reuters
Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair attends a press conference after his meeting with Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spruds (not pictured) in Riga, Latvia, 15 December 2023. [EPA-EFE/TOMS KALNINS]
Euractiv is part of the Trust Project >>>
Canada, looking to shore up its defense of the Arctic, is moving ahead to acquire up to 12 submarines and has started a formal process to meet with manufacturers, the defense ministry said on Wednesday (10 July).
NATO member Canada updated its defense policy this year with a focus on protecting the Arctic and dealing with challenges from Russia and China. The procurement of submarines is a critical step in implementing that strategy, the defense ministry said in a statement.
Citing global warming, Canada says the Arctic Ocean could become the most efficient shipping route between Europe and East Asia By 2050, thus raising the need to bolster maritime security.
“As the country with the longest coastline in the world, Canada needs a new fleet of submarines,” Defence Minister Bill Blair said in the statement.
After meeting manufacturers, the ministry in autumn will post a formal request for information on the procurement, construction, delivery and operational capabilities of potential bidders.
Canada currently has a fleet of four submarines that the ministry said was growing more obsolete and expensive to maintain. The new fleet of submarines will be conventionally powered and capable of operating under ice.
Ottawa has been under US pressure to boost defense spending to meet the 2% of gross domestic product agreed to by NATO allies in 2023. The defense policy update in April outlined billions more for the armed forces, including money for submarines, to take spending to 1.76% of GDP by 2030, up from the current 1.4%.
Canadian broadcaster CTV News, citing unidentified government sources, reported on Wednesday that Canada would unveil a plan on Thursday on how to reach its NATO commitment to spend two 2% of its GDP on defense.
DON'T BUY USED OR DIESEL SUBS
Euractiv.com with Reuters
Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair attends a press conference after his meeting with Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spruds (not pictured) in Riga, Latvia, 15 December 2023. [EPA-EFE/TOMS KALNINS]
Euractiv is part of the Trust Project >>>
Canada, looking to shore up its defense of the Arctic, is moving ahead to acquire up to 12 submarines and has started a formal process to meet with manufacturers, the defense ministry said on Wednesday (10 July).
NATO member Canada updated its defense policy this year with a focus on protecting the Arctic and dealing with challenges from Russia and China. The procurement of submarines is a critical step in implementing that strategy, the defense ministry said in a statement.
Citing global warming, Canada says the Arctic Ocean could become the most efficient shipping route between Europe and East Asia By 2050, thus raising the need to bolster maritime security.
“As the country with the longest coastline in the world, Canada needs a new fleet of submarines,” Defence Minister Bill Blair said in the statement.
After meeting manufacturers, the ministry in autumn will post a formal request for information on the procurement, construction, delivery and operational capabilities of potential bidders.
Canada currently has a fleet of four submarines that the ministry said was growing more obsolete and expensive to maintain. The new fleet of submarines will be conventionally powered and capable of operating under ice.
Ottawa has been under US pressure to boost defense spending to meet the 2% of gross domestic product agreed to by NATO allies in 2023. The defense policy update in April outlined billions more for the armed forces, including money for submarines, to take spending to 1.76% of GDP by 2030, up from the current 1.4%.
Canadian broadcaster CTV News, citing unidentified government sources, reported on Wednesday that Canada would unveil a plan on Thursday on how to reach its NATO commitment to spend two 2% of its GDP on defense.
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THE TAKE
The Take: Israel’s backdoor annexation of the occupied West Bank
Can Israel get away with the biggest land grab in 30 years in the West Bank and a secret annexation plan?
Manifesting has a dark side – there are problems with believing our thoughts have so much power
PTI |
Jul 11, 2024
Birmingham
Birmingham , Have you tried manifesting? It’s hard to escape on social media – the idea that you can will what you desire into reality through the power of belief. This could be financial success, romantic love or sporting glory.
Singer Dua Lipa, who headlined Glastonbury festival in June 2024, has said that performing on Friday night at the festival was “on her dream board”. “If you’re manifesting out there, be specific – because it might happen!”
Manifesting gained popularity quickly during the pandemic. By 2021, the 3-6-9 manifestation method was famous. A TikTok viewed over a million times, for instance, explains this “no fail manifesting technique”. You write down what you want three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times before you go to bed and repeating until it comes true. Now, content creators are explaining countless methods to speak your dreams into reality.
But the idea that if you wish for something hard enough it will happen isn’t new. It grew out of the self-help movement. Some early popular books that peddled this idea include Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich from as long ago as 1937, and Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life from 1984.
The trend really took off with Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, a book published in 2006 which claims you can bring about whatever you desire through the power of manifestation. It has sold more than 35 million copies and boasts many celebrity fans. Drawing upon the “law of attraction”, Byrne proclaims: “Your whole life is a manifestation of the thoughts that go on in your head.”
Manifesting as an intellectual vice
But there is a dark side to manifesting. Popular trends such as the 3-6-9 manifestation method promote obsessive and compulsive behavioural patterns, and they also encourage flawed thinking habits and faulty reasoning.
Manifesting is a form of wishful thinking, and wishful thinking leads to false conclusions, often through the inaccurate weighing of evidence. The wishful thinker overinflates their optimism about the likelihood of a preferred outcome. In philosophical terms, this kind of thinking is called an “intellectual vice”: it blocks a rational person’s attainment of knowledge.
Manifesting urges people to dream big and imagine in detail everything they desire. This sets people’s expectations unnaturally high, setting them up for failure and disappointment. It’s arguably a form of toxic positivity.
If you believe your own thoughts have the power to create reality, you may end up downplaying or ignoring practical actions and the efforts of others. You might manifest by saying: “I attract positive things to me”. But in doing so, you may not notice or credit the role of luck, chance, privilege and circumstance in explaining why some things happen and others do not.
Logical errors
Manifesting leads to logical errors. Someone who practices manifesting – and who finds that something they manifested comes true – is likely to attribute these desired outcomes to their prior hoping or wishing. But this does not mean hoping was the cause of the outcome. Just because one came before the other does not mean it was the cause: correlation does not imply causation.
If you believe the power of wishing for something results in what you want coming true, you will disproportionately attribute your mental activity with causal efficacy over other causes.
For instance, if you study hard for an exam and achieve a good grade, you might end up attributing this outcome to the daily mantra or repeated affirmations you said leading up to the test, rather than crediting the effort you put into studying. For your next test, you might keep on manifesting, but study less.
And when a hoped-for outcome does not occur, you might find yourself accounting for it in positive or fatalistic terms: the universe has something better planned. The negative outcome becomes additional evidence that you should still think positively, and so you won’t change your approach.
While it may seem initially appealing, manifesting may also encourage victim blaming: that if someone had thought more positively, an outcome would have been different. It also fails to encourage people to make backup plans, leaving them vulnerable to luck and circumstance.
Manifesting is very self-involved. The wants of the manifester are central to their focus and the use of their mental energy and time.
If you rely solely on mental power to achieve your desires, you will not succeed. Try to consider the various factors that support and resist your goals. Finally, remember that sometimes the thoughts we think are imaginative, fictive, fanciful or fantastic. It is enriching and positive that in many cases, our thoughts do not come true. NSA NSA
PTI |
Jul 11, 2024
Birmingham
Birmingham , Have you tried manifesting? It’s hard to escape on social media – the idea that you can will what you desire into reality through the power of belief. This could be financial success, romantic love or sporting glory.
Singer Dua Lipa, who headlined Glastonbury festival in June 2024, has said that performing on Friday night at the festival was “on her dream board”. “If you’re manifesting out there, be specific – because it might happen!”
Manifesting gained popularity quickly during the pandemic. By 2021, the 3-6-9 manifestation method was famous. A TikTok viewed over a million times, for instance, explains this “no fail manifesting technique”. You write down what you want three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times before you go to bed and repeating until it comes true. Now, content creators are explaining countless methods to speak your dreams into reality.
But the idea that if you wish for something hard enough it will happen isn’t new. It grew out of the self-help movement. Some early popular books that peddled this idea include Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich from as long ago as 1937, and Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life from 1984.
The trend really took off with Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, a book published in 2006 which claims you can bring about whatever you desire through the power of manifestation. It has sold more than 35 million copies and boasts many celebrity fans. Drawing upon the “law of attraction”, Byrne proclaims: “Your whole life is a manifestation of the thoughts that go on in your head.”
Manifesting as an intellectual vice
But there is a dark side to manifesting. Popular trends such as the 3-6-9 manifestation method promote obsessive and compulsive behavioural patterns, and they also encourage flawed thinking habits and faulty reasoning.
Manifesting is a form of wishful thinking, and wishful thinking leads to false conclusions, often through the inaccurate weighing of evidence. The wishful thinker overinflates their optimism about the likelihood of a preferred outcome. In philosophical terms, this kind of thinking is called an “intellectual vice”: it blocks a rational person’s attainment of knowledge.
Manifesting urges people to dream big and imagine in detail everything they desire. This sets people’s expectations unnaturally high, setting them up for failure and disappointment. It’s arguably a form of toxic positivity.
If you believe your own thoughts have the power to create reality, you may end up downplaying or ignoring practical actions and the efforts of others. You might manifest by saying: “I attract positive things to me”. But in doing so, you may not notice or credit the role of luck, chance, privilege and circumstance in explaining why some things happen and others do not.
Logical errors
Manifesting leads to logical errors. Someone who practices manifesting – and who finds that something they manifested comes true – is likely to attribute these desired outcomes to their prior hoping or wishing. But this does not mean hoping was the cause of the outcome. Just because one came before the other does not mean it was the cause: correlation does not imply causation.
If you believe the power of wishing for something results in what you want coming true, you will disproportionately attribute your mental activity with causal efficacy over other causes.
For instance, if you study hard for an exam and achieve a good grade, you might end up attributing this outcome to the daily mantra or repeated affirmations you said leading up to the test, rather than crediting the effort you put into studying. For your next test, you might keep on manifesting, but study less.
And when a hoped-for outcome does not occur, you might find yourself accounting for it in positive or fatalistic terms: the universe has something better planned. The negative outcome becomes additional evidence that you should still think positively, and so you won’t change your approach.
While it may seem initially appealing, manifesting may also encourage victim blaming: that if someone had thought more positively, an outcome would have been different. It also fails to encourage people to make backup plans, leaving them vulnerable to luck and circumstance.
Manifesting is very self-involved. The wants of the manifester are central to their focus and the use of their mental energy and time.
If you rely solely on mental power to achieve your desires, you will not succeed. Try to consider the various factors that support and resist your goals. Finally, remember that sometimes the thoughts we think are imaginative, fictive, fanciful or fantastic. It is enriching and positive that in many cases, our thoughts do not come true. NSA NSA
Tao Yuanming — Substance, Shadow, Spirit
Intersecting with Eternity
形影神
The recluse-poet Tao Yuanming (陶淵明 or 陶潛, 365-427 CE) is famed for having given up service to the state for a life of leisure, writing, drinking, and occasional agricultural pursuits. He is the archetype of a man who has rejected the onerous demands of the day to pursue instead the cultivation of the self. This quest for quietude, one also tinged with worldly concerns and fears, is recorded in poems that, for over 1600 years, have inspired artists and writers alike.
***
Tao Yuanming’s poem ‘Substance, Shadow, and Spirit’ addresses ancient and abiding tensions between lived reality, aspiration and transcendence. Referred to and quoted by writers over the ages, Tao’s message also featured in Confessions 懺悔錄, an agonised reflection on the dilemmas of life, work and politics in modern China published by the journalist Huang Yuansheng 黃遠生 in 1915, shortly before he was assassinated in San Francisco by associates of Yuan Shikai, republican China’s president-cum-emperor.
In Confessions, Huang wrote that living under Yuan Shikai he had become ‘schizophrenic‘ and, referring to Tao Yuanming, he mourns the fact that although his soul is dead his body lives on, like an automaton, in service to pettifogging existence. For China to reform and grow, he declares ‘I must first question myself, for if I am incapable of being a man what right do I have to criticize others, let alone the society and the state?’ What matters, above all, he declares is a spirit of ‘independence and self-respect’ 獨立自尊. Decades later, Liu Xiaobo would echo these sentiments in his appeal in June 1989 for people to confront their own failings, to confess their limitations and to seek redemption through action. (For more on Huang and Liu, see Confession, Redemption, Death: Liu Xiaobo and the Protest Movement of 1989, 1990; and also Liu Xiaobo on the Inspiration of New York, 31 December 2021.)
The quest to reconcile ‘substance’ and ‘shadow’ marks Chinese life into the twenty-first century. The agonies of writers like Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai would, for some, be resolved through self-renewal under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party. Although that rebirth was agonised and short-lived, the call for confession and ‘self-revolution’ 自我革命 is once more a feature of contemporary Chinese life, advocated by none other than Xi Jinping, the party-state-army’s Chairman of Everything.
The contemporary recasting of an ancient dilemma according to Party dogma hardly appeals to everyone. In an era of ‘involution’, ‘lying flat’ and eremitism, the fatalism of the Spirit in Tao Yuanming’s poem finds a ready resonance:
甚念傷吾生，正宜委運去。
縱浪大化中，不喜亦不懼。
應盡便須盡，無復獨多慮。
Dwelling on such things wounds my very life.
The right thing to do is to leave things to Fate,
Let go and float along on the great flux of things,
Not overjoyed but also not afraid.
When it is time to go then we should simply go.
There is nothing, after all, that we can do about it.
***
Elsewhere I have noted that the lively tension between Substance, Shadow and Spirit 身、影、神, as discussed in the following poem by Tao Yuanming, best reflects my notion of what I call The Other China. Engagement, questioning, self-doubt and transcendence are recurring themes both in China Heritage and in its various precursors.
Tao Yuanming’s work is specific to one place and a particular time in dynastic history, but its appeal reaches beyond the narrow confines of religion, state ideology and heedless materialism. The words of Stefan Zweig, which are quoted in the introduction to Intersecting with Eternity, and what he calls ‘the invisible republic of the spirit’ come to mind:
Whoever makes his home within this invisible realm becomes a citizen of the world. He is the heir, not of one people but of all peoples. Henceforth he is an indweller in all tongues and in all countries, in the universal past and the universal future.
We would suggest that the ‘spirit’ that Zweig evoked over a century ago resonates today with the Spirit 神 of Tao Yuanming’s haunting poem.
***
***
This chapter in the series Intersecting with Eternity is a companion piece to three essays on Tao Yuanming in The Tower of Reading. The first focusses on Tao himself. In the other two, the celebrated poets Su Dongpo and Lu You reflect on his inspiration.
My thanks to Callum Smith for his help with the layout of William Acker’s translation of Tao Yuanming’s poem.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
12 July 2024
***
Also in Intersecting with Eternity
- A Note from The Tower of Reading on the Double Tenth 石如飛白木如籀, 10 October 2023
- A Solitary Pursuit — ‘… then begins a journey in my head’, 5 December 2023
- So Starts the Spring, 4 February 2024
- In Cloudy Mountains, an Impossible Realm, 30 April 2024
- An Ascension, 28 May 2024
- Kinship of the Soul, 30 May 2024
- Out of Range 彀外遺少, 25 May 2018
***
Substance, Shadow, and Spirit
Tao Yuanming
translated by William Acker
Whether nobly born or humble, whether wise or simple, there is none who does not diligently seek to spare his own life, but in so doing men are greatly deluded. Therefore I have done my best to set forth the reasons for this in the form of an argument between Substance and Shadow which is finally resolved by Spirit, who expounds Nature. May gentlemen of an inquiring turn of mind take it to heart.
貴賤賢愚，莫不營營以惜生，斯甚惑焉；故極陳形影之苦，言神辨自然以釋之。好事君子，共取其心焉。
Substance Speaks to Shadow
Heaven and Earthendure and do not perish;Mountains and riversdo not change with time.Grasses and trees partakein this constant principle,Although the frost and dewcause them to wilt or flourish.Of all things Man, they say,is most intelligent and wise,And yet he aloneis not like them in this.Appearing by chancehe comes into this world,And suddenly is gonenever to return.How is one to feelthe lack of such a oneWhen even friends and kinfolkscarcely think of him?Only that the thingshe used in life are left —Coming across themmay make us shed a tear.I have no artto soar and be transfigured [1]That it must be soI cannot ever question.I only beg that youwill agree with what I sayAnd when we can get winenever perversely refuse it!
Shadow Replies to Substance
I cannot tell youhow to preserve life,And have always been ineptin the art of guarding it. [2]Yet truly I desireto roam on Kun and Hua [3]But they are far awayand the road to them is lost.Ever since I met youand have been with youI have known no othersorrows and joys but yours.Though I seemed to leave youwhen you rested in the shade,I never really left youuntil the day was done. [4]But this associationcannot last forever;Mysteriously at lastwe shall vanish in the darkness.After our death —that our name should also perishAt the mere thought of thisthe Five Passions seethe within me.Should we not laborand strive with all our mightTo do good in such a waythat men will love us for it?Wine, as they say,may dissipate our grief,But how could it everbe compared to fame?
Spirit Resolves the Argument
The Great Balance [5]has no personal power,And its myriad veinsinterlace of themselves. [6]That Man has his placeamong the Three Forces, [7]This is certainlydue to my presence with you.And although I amdifferent from you both,At birth I am addedand joined together with you.Bound and committedto sharing good and evilHow can we avoidmutual exchange?The Three Emperorswere the Primal Sages.Now, after all,whither are they gone?And though Grandfather Peng [8]achieved longevityYet he too had to gowhen he still wished to stay.Old and youngall suffer the same death,The wise and the foolish —uncounted multitudes.Getting drunk dailyone may perhaps forgetBut is not wine a thingthat shortens one’s life?And in doing goodyou may always find pleasureBut no one is obligedto give you praise for it.Dwelling on such thingswounds my very life.The right thing to dois to leave things to Fate,Let go and float alongon the great flux of things,Not overjoyedbut also not afraid.When it is time to gothen we should simply go.There is nothing, after all,that we can do about it.
***
Notes
[1] According to popular taoism, which was gradually becoming institutionalized into a church in Tao’s time, the adept could achieve these things by the practice of taoist yoga (a system of breath control), an elaborate and strict sexual regimen and, above all, a strict diet with avoidance of grain and meat and reliance on vegetables, herbs, and drugs of various kinds. Tao here shows himself to be rather skeptical of such claims.
[2] This refers specifically to taoist yoga, sexual regimen, and diet, which at the very least were supposed to confer longevity.
[3] After long and successful practice of “the art of preserving life,” culminating perhaps in the discovery of some elixir of immortality, the taoist adept was supposed to become transfigured. His very body was transformed into some finer substance, and he soared away to certain realms of the Immortals, where he lived in houses of gold and subsisted on air and dew. The Kunlun mountains far in the west, Mount Hua at the great bend of the Yellow River, and Mount Penglai floating in the midst of the Eastern Ocean were believed to be such abodes.
[4] The material soul (po [魄]), which unlike the spirit (shen [神] or hun [魂]) remains with the body after death like a sort of lingering eddy of animal magnetism, was identified with the visible shadow. But it remained with the body, whether visible or not.
[5] The Tao (Way) is the sum totality of all things, spirit, matter and the laws by which they operate, conceived of as one great monad. But though ultimately all is one, this monad expresses itself, operates, and ceaselessly creates through two apparently opposing forces, yin (shade) and yang (light). These terms are applied very widely to account for all sorts of dualities such as positive and negative, male and female, active and passive, etc. Neither one of these forces ever destroys or diminishes the other; the quantity and strength of each in these in the universe as a whole remain constant. The term Da Jun [大鈞] (“great scales,” “great balance”) expresses this truth, and so may almost be taken as an equivalent to Tao itself.
[6] Within the Tao, yin and yang, spirit and matter, the passive and the active, are all inexhaustible, indestructible, and equal. All phenomena and effects, visible or invisible, are produced by their ceaseless motion and constant interplay. Although this view of the universe leaves no room for a personal God, or deus ex machina, it cannot be called atheistic or materialistic, but is closer to what we know as pantheism or monism.
[7] The Three Cosmic Forces (San Cai [三才]) are Heaven, Earth, and Man. Chinese thought is by no means so unanthropocentric as is commonly said.
[8] The Chinese Methuselah, a very shadowy figure who had no special cult, but was merely proverbial for longevity.
***
Source:
- William Acker, T’ao the Hermit: Sixty Poems by T’ao Chi’en (365-427 A.D.), London: Thames and Hudson, 1952. See also Arthur Waley, Substance, Shadow, and Spirit.
Original text:
形影神
陶淵明
貴賤賢愚，莫不營營以惜生，斯甚惑焉；故極陳形影之苦，言神辨自然以釋之。好事君子，共取其心焉。
形贈影
天地長不沒，山川無改時。
草木得常理，霜露榮悴之。
謂人最靈智，獨復不如茲。
適見在世中，奄去靡歸期。
奚覺無一人，親識豈相思。
但余平生物，舉目情淒洏。
我無騰化術，必爾不復疑。
願君取吾言，得酒莫苟辭。
影答形
存生不可言，衛生每苦拙。
誠願游昆華，邈然茲道絕。
與子相遇來，未嘗異悲悅。
憩蔭若暫乖，止日終不別。
此同既難常，黯爾俱時滅。
身沒名亦盡，念之五情熱。
立善有遺愛，胡為不自竭。
酒雲能消憂，方此詎不劣。
神釋
大鈞無私力，萬理自森著。
人為三才中，豈不以我故。
與君雖異物，生而相依附。
結托既喜同，安得不相語。
三皇大聖人，今復在何處。
彭祖愛永年，欲留不得住。
老少同一死，賢愚無複數。
日醉或能忘，將非促齡具。
立善常所欣，誰當為汝譽。
甚念傷吾生，正宜委運去。
縱浪大化中，不喜亦不懼。
應盡便須盡，無復獨多慮。
***
***
Note on two calligraphic works by Tong Yang-Tze 董陽孜:
- 大象無形，《道德經·第四十一章》
- 知其白守其黑，《道德經·第二十八章》
Ancient Buddhist temple in Xinjiang stirs controversy
By Jilil Kashgary for RFA Uyghur
2024.07.10
2024.07.10
A view of the Mor Stupa in Kashgar prefecture in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Sept. 24, 2012.
Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty ImagesTwo earthen pillars, eroded by sand, in barren terrain are all that’s left of an ancient Buddhist temple in the far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang.
Chinese historians and archaeologists assert that a 7th century Chinese empress ordered the construction of the Mor Temple — known locally as Mora, or “chimney” in the Uyghur language — one one of the earliest Buddhist sites in the region.
The ruins show China’s influence in shaping the history and culture of the region — home today to 11 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs — going back centuries, state-run media said.
“They are a powerful testimony to the diversity, unity and inclusiveness of Chinese civilization,” according to a June 3 report by the China News Service.
But experts outside China dispute those claims, saying the Mor Stupa, or pagoda, and other temple structures were built in more of an Indian style.
And it's highly unlikely that Wu Zetian, empress from 690-705 CE during the Tang Dynasty, was involved in the construction of pagodas because it was hundreds of miles away from her court in central China, they say.
Instead, the Chinese government-backed research may be driven more by Beijing’s efforts to expand its cultural influence in the region, where it is actively seeking to Sinicize Uyghur culture and Muslim practices, they said.
“Empress Wu, the famous female emperor of that time, was avidly promoting Buddhism but not necessarily was she promoting it out in Xinjiang,” said Johan Elverskog, a professor of history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and author of the book A History of Uyghur Buddhism.
“There is no way that the Tang was involved in building things that far to the west,” he said.
Before Islam
Before Islam arrived in China in the 7th century, Buddhism did flourish in what China today calls Xinjiang, or “New Territories” — but which the Uyghurs refer to as East Turkistan, the name of the Uyghur nation that briefly existed in the mid-20th century.
Western archaeologists and Buddhism researchers believe that Buddhism began to spread to Xinjiang during the Kushan Empire, which controlled the western and northern Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang and ruled over parts of what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan and India between the 1st century BCE and the 3rd century CE.
Some historical documents show Buddhism spread to the region from Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, Elverskog said, while other documents indicate that the Kingdom of Khotan, in present-day Hotan, adopted Buddhism as the official state religion in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
Archaeological digs at the Mor Temple — about 30 kilometers (19 miles) northeast of Kashgar — since 2019 have determined that the original complex was built in the 3rd century, according to the China News Service report.
It said that elements of Chinese architecture appeared between the 7th and 10th centuries, indicating the prevalence of Chinese Buddhism.
Artifacts discovered around the site reflect Indian and Central Asian Buddhist traditions as well as the influence of the Central Plains, an area along the Yellow River that is believed to be the cradle of Chinese civilization, it said.
But Elverskog said that while there was a Chinese military presence in the region during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), no Buddhist temples were built.
‘United’ by Chinese culture
The idea that Uyghur culture, including its ancient Buddhist history and structures, should be supplanted by Chinese culture was summed up in a speech by Pan Yue, head of the State Council’s National Ethnic Affairs Commission, at an international forum on Xinjiang’s history and future held in June in Kashgar.
“Although Xinjiang’s culture is diverse, it exists in unity, and the most important factor that unites them is Chinese culture,” said Pan, who has been in his role since June 2022.
“Xinjiang should be studied from the perspective of the common history of the Chinese nation and the multipolar unity of the Chinese nation, and Xinjiang should be understood from the perspective of a region where many cultures and religions coexist and ethnic groups live together,” he said.
Kahar Barat, a Uyghur-American historian known for his work on Buddhism and Islam in Xinjiang, said there was “absolutely no Chinese influence” in the Buddhist culture of places like Kashgar and Kucha, another city that once had many Buddhist temples.
He said Kashgar and Kucha were part of the Hindu-Greek Gandhara Buddhist culture that existed in present-day Pakistan from the 3rd century BCE to the 12th century CE.
“They call it the Gandhara art,” he said. “It’s the Gandhara culture created by the Buddhism developed in Kashmir and Pakistan. Therefore, the Buddha paintings and temples in Hotan, Kashgar, Kucha have the influence of Gandhara culture.”
Furthermore, Buddhist temples during the Tang Dynasty were modeled after those in India, making it an exaggeration to say that the Mor Stupa and other temple structures reflected the architectural style of that era, he said.
“Pavilion-style construction is a style of India Buddhism,” he told RFA. “Hence, all the pavilions in China are inspired by these styles. The building styles in the Han Dynasty were later influenced by Buddhist vihara-style construction.”
Elverskog agreed that the Mor Temple was built in Indian style.
“It’s obviously based on precedence in northwest India,” he said. “That was the main source of the Buddhist culture in Hotan and particularly coming from India. … So the Buddhism, the iconography, the artwork, was heavily based on northwestern Indian models.”
Xia Ming, a political science professor at the College of Staten Island in New York, said China's interpretation of historical Uyghur Buddhism as part of Chinese Buddhism shows the tendency of the Chinese Communist Party to seek its current legitimacy from Chinese dynasties dating back thousands of years.
“If you look at the thousands of years of Chinese history,” he said, “you will see that the Chinese Communist Party will pick and choose any historical node and talk about it if it is useful to them.”
Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
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