The Nomadic Alternative – Page 199

costume - or none at all - accompanied unheard of rudeness and

drunkenness. One such was Mi Fei, painter of cloud-like mountains

and mountain-like clouds, calligrapher, permanent drunk, petromaniac,

connoisseur of ink-stones and archaic bronzes, hater of domesticated

animals and personal filth, who roamed from one hermitage to the

next or sluiced down fast-flowing rivers in a skiff, his important

art collection always beside him.

But the freedom of mountain solitudes was not their only attrac-

tion. For in the mountains grew magical herbs to excite the curious

pharmacologist. Gentlemen aesthetes retired to gather elixirs of

immortality in the grey hills, and presumably found them for they

never returned. The poet Tu Fu tells how his friend Li Po "that

most brilliant intellectual jewel of the Imperial Court" finally

cut himself loose from the Imperial purse-strings and "is now

tracking the mystic Way between Liang and Sung. We have made arrange-

ments to pick magical herbs. "Narcotics, wine and thehardships of

travel" and "the many-branchings of the Way", were the vehicles that

led Li Po to that mystical state known as "Wind-Wheel Samadhi" when

the traveller feels himself spiralling through the clouds like

the whirling wind.

The sacred place of a Taoist was a patch of mountainside with

some falling water. Mountain tops communed with the sky and mediated

between heaven and men. They were identified with YANG, the mascu-

line principle or positive force. Water, intuitive and secretive,

flowed into the earth, was feminine and YIN. And from early times

pilgrimages to the mountain-tops celebrated power rising in spring

(yang) and the passing of winter (yin). But the Buddha had also

roamed the forests and mountains, and when Buddhism arrived in

China, Taoist contemplation of natural wonders combined with the

ascetic wandering of the bhikku. Buddhism acquired a scenic aspect,

and the malodorous niches of Buddhist anchorites were substituted

for quiet refuges in settings of outstanding beauty.

The stultifying worldliness of some Buddhist orders further

stimulated the flight to the hills. Many monks declined to move at