Page 168 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

id; Soul suffering the torments of hell
Stone reliefsculpture on a cliff at Ta-tsu.
Szechwan. Sung Dynasty.

craftsmen on the cliff at Ta-tsu in Szechwan. These vivid carvings
belong to a tradition of popular didactic sculpture that survived
till recent times in Buddhist and Taoist temples and has been vig-
orously revived in the People's Republic, a striking example being
the Rent Collection Courtyard o( 1965, illustrated on page 260.
CH'AN PAINTING IN Buddhism as a popular religion, however, never fully recovered
THE FIVE DYNASTIES from the suppression of 845. During the later T'ang the specula-
tive and Tantric seas decayed, partly because they had no roots on
Chinese soil. But for the Ch'an sect (known in Japan as Zen) the
position was different. Like Taoism, it emphasised quietism, self-
cultivation, the freeing of the mind from all intellectual and ma-
terial dross so as to leave it open and receptive to those flashes of
blinding illumination when suddenly, for a moment, the truth is
revealed. To create the right atmosphere for meditation, the Ch'an
monks built their temples in beautiful secluded places, where the
only sound might be the wind in the trees and the rain falling on
the stones of the temple courtyard. Their aims, and the very tech-
niques by which they were to be realised, had much in common
with those of the Taoists. although they were a good deal more
strenuous. So it was chiefly in Ch'an that Buddhism, after being
on Chinese soil for nearly a thousand years, finally came to terms
with Chinese ideals.
In seeking a technique with which to express the intensity and
immediacy of his intuition, the Ch'an painter turned to the brush
and monochrome ink, and with the fierce concentration of the cal-
ligrapher proceeded to record his own moments of truth in the