Watching the Tree:
A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Tradition and Spiritual Wisdom
by Adeline Yen Mah
Reviewed by George T Merriman
When Adeline Yen Mah was 12 years old she went to school at the Sacred Heart Canossian Convent School in Hong Kong. Because of her step-mother's antipathy towards her, she was never allowed to go home. Finally, one freezing Chinese New Year her parents did send a car and allowed her to go home for the first time. They told her to sleep on a cot in her grandfather's room. Adeline was thrilled for this chance to talk to him and tell him all about her new religion.
With the help of her Bible and her English-Chinese dictionary she tried to convert him from Buddhism to Catholicism. But she discovered that many English terms didn't exist in Chinese. And the Chinese translations that did exist didn't represent what she was trying to say. Her grandfather, Ye Ye, had particular trouble with the words "Jesus," "miracle" and "sin."
"You say Jesus is God as well as the son of God," he commented. "How can He be both? And then you can't even tell me His surname! In China in the old days emperors were called 'Sons of Heaven' but every emperor had a surname!"
Much of what we accept as "religious" is a part of our culture -- so much so that we have a hard time separating our cultural beliefs from our religious beliefs. Is Christmas a part of our culture or part of our religion? Is our fear of the number 13 cultural or religious? Why do most of us dress up when we go to church -- is that cultural or religious?
We seldom think about these things because we swim in our culture -- impermeated by 20 centuries of Christianity -- like fish in water. But Adeline Yen Mah --who spent her childhood in China, her adolescence in Hong Kong, her university years in England and her professional life in the United States -- has a good understanding of both Chinese and Western cultures. And although a Christian she finds that many of her most spiritual values come from her Chinese cultural heritage. It is this heritage that she wants to explain to the American reader.
One of China's most enduring cultural legacies are a treasure of (usually) four character aphorisms. They are the remnants of the old scholarly Chinese language which, although very short, tell a story. Thus, by just using four characters, a Chinese author or speaker can communicate a message that it would require an English speaker to use 50, 100 or even many more words.
For example, the four characters pictured above in the small box on the front cover of the book, shou zhu de tu, allude to the following story:
Once there was a boy who was told by his master to catch a rabbit. He went into the woods and looked around. Lo and behold, at that very moment, he saw a rabbit running along at full speed. As he watched in astonishment, the rabbit ran smack into a tree and knocked itself unconscious. All he had to do was to pick it up. For the rest of his life the boy waited behind the same tree in the hope that more rabbits would do the same thing.
So, what does that mean? A Chinese using that aphorism -- which was coined by a Chinese philosopher over 2000 years ago -- would be telling his listeners/readers that just because something happened in the past, there's no guarantee that it will happen again in the future. Change is the only constant.
But not so with philosophical or religious truths. In China the Yi Jing (traditionally spelled I Ching) -- thought to be over 4000 years old -- has helped shape, and is continuing to shape, Chinese thought. The Yi Jing contains the important concept of yin/yang. These two things are neither competitive nor exclusionist, but, rather, complementary, interdependent and eventually transform into one another. Yin cannot exist without yang and vice versa. Without night there can be no day, without white there can be no black.
Another important concept in the Yi Jing is that of the 5 elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Yin and yang and the five forces form the basis of Chinese thought. They underpin such Chinese practices such as feng shui, qi gong and taiji chuan. Traditional Chinese medicine and religious beliefs such as Taoism and Buddhism are also influenced by the Yi Jing.
Of all the ancient Chinese classics, the one most frequently translated into foreign languages is a slim volume written 2500 years ago: the Dao De Jing (traditionally spelled Tao Te Ching -- the Classic of the Tao and Its Virtue). The reputed author was someone named Laozi, who in his old age travelled west to India, leaving his writing in the hands of a border guard. The central theme revolves around the dao, which means "the way" or "the road." As a philosophy, Daoism deals with the unchangeable, eternal and pervasive oneness of the universe. The book begins:
The dao that can be expressed is not the unchanging dao;
The name that can be defined is not the eternal name.
The dao is the ancestor of all things. It is powerful but is also invisible and inaudible. The dao operates by non-action (wu wei): "The dao takes no action but nothing is left undone."
The wisdom of Laozi was supplemented and expanded two centuries later by Zhuangzi, who wrote the book also known as Zhuangzi, considered to be one of the most important books of Daoism. Zhuangzi penned the story that if you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day; but if you teach him how to fish, you'll feed him and his family for life. Man should see his lifecycle of birth, growth, decay and death as part of Nature and accept change to be the dao of everything in the universe.
Another Chinese to use daoist ideas was Sunzi in his military masterpiece The Art of War. Sunzi sees dao as a principle of harmony that must be cultivated by the ruler to obtain the consent of the ruled. To read an online version of The Art of War, edited by the reviewer, click here.
For over 2000 years, Confucius (Kongzi or Kongfuzi in Chinese) had a greater influence on China than any other individual. He was a philosopher, not a prophet, and Confucianism was a way of life, not a religion. He taught that xiao (translated as "filial piety") was the root of virtue and the origin of culture. Morality in China was based on this concept.
Confucian beliefs were revolutionary when they were first propounded. Every man was given the opportunity to rise in the world through education. Titles and ranks were now determined by ability and not by heredity. "In learning," said Confucius, "there should be no class distinction."
Confucius seldom spoke of the supernatural; he advocated a doctrine of practical common sense which attempted to create order and harmony in the society of his era. He was China's' first educator and foremost sociologist. He taught that the ruler's right to rule was given as a mandate from Heaven. A ruler who failed to live up to this mandate of Heaven because of personal amorality and corruption should abdicate in favor of a virtuous man; if necessary, he should be overthrown by revolution.
Buddhism entered China gradually -- starting in the first century AD -- first primarily through Central Asia and, later, by way of the trade routes around and through Southeast Asia. The Buddhism that first became popular in China was deeply coloured with magical practices, making it compatible with popular Daoism. It was widely believed that Laozi had been reborn in India as the Buddha. Many Chinese emperors worshiped Laozi and the Buddha on the same altar. The first translations of Buddhist sutras into Chinese--namely those dealing with such topics as breath control and mystical concentration--utilized a Daoist vocabulary to make the Buddhist faith intelligible to the Chinese.
About 520 AD an Indian monk named Bodhidharma brought a new kind of buddhism to China. Because he taught meditation as a return to the Buddha's spiritual precepts, his school was known as the Dhyana (meditation) sect. The word was converted in the Chinese to Chan and in the Japanese to Zen.
Zen teaches that the Buddha-nature, or potential to achieve enlightenment, is inherent in everyone but lies dormant because of ignorance. It is best awakened not by the study of scriptures, the practice of good deeds, rites and ceremonies, or worship of images but by a sudden breaking through of the boundaries of common, everyday, logical thought. Training in the methods leading to such an enlightenment is best transmitted personally from master to disciple. To become enlightened, however, the transformation has to come from within the disciple.
Qi is a difficult word to translate from Chinese into English. A person gets qi from air, food and social interaction. It can be replenished by a healthy diet, physical exercise, undisturbed sleep, good friends and laughter. The concept of qi is crucial to qi gong, taiji chuan and acupuncture, among others. The author tells of going to a Chinese doctor with her aunt in Shanghai because of a lump in her breast. The doctor put four fingers on her aunt's wrist and sat in deep concentration for ten minutes with his fingers on her wrist. He then wrote out a prescription of herbs that the aunt was supposed to brew and drink. Thirty-one years later the author was again in Shanghai. She asked her aunt about the lump and her aunt told her that although the lump was still there, it had never grown any larger.
In European languages, the original meaning of the words "soul" and "spirit" is "breath." Both "soul" and qi can be considered "the breath of life," according to Ms. Yen, the principle force or energy that pervades all living creatures.
One of the author's professors told her in England: "As you mature as a medical student and delve ever deeper into the world of science, I predict that you will be driven to conclude that religion is childish nonsense." If you're curious as to why that never happened, you may want to read Watching the Tree for yourself.
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