The Ever-Wandering “Eye of the Heart”

- concerning the works of Zhu Hai

 

Zhong Biao

 

Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

This type of questioning has today already become like a mere drop in the vast flood of information. As we are swept along, who bends to listen to this soft eternal voice, who stops in his steps towards desire, and who even can take these questions on board?

In the consumer age, which drives us to struggle so competitively towards all types of goals, any ranking of the famous raises the same question: that is, just what is success? Our fondest dreams have been surreptitiously reduced to the very bull’s eye of desire, with success or failure being an examination of our precarious psychological balance. As such, the most likely price to pay is that we cannot help but use achievement of the highest recognized standard of value to prove our own existence. Even belief itself is lost as the goals determined by contemporary society gradually replace what we had been seeking quite independently. Life’s capacity to stimulate self-determination has been overtaken by the larger goals of common custom.

Zhu Hai’s works have from the beginning avoided the life of living beings, and have avoided the worries that inevitably entangle us. That type of freedom to see others when they cannot see you makes life able to unfold on its own.

Precisely because concealed, and so having the chance to escape from the common standards of value, this type of looking - as if the soul is peeping out - encounters real life only by chance, and opens up for us a metaphysical and surreal existence. From earth, from the stamens of flowers, from bubbles, from fleeting clouds, to the streets, war, and laboratories, this eyeball matter is ever more distantly separated from any specific body of flesh, and is directly conjoined with the spirit to become an “eye of the heart”. Because it has neither identity, nor status, nor honor on its material carrier, so this “eye of the heart” has nothing to fear and nothing to seek. It is able to continually simplify over-elaborate desires, and it can take a broad view of the world. Ever-wandering, it merely observes…….This journey that Zhu Hai is undertaking can also allow us, this author included, to free ourselves, but perhaps it can also give a new perspective, letting us hide behind it, following the “eye of the heart” in its search for freedom.

The Analects of Confucius say: “If in the morning I learn the Way, in the evening I am content to die”. Death here means the withering away of the body. If you can agree with this you will be quite clear that the body is basically just a tool for us to use. Once you’ve finished using the tool, you can throw it out, and take on a different form to continue existence. That’s what the Way tells us. If you can’t agree with this, then life is the same as the body, and just like a tool – once used up, it can’t take on a further life. For anyone who hasn’t learnt the Way and is therefore afraid of death, this is because the body is everything. Here, whichever way we read it, this lesson from remote history can at least enlighten us to use limitless directions to exceed our limited goals.

 “Zhu Hai, male, born in 1980 in Chongqing…..” In many years time, this information will perhaps be ever more well-known. In many years time, people in the future will surely meet with this “eye of the heart”. From some place we have passed they will find a sign which will enable them to open up this long-buried story, and go to question this wandering spirit.

 

15^th April, Chongqing            

翻译者 Tom Whitten       

作者：钟飙