Chapter Twenty: Thirty Spokes

Xiaoyao discovers a recently established study group now being conduceted by none other than Xiao Jing, assisted by Ling Ling and other past students from Shi Jie's restaurant.

Xiaoyao becomes obsessed with discovering the identity of the mysterious "Opener" for the group, and Ling Ling shows him her new "Wu Wei" tattoo.

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Xiaoyao Xingzhe, the self-styled carefree pilgrim, has lived and worked all over the world, having crossed the Gobi in a decrepit jeep, lived with a solitary monk in the mountains of Korea, dined with the family of the last emperor of China, and helped police with their enquiries in Amarillo, Texas.

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Transcript

Chapter Twenty: Thirty Spokes

 A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. (Dune)

The fierce sun glared down as I scurried from one patch of shade to another. Luckily this street had trees here and there. I squinted down at the scrap of paper. It had to be here somewhere, the Thirty Spokes Studio (三十輻文房 Sanshifu Wenfang).

 I had been sent to purchase brushes and paper for the monastery’s calligraphers, and they had insisted I get them from this place, over-riding my objections that there was a store much closer. 
Despite the heat, though, I was glad to revisit this section of the town, just for the feel, a wonderful combination of old China and--with the trees--an almost European atmosphere.

Ah! There it was.

The shop was cool after the hot summer sun, despite being open to the street. It wasn’t the chill of air-conditioning, but an effect of high ceilings and shade and slowly rotating fan blades high above.
I walked through rows of hanging brushes, ones for calligraphy, ones for painting, some of rabbit hair tips, others of wolf. Precious Huizhou ink sticks were embedded in embroidered boxes, gifts for discerning scholars. I ran my hand over the chill carved stone of Duan inkstones, dug from the pits in Canton, the miners always on the lookout for that special piece, the one with the prized phoenix eye.

I was just lifting the tight-fit lid on a stone with an exquisite carved dragon, when a female voice behind me said “You break it, you’ve bought it. See the sign? No touching.”

I turned.
The voice said, “Oh… it’s you. What are you doing here?”
It was Xiao Jing, Shijie’s student from the restaurant.

I took out the list and handed it to her. “The monastery wanted me to buy this stuff.” I paused before saying, “They insisted on me coming here. Must be them just having a joke.”
‘Maybe,” she said. “But it’s usually not that simple.” It was her turn to pause. “You know,” she said, “we are starting a new group, a new learning group. They might be suggesting that you should help.”
“Why don’t they just say that?”
“What is it about wu wei that you don’t get?” 

It was a flash of the old Xiao Jing coming out. Then she settled. “Real things are more subtle. A situation has to gel: gently, organically. Forcing something bends it out of shape. When something is beginning, it has to find its own balance. You’ve read Laozi, right? Chapters 63 and 64, among others?”
“Sure, yeah,” I said, looking around. “So when did you get a job here?”

“This isn’t just a job,” she said. “This is the new group venture. You know, like the restaurant used to be?”
I raised my eyebrows. Shijie--Xiao Jing’s teacher-- had explained. 

 This type of learning group is not an academic study group that anyone who is interested can join, it is a living organism, finely balanced, evolving.

 At a different time she’d told me:

If we take a business structure--and it need not be business, it can be any other type of structure--but when it is business, you can observe the state of the group through the state of the business. 
If it thrives, the balance is correct, both within the group and between the group and the surrounding matrix, its environment. The elements of the business form the study materials of the group, its theme, so to speak, reflecting both the mundane and the higher world.

 Xiao Jing watched me thinking. Finally she rolled her eyes and said “Come on, you can help me unload this shipment of xuan zhi that just arrived. It’s pretty heavy and the usual guy is off sick.”
We went to the back room which was full of cartons and boxes. As we shifted large paper rolls from a shipping container to low shelves, I asked her “Is Shijie involved?”
“No, she’s in another town. She has her own project.”
“So this is your venture, yours alone?”
“No, there are several of the restaurant group helping. You remember Ling Ling?”
I remembered the vivacious rather naughty girl who often sat with Xiao Jing, and nodded.

“We also have backup from the Monastery,” she said.
“Who?”
“A powerful friend. We call him The Opener. He opens our meetings, puts us on the right track for the night, establishes our connection with the spirit of the Dao.”
She raised one eyebrow. “You could well be here because of his suggestion,” she said.

A strange sensation invaded me, a chill crawling over my skin. I felt wheels, hidden wheels, moving and influencing my life, wheels of which I had--and could have--no knowledge.

“Or maybe not,” she added. “Come on, lift!”
We heaved a final roll on top of the stack, then stood back and dusted ourselves off.
“Thanks,” she said. “So, tonight is the weekly meeting. The group is new, not fully harmonised. They’ve only just started absorbing our introductory material.”

“How did you choose the members?”
“They are made up from several public low-level study groups, ones that anyone can join if they have a passing interest in Daoism, Buddhism, yangsheng and so on.”
“You run those groups too?”
“No, not necessarily. But we keep an eye on them, join in every so often, and observe.”“And then you invite the most keen, the most passionate?’

Here she laughed aloud. “Absolutely not. Those are often the most obsessed, the ones who base their whole identity on belonging to an elite spiritual group. We are looking for harmony, remember? People who can root themselves in the Dao but not adorn themselves with the outward trappings, not insist that everyone recognise how spiritual they are. Balance, harmony, effectiveness: those are the watchwords.”
I was silent for a while, taking this in. It matched what I had heard from the fat monk when I first approached him, so long ago, when he spoke of the pitfalls of learning.

“Basically,” she said, “we apply the aunty test.”

She saw my look and grinned. “The aunty test is: If I took this guy home and introduced him to my aunty, would she think he was weird? We want people who have a normal integration into society, but can also bring the results of a stabilised contact with higher learning into that mix, someone who can function on several levels at once.”

Ling Ling

Just then the girl Xiao Jing had spoken of earlier walked in.
“Lingling!” Xiao Jing said. “Look who’s here!”
Unlike Xiao Jing, Lingling looked happy to see me. “Xiaoyao! What wind blew you here?”
I had just started to explain when a customer rang the bell from the front, and Xiao Jing went to serve.
I asked Lingling how she had been, and then, before Xiao Jing could come back, I asked in a low voice, “You know Laozi chapters 63 and 64?” 
She nodded.
“Where in those chapters,” I said, “does it talk about getting the balance right at the beginning?”
“Well, the whole thing,” she said, “but especially those immortal lines from chapter 64:

 為之於未有，治之於未亂。
Wéi zhī yú wèi yǒu, zhì zhī yú wèi luàn.

Act before there’s a there there;
Fix it before it’s fucked up.

 Xiao Jing and the customer had come closer, and I heard him say “And also I’m looking for a calligraphy brush like Wang Xizhi used.”
“For kǎi style or running script?”
“Um, running script.”
“Well, he used rat whisker brushes for that. You can buy so-called “鼠毫筆 shǔ háo bǐ” in some brush shops but we don’t sell them.“
“Why not?”
“Because they are fake. They use cat hair. The brush-making techniques using real rat whiskers have been lost centuries ago. And the fake ones won’t give you the effect you are looking for.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Nowadays, a mixture of yellow weasel and goat hair gives you the best combination of suppleness and resilience. I’ve got some just over here …”

The voices moved away.
“How did Xiao Jing learn so much about brushes?” I asked in surprise.
“She’s been interested in calligraphy and painting since before I met her,” Ling Ling said. “Her father was a member of the famous Seal-Carving Society here in town. And Shijie encouraged her to learn as much as she could. Maybe she was thinking of this new group. Oh …,” Ling Ling looked at me, hesitating. “Did Xiao Jing tell you about it?”

“Yes,” I said.
“Oh, good,” she looked relieved. “In fact, she suggested I might help.”
“Really?” Ling Ling looked pleased. “Well, you should come by tonight then. 7:30.”

Xiao Jing returned. “I have wrapped up your order and put it on the front counter,” she said to me. Then she turned to Lingling. “Xiaoyao is interested in not-doing,” she said, pointing at her arm. “Why don’t you show Xiaoyao your wuwei tattoo?”
Ling Ling lifted her sleeve and turned her inner arm toward me. “What do you think?” she said.
I frowned as I bent over and peered at the skin. “I can’t see anything,” I said, straightening. As I looked at their faces, I went slowly red.

Lingling took me by the shoulders, turned me around, and gave me a gentle push toward the door. “See you tonight,” she said.

 Stonewall

Back at the monastery I delivered the brushes and paper, and tried to find out who the “powerful friend”, the mysterious “opener,” was for the new group’s activities. I was intrigued to know who it might be. And lurking in my barely conscious mind was the curious sense to know if I had some part to play in events beyond my immediate world, events that might draw me into paths I could not predict.

Cook shook his head, and the fat monk held up his palms facing me as he backed away. “The Abbot?” I asked, but they both shrugged. “Surely not Little Fang!” I said. They smiled.
“Why don’t you just go along to the meeting and find out?” was the suggestion.
Having no choice, I turned and made my hungry way back down the mountain.

 The Opener

I ate some soup noodles at a street stall before heading over to the Thirty Spokes Studio. Then I followed the noise to the back of the shop and climbed a set of stairs. At the top I found the original large rectangular room had been shaped by the addition of walls into an octagon. Above us, a pattern of stars was etched into the ceiling. People milled about in apparent chaos, but chairs were being set up around the walls, leaving an empty space in the middle of the room.

Small groups or couples spoke to each other, but attention was increasingly being directed to that empty space until, at what seemed the precisely correct moment, Xiao Jing stepped into the space and said quietly. “Let’s begin, if you will. Find your seats.”
I found a spot. Ling Ling sat next to me.

As Xiao Jing spoke a small square dais was carried out into the middle of the room by two men. One had been a cook at the restaurant, the other a waiter. The dais was of some light material, and was further covered with a plain cloth and a cushion placed in the middle.

Obviously this was the set-up for the “opener”, the great man who may--or may not--have been responsible for my presence there that night.
The lights were dimmed very slightly and the room settled. Then everyone stood and bowed as a small figure walked out, climbed the dais and settled himself cross-legged on the cushion.

It was the gatekeeper from the monastery.

Everyone resumed their seats, and with a sense of anticipation I waited for him to speak. I glanced around as silence grew. Some sat with eyes closed, some looked down at the floor, but no-one, except me, it seemed, felt any sense of awkwardness.
Long minutes passed. Then the gatekeeper rocked back, unfolded his legs, and climbed down from the dais. He gave a slight bow as he passed Xiao Jing, who returned it as she walked out into the middle of the room and sat casually on the edge of the dais.

 Ghee

“Now, last month,” she said, “you were all given a phrase to contemplate: 

黃婆勸飲醍醐酒，每日薰蒸醉一場
Huángpó quàn yǐn tíhú jiǔ, měirì xūnzhēng zuì yìcháng

 The matchmaker says:  Have some Tihu booze
For a bout of smoky steamy tipsiness everyday!

“So what did you all come up with?”
A moment’s hesitation, then a young man said a bit sheepishly “I found myself drinking more.”
Xiao Jing just nodded, no hint of judgement on her face, while other hands went up.
“I never heard of Tihu wine,” said a woman with glasses, “but I found it mentioned in a book of food therapy. It seems it is milk mixed with white distilled spirits.”
“I looked for the origin of the sentence,” a young woman said with a trace of pride in her voice. “It comes from Zhang Sanfeng’s Rootless Tree Verse.”[1]

At this there was a burst of excitement. “Isn’t Zhang Sanfeng the guy who invented Tai Chi? Maybe this has to do with drunken fist!” Someone else chimed in, “I loved that movie. Jackie Chan was so funny.”

This was the point Xiao Jing broke in with a hint of audible steel. “Here I will be the voice of discipline, just to bring us back to the topic of focus. Anyone have anything else on Tihu?”
“Tihu is a word used in Buddhism, a Buddhist friend told me,” said a weedy young man. “But he’d never heard of Tihu wine.”
“So what does Tihu mean in Buddhism?”
“Tihu is ghee: refined butter. But they use it to refer to Buddha nature.”[2]

“In what way?” Ling Ling asked.

“Well, I didn’t quite get all of it, but he told me a story about how you get milk from a cow, then butter from milk, then refined butter from that, and so on and so on. The point was that it is all Buddha nature, but it can be more and more refined.”[3]

There was silence for a moment as the group took this in.

Then Xiao Jing spoke. “All of that is correct except the last bit. Buddha nature, the Dao, the Spirit, is not refined. It is immense, incomprehensible, unfathomable. What can be refined through practice is our ability to access that Spirit. The more we learn to be able to access it, to beckon it toward us, the more our capacity to do so will grow. That is what is refined, not the ghee, or ‘Buddha nature,’ itself.”

She gave a big smile around at the listeners, and then said “But the big question for you now is: what’s this reference to Buddha nature doing here, in a Daoist chant?”

There was momentary silence around the group, until an older woman said, “Well, if it comes from Zhang Sanfeng’s Rootless Tree, it probably relates to alchemy. I know the word yellow granny, the matchmaker (黃婆 huángpó), is often used in alchemy.”

Xiao Jing nodded and gestured go on.
“And the ‘yellow’ points to the middle,” the older woman continued, “while the ‘matchmaker’ points to linking yin and yang, essence and life, inside and outside, ascent and descent.”

 All kinds of bliss

Then the first young man asked “But what about the drunkenness? Why does it say to get drunk everyday?”

Ling Ling nudged me. ‘Say something!” she whispered. “You know this.”
I spoke up, my voice echoing weirdly in the room. “Drunkenness is a kind of altered state where your everyday faculties are closed off,” I said, sounding pompous even to myself. “So I’m pretty sure it’s a metaphor here. All over the world ‘drinking wine’ is used to symbolise the bliss of mystic contemplation.”

There was a moment of silence, then the first young man said “I feel a bit silly, now, taking it literally.”
“You and many many others throughout history, including not a few famous scholars,” said Xiao Jing with a smile. Then she turned to me. “But I’m glad you mentioned ‘bliss’ here. That’s why the phrase uses the compound 醍醐酒 tíhú jiǔ. The wine refers to the bliss, but the tihu refers to the nature of the bliss: proper connection to the spirit.”

“Sorry, I don’t quite follow,” said the woman who knew a bit about alchemy. “What’s the difference?”
“There are many ways to induce bliss,” Xiao Jing answered. “You can do it simply by pouring attention into your body. There is nothing inherently ‘spiritual’ about it. To have that quality, a spiritual quality, there must be correct alignment, an alignment we call ‘vertical’, that establishes the heaven-human-earth link, the link to the Dao, the current that helps mature the individual or the group.” 

Xiao Jing looked around, her voice taking on a deeper intensity. “Tihu, ghee, is the medium of that current, the beginning and the end, everything we seek is there, in that. And we look within ourselves for that alignment, that posture that beckons that Spirit, that allows it to flow, and that allows us to act in that vertical alignment with ever greater capacity.”

She caught herself. “That’s enough for now.”

There was a moment of silence, which Xiao Jing let grow. Then she stood up and, looking around at the group, said “So the point of that phrase is simply to remind us that we should make some time everyday to quietly extend the best part of ourselves toward the spirit that moves with the Dao. The matchmaker part tells us that this should be based in harmony, neither frenetic nor lethargic, both attentive and relaxed, not grasping but not rejecting. We let it happen, if it happens, recognising without anxiety that times differ and we are not the master in the choice. All we can do is set the stage and adopt the posture that attracts ittoward us. That’s all.”

 Not-doing

The man who had been a waiter in the restaurant lifted his hand, then said, “So carrying that forward a bit, can you expand upon doing and not-doing in following the path?” I was sure he was giving Xiao Jing a chance to explain something he felt was important for the context, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Lingling idly tapping the place where her wuwei tattoo was supposed to have been. My cheeks began to burn but she gave me a sideward glance, nudged me with her shoulder and whispered “idiot!” with a smile.

Then I caught up with what Xiao Jing was saying.

“The sad fact is, we can’t force it, it must happen at its own pace. We actually supplied some references regarding this factor in our introductory material.”
She shuffled some papers. “Yes, here it is. Laozi, chapter 69: I would rather be the guest than the master. And we have Huang Yuanji’s comments: 

 It is only when true yang comes about and the qi mechanism is strong and full, only then can you advance fire and begin work. If you don’t wait patiently and quietly for the qi of lead (鉛 qián) but instead use the spirit to rise and descend to and fro, deliberately creating a circulation, it will always bring about perverse fire burning the body (xié huǒ fén shēn) and great calamity. You must--just at the divide of the four ‘seasons’--you must wait for the self-movement of kǎn ☵ qi, without lǐ ☲ becoming the master. This is why Laozi says I would rather be the guest than the master.[4]

 “So in this passage,” Xiao Jing said, “lǐ ☲ is the mind, while kǎn ☵ is the yang qi hidden deep within stillness. That hidden yang qi must move of itself, without prompting by the mind. This is why we encourage you to investigate greed, so you can see when it is operating.” She turned another page. “Have a look at page five of the introductory material, where we’ve included another quote, but this time from the Xianxue Zhenquan:

 The absolute is the unifying law of yin and yang and the five elements. If you want to operate yin and yang and the five elements, do not by any means focus your effort on yin and yang and the five elements. You must concentrate on the absolute, practice being unborn; then yin and yang and the five elements will operate spontaneously and naturally without you having to seek to operate them. This is an unknown truth that brings out the whole matter by getting to the gist of it.[5]

 The end

As the meeting was breaking up I found the little gatekeeper heading toward the door. I tapped him on the shoulder, he turned and looked up at me. “Am I part of some plan?” I asked. “Am I supposed to be here, for some hidden reason?”
He took my hands in his rough gnarled fingers, looked at me and gave a slow, almost imperceptible, shake of his head. Then he patted my hands, dropped them and turned away.
I frowned. Was it a look of pity? of disappointment? Or did he just mean no?

“Probably all those things,” Xiao Jing said. “He is a master of compressed communication.”
I turned in surprise. Had she read my mind? I hadn’t said anything.

“I could tell what you were thinking just by the confused look on your face,” she said, then shrugged. “Well, more confused than usual, let’s say. Now, help us clean up.” She pointed toward the other side of the room, where Lingling was organising a small crew.

As we folded chairs and swept the octagonal space, I asked Ling Ling, “So Xiao Jing is a teacher now?”
“No,” she said. “She’s just a channel. It is part of her training.”
“Channel for what?” I asked.
“A channel for the teaching, the current we’ve spoken about before. It is a test, actually.”
“Test of what?”

“The current accelerates your refinement, hence the importance of a group, which can handle a larger current than an individual. The problem is that the very same current can also accentuate your faults if it acts upon the un-regenerated parts of your self. The test for Xiao Jing is to not to begin to imagine that she is somehow great and wise, which is all too common in these situations.”

Suddenly a scene from Tolkien burst into my mind: Galadriel saying “I passed the test! I will diminish, and go into the West.” This in my mind was followed immediately by Laozi’s 損之又損 diminish and again diminish and then the image of the yin-yang symbol where the west descends into the north and the region of rebirth.

“… but part of my job” I resurfaced to hear Lingling saying, “is to monitor that situation and bring her down to earth if she begins to inflate.”

“Which I hope to avoid,” said Xiao Jing, walking over. “But I am relying on you, sister.”

Endnotes

[1] 張三豐無根樹道情二十四首 Twenty-four Verses on the Rootless Tree and Inclinations of the Dao. There are a variety of versions and commentaries, a notable example is the one by Liu Yiming.
[2] Later I found a quote from Yongjia’s Song of Enlightenment:
Himalayan butter to which nothing is added
it alone produces my favorite ghee
the nature that pervades all natures
the dharma that includes all dharmas.
Zen Roots, by Red Pine, 2020, Empty Bowl Press
[3]  I looked this up and found it came from the Nirvana Sutra. 《大般涅槃經·聖行品》: 善男子！譬如從牛出乳、從乳出酪、從酪出生酥、從生酥出熟酥、從熟酥出醍醐。醍醐最上，若有服者眾病皆除，所有諸藥悉入其中 … 言醍醐者，喻於佛性，佛性者即是如來. “Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom (Mahāpranjāpāramitā-sūtra): It is like the fact that curds are produced from milk, fresh butter is produced from curds, clarified butter produced from fresh butter, and the cream on clarified butter is produced from clarified butter … when we speak of tihu, it is a metaphor of Buddha nature, and Buddha nature is the tathagata.”
[4] “此喻真陽發生，氣機充壯，方可進火行工。如不靜候鉛氣之氣，而慢以神升降進退，循環運轉，未有不邪火焚身，大遭困辱者。當其四候之際，必候坎氣之自動，而離不得以專主，故曰「吾不敢為主而為客」.”
[5] This is a quote from the Xianxue Zhenquan (仙學真詮), the translation is from Thomas Cleary’s Practical Taoism, p. 27. The original is: 仙道雖不外于陰陽五行，然陰陽五行非太極則不能自運，太極者陰陽五行之綱維也。苟欲運吾身之陰陽五行，切忌在陰陽五行上著，只须去太極上用心：做父母未生以前功夫，则陰陽五行不求運而自運；此提綱挈领之元旨也。