It is the art of moving through the world with spontaneity, a perspective rooted in the Mahayana Buddhist notion of universal emptiness (sunyata).

This “emptiness” does not imply that the phenomenal world does not exist, but rather that all things exist in a state of constant flux, yet are included in the dharma body. In this sense, it describes a state of mind liberated from grasping, in that we cannot really hold air in our hands but see it as it is.

Reality, as we tend to perceive it, is a fluid process of rising and falling.

This understanding is often defined as co-dependent origination: everything comes into being through a web of external causes and conditions. Therefore, the individual, like the flowing river, the pine tree, is inherently empty of something permanent, independent.

Among the poets of the Tang dynasty, Wang Wei 王維 (701-761) has been traditionally viewed as the embodiment of the Ch’an spirit.1 In his works and art, Buddhism is not a doctrine but a lived experience. He was the grandmaster of fusing Buddhism and Chuang Tzu’s philosophy with natural imagery to generate a distinctive style of poetics.

Reading his poems, we are often drawn into a tacit harmony with nature, with a continuous flow of inspiration within his poetic world.

The Vimalakirti connection

Wang Wei’s Buddhist path started when he was young. His mother, a devout Buddhist practitioner, was perhaps the earliest Buddhist influence on him.

She gave him the courtesy name Mojie 摩詰. When combined with his given name, Wei 維, it forms Wei-mo-jie, the Chinese transliteration of Vimalakirti.

Vimalakirti was the legendary lay Buddhist practitioner from India known for the concept of non-duality. In doing so, Wang Wei’s mother perhaps wished that her son would adhere to the pure and clean doctrine (Vimalakirti means “untainted”), or she hoped that the Buddhist teachings would protect Wang Wei when he was destined to go through the “dusty world,” but not to be captured by it.

Still, Wang Wei was influenced by the classical education and followed the traditional Confucian way of social participation. Public service was invariably the expected venue for a young man of his talent, as well as a viable path of his family tradition.

Yet even in his earliest poems, we can find clear traces of detachment, unusual and distinct in a teenager.

It was only after decades of living that the Buddhist mentality within him became fully apparent.

The poetics of emptiness

When he was young, Wang Wei associated with the Northern school of Ch’an. This sect emphasizes continuous, gradual cultivation and sitting meditation.

Later, he acquainted himself with the Southern School, known for sudden awakening (dunwu 頓悟), through “direct pointing,” collection of the heart-mind in the present, without grasping.

While working in the court, Wang Wei would often visit Buddhist temples and engage in conversations with the monks and scholars. In his existing poems, we can find some records of this aspect of his life.

On one occasion, Wang Wei visited Qinglong Temple 青龍寺, which still exists in today’s Xi’an, to see a monk.

The temple is located in a position that allows visitors to look into the distant city center. From afar, one could see the rising smoke, the dense, distant trees that seemed to be aligned in a line.

The azure mountains beyond the villages and the setting sun paint a continuous horizon, escaping the limits of the sensual perceptions.

Here, Wang Wei uses natural images to evoke the Buddhist state of mind, boundless, seeing but not attached to the myriad things:

His field of vision today is without taint (眼界今無染):

Empty-minded, how can he be deluded (心空安可迷)?2

The empty mind, in quiet meditations, does not seek to grasp, but roams with the changing reality, like seeing and feeling water flowing through fingers.

The notion of emptiness (kong 空) frequently appears in Wang Wei’s poems. This was even more so since his thirties.

On the one hand, his understanding of the Buddhist idea is derived from serious studies and observations from being in nature:

Sitting at night in the empty forest, silent (夜坐空林寂),

Pine winds seem like those of autumn (松風直似秋).3

Yet, on a deeper, experiential level, events in his personal life served as catalysts for that major spiritual shift.

The crucibles

The young Wang Wei started his political career at the age of twenty-one. After passing the state exam, he was appointed Tai Yue Cheng 太樂丞 (Assistant Master of the Imperial Music) in the central government due to his musical talent. Like any aspiring person at the beginning of one’s career, Wang Wei was also full of expectations.

Yet, after serving on the post for a few months, he suffered the first major political setback: banishment for misconduct involving a royal prince. In the next five years, he worked as a warehouse manager in Jizhou 濟州 (a region in today’s Shandong province).

The young poet, then, began to experience the unpredictable pulse of imperial politics, a theme of instability that would haunt his later years.

Wang Wei eventually resigned after serving there for about five years and came back home. Around this time, he got married and lived a few peaceful years with his family and friends.

Fate, again, entered to play a joke. Just when he was happily expecting to be a father around the age of thirty-one, Wang Wei lost his wife and the unborn child.

This personal tragedy further hastened his devotion to Buddhism. In the following years, his life was characterized by communing with mountains and rivers, court duties, Buddhist cultivation, and simply being with himself.

From the existing works, we cannot find any poem dedicated to his wife. All we know is that he never married again and lived alone until his last day.

Choosing not to write poems to his wife was possibly an intentional act. Yet this silence suggests a grief too deep for words.

Perhaps in nature, that grief can be dissolved to some extent, where he could find her in the “dharma world,” where they used to walk in the forest, breathe in the scent of flowers, hear the wind in the pines, and observe the carefree flying of the egrets. He must have known that their shared memories were also part of the flux, with her departure, as he witnessed the ashes of time in the burning incense in his quiet moments of chanting sutras and meditations.

This was not the first time Wang Wei had experienced loss. When his father died from a small accident, Wang Wei was only nine years old.

We cannot imagine the changes in the young poet’s inner world during those six years before he left home for Chang’an at the age of fifteen. As the oldest son in the family, he was responsible for taking care of his mother and four siblings.

And judging from what he had become later, it’s not hard to imagine the hardship he went through during those silent days, which helped shape his personality and art.

At the age of seventeen, Wang Wei became a household name nationwide. In a poem to his family, he wrote:

Alone in a foreign province as a foreign guest (獨在異鄉為異客),

Each time I come to a holiday, doubled my thoughts of home (每逢佳節倍思親).

From afar I know my brothers have climbed on high (遙知兄弟登高處):

Putting dogwoods everywhere but missing one person ( 遍插茱萸少一人).4

Being alone in a strange city, the young Wang Wei obviously felt the weight of solitude. But on this Double Ninth Festival (Chong yang jie 重陽節), when people would often write poems and observe rituals for the dead, he knew his brothers were thinking of him while climbing a mountain. Here, his spirit allows him to empathize with them rather than be overwhelmed by personal feelings.

Later, while Wang Wei was still alive, his character and bearings, poetry, painting, music, and aesthetics came to represent the High Tang culture.

Yet, still waters run deep.

Only in a few remaining works from his final years do we find traces of his heart.

In writing about the visit to his Buddhist teacher, Wang Wei expressed his inner thoughts:

My early years are not worthy of words (少年不足言):

When I saw the Tao I was already old in years (識道年已長).

How can I regret past affairs (事往安可悔)?

The rest of my life luckily can be nurtured (餘生幸能養).

I vow from now on to cease eating garlic and meat (誓從斷葷血)

And never again to get tangled in worldly nets (不復嬰世網).

Floating fame I shall leave to tassels and girdles (浮名寄纓珮):

The empty nature has no restraining halter (空性無羈鞅).5

Strictly speaking, the “Tao” here refers to the Buddhist teachings. At this time, Wang Wei had realized the impermanent, fragile nature of the things we pursue and cling to in life: fame, power, attachments.

Yet he was not the type of person who could be swayed by emotions, passions, or personal views. His poems reflect the penetrative sensibilities of a poet, perhaps more importantly, but often overlooked, the depth and inner lucidity of a philosopher.

Beyond emptiness

For Wang Wei, resonance with emptiness was not a retreat into passivity or nihilism. Throughout his thirties and forties, he continued to fulfill family duties and court responsibilities.

Knowing the idea of non-duality is one thing. But practicing it in life requires more. That means no distinction between samsara and nirvana, between emptiness and forms (the appearances of things), or engagement and withdrawal. And the idea of emptiness is also empty. He wrote:

Wishing to ask about the principled mind’s meaning (欲問義心義),

From afar I know the disease of voidness is empty (遙知空病空).6

Existentially, Wang Wei recognized that liberation of the spirit comes from non-fixation of the heart-mind:

Illusory specks gather and scatter (空虛花聚散)

The forest of Kleśa grows sparse or thick (煩惱樹稀稠).

If you annihilate thought, then things remain too neutral (滅相成無記);

But if the mind arises, then that leads to desire (生心坐有求).7

He observed that when thoughts emerge, the heart is disturbed by seeking, and when fixations are let go, one enters a state of spontaneous freedom and ease.

By his late thirties, Wang Wei not only wrote about Buddhism but also became a dedicated practitioner. That early spiritual encounter, as it turned out, was destined to accompany him through the eventful remaining years.

This essay is part of my ongoing writing about Wang Wei.

In his monograph, The Life and Art of Wang Wei (王維の生涯と藝術), Kobayashi Taichirō (1901–1963), a scholar of Japanese and East Asian art history, stated that Wang Wei shaped the cultural character and psychological archetype of the East Asian personality.

This influence is often displayed through a sophisticated, nuanced empathy across his poetry, letters, and art, and its reception and evolution in Japan.

When examined through the lens of our multidimensional social world, Wang Wei ceases to be an ancient figure and becomes more of a contemporary.

In his works, we find not just the inner dimensions of a poetic voice but also shared sensitivities among us all, in the face of the complexity, confusion, uncertainty, and the inevitable chaos in life.

In my spiritual world, Wang Wei stands alongside Chuang Tzu 莊子. In writing these essays, I’m re-reading and investigating his world, with the hope of presenting his life, reflections, and art in an accessible and helpful way.

Currently, I’m constrained by the Japanese language, so I’m relying on vital external voices to enrich my understanding of Zen and Japanese philosophy. For those seeking to dive deeper, I highly recommend the following:

• Romaric Jannel’s Japanese Philosophy Course: For a grounded understanding of the broad, foundational currents, approaches, and themes of Japanese thought.

• Peck Gee Chua’s Zen-Taoist Living series: An insightful synthesis of intellectual history and experiential reflections, exploring the aesthetics and philosophical traditions underlying the Way of Tea.

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Seeing the myriad affairs as a series of relative opposites, in separate, disconnected pieces, shapes our interactions with the world at both intellectual and experiential levels.

Perceptions and immediate realities reinforce each other. As a result, we may risk developing an imagined world through a constant process of self-encapsulation.

Within this filtered world of perception, there are always the notions of “this” and “that,” “right” and “wrong,” or “black” and “white.”

Judgment and taking sides, the inherent habit of human agency, begin as internal acts, quickly spilling into how we live, feel, and react.

In this sense, between endless striving and total renunciation, there actually is a third way — the way of spontaneous, cyclic action and repose, inner clarity with non-distinction.

Feeling exhausted by everyday entanglements, I open Wang Wei’s poems with tea. It’s my ritual of emptiness—temporarily detaching myself from everyday concerns, forgetting my connection with this world, while allowing my heart to dwell in a state of open sensitivity and reception.

That experience is a spiritual cleansing. Afterward, I felt refreshed and ready to reenter the world.

Seeing without the ‘I’

In those moments, I feel Wang Wei leads me to feel and see what he experienced:

Empty mountains after a recent rain:

The air, since evening, turns autumnal.

The bright moon, amid the pines, shines. 

The clear stream, over rocks, flows.

Bamboos rustle: washerwomen return.

Lotuses move: fishing boats come downstream.1

The mountains take on new colors and forms after the rain. They witness the coming and going of seasonal changes, the visits and disappearances of humans. They show the illusory nature of appearances in the phenomenal world.

The poet discovered the flux of scenery in the mountains because he dwelt in an inner emptiness. The absence of the person, the “I,” allows him and us to register the clustered mountain images.

We hear the sound of a flowing river. We smell the scent of new air after the rains. We see the moonlight crossing the pine trees, and the bamboo dancing with the wind.

Sound and quiet, action and stillness, light and shadows interpenetrate. The mountain images reflect phenomena in motion and their dissolution in the ultimate reality of emptiness.

While traveling on court duty, Wang Wei encountered the Han River, which originates in the south of Shaanxi province and flows through the northwest part of Hubei province. Seeing the joining of separate rivers and their continuous currents, he was amazed by the workings of nature:

The river’s flow is beyond heaven and earth;

The mountain’s color between being and nonbeing.

Commandery cities float on the shore ahead;

Ripples and waves stir the distant sky.2

Where does the river flow? Can we tell the exact colors of the mountains?

Is it possible to grasp the absolute certainty in the myriad things from being and non-being, existence and non-existence?

Together with Wang Wei, we experience a sense of inner serenity in seeing, hearing, and feeling in the moment of fusing the self and the world: the liberation of the spirit in a state of non-differentiation.

The union of retreating and reentering

Life often demands more from us. Wang Wei could not choose the path of complete reclusion. Nevertheless, being bound by court duties did not prevent him from the Buddhist path.

On an autumn night, the poet was drifting on the river by himself, reflecting on his state of being:

The autumn sky gleams into the distance —
And even more, remote from the midst of men:
Traversed by cranes on the edge of the sand
And joining with mountains beyond the clouds.
The limpid waves are tranquil as night approaches;
The clear moon is white and serene.
This evening I will trust to my single oar,
Irresolute, not yet to return. 


Pauline Yu, The Poetry of Wang Wei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 193-194.

In this poem, Wang Wei did not present vivid details of natural scenes. Instead, diverse elements are arranged harmoniously on a single canvas.

The distant sky stretches so far from the realm of men. The misty mountains, along with the flying cranes, seem to be moving with the drifting clouds.

The tranquility of the “limpid waves” reflects the serenity of the poet’s heart, accentuated by the stillness of the night.

All we see is a cluster of natural objects. The vagaries and vagueness of the distant and spacious scene seem to suggest the limitations of our perceptions. Yet, the rise of the bright moon adds some clarity.

By gazing at such a scene, we can probably share Wang Wei’s moment of realization: there is indeed this place I can come back to in the midst of a strained life.

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I remember the silly ambitions, the rashness, the dreams that were not necessarily plans so much as distorted perceptions of reality. I see it now.

And growing up, for me, has been the slow acceptance of my own stupidity and absurdities. I assumed that life could be steered by some tried-and-true scripts. Later, I realized I was writing on sand, the lines and traces lifted by the wind before they were finished.

For some time, I thought that memories were just like the road in the rearview mirror. But at unexpected hours, a flash returns.

I see the scenes long buried. Sometimes, in my dreams, in watching the setting sun, in listening to the summer rains, thoughts fly back to those bright spring afternoons: the cool breeze, willows swaying, a pavilion by the riverbank, the lingering mists seeing everything returning to rest.

How devoted we were to the simple joy of just being young. Growing up is also a long process of farewell. Life goes on, but cherished memories last:

At Xinfeng, fine wine— a gallon for ten thousand cash.

In Xianyang the knights-errant are mostly young in years.

Meeting together in high spirits they offer each other toasts,

And tie their horses at the tall tower next to the weeping willows.1 

This early poem by Wang Wei reminds me that sometimes we really don’t know how experiences will shape our lives. And there really is no alternative path. We are in the stream and have changed.

Old pages often find me in those unexpected ways, allowing me to see, feel, and then forget.

When waters end and clouds rise

By his early forties, Wang Wei divided his life between official duties in the government and private, peaceful reclusion at the Wangchuan estate (see the introduction in the post below). He had already spent some years in reclusion, on and off.

There is the view that one’s personality and character can be shaped and changed by life’s course. Yet, an alternative view holds that a person’s character is already determined at birth. In this sense, encounters in life would only carve out what is already within, like sculpting a jade from layers of rock.

Wang Wei’s poems reveal the essence of his personality. We can barely detect his emotions in most of his existing verses, as they are fused into the scenes. A significant number of his poems are letters, written for friends in moments of departure. Still, in these works, we can feel an affection toward his friends, with an unspeakable sentiment overflowing:

At the farewell banquet already pained by parting,

Grieving I enter the desolate city again.

…

You loosen the rope and are already far away:

I gaze at you, still standing in place.2 

In those old days, traveling was an arduous, often prolonged undertaking, complicated by factors such as transportation and weather. A parting between friends or family for work can often lead to a long period without seeing each other. In this sense, every encounter and union mattered.

Yet, we know Wang Wei’s poems are defined by inner serenity and the union of the poetic heart-mind with the surroundings.

Taoism and Buddhism accompanied him in life. In particular, his conscious embrace of Buddhism and the tranquility, insipidity, and otherworldly element in his character give rise to a poetic style that conveys a sense of calm, detachment, and harmony.

In a well-known poem, Wang Wei gives us a clue to his life in being with nature, accordingly, a doorway to his inner world:

Zhongnan Retreat

In middle years I am rather fond of the Tao;
My late home is at the foot of Southern Mountain.
When the feeling comes, each time I go there alone.
That splendid things are empty, of course, I know.
I walk to the place where the water ends
And sit and watch the time when clouds rise.
Meeting by chance an old man of the forest,
I chat and laugh without a date to return. 

Pauline Yu, The Poetry of Wang Wei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 171.

The first two lines are a self-narrative of his attitude toward following the Tao. I think he refers to both Taoism and Buddhism here.

Wang Wei’s affinity for Buddhism came from the early influence of his mother, a devoted Buddhist disciple. He came to Chang’an 長安 at 17, passed the jinshi3 exam (a national test) at 21, and started his political career then.4 During his stay in the capital city and throughout his short stays in a few other places, he often associated with Taoists and Buddhists.

At the age of 30, he lost his wife and devoted himself to Buddhist studies. In his late thirties, the poet lost a few close friends, including Zhang Jiuling 張九齡 (678-740 AD), a renowned prime minister and the poet’s mentor, and Meng Haoran 孟浩然 (689-740 AD), another famous poet, which may have hastened his turning inward.

We can imagine that, perhaps after all these successive losses of important people in his life, he began to make peace with what happened to him, seeing and accepting the emptiness of this world.

The poet-Buddha’s eyes see through the impermanent nature of things in flux, like a shadow, a bubble, a mirage, that emerge, linger, and disappear, but can never be grasped.

His heart-mind, thus, is no longer shackled to the appearance of things, not disturbed and captured by the phenomenal world. He knew that “splendid things are empty,” rising, falling, and dissolving, just like the floating clouds that can never stay.

With this realization, Wang Wei was not fixated on the notion of emptiness. He could “walk to the place where the water ends and sit and watch the time when clouds rise,” without being shackled to emotions or attachments, as they come and go.

He could eventually embrace an unconditioned, spontaneous mode of living, letting inner serenity and liberation arise and go through him. And with this process, the poet’s spirit entered the realm of the infinite, arising, retreating, flowing with the current of the Tao.

From that moment of walking alone in the woods, Wang Wei may have realized that he was, just like the white clouds, the blowing winds in the mountains, and the sunlight through the pines, temporarily lodged in this world.

Joy in solitude

For Wang Wei, solitude was a proper way of being. It was a practice of meditation in everyday life. He would usually attend his Buddhist study sessions at home after returning from court duties.5

Apart from the mountains, he often frequented Buddhist temples. In one poem, he wrote:

I do not know the Temple of Gathered Fragrance,
For several miles, entering cloudy peaks.
Ancient trees, paths without people;
Deep in the mountains, where is the bell?
Noise from the spring swallows up lofty rocks;
The color of the sun chills green pines.
Toward dusk by the curve of an empty pond,
Peaceful meditation controls poison dragons. 

Pauline Yu, The Poetry of Wang Wei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 145.

I cannot remember how many times I’ve walked in this temple, thinking of Wang Wei and his eventful life. Yet I knew I was not aware of what I was looking for during those visits.

I’ve realized that the spiritual world was enough for Wang Wei. If solitude were the ideal state of being, there was really nothing to expect.

So we see the poet spending time alone in his Wangchuan estate, meditating in the midst of flowing time:

At morning chants the forest has not yet dawned,

During night meditation, mountains are even stiller.6

Being with nature loosened his connection with worldly affairs. His spirit merged with the natural, harmonious rhythm of nature:

Man at leisure, cassia flowers fall.

The night still, spring mountain empty.7

Occasionally, Wang Wei would stroke his zither with the companion of the moon:

Alone I sit amid the dark bamboo,

Play the zither and whistle loud again.

In the deep wood men do not know

The bright moon comes to shine on me.8

The boundary between the human and the natural has quietly dissolved, time and space collapsed into one canvas, where the poet’s heart and the landscape interpenetrate and become indistinguishable.

At times, as I read his restrained lines, I feel I can sense the sentiment beneath their calm surface. In those silent hours, I want to tell him: I, too, dwell in your solitude, in the ashes of time.

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With the passage of time, I’ve come to believe that it is fortunate to have the companionship of a true friend in life’s journey.

Lately, I have been reading Wang Wei’s poems about his exchanges with friends. Somehow, I find that I’m listening to that rhythm across over a thousand years.

On a Spring Day Going with Pei Di to Xinchang Ward to Visit the Hermit Lu and Not Encountering Him


The Peace Blossom Spring has always been cut off from wind and dust.
At the southern edge of Willow Market we visit a recluse friend.
Arrived at his gate we do not dare to write “common bird.”
Seeing bamboo why do we need to ask about our host?
Outside the city azure mountains are almost inside the room;
From eastern homes flowing waters enter the western environs.
Behind closed doors, he has written books for several years and months;
The pines he planted have aged with him and grown a scaly bark. 

Pauline Yu, The Poetry of Wang Wei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980)，188.

The Peach Blossom Spring is the home of the hermit Lü, located at Xinchang Ward, a region in Chang’an, the capital city of the Tang dynasty (618-907).

Wang Wei often moved between public duty at the central government and retreat at his Wangchuan residence (see the linked post below), keeping company with recluses, Taoists, and Buddhists. Pei Di was a close friend, a member of the poet’s inner circle.

On this spring day, they did not see Lü the hermit, yet Wang Wei implied that his friend kept the place open for them.

Their friend probably led a rather detached life. The phrase “cut off from wind and dust” (jue fengchen 絕風塵) symbolizes a spiritual, unattached way of living, free from the mundane, everyday concerns.

While dwelling there, looking at the bamboo and pine trees, the poet reflected on his friend’s daily life: working on his books while communing with nature.

The “phoenix” on the door

Wang Wei’s reference to the “common bird” brings us to an anecdote during the Wei-Jin period (220-589 AD).

Ji Kang (嵇康, 223–262) and his friend Lü An (呂安) were both representatives of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Groves (zhulin qixian 竹林七賢). Lü An, known for his untrammeled bearing, would set out to see Ji Kang the moment longing struck, no matter the distance.1

One day, Lü An arrived to call on Ji Kang, but found him away. Ji Xi (嵇喜), the elder brother, came out to receive the guest. Lü An did not step inside. He took a brush, wrote a single character — feng 鳳 (means phoenix in Chinese)— on the door, and left.

Ji Xi was delighted to see it. He missed the irony of the stroke. The character feng 鳳 carries within it fan 凡 (common) and niao 鳥 (bird). The message was exact yet sharp: I came seeking the phoenix, not for a common bird.

The further implication is that Lü An did not intend to stain his dear friend’s household with a coarse word, despite the fact that he did not like the older brother, who was actually a good and capable scholar-official, but not as highly esteemed as his brother.

Bamboo, flowing water, and the unbound mind

In referring to this story, Wang Wei says that they dare not write the “common bird,” showing great respect for his recluse friend.

Hermit Lü’s household arrangements and the affinity with nature scenes showed them an alternative way of living. The bamboo groove symbolizes the hermit’s principled self-conduct.2

A heart-mind that is free and unbound can find ease and leisure in the simplicity of things, in the joy of nature.

The “azure mountains” and “flowing waters” become not objects in the external, natural world, but the essential companions of the hermit Lü, of the lingering images in Wang Wei’s poetic world.

Aristotle conceived of friendship as a bond between people with shared virtue.3 For Chuang Tzu, the friendship of the gentlemen is like mild and insipid water, yet it lasts.4

Lingering resonance (Yuyun 餘韻)

The hermit image was a frequent theme in traditional literary works.

We often come across the story of a person seeking the recluse in the deep mountains, yet not encountering that person, leaving readers to imagine.

Here’s another well-known poem in this spirit:

Under the pine trees I asked your disciple,
“My master’s gone to gather herbs.
He’s somewhere in this mountain,
How can I know, through all these deep clouds?”

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