Virtue and Tao

“The man who is saturated with Virtue is like a little child. Scorpions will not sting him, wild beasts will not seize him, nor will birds of prey pluck at him. His young bones are not hard, neither are his views strong, yet his grasp is firm and sure. He is full of virility, though unconscious of his sex. Though he should cry out all day, yet he is never hoarse. Herein is shown his harmony with Nature. The knowledge of this harmony is the eternal Tao. The knowledge of the eternal Tao is illumination. Habits of excess grow upon a man, and the mind, giving way to the passions, they increase day by day. And when the passions have reached their climax, they also fail. This is against the nature of Tao. What is contrary to Tao soon comes to an end.”

— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

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Su Hanchen, Children at Play in Winter (12th century)

Chinese repeating crossbow, Warring States Period, 4th-2nd century BC.

Shallow Basin Supported by a Bird (Bian), early 400s BC, Cleveland Museum of Art: Chinese Art

The bird, in its graceful and dignified pose, firmly grasps a pair of intertwined serpents cast in the lower basin. This composition of the bird’s triumph over the serpent has been given various interpretations. The Chinese ethnographers regard this as a totemic symbol—a suggestion of a specific clan’s superiority over contending neighboring peoples. Other scholars interpret this as good creatures warding off evil influences or as an early manifestation of the concept of complementary pairing (yin-yang, heaven-earth) in Chinese cosmology. The original appearance of this vessel was brilliant and colorful due to the use of malachite and azurite in inlaid decoration, producing red, green, and blue against the bronze surface. Size: Overall: 23.3 cm (9 3/16 in.); Diameter of base: 18.3 cm (7 3/16 in.) Medium: bronze inlaid with powdered malachite and azurite

https://clevelandart.org/art/1991.8

团圆 ~ 

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夢迴 Dreaming Back to the Qing Dynasty..