Click here to go to section one of "Breaking the Vessel."
Click below for the other "Breaking the Vessel" posts.
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Click below for the other "Breaking the Vessel" posts.
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Click here for pronunciation help with "Luoyang."
April 2011
This month's main entries (entitled “Breaking the Vessel”) will chronicle an author and a book—Sima Guang (1019-1086) and the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Ruling, which was submitted to the (Northern) Song dynasty throne in what we in the West call January of 1085. I like to say that this book is the missing piece in management education, during which MBA students read carefully through translations of the Art of War and then seem to think that they understand Chinese management thought. (Good luck with that, pardner). I like to say that Sunzi (Sun-tzu) is “lunch” and the Comprehensive Mirror is “what comes next—it’s what’s for supper.” It is essential reading for everyone at any level of management—from parent and foreman to ruler of the world (and everything in between). The problem is that it is 10,000 pages long (I am not kidding) and is in Chinese—“medieval” Chinese, at that. That is where I come in. I want to help you.
Welcome. 歡迎. I have been waiting for you.
April 2011
[b] Artisans of war |
[a] Sunzi bingfa |
Welcome. 歡迎. I have been waiting for you.
VIII
Luoyang Longing
[c] Capital, many times |
For now, he would bide his time. In any case, he had work to do. Indeed, Sima Guang’s self-imposed exile in Luoyang over a fifteen-year period enabled him to remain clear of the most intense infighting of his day, and to complete the Comprehensive Mirror. He studied hundreds of historical works written many centuries before his time, and was even said to have invented a peculiar kind of log-pillow that ensured he would not get too much rest before returning to his task. This should not surprise anyone. It should already be apparent that Sima was anything if not driven.
[e] Storied capital |
[f] Ouyang Xiu, 1007-1072 |
For a comparison, cross time and space and think of the present. It was as though a large cross-section of great American minds (all agreeing on politics, more or less, and forming a kind of “think tank”) came together in Philadelphia (the ancient capital) for more than a decade of writing, repartee, painting, eating dainties, and drinking (in no particular order). Except that Luoyang was more beautiful.
[g] A fanciful Bo Juyi (772-846) |
[h] Taking the Luoyang view of history |
[i] Luoyang Lushness |
These same, rich source collections also speak of the pleasure of strolls through the city, finding out-of-the-way temples, or contemplating magnificent gardens. The “elder statesman” Fu Bi’s garden was a marvel among them, and this prompted one writer to note that “the man who had ordered the affairs of the empire now controlled even more absolutely the plan of his garden."[1] Continuing with the varied temples, caves, and carvings, one could go on almost endlessly about the fascination Luoyang, and a life of relative leisure, held for its “exiled” inhabitants after 1070.
Luoyang indeed represented for many officials a freedom from the burdens of office, and even from the constraints of a somewhat stern literati tradition. The city’s Buddhist temples were prominent features, and many wrote of them—as well as the monasteries, intricate caves, and surrounding central “sacred” mountain—in what could be called a literature of enthrallment regarding their environment. Many scholars, too, pursued studies of Daoist and other works that, several decades earlier, would have been regarded as unscholarly, at best, and heterodox, worst.
[j] Sima's sabbatical |
Sima wanted to advise the ruler, but instead, of necessity, he wrote. To use a Daoist phrase more current at the time in Luoyang than the strict, Confucian setting of the capital in Kaifeng, he became “one with the history.” A poem by Su Shi—composed just after he and others of the Luoyang group had returned to the capital in the mid-1080s—might as well have summed up the focus of those “on leave” for fifteen years—they became their work.
When Yu Ke painted bamboo
He only perceived bamboo—never people
Do I mean he saw no people?
So enthralled that he forgot even himself
He became the bamboo
Perpetually growing new fibers
The great and playful thinker Zhuangzi is no more
Who, then, can begin to grasp his uncanny ability?
[1] Michael Freeman, "Lo-yang and the Opposition to Wang An-shih: The Rise of Confucian Conservatism" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1973), 38.
(Wednesday, April 13)
Being the Text; Crafting a History
Sima Guang had work to do, and an agenda to keep. Luoyang was beautiful (as we have seen), but he didn't create almost three hundred chapters (and thousands of pages) by painting peonies and drinking plum wine. Don't forget the log pillow...or his lingering resentment. Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at just what went into creating the greatest management book of all time—one that every student should read in every business school in the world. Sima wouldn't have had it any other way, and Mao probably wouldn't, either.
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