The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove: The Original Anarchists of Silence
Modern society remains in the grip of a certain kind of collective obsession, unable to escape, continuing its subsidence. One characteristic of this collective sinking is the prevalence of speech that appears to say something while, in fact, saying nothing. Despite saying nothing, because one can stage the pretense of having spoken, rewards in the form of praise for self-actualization, or even criticism, are prepared from the start. As a result of this farce spreading on a planetary scale, humanity has committed a monumental and fatal error.
The sinking surfaces on the individual level as an indescribable sense of irritation or burnout. The manifestation of burnout increases in proportion to the intensity of the lack of introspection. At this juncture, even if one attempts mindfulness as a symptomatic treatment, it merely results in an inability to escape the deepening quagmire. What I am intensely convinced of is that mindfulness in the Western context never existed in the East.
In other words, even if they have packaged Eastern materials such as meditation into mindfulness, the essence of meditation possesses no such lukewarm gentleness. The “intense pain” inherent in authentic meditation is the most important fruit of one’s introspection; yet in mindfulness, this must be thoroughly eliminated—otherwise, it cannot be generalized (that is, commodified)—so it is completely ignored. Therefore, it is nothing more than mindfulness as a hollowed-out trend. In this state, no matter how many new meditation methods are developed, the essence does not move an inch, and the play of the surface merely takes on a more ludicrous hue. Regardless of West or East, those who truly know meditation do not commit the folly of avoiding that intense pain.
Not limited to the above, if one points out that the primary cause lurking at the bottom of this subsidence may stem from things we have not thought about until now—no, things we did not want to think about—what kind of escape route can be conceived? Or, now that all sides are already solidified and guarded by sentries, is there no escape route for us at all? This is what I wish to ask this time.
The major premise is the fact that we have treated every friction, pain, or element of loneliness in individual life as if it were a defect of life, and have tried to thoroughly eliminate them through institutions, technology, and furthermore, human benevolence. This is not solutionism in the context of technology believers; rather, the fundamental perversion of solutionism lies in the weapon known as human benevolence itself. I will take this as my standpoint.
We have become too sensitive to unpleasant noise in life, with a tendency to over-identify it as “evil” upon discovery. Moreover, we are desperate to exterminate it all, believing that making things clean is the ideal. To be more comfortable, safer, and less hurt is not consideration in the essential sense, but merely a wall (a clean room) constructed by “pushed-upon consideration.” If a human stays inside a wall for 100 years, they forget the threats outside and even the existence of the outside world. Similarly, people raised safely within the invisible walls of “pushed-upon consideration” begin to possess one common characteristic. That is growing up regarding Reality-ness as Reality, completely unknowing of the impossibility that authentic Reality possesses. Its ultimate form appears collectively as a posture of rejecting the impossibility of Reality.
In my view, Reality is always impossible. It is Reality precisely because it is filled with impossibility. To challenge this truth, a certain requirement is necessary: the answer to the question, “How much have you faced yourself?” This answer is not given in words, but is answered as actual practice (pratique) itself. However, the majority of people reject such things because they involve intense pain. The rejection here is a self-abandonment of one’s own living, and no matter what anyone says, it is entirely a self-responsibility. And this self-abandonment equates to Reality-abandonment.
Therefore, people who have rejected Reality globalize the Reality-ness that has been alienated from the impossible Reality, and bury themselves by living therein. If one forms a world within alienated Reality-ness, over the years, one can feel as if Reality-ness has become Reality; eventually, adapting to such an environment is called “evolution,” and the group begins self-affirmation (self-praise). However, there is actually no vitality of life there. It simply centralizes the Form of alienated Reality-ness, forms a membrane of collective common illusion, and over time, manifests as an institutional dimension fueled by rules and norms.
In truth, there is no center or anything there, but the people who rejected Reality and wished to be confined here idealize a peaceful life here—that is, spending time in a “prepared reality” where “intense pain” has been eliminated to every corner. Furthermore, alienated Reality-ness enters a state of trying to eliminate “intense pain” in diverse forms, such as social institutions and ultimately over-protective intervention by the government, beginning to blindly believe that confining individual lives in a condition like a sterile room is success. The fact that this has resulted in the mass production of people who waste their lives and end their days solely for adaptation to a fake “comfort” is the greatest proof of all. Because having a beating heart and living are essentially different. And what is interesting is that such people are the ones who fear “death” the most.
Looking at society, from welfare and education to corporate services, “not getting hurt” and “not getting lost” are upheld as top priorities, and even the speech of developed nations has fallen into a state where it is constantly monitored and managed, leaving people unable to move. There, things have inverted into a serious situation where one cannot digest the days except by becoming extreme or doing nothing. They self-affirm excessive protection, loudly claiming they are protecting people from evil and depravity to pride themselves on their legitimacy, but if one goes outside, it is immediately obvious that the exact opposite is occurring. If you ask why they cannot understand something of this degree, it is because, as mentioned before, this type of person blindly believes in Reality-ness as Reality, and thus does not look directly at the impossibility of Reality. The strange inversion of modernity is like the dead living, and the non-real becoming the real. And while intellectual people feel something is wrong, they have not been able to doubt their own standing basis itself, and because they profit reasonably well, they do not reach the point of seriously thinking that the foundation itself is the problem.
Then, since the “World” is a prefabricated shack formed by an accumulation of Reality-ness that is easy for them, only the voices of those who do not look at Reality and have abandoned life become excessively noisy, increasing their influence. This is natural, for the echo chamber of that world is made of materials convenient for them. Therefore, those who sing counter-arguments are ruthlessly excluded. This is because the fantasy structure has become so complex, but the crucial point is that this world has no texture. In other words, those voices have no heat; there is a fabricated semblance of heat, but no heat as a tactile sensation. You all likely understand better than I, a Japanese person, that a fierce collision between the two has continued here over the past few years, but then, where are the true modern sages?
While surveying the disastrous state of the era, what always comes to my mind is an ancient Chinese tale. That is the “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove.”
They lived in mid-3rd century China, exactly during the transition from Wei to Western Jin. It was considered a dark age where betrayal and purges were rampant; the Sima clan, who held real power, were eliminating political enemies one after another, and what was used to justify their power was Confucianism. However, this Confucianism had forgotten the teachings once preached by Confucius and was merely a regime philosophy convenient for the rulers. At this time, the important moral wisdom regarding introspection that Confucius originally asked—”Be polite to yourself,” “Be faithful to yourself”—was converted directly into the command “Be polite to power and follow it faithfully.” In this suffocatingly unrestful era, seven sages chose by their own will, not to raise their voices to change politics, but rather to dare “not to speak of politics” in order to live their own lives even in a turbulent age.
They gathered in a bamboo grove away from urban politics, exchanged cups of wine, and devoted themselves to philosophical discussions centered on Laozi and Zhuangzi thought, called “Seidan” (Pure Conversation). Rather than speaking of the politics which Reality could not change—politics that did not touch Reality itself at all—they abandoned it, and while immersing themselves in the cosmic truths of Laozi and Zhuangzi, they chose the path of confronting Reality to the end. What I personally find interesting here is that while modern people regard this as “escapism,” the ancient Chinese sages teach us that it is the opposite.
And they performed eccentricities such as daring to drink heavily and get dead drunk, or casting off their clothes to ignore “propriety,” one of the teachings of Confucianism. These were not escapes from Reality or depravity, but expressions of life-staking non-compliance, and the very resolve to face Reality thoroughly. In other words, the seven sages refused to pander to the regime by contenting themselves with living in Reality-ness. That refusal was not a simple Yes or No, but facing thoroughly the impossibility that is Reality, and living in actual practice (pratique) therein. By deliberately acting out madness, they appealed to the powerful, “I have no political ambition, I am just a useless person,” avoiding the blade of the purge while devoting themselves solely to sharpening their own introspection. And at the same time, by opposing the natural spirit derived from Laozi and Zhuangzi against the hollowed-out Confucian morality brandished by the rulers, they severely satirized their hypocrisy.
In fact, they did not overthrow the political regime. As the leader Xi Kang was executed, it is sometimes evaluated that they were powerless before the violence of authority, but I do not think so, and I even think that the way of understanding them is completely wrong. Modern people are trapped in the fixed concept that raising one’s voice and overthrowing or correcting power is revolution, but that is within Reality-ness from beginning to end, and is not Reality. Originally, revolution is nothing other than one’s struggle against oneself. I believe that these sages were the most radical anarchists in the sense that they proved with their own bodies that “no matter how harsh the times, one’s self is the one thing that cannot be dominated.” They were sages who invented not a way to change politics in Reality-ness, but a “way to carry oneself through” in a hopeless era. When I reconsider their way of life, I cannot help but feel that the modern era is the same, or an even worse era.