Dividing the Indivisible

The Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat
Dividing the Indivisible, 2019
Ink and watercolours on cloud-dragon paper
 
With five seals of the artist, 水松石山房Shuisongshi shanfang (‘The Water, Pine and Stone Retreat’), 攜杖老人 Xiezhang laoren (‘The old man who carries the staff’), 竹虛老人Zhuxu laoren  (‘Old man as empty inside as bamboo’), 墨者不朽 Mozhe buxiu (‘Let ink be my immortality’), and this 養石閒人 Yangshi xianren (‘An idler who cherishes stones’). 

Inscription:

Beyond the world of fragments, the unified realm awaits. The irony being that one can only discuss it with the fragmentary faculty of the rational, reasoning intellect. Unity is indivisible, but in order to comprehend it, it becomes necessary to divide it as best we may.  For this reason, explaining the inexplicable in all religions and philosophies falls back on analogies and parables, usually to the confusion of the uncomprehending masses.  This is achieved less dangerously in those religions where a higher state of being, rather than a higher being, governs, but even Daoism and Buddhism give rise to endless deities, myths and legends that can be taken too seriously, along with a hierarchy of transcendent realms. The Emerald Gorge of the Western Paradise shimmers somewhere beyond mortal reach and is inaccessible, unknown, even to many immortals and deities.  But nothing is beyond the imagination and the brush.

Inscribed by the Master of the Water, Pine, and Stone Retreat in a haze of incense at the Garden at the edge of the Universe at the onset of winter in the year 2019.

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This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

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