Aesthetic and Moral Appreciation of Nature in Philosophical Traditions of China - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 41

ceaseless process of production and reproduction of things. For this reason, some
scholars translate cheng as creativity. Tu Wei-Ming explains cheng in terms
of creativity:
…we can conceive of it as a form of creativity…it is that which brings about the transforming
and nourishing processes of heaven and earth. As creativity, Ch'eng is “ceaseless” ( pu- hsi
[ buxi ]). Because of its ceaselessness it does not create in a single act beyond the spatiotem-
poral sequence. Rather, it creates in a continuous and unending process in time and space…
it is simultaneously a self-subsistence and self-fulfi lling process of creation that produces
life unceasingly. (Ames and Hall 2001 , p. 35)
From this passage, we can see that cheng is the expression of the feature of creativity
in ch'i . Compared with Confucianism, Daoism emphasizes the emptiness feature
of ch'i . Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu often used the word emptiness to describe Tao:
Tao is empty (like a bowl), It may be used but its capacity is never exhausted. It is bottom-
less, perhaps the ancestor of all things. (Ames and Hall 2001 , p. 141)
How Heaven and Earth are like a bellows! While vacuous, it is never exhausted. When
active, it produces even more. (Ames and Hall 2001 , p. 141)
Emptiness, stillness, limpidity, silence, inaction-these are the level of Heaven and earth, the
substance of the Way and its virtue. (Chuang 1968 , p. 142)
In the above passages, Lao Tzu compares the Tao to a bowl and a bellows to
convey the idea that ch'i has the inexhaustible and infi nite power of producing life.
However this power is hidden because of its emptiness.
The Chinese aesthetic appreciation of emptiness and creativity of ch'i can be best
illustrated in traditional Chinese landscape painting. The important principle of
Chinese painting which is recorded in the Ku Hua P'in by Hsieh Ho (479-502) is
Spirit Resonance. Spirit is another English translation for the Chinese word ch'i .
According to this principle, the excellent painting should embody the features of
ch'i . Chinese painters use some methods to capture those features of ch'i. First, as I
noted earlier, the invisible ch'i is always in an unceasing process of movement
which nourishes and sustains all kinds of life. The important method adopted by
Chinese painters to capture this feature of ch'i is called liu bai which means to leave
the empty space in the painting. Painters often use fog, clouds and water to indicate
empty space, which provides a rhythm and a breath to the overall painting. Doing so
conveys the moving and creative power of ch'i . Second, based on Chinese philoso-
phy, everything is in fl ux and change since every concrete thing in nature is made up
of ch'i . Some Chinese painters draw different heights for mountains and trees to
convey the idea of fl ux and change. The Ming Dynasty painter Chang Tung Chi
declared:
The rising and falling of mountains in the distance conveys a sensation of power. The varying
height of the trees in a forest is expressive of feeling. (Tsung 1995 , p. 36)
Chinese painters used this method to convey the dynamism and change in things.
Other painters such as Ni Zan (1301-1374) painted the trees in a way that makes
them sparse and bare so that they have a kind of dynamism to them. When we look
at the trees, they appear to be stretching out toward the mountains.