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Note: The man is holding a seal carved with "水," the character for water.
The Diamond Sutra is the earliest example of printed text that exists today. This piece depicts a monk kneeling and prostrating himself in the front of the Buddha and enlightened deities. The power of the written word derives from it's ability to create ideas that surpasses an individual's imagination.
Yet the written word on text is immobile. It needs the human agent to influence action.
I find it ironic that the earliest published book is a Buddhist text because Buddhism preaches suffering from the attachment to identity. The very nature of text is to identify and categorize. Ideas of human beings are based on how humans relate the outside world to our own perceptions. Buddhism claims perception in itself is a form of illusion, impermanent as nature erodes and constantly shifts identity.
When Song Dong attempts to imprint a human label onto nature, the label has no permanence. The water has no ability to self identify, or hold onto such a label. The liquid simply returns to it's original state and continues to flow. Man cannot force nature to accept a label.
Song Dong's piece also shows how text relates to the flow of time. Text will always be about recorded thoughts from the past. Ink holds and maintains ideas when it attaches to paper, but the the of the present moment becomes the past. The present in infinitesimally fleeting. Nature needs no sense of self identity and continuously changes.
This contrast reflects upon the power and weakness of text. If humans cling nurture the values of the past, text can multiply and remain within our social consciousness. But just imagine what would happen if we placed The Diamond Sutra into the water. Ideas that have life on paper would disintegrate into the impermanence of nature. Perhaps we have to accept that even the grandest and deepest of human thoughts must dissipate into the constant shifting of nature.
Yet the written word on text is immobile. It needs the human agent to influence action.
I find it ironic that the earliest published book is a Buddhist text because Buddhism preaches suffering from the attachment to identity. The very nature of text is to identify and categorize. Ideas of human beings are based on how humans relate the outside world to our own perceptions. Buddhism claims perception in itself is a form of illusion, impermanent as nature erodes and constantly shifts identity.
When Song Dong attempts to imprint a human label onto nature, the label has no permanence. The water has no ability to self identify, or hold onto such a label. The liquid simply returns to it's original state and continues to flow. Man cannot force nature to accept a label.
Song Dong's piece also shows how text relates to the flow of time. Text will always be about recorded thoughts from the past. Ink holds and maintains ideas when it attaches to paper, but the the of the present moment becomes the past. The present in infinitesimally fleeting. Nature needs no sense of self identity and continuously changes.
This contrast reflects upon the power and weakness of text. If humans cling nurture the values of the past, text can multiply and remain within our social consciousness. But just imagine what would happen if we placed The Diamond Sutra into the water. Ideas that have life on paper would disintegrate into the impermanence of nature. Perhaps we have to accept that even the grandest and deepest of human thoughts must dissipate into the constant shifting of nature.
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