High Conversation

above: The view from Amy and Bruce's house. On special occasions Amy would set up a card table in the den and the children would eat out there. Amy would always cook special food from traditional recipes for these dinners. Then she would announce, “No children at the table; tonight we will have only high conversation.” The first time we had spent the afternoon making several hundred dumplings and she boiled them, shocking them with cold water added to the boiling pot and then skimming off the ones that rose to the top. There would be no talk about the day’s affairs on this night. We would talk about philosophy and manifestations of the “strange force” in history and Amy’s personal experiences in China. These dinners and the conversations with Amy and Bruce have a special place in my memories now, so many years later.

I came as a beggar with very little to add to any of these conversations. These conversations made me deepen my reading about Chinese thought, history and language. I remember Amy, with Bruce translating and adding comments, talking about the concept of sanjiao sizhi or “unity among the Three Teachings or Paths “ of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. She easily slipped from one teaching to another in philosophical conversation, blending the concepts perfectly. Bruce translated much of this for me and explained that the literati had developed this ecumenical approach from the core teachings of the Complete Realization sect of Taoism. The more ancient text concerning this was Zhouyi Cantongqi, or the Concordance of the Three, according to the Book of Changes of the Zhou Dynasty (the Three being Earth, Man, Heaven, on the outer or macrocosmic level and jing, qi, and zhen on the inner level.) The practice that this text advocated brought Taoism and Confucianism together; only later was Buddhism recognized as an equal. to be continued