Actualizing the Shadow - Yang

 

(PC: Yifei)

In mid April, I once again visited two friends in the San Cristobal mountains north of Taos.  They live in a lovely octagon belonging to a Buddhist neighbour, amidst pines and junipers and off the grid.  One evening, sitting on the wooden floor after dinner, we played a word game as the room slowly dimmed.

One person is to come up with one word in mind, and the others shall make guesses of what the word is by asking questions.  All this person can answer is a yes or no.  The rules are simple enough.  

There was one word that took us most time to figure out.  The interrogation went roughly like this:

"Is it a noun?"

-"Yes."

"Is it something you can grab by hand?"

-"No."

"Is it something you can see?"

-"Yes."

"Is it an emotion?"

-"No."

"Do you like it?"

-"Yes."

"Do you have it?"

-"Yes."

"Does Diodio (our dog, the one sitting on the deck in the picture above) have it?"

-"Yes." ("In fact, everything has it.")

"! Everything has it?"

-"Yes."

"A name?"

-"No."

"A sign?"

-"No."

""Is it gravity?"

-"No."

"Shadow?"

-"No, but close."

.......

The word he had in mind was "reflection".

Somehow the notion that everything has reflection, or at least capable of having reflection, stuck with me.  A line from Dogen floated to the surface:

"In this sense, the line 'Mind itself is buddha" is the moon reflected on water, and the teaching 'sitting itself is becoming buddha' is a reflection in the mirror."  (On the Endeavour of the Way, Question 4)

Language is reflection.  Reflection of what? On what medium?

I then wondered at the similarity and difference between reflection and shadow.  In modern Chinese, shadow(影子) and reflection(倒影) are closely related by sharing a character 影.  

A shadow is cast due to lack of light -- when light is blocked by an object.  The shadow preserves the contour of the object, but can be stretched or shortened depending on the angle of the light.  Shadows manifest on another surface, not necessarily separate from the object (shadows of leaves on branches of the same tree, shadows of branches on the trunk), but another plane of the object.

But shadows preserve the contour of things only.  They are dark shapes without contents.  Reflections, on the other hand, preserve the look/appearance of things.  Reflections become possible when 1) light is present, 2) a smooth surface is nearby.  We see our own reflections in bodies of water, and when indoors, in the mirror, in the TV, in the oven door, in the backside of a spoon.  They are usually not dramatically stretched as shadows are, depending on the curvature of the surface.

The picture below shows a lovely complication: the reflection of a shadow.  There are four realms in this picture, and it is light that links all of them.  Is Buddha Dharma the light?  Are shadows painted rice cakes?  Or reflections are painted rice-cakes?  Or, the shadow of the reflections are painted rice-cakes?  Are they all painted rice-cakes?  Is the shadow of reflection the word "painted rice cakes"?

Perhaps yet another complication, from Dogen's poetic, paradoxical and imaginative soulmate Zhuang Zi:

罔兩問景曰：「曩子行，今子止，曩子坐，今子起，何其無特操與？」景曰：「吾有待而然者邪！吾所待又有待而然者邪！吾待蛇蚹、蜩翼邪！惡識所以然？惡識所以不然？」

"The Penumbra asked the Shadow, saying, 'Formerly you were walking on, and now you have stopped; formerly you were sitting, and now you have risen up - how is it that you are so without stability?' 

The Shadow replied, 'I wait for the movements of something else to do what I do, and that something else on which I wait waits further on another to do as it does. My waiting, is it for the scales of a snake, or the wings of a cicada? How should I know why I do one thing, or do not do another?"