The Unresentful Sound of the Qin

Ji Kang, one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove who throughout his life revered "transcending moral conventions and following nature," was about to be executed. Seeing that the sun was still high and the hour of execution had not yet come, he asked his elder brother for a qin, played the piece "Guangling San" (Guangling Melody), and then calmly accepted death. Ji Kang's detachment from the mundane and his composure reached such a point.

Before his death Ji Kang wrote "On the Non-Affective Nature of Sound." In this essay he wrote of music: "When the gong and shang notes are assembled and tuned together, the sounds achieve harmony; this is the deepest wish of the human heart and the very focus of desire. Therefore the wise know that feelings cannot be indulged to the full and desires cannot be pressed to the limit, and so, in whatever is used, they always set a measure, so that grief does not reach the point of injury and joy does not reach the point of excess. Such is the general rule."

The Chinese guqin (seven-string zither) is the instrument that best embodies the ideal that "grief does not reach injury and joy does not reach excess." Confucius practiced the qin, and its tones "lingered around the beams for three days," so much so that Confucius forgot himself to the point of "not knowing the taste of meat for three months." Confucius held that "music teaches harmony"; the sound of the qin can bring a person to a state of equanimity.

The sound of the guqin is simple, deep, and lingering. Of all instruments, the guqin is the one best suited to "delighting oneself" rather than "delighting others." Although Bo Ya met Zhong Ziqi and thus gave rise to the eternal tale of "high mountains and flowing water" finding a soulmate, the guqin does not necessarily require a soulmate to be played with feeling. When one plays alone in a quiet room, a gentle breeze drifting by, the qin tones rising and falling, taking the qin as a companion, one is not lonely.

The guqin has no resentful notes; "sound without grief or indignation" is its characteristic. Within its mellow, lingering tones lies a calm that has seen the world through. No incense is needed. In a spare moment, sitting at the qin table, plucking, flicking, stroking and pressing: the scattered tones are vast, the harmonics clear and high, the stopped tones long-drawn. When one piece ends, the heart and mind are refreshed and all anxieties are dissolved.

I have loved music since childhood. My father was proficient in music, but he refused to teach me, fearing it would affect my studies. In middle age I still could not let go of music, so I decided to learn an instrument. Among the various instruments I chose the guqin.

The guqin is unlike the zheng, which is a bit too noisy and suited to performance. The guqin is serene, suited to sitting alone in a study or in some quiet valley, playing to delight and refine one's nature. When flowers bloom indoors in spring, playing the qin for half a day before the blossoms makes one feel that there is no greater joy on earth.

After playing the qin for a long time, resentment and discontent gradually fade from the heart. In life, who avoids unpleasant things? In practicing medicine there are many disappointments that are hard to share with others. But the seven strings of the qin seem to understand the matters on one's mind. The clear or mellow sounds flowing from the strings can carry a person into another world.

Once the qin sounds, the mundane, practical world seems suddenly a thousand miles away. Within the simple, deep tones there are high mountains and flowing waters, crisscrossing paths, a fishing boat singing at evening, the setting sun on a long river, and a small boat drifting on the lakes and rivers.

Ancient writers on the qin described its style, mood, flavor and character as having the qualities of "lofty, pure, clear, empty, secluded, rare, antique, and unadorned." On the whole, the guqin is an instrument that transcends the mortal world.

A person needs a spiritual transcendence in order to rise above the bonds of the practical world. Whether one leaves the world or engages with it, one cannot escape the limitations the Creator has set for us. Only the spirit can cross thresholds the body cannot, and depart from this tangled, dusty world. Through music one can achieve spiritual transcendence. Melody communicates with the human heart; melody can build for a person a poetic world.

For a person to live his whole life only in the practical world is far from enough. One should also have another world—a world unbound by fuel, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, and tea, or by fame, wealth, position, gain and lust; a free, poetic world in which one may soar at will.

Ji Kang said, "The wise know that feelings cannot be indulged and desires cannot be pressed to the limit"; this was the thinking of the nature-worshipping Ji Kang himself. Yet the multitude, living out their joys and sorrows in real life, precisely love to indulge their passions and desires. Though it is said that the savor of life lies in quiet joy, the world prefers to live out a drunken, dreamlike existence in a world of feasting and lights.

The desolation after a climax subsides, the sorrow after prosperity fades, often turn joy to grief. Yet mere coldness and austerity, as Hong Yingming, author of Cai Gen Tan (Vegetable Roots Discourse), noted, lose the vitality that should be there. Hence Confucius advocated the mean, and the Buddha Shakyamuni likewise advocated the "Middle Way."

The scattered tones and harmonics of the qin are like yin and yang: the yang does not become overbearing, and the yin has no taint of cold barrenness. Yin and yang support each other, just as humans are male and female; in their responsive harmony they accord with the great way of nature, in which yin and yang coexist and life ceaselessly renews itself.

I love the guqin.