Moonlake Sunmirage
Establishing balance within unconscious order.
Chapter I:
The Way of Yin and Yang
Chapter II:
The Way of Worldly Engagement
Chapter III:
True way, wild and free.
Moonlake Sunmirage
(2025-2026)
Ten years ago, I chanced upon this lake. Amid the mountains encircling the waters, a silent qi quietly reshaped my perception and understanding of the natural landscape. Over the decade that followed, I kept fathoming the flowing imagery of rivers and streams until I returned to this very field of energy that had once stirred ripples deep within me.
This lake, vast as an inland sea. Standing on its shore and gazing toward the opposite bank, the distance, elusive and ambiguous, at times defies all sight of the far shore. Here, "distance" is something of the mind; it shrinks and expands not by rulers or mileage, but by the shifting states of the present moment. And so, the physical measure of space dissolves, transmuting into a space of the mind.
I set an arbitrary starting point at the water's edge and walk around the lake. This starting point becomes the very endpoint I reach each time after circumambulating over four hundred kilometers, and that endpoint, with a turn of the body, becomes a new beginning. Whether on the southern shore or the northern bank, sitting cross-legged by the water, with patience, one may witness the moon rising from the very place where the sun ascends. Should strength remain and the will not yet weary, one may wait in the direction where the moon has set, through the passage of darkness, to once again behold the sunrise. Thus it cycles, ever-changing, yet never departing from its heart.
Moonlake Sunmirage takes Taihu Lake as its archetype. Upon the real landscape, with the mind reflecting the world and the world witnessing the mind, it distills the principle of Yin-Yang and the way of endless generation between beginnings and endings, and names it "Supreme Void." Yin and Yang revolve in their eternal turn; wax and wane pursue each other in ceaseless sequence; beginning and ending are without terminus. Emptiness and fullness lean upon each other; far and near take shape through each other; start and finish give birth to each other. Amid the interweaving breath of all things, a spiritual mirror is built. Between the ebb and flow of Yin and Yang, balance holds itself.
Just so this lake, round as the Great Ultimate (Taiji).
Zhong Qi, 2025
