In Tun-huang–

Manuscripts of the Gods: The Bible and Ancient Cultural Thresholds

by James Whitlark, Ph.D.

“Far—From—Equilibrium” Tun—huang:
John and Eastern Illumination

[cavern near Tun-huang]

China’s westernmost bordertown, Tun—huang was repeatedly captured by one neighbor after another. The Mongols called it Sachiu (“City of Sand”), indicative both of its arid location and tendency to crumble before invaders. It is perhaps even a clearer image of venture into chaotic complexity than Rome, Taxila, or Alexandria. At least, that is the notion that guided my choice of color for each section: red for Rome, where the L4 veneer of Law was as thin above L3 violence as in the Solomonic empire; L6 for Taxila, relatively humanistic and tolerant; the yellow of L7 for the individualistic mysteries of Mark in Alexandria ; and finally, turquoise for an L8 theme in the manuscripts at Tun-huang: the problems of describing the partial merger of a complex, fully developed individual into a collectivity that is one, yet not exactly.

Since higher-numbered Graves/Jung levels seem stupid, criminal, insane, and/or weak to lower numbered ones, L8s (if they exist) could only congregate in some such place as Tun-huang, where a large population of transients shifted too often for authorities to monitor them closely, since the city’s wealth derived from openness to world trade. While some parts of China achieved stagnancy under the tight control of a literary elite, who were masters of a relatively coherent, intellectual order, Tun—huang was deluged by a thousand wisdoms wandering to it through the desert.

Traversing wastes where “Bones of men and beasts/Merely serve as guideposts on our journey,” bringers of scriptures roamed Central Asia (Fahsien, quoted in Inoue vi.). According to Taoists, the “cloud—riding” author of the Tao Te Ching sped West to convert barbarians and had the Buddha as one of his pupils (Fischer—Schreiber 141). By that assumption, the monk Hsüan—tsang, importing an entire caravan of Buddhist sutras, merely returned to China what was its own. In another legend, a dragon, a monkey king, and a pig immortal protected him. Hsi—yu—chi (Journey to the West), a popular fiction about this quest, itself became almost a scripture. The Taoist Liu I—Ming writes: “Wherever this book is, there are celestial spirits guarding it. If you are going to [peruse] it, you should clean your hands, light incense, and read it with sincere respect. When you feel fatigued, then close the book and put it away in a safe place” (Clearly 1991a, 253). Liu I—Ming adds that the very words of the story are paradoxes–Ch’an devices to trigger Enlightenment (Cleary 1991a, 253). It is about Bodhisattvas and Immortals working together to help the world, a very mythologized version of L8.

Its conflation of popular fiction and spiritual koans sounds strange, but is actually typical of the intellectual trade and also a clue to scriptural paradoxes necessary to express the complex insights of L7 or L8. Within a single tradition, wisdom tends to be endoxical. If, however, a scripture is not limited to a homogeneous group (i.e., if it is to appeal to multitudes), it naturally draws on diverse conventions, which probably contradict one another. The result is like John Holland’s letting natural selection sort between contradictions in his computer program (vide Introduction to The Big Picture). The result is no final choice, but one or another rule working best at a particular time. Self—contradictory scriptures are so rich in ideas that they can best meet the demands of cultural diversity. Eventually, when the texts have become venerable, an elite harmonize words grown even more obscure with age and claim that they always formed some dogmatic system; however, to have survived that long, the text must have adapted to shifting times.

Near Tun—huang, a series of caverns still show its rôle in the popular traffic in Illumination. Mural fantasies depicting Hsüan—tsang’s journey decorate the Thousand Buddhas grottoes (Mokaok’u; Gray 61). Along with 45,000 square meters of religious frescoes and 2000 statues, the caverns long housed more than forty thousand scrolls, including scriptures and some of the oldest manuscripts of popularized spiritual literature (Dunhuang Institute for Cultural Relics 9). The writings range from before the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.– 220 C.E.) to the eleventh century C.E. A Mongol city when Marco Polo visited it, Tun—huang later suffered many invasions, but without anyone’s discovering the cache until the twentieth century, when, citing Hsüan—tsang as his inspiration, the Taoist priest Wang Yuanlu tried to renew the area as a religious site by restoring the caves. Serendipitously, he uncovered the depository. (Whitfield 15).

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