Stairway to Heaven: A Journey to the Summit of Mount Emei

Closing Thoughts

193 Closing Thoughts The magistrate of Emei xian, Zhao Mingsong, writing in his preface to Dryden Linsley Phelps’s Omei Illustrated Guide Book, mentions that he visited Mount Emei twice. In preparation for each ascent the magistrate looked over various “writings of the past.” Here is how he describes his reaction to those texts: Before each ascent I invariably glanced over the pure and fragrant writings of former authors, as well as the polished and assorted writings of modern scholars. They merely praise and exaggerate Mount Emei’s peaks, grottoes, springs and rocks, precipices and ravines, purification halls, Buddhist enlightenment sites, the bright luster of icy snows, the strange illusions of mists and clouds, the majestic manifestations of Tathāgata, and the great arhats who meditate cross-legged and are at peace with the world. These are the divine wonders that met the eyes of these writers, which they assembled together. They just saw what everyone else saw, described what everyone else described, and that is all. Upon close examination, all of their accounts are contradictory and bear no resemblance to the facts. . . . The reason Emei’s fame is second to [Mounts] Song and Hua is due to the fanciful tales told by mountain monks, and to those men of letters who, fond of crafting compositions, append to them numinous vestiges of the past in order to show off their talent. And yet, they do not know a single name or single artifact of the mountain. Although the names and artifacts are slight in number, they must be utilized to the full extent.1 Within the space of a single paragraph, Zhao Mingsong dismisses virtually all the written sources upon which this book is based. The problem with these texts, he argues, is that the authors failed to probe deeply enough into the names (ming 名) and artifacts (wu 物) associated with the mountain . Later in his preface Zhao Mingsong extols the Omei Illustrated Guide Book because, he says, it reveals Mount Emei’s “true appearance” (zhen 194 Stairway to Heaven: A Journey to the Summit of Mount Emei mianmu 真面目; lit., “true face and eyes”), “true facts” (zhen yuanli 真原 理), and “true function” (zhen gongyong 真功用).2 Since Zhao’s purpose in writing the preface was to heap praise on the Guide Book, and also because he admits to never having seen the original Chinese text on which Phelp’s based his English translation (that is, the Eshan tushuo), we need not take his indictment of past and present sources too seriously. The magistrate does, however, raise a fascinating issue. If the writings of the past and present fail to reveal the genuine “appearance, facts, and function” of Emei shan, then where should we look for these truths? Zhao Mingsong provides no satisfying answer to the question. Of course, one of the best ways to gain knowledge about a particular place is to go there and experience it first hand. But this is not always possible; hence there are many books in circulation (like this one) that attempt to describe places for people who will probably never have a chance to visit them. To be sure, the sources upon which this study is based are all biased to some degree. But isn’t all writing informed first by the predisposed perspective of its author? A related problem of course is how does a writer deal with sources that are far removed from him or her in time, history, and culture? The best anyone can do is to try to understand and interpret the biases of the old authors and one’s own “predisposed perspective.” My ultimate goal, as outlined in the introduction, has been to demonstrate how human interaction has impacted the place and space of Mount Emei over the course of its long history as a “famous mountain.” Whether my findings would satisfy Zhao Mingsong’s demand for the “true appearance” of Mount Emei I cannot say. In my view, the magistrate’s demand is impossible to achieve for the simple reason that no single “reality” of Mount Emei exists. I take this position for the same reason mentioned in chapter 1: the lengthy history of human activity on Emei shan has always maintained a dynamic quality. This is one of the main themes to emerge from my research. There is no single “true reality” of Mount Emei because over the centuries many people with varied backgrounds and views have traveled or lived there and interacted with the mountain’s place and...