Chinese Landscape (shanshui) and the Sacred
Résumé
In his paper “Generosity Toward Multiple Others,” Vincent Shen explains how, in the Taoist tradition, billions of things are produced by “Tao’s generosity going outside of the self, whilst beauty concerns the ontological re-union of Heaven and Earth returning to Tao.” Here, beauty concerns landscape. This paper aims to show that, when perceived as such, landscape is an expression of Tao’s generosity, but at the same time, the sacredness of mountains and waters does not always imply their “beauty” as understood by Shen.