In Painting and in Life, Both Must Be Plain
Of West Lake — that picture-and-poem — Su Dongpo of the Song offered this: I would compare West Lake to Xi Shi: in plain dress or heavy, she is always fit. Although for tone he had to put plain dress before heavy, in Su's eye heavy fell short of plain.
His line likely drew inspiration from the Tang's great Li Bai, who wrote: plainly swept, the bright lake opens its jade mirror.
Whether literary master or poet, whether Lake Dongting or West Lake — the prized quality is one word: plain. After them, Liu Ban of the Song (1023–1089) wrote in his "Pond After Rain": one rain, and the pond is level — plainly polished, the bright mirror catches eaves and pillars. The verb polish, prefixed with plain, is a stroke of inspiration — and the value of plain shines through.
Xu Youren of the Yuan, the child-prodigy whose single glance took in five lines, wrote in Setting Out Early at Huo Harbor: the plain moon hides among the reed flowers. Bright moon, full moon, lush moon, crescent moon, slanting moon, waning moon — all writable; that he singled out plain was no accident. Can heavy never enter the painting or the poem? Not at all.
Wang Anshi's Ode to the Pomegranate Flower — heavy green, ten thousand branches, a single red dot; spring colour that moves the heart needs no abundance — is a famous line; but heavy never quite matches plain in clear-still poise. Note that Wang adds at the end "needs no abundance": heavy is not many; that is plain. Wang uses heavy here to throw plain into relief.
In our daily life, nothing is free of heavy and plain; but the heavy mostly harms, and the plain mostly benefits. Take the pleasures of seeing and hearing: a mountain collapsing, a thunderclap — sound at its heaviest; the quiet of silk-and-bamboo — plain. Pump heavy sound into a headphone over time, and your hearing will surely drop.
To stare at a TV is never as kind to the eyes as to lift them to the far view. The first is heavy in colour, the second plain. Rich-and-greasy food is the heavy in diet; Chinese medicine calls it the poison that rots the bowels. Plain tea and simple rice are plain, and over the long run nourish life.
Low-proof, plain liquor benefits a person; high-proof, heavy liquor harms.
A person is master in thought, unless he is a vegetable. So in thought all the more, one should keep off heavy and lean to plain.
First — be plain in matters of name and gain. Xue Xuan of the Ming once said: Once outer things draw you, the heart has not an instant of peace. See name and gain as plain, and they cannot draw you. Xichou the Elder's Rules to Oneself explains why the plain man is not drawn: the gentleman can sit lightly to desire, at ease in clear plainness. Zhuge Liang too summed it up: without plain-and-dilute, no clear will; without quiet, no reach to distance (from The Collected Works of Marquis Wu, A Letter Instructing My Son). The plain person is at peace and clear and still; a fool with mind clouded by greed cannot know what plainness is.
The ancients long knew that those at ease in body and mind live long, and the restless and harried die young. The Tang poet Du Xunhe declared: I would be the leisured guest of the universe, not a thief of grace and salary under heaven and earth (Preface to Tang Wind Anthology).
Even in daily life, plainness is the standard. Of fine friends — the gentleman's friendship is plain as water. To wear silks reeking with the worldliness of food and wine and call on the gates of nobles is not what plainly sweeping the moth-brow, going up to the great (Zhang Hu's Hall of the Spirit) means. To welcome friends with coarse tea and simple fare, as Huang Tingjian did — how the depth of friendship shines through.
Even in Chinese medicine, with herbs like zhuye, wuzhuyu, kunbu, qiushi, ganjiang, huirong, plain preparation is stressed, to reduce side effects — the plain preparation reduces what modern language calls side effects.
I venture: to keep our youth, to nurture body and heart — there is one word: plain. As Zhuge Liang sings in the Empty Fort Strategem opera: I was a man at ease in Sleeping Dragon Ridge, leisurely and plain in nature. If we must cite the classics, take Lu You's "Autumn Thoughts": one window settles a plain life.
From The Medical Discourses of Gan Zuwang