Savoring in Academia: An Appreciative Recollection
by
Mitch Hall
(Note: This article was posted on the Dialogues
and Task Force on Indigenous Psychology list servs in early November, 2017. The response is from Dr. Louise Sundararajan, moderator of both forums and the scholar from whose work I have learned about the Chinese concept of aesthetic savoring.)
In the spring of 1964, the last semester of my undergraduate senior year at Columbia University, I enjoyed the memorable, good fortune of studying in a course entitled Taoist Thought and Its Development. The visiting professor, who taught this course at Columbia only that one time, was John C.H. Wu, [1] a distinguished Chinese scholar, prolific author and translator, polyglot who wrote in Chinese, English, French, and German, jurist, lawyer, philosopher, primary author of the Constitution of Taiwan, diplomat, convert to Roman Catholicism, and ecumenist who embraced and elucidated the wisdom of Zen, Taoism, and much more. In his course, we read, in English translation, the primary works of Laozi (Lao Tzu), and Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), as well as articles and histories.
Professor Wu was 65 years old at the time. As a 22-year-old, I could not fully grasp the scope, significance, and depth of this professor’s erudition, intercultural adeptness, and accomplishments, but I looked forward to and enjoyed each class with him and felt his congenial teaching style was unique in my experience and was infused with a vital, intangible essence that I did not, at the time, have the words to articulate. In retrospect, thanks to reading some of Louise Sundarajan’s insightful expositions of the Chinese conception and cultural practice of aesthetic savoring (Pin wei 品味) [2] as well as to participating in a research project [3] with Louise and my friend, the poet Chun Yu,I have come to recognize that savoring was an intrinsic aspect of Professor Wu’s pedagogy and was so congruent with the values of the Daiost philosophers whose works we were studying.
As Louise has defined it, and has illustrated with numerous, moving quotes and references from Chinese poetics and commentaries, savoring is “appreciation and extensive processing of personal emotional information that includes but is not confined to aesthetic experiences.” [4] She identified four principles that characterize savoring: (1) “self-reflexivity,” (2) “detached engagement,” (3) being “intrinsically communal,” and (4) having “a long shelf life, as it is a process that subsists primarily in the post-stimulus phase of the phenomenon.”[5]
On the basis of the preceding definition and principles of savoring, how was Professor Wu’s teaching style infused with savoring? I remember him as consistently relaxed, friendly, calm, confident, modest, competent, respectful, and knowledgable. We read his own translation of the Daodejing (Tao Teh Ching). [6] He taught in a way that was different from the style in any other class I had taken at Columbia where lectures had often been lengthy, discursive, and fast-paced displays. For example, over a period of weeks, Professor Wu clearly and slowly read aloud each of the classic text’s 81 sections. We savored the text together and did the same with chapters of the more literary, playful writings of Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu). Professor Wu would comment on meanings, feelings the verses invoked, variant translations, ambiguities, parallels or differences from the values and practices of other spiritual traditions, and more. He would then invite discussion. If any students aggressively asserted their ideas, Professor Wu remained unflappably peaceful, at times seemed respectfully bemused, and took the occasion to help the class go more deeply into the spirit as well as the letter of this mystical text. His expertise and mastery of the material were manifest, and he did not need to prove anything by argumentation. In so many ways, Professor Wu exemplified the self-reflexivity and detached engagement that characterize aesthetic savoring. At the same time, he exemplified the modesty, frugality, kindness, mercifulness, genuineness, sincerity, and other virtues that are extolled in the Daodejing. While deeply engaged, he was also detached even from the wording of his own translation and, at times, suggested refinements to what had been published.
Clearly, this class itself with its live readings and discussions was a sustained experience of the “intrinsically communal” nature of savoring. Further, this experience of savoring has for me had such “a long shelf life” that almost 54 years since I was a student in the class I am still able to tune into and savor the feelings that studying with Professor Wu induced in me. Over these intervening years and throughout the many geographical moves I have made in this country and abroad, I have often read and kept with me Professor Wu’s translation of the Daodejing,
and other books from the course, including his friend, the ecumenical Trappist monk, social activist, and poet Thomas Merton’s book, The Way of Chuang Tzu, [7] which Merton had appreciatively dedicated to John C. H. Wu, “without whose encouragement I would never had dared this.”
In many respects, my direct experience of studying with Professor Wu has demonstrated for me the living tradition of aesthetic savoring transmitted throughout centuries of Chinese culture that Louise Sundarajan has also exemplified and has so elegantly and movingly brought into contemporary scholarship through her many amazingly fecund contributions to discussions of culture, emotions, cognition, Chinese poetics and spiritual traditions, and so much more. Through this little article, I wish to thank both Professor Wu and Louise Sundarajan for helping me learn to savor, perhaps a bit more than I would otherwise have been able to do without their kind presence, profound scholarship, and generous sharing.
Endnotes
For more information about John C. H. Wu, his life and writings, see the following:
2. Sundararajan, L. (2015). Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture: Thinking through Psychology.
New York: Springer International Publishing Company. See, in particular, Chapter 10, Savoring (Pin wei 品味), from Aesthetics to the Everyday.
3. Sundararajan, L., Yu, C., & Hall, M. The Appreciative Critic: An Invitation to Aesthetic Savoring. In L. Hoffman, M. Yang, M. Mansilla, J. Dias, M. Moats, & T. Claypool, (Eds.). (In press, 2018). Existential Psychology: East-West (Volume 2).
Colorado Springs, CA: University Professors Press.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Lao Tzu. (1961). Tao Teh Ching. Translated by John C. H. Wu. New York: St. John’s University Press.
7. Merton, T. (1965). The Way of Chuang Tzu.
New York: New Directions.
P.S.
By the way, around 1969 and 1970, I had a friend who was a Chinese-American student at Barnard College. As it turned out, she was in John C. H. Wu’s extended family. She once invited me to go to a family gathering where she introduced me to one of Professor Wu’s younger children, a daughter, and one of his 11 kids with his first, dearly beloved wife. I expressed my appreciation of her father to the daughter, then a young mother with her own child. The daughter responded thankfully and cheerfully. She said that she and some of the other siblings had not had much contact with her father who was such a great scholar. I was impressed that she said this in a respectful and affectionate way with no trace of apparent resentment as having had a more distant dad.
While looking on the Internet for links to cite for the little article I wrote, I came across this touching anecdote that Professor Wu published in the Epilogue, called Sparks of Zen, to his book, The Golden Age of Zen:
"True goodness is always beautiful and cheerful, even when one is on the brink of death. I can no longer doubt this after I have witnessed with my own eyes the death-bed scene of my dear wife, Teresa (d. Nov. 30, 1959). She was cheerful and thoughtful up to the very end. About two hours before her death, she whispered to our son Vincent, who was in her room together with Dr. Francis Jani saying, “The doctor has been standing so long that he must be greatly fatigued. Go bring a chair for him to sit down.” Dr. Jani thought that she was asking for something. So he asked Vincent what was her desire. When Vincent told him what she had said, the doctor was so moved that he went out immediately and wept. Later he told me that it was the first time in his thirty years of practice to find a dying person still so thoughtful of others. About an hour later, the doctor called us all in for the final farewell. She was in smiles, speaking to all our children one by one and blessing them and promising to pray for them in Heaven. I was simply dazed with wonder. Lowering my head, I prayed and offered her to Christ in the words of John the Baptist: “He who has the bride is the Bridegroom; but the friend of the Bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices exceedingly at the voice of the Bridegroom. This my joy, therefore, is made full. He must increase, but I must decrease.” Suddenly I heard our children call me, “Dad, mommy wants to speak to you!” No sooner had I turned my eyes to her than she leaned forward and, holding my hands in hers, said cordially, “Till our reunion in Heaven!” This lifted my spirit to such a height that I forgot my sorrow!"
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From Louise Sundararajan
Dear Mitch,
The anecdote in your note made me cry.
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From Mitch Hall
I was also so touched by the anecdote. I realized that Professor Wu had lost his beloved first wife just 5 years before he was my teacher. I think they were married when he was still in secondary school and only 17. It was such a long, devoted marriage. It is so moving. I feel tearful to be communicating with you about this. Your response is facilitating my access to my deeper emotional experience. This is perhaps primary evidence of the intrinsic communal nature of savoring.