The Nine Cloud Dream
My preferred way of engaging with books is reconstruction. These notes were created during my reading process to aid my own understanding and not written for the purpose of instruction. With that said, I’ve decided to share these unedited notes on the off chance they are helpful to other readers.
The Nine Cloud Dream is arguably the most beloved masterpiece in Korean literature written by Kim Man-jung. Kim was himself an exiled government minister after scoring the top score on the national civil service examination just like the protagonist Shao Yu. To me this is a tale with two overbearing motifs – illusion, and disillusionment – with fascinating implications for the Buddhist path.
The first motif of illusion can be seen in the recurring use of dreams. Shao-yu’s life is merely a dream by the monk Hsing-chen. Within this dream are nested multiple recurring dreams, some that see Shao-yu dream about his real life as Hsing-chen. Furthermore, even when Hsing-chen wakes up, his master still comments that he is also dreaming in some sense before fully passing on the Dharmic teachings through a teaching of the Diamond Sutra. Lastly, because of structural similarities between the author’s and Shao-yu’s life, this entire novel can be interpreted as a dream of Kim’s or, more accurately, an embellished dream-like autobiography. This layered dreamscape makes all the elements of the story, even ones that may seem solid and real to the protagonist, illusive. But the motif of illusion also extends into narrative elements as we see how unstable and fluctuating identity is. Shao-yu pretends to be a girl to glimpse at his future wife. A boy he picked up turned out to be a lady love interest in disguise. But the most revealing connection between masking identities and illusion is when Ch’un-yun seduced Shao-yu as a ghost while saying: “But you love me because of my dark eyebrows and rosy cheeks, and these are false. They are not my true form, but just an illusion to entice living men.” Just like the nested dreamscape, Ch’un-yun represented four layers of identity: Ch’un-yun, a human love interest, a ghost, and one of the eight fairies.
What I found fascinating was that this illusion full of desire and indulgence, despite what it first seemed to Hsing-chen, was not a punishment or deviation from the Buddhist path. His master initially casts him into the mortal realm by saying: “Each man has his own path to perfection, and each is reborn in order to carry out the things necessary to work out his karma … ‘I am sending you away because that is what you wish,’ said Liu-kuan. ‘Why would I make you go if you wanted to stay? You ask, ‘Where am I to go?’ You should go wherever your desire takes you.’” In fact this indulgence and full engagement with samsara is presented as a necessary step to be disillusioned by samsara and one of his final practices before he escapes samsara. Upon waking up, Hsing-chen concludes: “My master knew of my wrongful thoughts and made me dream this dream to learn that worldly riches, honor, and desire are nothing.”
Shao-yu embodies the perfect Confucian ideal: handsome, talented at poetry, loyal, pious, humble, and smart. He was a brilliant commander, politician and poet. He also had an incredibly successful romantic, military, and political life. By making such an exaggerated embodiment of Confucian ideals reject Confucianism in favor of Buddhism at the end of his life, the novel is making two claims. Firstly, that it is sometimes desirable if not necessary for certain individuals to fully indulge in their desires before they can truly develop renunciation and see it for what it is. Disillusionment only comes from complete immersion within illusion. Secondly, that Buddhism is superior to Confucianism because even one who fully embodies the ideals of the latter, as long as they are thoughtful and introspective, would realize the limitations of said system. That is to say one can progress dialectically from Confucianism to Buddhism simply by using the resources within Confucianism to critique itself. In this quote, Shao-yu’s argument for the superiority of Buddhism seems to be that the Confucian value of legacy is futile because even the most successful like Han Wu-ti do not, at the current moment, have much to show for his once immense power:
“Boys who come to gather wood and feed their cows will sing sad songs and say, ‘This is the place where Yang the Chief Preceptor played with his wives and concubines. All of his riches and his honor and all his beautiful women, elegant as flowers, with faces like white jade—all gone forever.’ The cowherds will look upon this spot just as I look upon the ruined palaces and the tombs of those three emperors. A man’s life is but a fleeting moment.
There are three ways in the world—the way of Confucius, the way of the Buddha, and the way of the Taoists. Buddhism is the highest. Confucianism exalts achievements and concerns itself with the passing down of names to posterity. Taoism is mystical, but it is unreliable, and though it has benefited many, its truths cannot be wholly known. Consider the fates of Ch’in Shi-huang, Han Wu-ti, and Hsüan Tsung.
It is evident that, much like Siddhartha’s experience with the four sights, it is the quality of impermanence that leads Shao-yu to reject worldly values. Also like Siddhartha who indulged in all the world had to offer as a prince before choosing the monastic life, Hsing-chen could only obtain enlightenment when he fully embodied and could viserally see the limitations of the worldly life through his own experience. It was only through full immersion in illusion could he be disillusioned. This unique take on the Buddhist path -- that some desire can be overcome through full indulgence and maybe can only be overcome in this way -- has been hugely insightful personally.