The Diagram of Inner Lights: the Interweaving of Flesh with Landscape (Zoom)​

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Vincent Qiu

​Independent scholar​​​​

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The Diagram of the Inner Lights depicts a human body with the landscape of mountains, rivers, forests, and shelters. Its main version was found in the White Cloud Temple of Beijing in 1886, and preceding it, a genealogy of body images evolved since the fifteenth century. As an important image of both a Taoist self-cultivation guide and a Chinese medical illustration, its architectural significance nonetheless remains unexplored. By presenting the alternative relationships between the human body and surrounding landscapes in this diagram, this essay evokes a renewed understanding of architectural action, deemed as the manner of dwelling on the earth.

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This body image is comprised of two spheres. The head sphere is formulated by layered mountain ridges and waters, with a twelve-story pagoda that symbolizes the throat. The main sphere of the body can be divided into three horizontal regions, connected by the spine water that runs throughout the body. Instead of forming a dualistic opposition, the body has an undifferentiated intertwining relation with surrounding landscapes and they should be considered as one.

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As for the details of the main sphere, the first horizontal region symbolizes the heart, depicting the Cowherd Boy who bridges the stars over the circular Ken field. The second horizontal region is the upper abdomen, wherein the Weaving Girl turns the wheel to produce silk ribbons next to a mulberry forest. The third horizontal region is the lower abdomen, wherein the Children paddle the Mysterious Yin-yang Treadmill, turning the bodily circulation of Qi from downward to upward.

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After introducing the majority of the diagram’s content, it becomes clear that the flesh of the body is never objectifiable substance, but always entails a certain degree of fluidity and motion. Apart from the liquid landscape elements seen above, there is another level of invisible fluidity taking the form of yin-yang polarity, such as the sun and the moon, the Ren and Du two Vessels, as well as the elder Laozi and the young monk. As the interweaving of the body and landscape carries on from a stable to dynamic mode, it is found that the entire body has only a primeval oval shape, since it signifies the human being’s infinite transformative potentials.

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The essay ends by looking at the human activities portrayed within the landscape, including the work of the Cowherd Boy, the Weaving Girl, the Plowing Man, and the Children. Together, they evoke a renewed understanding of architectural action, deemed as a manner of dwelling on the earth: despite various utilitarian functions of human acts, their purposes always have an excessive dimension that partakes in natural circulations. Correspondingly, dwelling activities mobilize the self-transformation of the human being so as to attune the selfness with the changing world.