近几年来，我离开了喧嚣缤纷的巴黎，搬到巴黎郊外的枫丹白露森林。我自己问自己这样的选择是不是有些志至先还了呢？结果因为抽离了我认为是“闹市”的地方。我才似乎有些明白了，庄子为什么称：梦与觉两者都是“真”的那种逍遥生活态度。
离开了我认为那是“闹”的地方，进入一个我以为是静的地方。只有体验可以告诉你：“闹”并不闹；“静”也非真静。这之间没有对立，而只是一个对等的关系。结果我每次都是很喜欢的进入我的“闹市”，又很欣慰的返回我的静地。2009年不也是一个世面上静如冬季的森林，而人们心里焦炙如地壳下的岩浆么。热正被冷孕育着。
年轻的时候，对自己的创作半信半疑。可还是拉紧缰绳，不管不顾的凭着一股倔强策马狂奔。总觉得被一种内在的冲动驱策着，试图挣脱另一种无形桎梏的束缚。我在“星星”时期的那些作品，都是在这种灵感中产生的。如“星星”参展作品《希望之光》（油画）、《挣脱》（木板画）。
今天看来，其实就是不想穿别人的鞋和袜子走路，不想活在别人的真理里面。等到我这个不怕虎的牛犊，成了有奶的母牛后，记得十几年前回国探亲，有一天，和几个有学问的朋友一起逛街，他们非要进书店，因为怕朋友奚落我没文化，也跟着凑热闹，买回一本《庄子》。读了一遍没懂，就又凭着一股倔劲读了几遍，却还是半懂不懂。奇怪的是像我这种从小被“文化大革命”吓着了的人。本以为这辈子不可能与“文化”有什么缘分了，却居然因怕朋友奚落我没文化，装样儿买来一本庄子的书后，歪打正着！我被他梦和旦只是对等关系的观念，牢牢吸引住了。我坚信它是一种解释生命源于何处的智慧。多少年来，我都若即若离的，时不时想尝一尝庄子所说的那种“栩栩然胡蝶(蝴蝶)也，自喻适志与”，是个什么滋味？!
自从十三岁拿起画笔，非要当艺术家不可，一恍也画了三十年画儿。现在家住山林边的小村子里，我最喜欢的是爬到山坡上的巨石上，观日出，赏日落。
2009年，我想尝试庄子所说的那种 “梦为蝴蝶也，自喻适志与”，是个什么体会的，热情又向我袭来 。于是我画了一张“大蝴蝶逍遥图”，一边画一遍想象那梦中的蝴蝶是真还是醒后的庄周是真，谁在梦谁呢？这第一幅画一开始动笔，紧跟着第二幅画就在脑海中动念了，我笑问：“这不正是‘方其梦也，不知其梦也’吗？”真不知是谁把谁给梦出来了。就这样一发不可收拾的画开了。这“因”是做了许多年的蝴蝶梦，这“果”是画了一年的逍遥蝴蝶。
每当我坐在山林的巨石上，看天看地看草木昆虫。偶尔也有成群的鹿和野猪跑来跑去的。我真觉得，大自然和动物，植物，都好像我们生活中的导师，也早就稳如泰山，颇有耐心和毫无吝啬的在那里展示给我们一个：人类千百年来，以及其复杂的方式探寻的那个深不可测的神秘生命来源。很可能就是我们自己！
想象一下我们生活的世界是个万花筒，大家都聚精会神在用一只眼盯着万花筒，他们看见的，只能是他们当时的心态驱使和希望的！其实万花筒中万物俱全，再怎么玩命转它，不想看的人，见到了“真相”也不认识。可“真相”不会因为人没看见它，就不在那儿了。那要是个育盲人呢，不全世界全宇宙里就剩他一个人活着了吗？“真实”只是人们对什么是真实的一种看法，或说是一种心态。跑的更远的人，就坚信了他们的一种信仰。再经过人类千百年来集体的认可，传播后，成为一种“绝对”的东西。每个人的见解都建立在他自己独有的体验上，世界因此变的五花八门了。大家都爱争个“我的真理是唯一对的”。而庄子大就大在：他体验到梦与旦是同等和统一的。谁的真相对他们自己而言都是对的，都是万物与自己一体独特的共振。
在进入2010年元旦那天，我又爬上了巨石，当时太阳正在下山。我想到了这一年我画的那些逍遥的大蝴蝶，想象着它们正在追赶着太阳，请太阳回来吃元旦晚宴。这想象是那么真切，我咯咯大笑起来，笑声回荡在巨石之间，回声像猿猴在歌唱。突然一个我琢磨了许多年的问题：是什么造成了人与人之间评判，防备的分离现象呢？一个答案涌到我的心中：“可能我们正在用我们不能从自己内部接受的东西，为武器来谴责别人。那么只有在我们活出了所有的生活境况后，并且从这些境况中，找到了一个自己内在的平和后，才能够去了解别人，并且不带评判的，容许别人成为他们自己所是的！”
太阳下山了，我从石头上一跃而下，觉得身轻如燕。这一夜，我与朋友们跳了一夜舞。2009年最后一天午夜子时，当时钟敲响后，朋友们互相争着拥抱亲吻，并且像猿猴一样嗷嗷直叫。大家还学着蝴蝶的样子，翩翩起舞。
2010年拂晓，我睡着了以后，竟然梦见我们还在跳舞，并且在梦中我知道自己正在做“梦”！看来“梦”和“觉”不仅都是真实的，还是一体的。我起床，给一个吵翻脸多年不曾来往的朋友写了一张新年贺卡，其中有一句写道：“放开别人就等于放开自己，这样别人和自己都将是轻盈和明亮的。”过了几天，贺卡又出现在我的信箱里，原来写错了地址，歪打正着。我自语；“你看应先原谅自己 ，才能平和的原谅别人。”这歪打正着的小小生活迹象，却如此的发人深省！我又在另一张贺卡上写的；“我爱你”！
对这个展览我希望分享的是：生活是礼物！活着真开心！
文/ 李爽
2010年1月
Free – the deep joy of detachment
In recent years, I left the colorful hustle and bustle of Paris and moved to the nearby Fontainebleau forest. I asked myself if I made this choice just to go back to my sources. Finally, since I left what I considered as the “bustling life” of the city, I seemed to begin to understand what Zhuangzi meant when he said that dreaming and being awake are both “true”, and to grasp his own choice of a carefree life.
When you leave a place which you consider noisy for one that you find quieter, only experience can tell you that “noisy” is not noisy at all and “quiet” is not really quiet. The two are not opposed but rather reciprocal. I do enjoy going to “noisy” places actually, but I feel very comfortable and happy to come back to my “quiet” place as well. Last year was as quiet as a winter forest, but people were boiling inside, like magma under the earth’s crust. Heat was really nurtured by the cold.
When I was young, I was not very confident about my creativity. But I held the reins tight, and without paying much heed to anything else, I spurred my horse and galloped ahead. I always felt an inner impulse strongly urging me to break free from another invisible force that was reining me in. During my “Stars” period, it was that impulse that inspired me. Such is the case of “A ray of hope” (oil on canvas) and “Breaking free” (wood print), both from that period.
Retrospectively, I think I did not want do wear other people’s shoes and socks nor to walk on trodden paths, and I did not want to live in someone else’s truth. After I grew up from a young filly fearless of tigers into a quieter mare, I remember I went back home to see my relatives about ten years ago, and one day, as I was shopping with some learned friends, intellectuals, they insisted on going to a bookstore; and just out of fear that they would think me uncultured, I followed them, for the fun of it, and I bought one book: “Zhuangzi.” The first time I read it I did not understand anything but, stubborn as I am, I read it over again several times, and I still only half-understood it. What is strange is that in my youth I had been so frightened by the “Great Cultural Revolution,” I thought I would never get along with “culture’ in my life; I went nonetheless into that bookshop – only for fear of being thought uncultured by my friends – and I bought that Zhuangzi book, which was just a pretence: it was all just too many coincidences, a stroke of luck. Then, Zhuangzi’s notion that “dreaming” and “awareness” are reciprocal things gradually pervaded in my mind. I really believe that it is a wisdom that can explain the origin of life. For all these years, I never stopped wanting to taste what it was like to be ‘fluttering like a butterfly, doing what it pleased me to do.”
Since I first took to painting when I was thirteen, I wanted to be an artist and nothing else, and I have been painting for thirty years. Now that I live in a village near the forest, what I like most is going to the woods and climbing on the rocks, to watch the sun rise or set.
In 2009, I wanted to try Zhuangzi experience, to “dream I was a butterfly, and do what I pleased.” So I painted a “Big carefree butterfly” and while I was painting I kept imagining that very butterfly in Zhuangzi’s dream: was he real or was he Zhuangzi after he woke up? Who dreamt of whom after all? As soon as I started to paint that painting, the next one was floating in my mind, and I was thinking: is this not really like in Zhuangzi: “Was it just a dream? Or didn’t I know it was one?” Can’t say really who dreamt of whom. That’s how these paintings came about, the “cause” is because I dreamt so many years of butterflies, and the result is that for one year I painted carefree butterflies.
Every time I’m sitting on a big boulder in the forest, I look at the sky and the ground, at the grass and the trees, and at the insects. Occasionally, a bunch of deer or boars rushes by. I really feel that nature and the animals and the plants are our life guides, that they are our unswerving base, that they are showing us patiently, with generosity, the mystery of the origin of life that man, since he has been around for thousands of centuries, has been trying to pierce. Perhaps it’s only us, after all!
When we imagine our world, it’s like a kaleidoscope, every one is engrossed looking through that kaleidoscope with one eye, and all they can see is their present state of mind and their hopes! But the kaleidoscope is such that, however one turns it around, those who do not want to see will not know the truth even if they see it. But just because people don’t see it doesn’t mean that the “truth” doesn’t exist. If there was but one blind man, wouldn’t he be the only one being left living on earth and in the universe? “Reality” is but one view that men have about reality, or an attitude. Men who push things further create a faith. All the knowledge accumulated by men over the centuries has become, when transmitted, a “certainty.” Every man’s opinion is made up from is experience, and that’s what makes the world so diverse. Everybody argues that his “truth is the only one that’s right.” And the greatness of Zhuangzi is that he has experienced that “dreaming” and “awareness” were reciprocal and, as it were, one same thing, the two sides of the same medal. Everybody’s reality is just; it is but a resonance between oneself in particular and the universe.
On New Year’s Eve before the beginning of 2010, I climbed once again on that boulder and watched the sun set. I thought about that year I spent painting “carefree butterflies” and I imagined them trying to catch up with the sun and invite him to come back for the evening party. The image was so vivid that I laughed out loud, and the sound of my mirth echoed between the boulders like a bunch of singing monkeys. Suddenly a question that I had been pondering over for years came up to my mind: what makes us judge each other and causes the phenomenon of defensive separation? An answer rose in my heart: “Perhaps we use what we cannot accept within ourselves as a weapon against others. Then, only after we have lived out our experiences and found therein our own inner harmony, can we understand others rather than judge them, and accept them as they really are!”
The sun went down behind the horizon, and as I leapt down from the boulder I felt myself as light as a swallow. I spent that night dancing with friends. The last night of 2009, as midnight bell struck, we hugged each other and exchanged kisses, honking like monkeys. And we all danced like butterflies.
When I woke up on the first morning of 2010, I dreamt that we were still dancing, and in my dream I knew I was dreaming! It looked as though “dreaming” and “being awake” were not only real but the same thing. I got up, and wrote a Season’s Greetings card to a friend with whom I had quarrelled and had not had any relations for years, with this sentence: “Forgiving others is like forgiving ourselves: it makes all of us brighter and clearer.” A few days later the card came back in my mailbox: I had sent it to a wrong address. Another strike of luck! I told myself: “You see, you must forgive yourself before you can find harmony and forgive others.” Life gives you sometimes little signs such as this one that make you ponder a lot! I wrote another card with the words: “I love you:”
What I want to share with this exhibition is this: “Life is a gift! Enjoy it!”
Li Shuang
January 2010