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Translator's Preface 7-21
p.8 Recognized professionally as a Sinologist, Jullien has frequently and publicly asserted that he came to this field not out of a passion for things Chinese but out of a desire to gain a clearer perspective on the roots of his own tradition as found in Greek philosophy.
Prologue 23-25
p.24 Blandness... provides access to the undifferentiated foundation of all things and so is valuable to us... At this stage, the real is no longer blocked in partial and too obvious manifestations; the concrete becomes discrete, open to transformation.
Chapter One: A Change of Sign 27-33
p.31 striving and inner contentment... what matters is the tension between the two movements, its renewal and duration (more than a result that, by its very nature, must be temporary). In short, what matters is that uninterrupted desire to go beyond, a desire that finds within itself its own end (its "happiness") and keeps life young and evolving.
Chapter Two: The Landscape of the Bland 35-39
p.39 The blandness of the painted landscape cannot be confined to the realm of artistic effect. Rather, it expresses wisdom, for the bland life constitutes an ideal.
Chapter Three: Blandness-Detachment 41-45
p.41 According to the Daoists of antiquity, the very foundation of reality, in its infinite fullness and renewal, reveals itself to us as "bland" and "flavorless"
p.42 All flavors disappoint even as they attract... the bland invites us to trace it back to the "inexhaustible" source of that which constantly unfolds without ever allowing itself to be reduced to a concrete manifestation or completely apprehended by the senses: that which transcends all particular actualizations and remains rich in virtuality. Every actualization constitutes a limitation, for it excludes all other becoming... Wisdom consists in perceiving that opposites, far from being sequestered in their exclusive individuality, ceaselessly modify and communicate with each other.
p.43 Art and wisdom consist, then, in allowing oneself to be led from one extreme to the other, intervening as little as possible, in order to benefit fully from the logic - inherent in the real - constituted in this dynamic of reversal. One must not apply oneself to resolving "difficulties" at the stage when the situation has become difficult. Rather, we are shown, one anticipates the predictable arrival of this stage and pays close attention to things while they are still easy to manage.
p.43 Neither should one desire to realize immediately any "great projects"; instead, always begin at the incipient stage of things, which, as such, constitutes a promise of development.
p.43 flavor provokes attachment, and insipidity provokes detachment. The former overwhelms us, clouds our minds, reduces us to a state of dependence; the latter liberates us from the pressure of the external world, from the excitement of sensations, from all false and short-lived intensities.
p.43-44 for when consciousness no longer permits itself to be ensnared by the diversity of flavors but perceives the essential non-differentiation at the base of all these differences, the world can again open up to its initiatives. Fixations and blockages disappear. Desire's overdeterminations... evaporate.. The phase of "non-differentiation" is that from which all things originate and to which all things return... As long as no one flavor attracts us more than any other... we maintain an equal balance among all the virtual forces at work
p.45 blandness-detachment characterizes the basis of reality and serves as the platform on which all existence rests. Therefore, it is vital that we not take an absence of flavor or allure as a sign of deficiency... the blandness that leads to detachment is simply the path of free, unimpeded growth, the path of what happens spontaneously... Reality projects no meaning beyond itself, and nothing else lends it variety or attraction. Blandness characterizes the real in a way that is complete, positive, and natural.
Chapter Four: The Sense of Neutrality 47-53
p.48 This approach to the real does not encourage inquiry into what truly is... Rather, the Chinese perspective opens directly onto the coherence inherent in change itself and so bestows on becoming the logic of its own transpiring. The Chinese are interested in accounting for the potential (de) common to all reality and for all its stages of existence... without which the world would not be continuously renewing itself and without which life would cease its course.
[JLJ - Does this have an application as well to game theory? A machine "playing" a complex game of strategy is interested in (or, should be interested in) estimating the potential of the position, and in the potential of future positions. It should "see" the "design" of the position(s) as one for action (even if temporarily blocked or constrained) and renewal, and it should busy itself in performing competent diagnostic tests of the ability of the experimental yet evolutionary-designed tension to renew itself by examining sequences of "maybe" moves or "musings", but only where the "renewal" of the sustaining positional tension is in doubt - where there are not multiple paths forward.]
p.48 What, then, is the source of the efficacy of change?
p.49 The Confucian ideal... is based on the perception of the fundamental neutrality of all nature... There is no other basis in reality apart from this value of the neutral: not leaning in one direction more than in another, not characterized more by one quality than by another, but preserving, perfectly whole within itself, its capacity for action. From this neutrality drives, in the eyes of the Confucians, all true efficacy.
p.50 True efficacy is always discreet; conversely, the ostentatious is illusory. Sage and strategist alike reject spectacular and superficial acts in favor of an influence that operates profoundly and over time.
p.51 The less evident a quality, the greater its capacity to grow. Plenitude is all the greater for its refusal to show itself... this restraint is the very condition for non-exhaustion.
p.52 Rather than isolating the various aspects of the real, the stages of becoming... the Sage understands... that everything exists only in process, in its passing from one state to another.
Chapter Five: Blandness in Society 55-58
p.58 One does not bring about that which one cannot sustain
Chapter Six: Of Character: The Bland and the Plain 59-63
p.59 Blandness should be our dominant character trait, since it alone allows an individual to possess all aptitudes equally and to bring the appropriate faculty into play when needed.
p.60-61 "when a man's character is plain and bland and does not exhibit any particular proclivities, then he is master of all his abilities and uses them most effectively: he adapts himself to all changes and never encounters an obstacle." ...No single aptitude, whatever it might be, should monopolize the personality as a whole, and it is less a matter of energetically pushing a situation in a given direction than of exploiting it by molding oneself to it. The ideal is not a no-holds-barred offensive in which all efforts are directed toward a single goal, but an individual's openness, which moves in harmony with the fluctuations of the world and makes it possible to partner them freely.
p.62 beware: emphasizing one aspect over another will not benefit the one emphasized but will actually act to its disadvantage.
Chapter Seven: "Lingering Tone" and "Lingering Taste" 65-68
p.68 this articulation of blandness also contains an analysis of our receptive capacities and of sensual experience, which is ripe for application in the realm of aesthetic reflection.
Chapter Eight: Silent Music 69-77
p.75 Somewhere between its reluctance to emerge and its desire to be reabsorbed into the whole, the played tune comes about only to make it possible to experience the tacit and perfect harmony from which it emerges and into which it returns.
Chapter Nine: The Blandness of Sound 79-84
p.79 As we have seen, perfect harmony exists only in that moment before actualization - or, otherwise, just afterward, as it submerges itself into undifferentiation... That is, at that stage when the flux of existence is still unified and its tensions still latent or in the process of being reabsorbed rather than intensified.
Chapter Ten: Blandness's Change of Signs in Literature 85-94
p.93 Blandness, prompting one to gradual and never-ending discovery, is the richest of the poetic modes.
Chapter Eleven: The Ideology of Blandness 95-102
p.98-99 This trueness... pertains to the expression of our basic nature. When, in refusing superficial enticements... we... preserve the fresh spontaneity of our ability to respond to the totality of the real - in all its incommensurability. And this capacity renders our engagement in the world authentic and enables us to stay connected to the universe as a whole.
Chapter Twelve: Flavor-Beyond-the-Flavorful, Landscape-Beyond-Landscapes 103-116
p.108 One could trace in even greater detail the harmonizing play of concurrent tensions, of polarities that essentially neutralize each other... Poetic blandness depends, then, on our senses' never leaning markedly in one direction or another; rather, the senses must allow phenomena and situations to appear without interference. Nothing overwhelms the attention, nothing else is obscured by its presence, and things no sooner emerge than they retreat and change.
Chapter Thirteen: The "Margin" and the "Center" of Flavor 117-123
p.118 Such, then, is the value of the center... by keeping to the center, one avoids slipping into a position of partiality, which would block our innate capacity to evolve in harmony with the world. And so one reconnects with the neutrality that is essential to the great, wordless process of things - a neutrality from which flows the regularity and constancy of that process... The middle transcends the opposition between the bipolar extremes of existence and nonexistence, affirmation and negation, pleasure and pain.
p.122 Blandness does not demand that we look for another meaning or embark on a quest for a hidden mystery. Rather, it invites us to free ourselves from the differentiating nature of meaning and of all particular and marked flavors. Rather than setting up tension... It creates ease.
p.123 True, existence does not exist, but neither is it nonexistent.
[JLJ - The winner (so far) of the 2015 John L. Jerz award for unexplainable text. The actual award itself does not exist, but neither is it nonexistent.]
p.123 To be in a position to fully enjoy existence, all one has to do is to resist being subjugated by it. Blandness is precisely this taste of the virtual, the power to evolve and to transform oneself; and, as such, it is inexhaustible. Neither do we find any Meaning to decode or any Revelation to await.
Chapter Fourteen: Blandness or Strength 125-137
p.127-128 the art of calligraphy... The conditions for embarking on this road are "possessing a clear awareness of what conforms to our interest and what harms it" and "allowing nothing to escape our attention": "that an emotion burns within, and the desire inspired by this interest is ready to confront anything in order to be carried away and completely engaged."
p.133 The richness of the bland lies in its capacity to offer us an opportunity to transform our gaze into consciousness and to go endlessly deeper.
Chapter Fifteen: Transcendence Is Natural 139-144
p.139-140 blandness... does not limit itself to the lesson of the value of discreteness, but is rooted in a metaphysical notion: that of neutrality... Manifesting itself as a kind of style, blandness nevertheless calls for a transformation of existence... Blandness is experienced by the whole consciousness and expresses our being in the world at its most radical.
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