Free and Easy Wandering Exhibit Catalog

Free and Easy Wandering: Markings On The Way 

Based on a summary of ancient Taoist stories in Dragon's Play by Charles Belyea and Steven Tainer, related in spirit to such Chinese folk novels as the popular Monkey from Journey to the West (Hsi Yu Ki) and predating the well-known Zen Oxherding pictures, Free and Easy Wandering is an epic journey of self-discovery that begins in fragmented isolation and culminates in nondual wholeness. 

Undertaken in three phases: autonomy, aloneness, and detachment, it unfolds in twelve stages called Markings that reveal the characteristic workings of the wanderer grappling with permanence, impermanence, identity, belonging and homecoming in a nondual landscape of creative, noetic, kinetic and sensate elemental force.  

I. Freedom of Relating with Autonomy

Marking One: Isolation

Marking Two: Duality

Marking Three: Tolerance 

Marking Four: Integration

Marking Five: Discrimination

Marking Six: Unconditional Relaxation

II. Freedom of Relating with Aloneness

Marking Seven: Oneness With Space

Marking Eight: A Demonstration of Great Order

Marking Nine: Being and Acting as the Creative Center of the Universe

III. Freedom of Relating with Detachment 

Marking Ten: Immortality 

Marking Eleven: Living Concretely at the Heart of Nature (Yin and Yang phases)

Marking Twelve: Nonduality

The Four Immortals

Immortal Fire

Immortal Air

Immortal Water 

Immortal Earth