Love Becomes Her expands Yun Rou’s philosophical narrative
Yun Rou, a Daoist monk and philosopher educated at Yale, Cornell, and the University of California, is the author of more than 20 award-winning books, several of which have been adapted for film in Hollywood and China. His work has appeared in prominent outlets such as Vogue, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal. Yun Rou is also recognized for his achievements in martial arts, having been named Tai Chi Master of The Year in 2011. Following his previous book, Wasp Warrior, his latest release, Love Becomes Her, published by Earnshaw Books, continues to delve into themes of compassion and human experience, presented through a lens of magical realism.
What inspired the unique narrative blend of mysticism, romance, and adventure in “Love Becomes Her”?
I’ve been writing magical realism and applying it to the history of China through a number of novels lately, including The Jade Boy, Wasp Warrior, Turtle Planet, The Crocodile and the Crane, and more. Mysticism is a cornerstone element in Daoist teaching, romance and adventure are tried-and-true memes in storytelling and have been for millennia. In the same way that I find delight telling a story by jumping back and forth across the world, I relish following ideas and characters by jumping back and forth through time. Adventure gives a spine to a narrative and encourages people to want to turn the page just as a character might take a walk in the woods. Romance, well, love is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Who doesn’t enjoy reading about it, particularly in a story as unique as this one. Magical realism is a literary method for showing us how little we really know about all the forces at play in the world
What was the most challenging part of writing “Love Becomes Her”?
It’s hard to answer this without spoiling the fun of the story, but let’s just say that rendering the female character, in all her special glory, was a significant challenge. I truly hope readers will feel I did a good job with that. I want people to care about her as I do and as Laozi does in their relationship.
Love in various forms—romantic, platonic, and transcendent—is central to the story. How do you define love in the context of this book?
The love between the main characters in this story is, as your question suggests, multi-dimensional. It also evolves over time as do the best romantic relationships. Stretching credulity (but hopefully not breaking it) while drawing the reader ever deeper into the feelings between Laozi and his soulmate, creates a vibration unlike any I’ve ever rendered in fiction. That vibration, the communications between them, the twists and turns of the story, are all redolent of a love that is literally undying.
Long Ears uses a combination of Taoist philosophy and magic. What research influenced your portrayal of his character?
Though the foundational Daoist text, Daodejing by Laozi (also Lao Tzu, Lao Tse) is reputed to be the second most widely-translated book in the world, very little has been written about the putative author himself. perhaps because there is such a paucity of historical information that there are those (including me) who very much doubt he existed. More likely, like other mythical/legendary religious leaders, he was like an imaginary construct or amalgam of different teachers during the “Axial Age”. Whether Laozi ever lived or not, his legend served the purpose of embodying teachings and offering a focus for worship. Since we know so very little about the man himself, I decided to “flesh him out” as both entertainment and an offer of context for his sage vision of the “sage” and his guidance for how to live and who to be. My primary resource was the handful of legends that exist about the Great Sage and, of course, my nearly 50 years of studying his writings.
The book discusses impermanence and the cyclical nature of life. How do these themes reflect your own understanding of existence?
The yin/yang symbol known as the taijitu tells us not only that the universe is self-organized into opposites known as yin and yang, but that each includes an element of the other. More important, though is a point that many people miss—specifically that the two “fish” in the most commonly seen version of this symbol are contained within a circle that suggests movement and change. That famous symbol is, in short, a movie not a still. I’ve heard people refer to Dao as evolution and as God. I’ve heard God referred to as change. The very first step in any spiritual practice, any awareness training at all, is the recognition that whether you are locked in a tower watching a candle burn, hiking a mountain trail, or bobbing offshore in a dinghy before a storm, something is going on.
What role does nature play in “Love Becomes Her,” and why is it such an integral part of the characters’ spiritual growth?
The notion of nature as a thing apart, a thing unto itself, an element in the world as opposed to the world itself, is a Western idea—a relatively recent one in the warp and woof of human philosophy. This is a construct, of course, no more real than any of the myriad other constructs—from the God and prophets of the Old Testament to the deities in the island cultures of Oceania and Asia. We create our myths and legends and divine beings in order to lend us succor in the face of our own limitations and mortality.
Nature stands apart from our religious creations and beliefs, including those that greatly soothe and reassure us. Nature is another word for the reality in which we exist physically and energetically, the latter expressed as vibration. In Love Becomes Her, a sage enlightens a creature who in turn enlightens him. He chooses her as his soulmate because she is the feminine quintessence of nature, the purest version he can find of yin, of the Earth Mother, the dark, moist valley, the foundational material from which living things derive. Given that he is the putative founder of what is, in some sense, a form of nature worship, the emphasis on the natural world seemed appropriate to me.
How would you characterize the relationship between power and wisdom as seen through the leaders and sages in the book?
Essential to an understanding of power in a Daoist sense is the notion that power derives only from submission to Dao. Such obedience flows from the fact that any notion of “other” or separation is an illusion. If we have power it is because we belong to something much larger than ourselves. A fabric that includes us, of whose threads we are woven. We are not a creation of an entity to whom we must pledge obedience or allegiance or loyalty in order to “borrow” any power on temporary loan by a controller. No submission in the sense of Islam or obedience as in the other Abrahamic faiths. It doesn’t belong to us but to the “system” that births, enlivens. Wisdom is the quality of understanding this, which in turn leads to efficacious but effortless living, what Daoists call wei wu wei. Without realizing how things really are, without allowing Dao to flow through us and animate us the way our hand might a marionette, we can never be truly powerful. Knowledge and understanding are, in this way, essential to manifesting real power.
Are there any genres or topics you haven’t yet explored but would like to in your future writing projects?
Right now I’m venturing into a book of science fiction that is a little more complex than a novel of magical realism. I’m polishing it now. It’s a hefty tome and an intricate story. But more about that when it comes out!
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