TA TUNG • ORACLES NYC
 

ÁLVARO J. CAVIEDES
MULTIPLE EXPOSURE PHOTOGRAPHY
CONFUCIUS PLAZA - CHINATOWN - NEW YORK CITY
2025

 

THE JUDMENT: THE CHAPTER OF GREAT HARMONY (TA TUNG)

 

Confucio (551–479 b. C.)
 

When the Great Principle prevails the world is a Commonwealth in which rulers are selected according to their wisdom and ability. Mutual confidence is promoted and good neighbourliness cultivated. Hence men do not regard as parents only their own parents nor do they treat as children only their own children; provision is secured for the aged till death, employment for the able-bodied and the means of growing up for the young. Helpless widows and widowers, orphans and the lonely as well as the sick and the disabled are well cared for. Men have their respective occupations and women their homes. They do not like to see wealth lying idle, yet they do not keep it for their own gratification. They despise indolence, yet they do not use their energies for their own benefit. In this way selfish schemings are repressed, and robbers, thieves and other lawless men no longer exist, and there is no need for people to shut their outer doors. This is the Great Harmony (TA TUNG).

 

THE IMAGE

 

Ta Tung the Great Harmony is the idea of a world in profound balance. It is not conceived as a naïve utopia nor as an unreachable ideal, but as a state of being and organization in which human beings live aligned with nature, with others, and with themselves. It describes a form of coexistence without domination or excess, where harmony emerges through correspondence between all parts.

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This worldview arises at the intersection of Confucianism and Taoism. For Confucius, Ta Tung represented an ideal society grounded in justice, mutual care, and shared wisdom, a community in which leadership is exercised through virtue and collective responsibility. From the Taoist perspective, the Great Harmony takes on a quieter, more organic form: a state in which nothing is forced and everything flows according to its own nature.

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Ta Tung is not understood as a destination, but as a condition that is inhabited. It is not achieved through conquest or imposition, but through the act of letting go. It emerges when the ego ceases to dominate and begins to listen, when the individual remembers they are part of a greater whole and that their well-being is inseparable from that of others.

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Its contemporary relevance becomes evident in a world shaped by fragmentation. The separation between body and mind, humanity and nature, past and present has produced a notion of progress driven by constant acceleration. In contrast, Ta Tung does not advocate infinite growth, but conscious return: a return to seeing, to feeling, to inhabiting the world with presence.

Within this framework, art becomes a threshold toward Great Harmony. It does not operate through explanation or control, but through revelation and connection. In the creative act, the artist momentarily dissolves as an individual and becomes a channel, allowing multiple layers of experience, memory, landscape, body, and time to resonate together. It is within this gesture that unity occurs.

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From this cosmology, creation can be understood as a deeply political act, not in terms of power or dominance, but of care. The creative act resists fragmentation by reminding us that everything is interconnected: light and shadow, past and present, inner and outer worlds. Thus, Ta Tung is not presented as a future promise, but as a living practice one that begins within and extends outward into the world.