The term describes a state of mind one achieves when appreciating an artwork, in which process one’s inner feelings interact freely and joyfully with nature. In particular, it describes one’s aesthetic experience of appreciating landscape paintings and landscape poems, when one feels absorbed with the natural scenes and images depicted. In his “On the Creation of Landscape Painting,” Zong Bing (375-443), painter of the Southern Dynasties, pointed out that by watching landscape paintings, one can appreciate the philosophy and pleasure which sages of past times drew from landscape. When doing so, one becomes oblivious to the external world and is totally free from worldly considerations, thus achieving full satisfaction of both body and mind. This term not only reveals the unique aesthetic function of landscape paintings, landscape poems, and natural beauty, but also demonstrates traditional literature and arts’ pursuit of harmony between nature and man and between mind and heart.

As sages of remote past already discovered the philosophical wisdom inherent in nature through imagination and contemplation, what more do I need to do now? All I have to do is relishing the joy when my mind interacts freely with the depicted landscape. (Zong Bing: On the Creation of Landscape Paintings)