Jingjie 境界, also known as yijing 意境or jing 境, is an ambiguous, abstract term which refers roughly to a state of free and unlimited imagination and comprehension attained through aesthetic activity. The term is found in Tang dynasty discussions on poetry and painting where its meaning varies with the context in which it is found but is still quite narrow in scope. I n the Song dynasty, under the influence of Chan Buddhism, the term becomes at once more profound and abstract, with a strong emphasis on the role of enlightenment in aesthetic activity. By the Qing dynasty the term and its variants are common critical categories, with the stress on enlightenment still very much in evidence, but with an added focus on. a total aesthetic understanding. Wang Guowei of the late Qing made jingjie and the related yijing central critical categories in his theory of aesthetics, attempting a systematic definition which emphasized the mutual interrelationship between the subjective and objective elements in aesthetic activity. Wang’s conception of the perfect creative state (jingjie) stresses the poet’s freedom from subjective ties and a selfless accordance with nature which in turn allow the imagination full rein to produce a limitless aesthetic effect or artistic world. Modern critics have attempted to clarify jingjie’s parameters more closely than their traditional predecessors. Recent defi­nitions include the metaphysical theory, the intuitive imagination theory and the theory of aesthetic levels, all of which seek to broaden the understanding of this complex concept of aesthetic activity.