The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [96]
This spirit is seen at its best in the great sand and rock gardens of Kyoto, of which the most famous example is the garden of Ryoanji. It consists of five groups of rocks laid upon a rectangle of raked sand, backed by a low stone wall, and surrounded by trees. It suggests a wild beach, or perhaps a seascape with rocky islands, but its unbelievable simplicity evokes a serenity and clarity of feeling so powerful that it can be caught even from a photograph. The major art which contributes to such gardens is bonseki, which may well be called the “growing” of rocks. It requires difficult expeditions to the seashore, to mountains and rivers, in search of rock forms which wind and water have shaped into asymmetrical, living contours. These are carted to the garden site, and placed so as to look as if they had grown where they stand, so as to be related to the surrounding space or to the area of sand in the same way as figure to background in Sung paintings. Because the rock must look as if it had always been in the same position, it must have the air of moss-covered antiquity, and, rather than try to plant moss on the rock, the rock is first set for some years in a place where the moss will grow by itself, and thereafter is moved to its final position. Rocks picked out by the sensitive eye of the bonseki artist are ranked among Japan’s most precious national treasures, but, except to move them, they are untouched by the human hand.
The Zen monks liked also to cultivate gardens which took advantage of an existing natural setting–to arrange rocks and plants along the edges of a stream, creating a more informal atmosphere suggesting a mountain canyon adjoining the monastery buildings. They were always sparing and reserved in their use of color, as were the Sung painters before them, since masses of flowers in sharply varying colors are seldom found in the state of nature. Though not symmetrical, the Japanese garden has a clearly perceptible form; unlike so many English and American flower gardens, they do not resemble a daub in oil colors, and this delight in the form of plants carries over into the art of flower arrangement inside the house, accentuating the shapes of single sprays and leaves rather than bunched colors.
Every one of the arts which have been discussed involves a technical training which follows the same essential principles as training in Zen. The best account of this training thus far available in a Western language is Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery, which is the author’s story of his own experience under a master of the Japanese bow. To this should be added the already mentioned letter on Zen and swordsmanship (kendo) by the seventeenth-century master Takuan, translated by Suzuki in his Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture.
The major problem of each of these disciplines is to bring the student to the point from which he can really begin. Herrigel spent almost five years trying to find the right way of releasing the bowstring, for it had to be done “unintentionally,” in the same way as a ripe fruit bursts its skin. His problem was to resolve the paradox of practicing relentlessly without ever “trying,” and to let go of the taut string intentionally without intention. His master at one and the same time urged him to keep on working and working, but also to stop making an effort. For the art cannot be learned unless the arrow “shoots itself,” unless the string is released wu-hsin and wu-nien, without “mind” and without blocking, or “choice.” After all those years of practice there came a day when it just happened–how, or why, Herrigel never understood.
The same is true in learning to use the brush for writing or painting. The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can