CHAPTER 2 THE PRELUDE TO ZEN CULTURE_Zen Culture

Produced by Al Haines

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ZEN CULTURE

Anyone who examines the Zen arts is immediately struck by how modern

they seem. The ceramics of 16th-century Zen artists could be

interchanged with the rugged pots of our own contemporary crafts

movement; ancient calligraphies suggest the monochromes of Franz Kline

or Willem de Kooning; the apparent nonsense and illogic of Zen parables

(and No theater and Haiku poetry) established the limitations of

language long before the theater of the absurd; 400-year-old Zen

architecture seems to be a copy of modern design ideas such as modular

sizing, exposed woods, raw materials, bare walls, uncluttered space and

a California marriage of house and garden.

Zen values experiencing things over analyzing them. Perhaps if we can

take the power of direct perception, sharpened by the devices of Zen

art, back to everyday activities, we will find a beauty in common

objects that we previously ignored.

Selected Reviews

_The notoriously grumpy _Kirkus Reviews _said, "Thomas Hoover has a

considerable gift for expressing his appreciation and understanding of

various arts associated with Zen. . . . These are deftly treated, with

a concise synopsis of the historical development of each; and together

Hoover's discussions provide an excellent introduction to the

aesthetics of Japanese culture."

_Library Journal _said, "Hoover covers the ground in an easy and

informative way, describing the origins of Zen itself and the Zen roots

of swordsmanship, architecture, food, poetry, drama, ceramics, and many

other areas of Japanese life. The book is packed with facts, the

bibliography is excellent, the illustrations few but most appropriate,

and the style clear and smooth. A most useful book for all

collections."

_Asian Studies _declared, "Highly recommended. ZEN CULTURE moves easily

from the political climate that gave rise to Zen to the cultural areas

- art, architecture, theatre, literature, flower arrangement, design,

archery, swordsmanship - where Zen has manifested itself."

As for the influence of the Zen aesthetic, the_ Houston Chronicle

_said, "Hoover suggests we need only look around. Modern furniture is

clean, simple lines in unstained, unadorned woods. And that old fad

became a habit, houseplants. These are all expressions of ideas born

with Zen: understatement, asymmetry, intuitive perception, nature

worship, disciplined reserve."

"Highly recommended," said _The Center for Teachers of Asian Studies._

"Western intellectuals have tried to represent the height of Buddhist

mysticism within the pages of mere books, reducing an ineffable

experience into a written report. Predictably such attempts have failed

miserably. ZEN CULTURE by Thomas Hoover comes the closest to

succeeding," said_ Hark Publishing_.

"ZEN CULTURE, concerned as it is with the process of perception as much

as with actual works of art, can open our sense so that we experience

anew the arts of both East and West, ancient and modern." declared the

_Asian Mail_.

And to go multi-media, _NYC-FM _in New York said, "Hoover takes us on a

grand tour of Zen archery and swordsmanship, flower arranging, drama,

food, gardening, painting, poetry, architecture. His book is

essentially one by a connoisseur."

BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER

Nonfiction

Zen Culture

The Zen Experience

Fiction

The Moghul

Caribbee

Wall Street _Samurai_

(The _Samurai_ Strategy)

Project Daedalus

Project Cyclops

Life Blood

Syndrome

All free as e-books at

www.thomashoover.info

Throughout the entire Far East of China, Korea, and Japan, we see the

system of a unique culture which originated in the sixth century,

reached its meridian in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and

began to decline in the seventeenth century, but which is still kept up

in Japan even in this day of materialism and mechanization. It is

called _Zen Culture_."

SOHAKU OGATA,_ Zen for the West

_ ZEN CULTURE

Thomas Hoover

Random House New York

Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New

York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,

Toronto.

ISBN 0-394-41072-6

Manufactured in the United States of America

Key Words:

Author: Thomas Hoover

Title: Zen Culture

Zen History, Haiku, Zen, Ceramics, Archery, Landscape Garden, Stone

Garden, Ink Landscape, Zen Architecture, Sword, Katana, No Theater, Noh

Theater, Japanese Tea Ceremony, Tea Ceremony, Flower arranging,

Ikebana, Zen Ceramic Art, Raku, Shino, Ryoanji-ji

PERMISSIONS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to

reprint previously published material:

AMS Press, Inc.: Two three-line poems from page 75 of Diaries of Court

Ladies of Old Japan; Doubleday & Company, Inc.: Eight Haiku poems from

Harold G. Henderson; The Hokuseido Press Co. Ltd.: Poem on page 35 of

The Kobin Waka-Shu, translated by H. H. Honda. Poem on page 82 of

History of Haiku, Vol. II by R. H. Blyth; Penguin Books Ltd.: A tanka

from 'Ise Monogatari' by Ariwara Narihira. Reprinted from page 71 of The

Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, translated by Geoffrey Bownas and

Thwaite; Shambala Publications, Inc. (Berkeley, California): Poems on

pages 15 and 18 of The Sutra of Hui-Neng; Stanford University Press:

Poem on page 91 of An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry by Earl

Miner; Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.: Three lines of verse from page

130 of The Noh Drama; University of California Press: Four-line Haiku

poem from page 104 of The Year of My Life: A Translation of Issa's Oraga

Haru, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. Copyright (C) I960, 1972 by The

Regents of the University of California.

Acknowledgments

THE AUTHOR'S THANKS go to Anne Freedgood for editing the manuscript and for

her many helpful suggestions; to Professor Ronald F. Miller for

critical advice on things Western, ranging from art to aesthetics; to

Professor Gary D. Prideaux for introducing the author to both Japan and

Japanese linguistics; to Tatsuo and Kiyoko Ishimoto for assistance in

interpreting Japanese architecture; and to others who have graciously

reviewed the manuscript at various stages and provided helpful

suggestions, including Julie Hoover, Lynn Grifo, Anna Stern and Ellen

O'Hara. I am also grateful for guidance from Professors Shigeru

Matsugami and Takashi Yoshida, formerly of Tottori University, and from

the garden artist Masaaki Ueshima. The insights of yet others, lost in

years of questioning and research, are acknowledged here in spirit if

not, unfortunately, in name.

Japanese Chronology

JOMON CULTURE (2000 B.C. [?]-ca. 300 B.C. )

YAYOI PERIOD (ca. 300 B.c-ca. A.D. 300)

MOUND TOMB ERA (ca. A.D. 300-552)

ASUKA PERIOD (552-645)

Buddhism introduced (552)

Chinese government and institutions copied

EARLY NARA PERIOD (645-710)

LATE NARA PERIOD (710-794)

Japan ruled from replica of Chinese capital of Ch'ang-an built at

Nara (710)

Bronze Buddha largest in world dedicated at Nara (752) Compilation of

early poetry anthology Manyoshu (780)

Scholarly Buddhist sects dominate Nara

HEIAN PERIOD (794-1185)

Capital established at Heian-kyo (Kyoto) (794)

Saicho (767-822) introduces Tendai Buddhism from China (806)

Kukai (774-835) introduces Shingon Buddhism from China (808)

Last mission to Tang court ends direct Chinese influence (838)

Tale of Genji written by Lady Murasaki (ca. 1002-1019)

Honen (1133-1212) founds Pure Land, or Jodo, sect (1175)

Taira clan takes control of government, ousting aristocracy (1159)

Minamoto clan replaces Taira (1185)

KAMAKURA PERIOD (1185-1333)

Warrior outpost in Kamakura becomes effective capital (1185) Eisai

(1141-1215) introduces _koan_-oriented Rinzai sect of Zen

on Kyushu (1191)

Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199) becomes shogun (1192)

Hojo clan assumes real power in Kamakura (1205)

Shinran (1173-1262) founds rival Amidist sect called True Pure

Land, or Jodo Shin (1224)

Dogen (1200-1253) founds _zazen_-oriented Soto Zen (1236)

Nichiren (1222-1282) founds new sect stressing chants to Lotus Sutra

(1253)

ASHIKAGA PERIOD (1133-1573)

Hojo regency ended; Kamakura destroyed (1333)

Emperor Godaigo briefly restores imperial rule (1334)

Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358) ousts Godaigo, who establishes

rival court (1336)

Takauji becomes shogun, beginning Ashikaga era proper (1338) Muso

Soseki (1275-1351) convinces Takauji to found sixty-six

Zen temples throughout Japan (1338)

Landscape gardens evolve to reflect Zen aesthetic ideals Ashikaga

Yoshimitsu (1358-1408) establishes relations with

Ming China (1401)

Zeami (1363-1443), encouraged by Yoshimitsu, creates No

theater

Golden Pavilion built by Yoshimitsu (begun 1394)

Sung monochromes imported, inspiring re-creation of Chinese

schools (fourteenth century)

Yoshimasa (1435-1490) becomes shogun (1443)

Onin War begins, to devastate Kyoto for ten years (1467)

Silver Pavilion built by Yoshimasa; Zen architecture (1482)

Tea ceremony begins to take classic shape as a celebration of

Zen aesthetics

Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506), greatest Japanese landscape artist Abstract

stone gardens appear (ca. 1490)

General anarchy envelops country (ca. 1500)

Portuguese discover Japan, introduce firearms (1542)

Francis Xavier arrives to preach (1549)

Ashikaga shogunate overthrown by Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582)

MOMOYAMA PERIOD (1573-1615)

Nobunaga begins unification of Japan (1573) Nobunaga assassinated

(1582)

Hideyoshi (1536-1598) assumes control and continues unification (1582)

Sen no Rikyu (1520-1591) propagates Zen aesthetics through

tea ceremony

City of Edo (Tokyo) founded (1590)

Hideyoshi unsuccessfully invades Korea, returns with Korean

ceramic artists (1592)

Momoyama Castle built by Hideyoshi, giving name to the age

(1594)

Rise of elaborate arts in opposition to Zen aesthetic ideals Tokugawa

Ieyasu (1542-1616) appointed shogun (1603)

Ieyasu defeats forces supporting Hideyoshi's heir (1615)

TOKUGAWA PERIOD (1615-1868)

Ieyasu founds Tokugawa shogunate (1615)

_Daimyo_ forced to begin system of attendance on Tokugawa in

Edo

Basho (1644-1694), greatest Haiku poet

Popular arts of Kabuki and woodblock prints arise in Edo

Classic Zen culture no longer supported by shogunate

Hakuin (1685-1768) revives Zen and broadens appeal

Zen culture influences popular arts and crafts

MAJOR CHINESE PERIODS

Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220)

Six Dynasties (220-589)

Sui dynasty (589-618)

Tang dynasty (618-907)

Five Dynasties (907-960)

Northern Sung dynasty (960-1127)

Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279)

Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (1279-1368)

Ming dynasty (1368-1644)

ZEN CULTURE

Foreword

ANYONE WHO EXAMINES the Zen arts is immediately struck by how modern they

seem. Many of the most famous stone gardens are abstract expressionism

pure and simple, created out of found objects. The ceramics of the

sixteenth-century Zen artists could be interchanged with the rugged

pots of our own contemporary crafts movement and few people would

notice a difference. Ancient Zen calligraphies, bold and slashing,

suggest the monochromes of Franz Kline or Willem de Kooning, and if the

word "impressionistic" has any real meaning left, the spontaneous,

intuitive, impulsive Zen painters should have first claim to it. The

apparent nonsense and illogic of Zen parables established the

limitations of language long before the theater of the absurd decided

to ridicule our modern doublespeak; indeed, our new-found skepticism

about language as a medium for communication was a commonplace to

Japanese artists who created both a drama (the No) and a poetry (the

Haiku) that neatly circumvent reliance on mere words for expression--and

in two entirely different ways. Four-hundred-year-old Zen architecture

appears to be virtually a copy of contemporary design ideas: modular

sizing, exposed woods and materials, movable partitions,

multifunctional rooms, bare walls and uncluttered space, indirect

lighting effects, and a California marriage of house and garden. The

celebrated tea ceremony might be considered an early form of Japanese

group therapy, while Zen landscape gardens are nothing less than a

masterful deception masquerading as the "natural" look.

If all this were not coincidence enough, consider for a moment our

present-day artistic conventions and aesthetic ideals. Like much of

what we consider "modern," Zen arts tend to be as simple as possible,

with clean, even severe, lines. Decoration for its own sake is

virtually nonexistent; Zen artists had no more taste for the ornate

than we do today. The works of medieval Zen artists were rough and

asymmetrical, with a skillful exploitation of deliberate imperfections

and blemishes to make the viewer aware of both the materials used and

the process of creation. If it is true that classic art makes one aware

of the form and romantic art makes one aware of the artist, Zen art

makes one aware of the work of art itself.

We have absorbed into our Western culture almost unawares such Zen

cultural forms and aesthetic principles as Japanese ideas of

architecture, gardens, and flower arranging. Other forms, such as Haiku

poetry and Zen-style ceramics, we have borrowed in a more open-handed

way, freely acknowledging the source. Actually, none of the Zen arts is

really out of our reach, and a critical following has developed in the

West for almost all of them. The great Irish poet and dramatist William

Butler Yeats embraced the Zen-inspired No drama, although he probably

knew next to nothing about Zen. (For that matter, we should recall that

no English-language books were written on Zen until well into the

twentieth century.) It seems fair to say that the Zen arts have touched

us because they express some view of the world that we have, several

hundred years later, quite independently come to share.

Yet for all the seeming familiarity, there remains an alien quality. We

are not always aware of the really quite extraordinary mind

manipulation inherent in Zen art. Why, for instance, does a Japanese

garden often seem much larger than it really is? How does the Japanese-

style room alter human perception in such a way that people's

experience of each other is intensified? Why do Zen ceramics always

manage to make one take special notice of their surface? This subtle

manipulation of perception is all done by ingenious but carefully

hidden tricks. But since the Zen arts appear so modern, we are lulled

out of looking below the surface to find the fundamental differences.

Most important of all, it is easy to miss what is surely the most

significant quality of Zen arts--their ability to unlock our powers of

direct perception. Since Zen teaches that categories and systematic

analysis hinder real understanding of the outer

(or inner) world, many Zen arts are specifically designed to awaken our

latent ability to perceive directly. They appear innocent enough on the

surface, but they involve a subtle mind- massage not obvious to a

casual observer. It is this added dimension of Zen art that truly sets

it apart from anything we have produced in the twentieth century.

In these pages I will attempt to trace the history and characteristics

of both Zen and the Zen arts--to explain where they came from, why they

arose, what they were intended to do, and how they go about doing it. I

have also included some Western-style analysis of their very non-

Western qualities. The aesthetic ideas embedded in Zen culture and its

perception-inducing works of art are among the most stunning

achievements in world art history. Zen culture, concerned as it is with

the process of perception as much as with actual works of art, can open

our senses so that we experience anew the arts of both East and West,

ancient and modern.

Contents

PART I: The Beginnings: Prehistory to 1333

1. Zen Culture and the Counter Mind

3. The Prelude to Zen Culture

5. The Rise of Japanese Buddhism

7. The Chronicles of Zen

9. Zen Archery and Swordsmanship

10.

PART II: The Age of High Culture: Ashikaga (1333-1573)

11. The Great Age of Zen

12.

13. Zen and the Landscape Garden

14.

8. The Stone Gardens of Zen

9. Zen and the Ink Landscape

10. The Zen Aesthetics of Japanese Architecture

11.

12. The No Theater

13.

PART III: The Rise of Popular Zen Culture: 1573 to the Present

14. Bourgeois Society and Later Zen

15.

16. The Tea Ceremony

17.

18. Zen Ceramic Art

19.

20. Zen and Haiku

21.

22. Private Zen: Flowers and Food

23.

24. The Lessons of Zen Culture

25.

REFERENCES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GLOSSARY

Part I

THE BEGINNINGS: PREHISTORY TO 1333

CHAPTER ONE

Zen Culture and the Counter Mind

_ Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

_Matthew 6:28

_Pre-Buddhist clay figure _(haniwa)

THE ZEN TRADITION extends back some fifteen hundred years to a wandering

Indian teacher of meditation named Bodhidharma. As Indian gurus are

fond of doing, Bodhidharma left his homeland and journeyed abroad,

following what was in those days a well-beaten trail to China. Upon

reaching Nanking, he paused to visit the Chinese Emperor Wu, a man

known to be a particularly devout Buddhist. The emperor was delighted

to receive his famous Indian guest and proceeded immediately to boast

of his own accomplishments. "I have built many temples. I have copied

the sacred _sutras_. I have led many to the Buddha. Therefore, I ask

you: What is my merit: What reward have I earned?" Bodhidharma

reportedly growled, "None whatsoever, your Majesty." The emperor was

startled but persisted, "Tell me then, what is the most important

principle or teaching of Buddhism?" "Vast emptiness," Bodhidharma

replied, meaning, of course, the void of nonattachment. Not knowing

what to make of his guest, the emperor backed away and inquired, "Who

exactly are you who stands before me now?" To which Bodhidharma

admitted he had no idea.

Sensing that the emperor was not yet prepared for such teachings,

Bodhidharma left the palace and traveled to a mountain monastery to

begin a long career of meditation. Over the years his reputation for

wisdom gradually attracted many followers--dissident Chinese who

rejected classical Buddhism and all its rigmarole in favor of

Bodhidharma's meditation, or _dhyana_, a Sanskrit term they pronounced

as Ch'an--later to be called Zen by the Japanese. This teaching of

meditation and vast emptiness shared very little with other branches of

Chinese Buddhism. Ch'an had no sacred images because it had no gods to

worship, and it de-emphasized the scriptures, since its central dogma

was that dogma is useless. Handed down from master to pupil was the

paradoxical teaching that nothing can be taught. According to Ch'an

(and Zen), understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and

heeding the instincts, the intuition.

Thus Zen became the religion of the antirational, what might be called

the counter mind. The counter mind has taken on more concrete

significance in recent years with the discovery that the human mind is

not a single entity but is divided into two quite different functional

sections. We now know that the left hemisphere of the brain governs the

logical, analytical portion of our lives, whereas the right hemisphere

is the seat of our intuitive, nonverbal perception and understanding.

As far back as the ancient Greeks, we in the West have maintained an

almost unshakable belief in the superiority of the analytical side of

the mind, and this belief may well be the most consistent

distinguishing quality of Western philosophy. By contrast, the East in

general and Zen in particular have advanced the opposite view. In fact,

Zen masters have deliberately developed techniques (like illogical

riddles or _koan_) to discredit the logical, verbal side of the mind so

that the intuitive perceptions of the right hemisphere, the counter

mind, may define reality.

What is the counter mind really like? What is there about it that has

caused Western thinkers to disavow its functions for so many centuries?

The answer to these questions is not simple, but the path leading to it

is directly before us. Zen has produced a rich culture which we may now

examine at length. As the scholar-diplomat Sir George Sansom has

pointed out, "The influence of [Zen] upon Japan has been so subtle and

pervading that it has become the essence of her finest culture." And in

the classical culture of Japan it is possible to find the most

revealing examples of the arts of the counter mind. Zen culture invites

us to experience reality without the intervening distractions of

intellect, categories, analysis. Here we may find the best evidence of

what the intuitive side of the mind can produce--evidence all the more

fascinating because it repudiates many of the most cherished

assumptions of Western civilization.

When examined closely, Zen culture in Japan reveals at least three

interrelated aspects or faces. First there are the fine arts, creations

of beauty but also devices whereby the Zen masters transmit otherwise

inexpressible insights. Interestingly enough, the Zen masters did not

trouble to invent new art forms but rather co-opted existing Japanese

(and sometimes Chinese) forms and revised them to suit Zen purposes.

During medieval times, the Chinese-style gardens so favored by the

Japanese aristocracy were adopted for use around Zen temples, but not

before they were first converted into small-scale landscape "paintings"

and later into monochrome abstractions. Chinese ink painting, both that

of the Sung academy and that of eccentric Chinese Ch'an monks, was

imported and made the official art of Zen. Ideas from Shinto

architecture were combined with design details from mainland Ch'an

monasteries to produce the Zen-inspired classic Japanese house. Various

types of rustic dramatic skits popular among the Japanese peasants were

converted by Zen aesthetes into a solemn theater experience called the

No, whose plays and narrative poetry are so austere, symbolic, and

profound as to seem a kind of Zen Mass.

In the later years of popular Zen culture, poets revised the standard

Japanese poetic form, which might be compared loosely to the Western

sonnet, into a shorter, epigrammatic expression of the Zen outlook--the

seventeen-syllable Haiku. Zen ceramics are a curious mixture of

Japanese folk craft and Chinese technical sophistication; flower

arranging is a link between Zen and the Japanese love of nature,

blossoms and beauty; even formal Japanese cuisine is often more a

celebration of Zen ideals than a response to hunger. The famous

Japanese tea ceremony evolved from a Chinese party game into a solemn

episode for the celebration of ideal beauty, inner calm, and the Zen

concept of living.

The second face of Zen culture is best seen in the way in which

Japanese life differs from our own. This is not to suggest that every

Japanese is a living exemplar of Zen, but rather that many of the

peculiarities--both good and bad--of the way of life we now think of as

Japanese are traceable to attitudes stemming from Zen. In the military

sphere, Zen influence began as a special approach to swordsmanship and

archery and ended as a disciplined contempt for death beyond what any

other religion has inspired, save possibly in a few saints. In the

military arts, as in other areas of life, Zen both led and followed

Japanese culture--molding that culture and also presenting a vehicle for

the expression of tendencies far older than Zen, among them the

historic Japanese love of nature, the acceptance of hardship as

uplifting to the spirit, the refusal to distinguish between the

religious and the secular, and the capacity for the most unpleasant

sorts of self-discipline. It might be said that the ideals of Zen

struck a respondent chord in the Japanese character, bringing harmony

where once there had been random notes.

Zen also brought something new to the Japanese which might be described

as a religion of tranquility, or the idea that tranquility is the main

objective of religion. The underside of this tranquility is its sense

of humor. Zen, with its absurdist _koan_, laughs at life much the way

the Marx brothers did. What exactly can you make of a philosophical

system whose teacher answers the question, "How do you see things so

clearly?" with the seeming one-liner, "I close my eyes"? Zen has long

used the comic view of life to deflate those who start believing in

their own systems and categories. It is easier to be tranquil about

existence when you recognize the pointlessness of solemnity.

The other side of the religion of tranquility is the need to maintain

peace of mind in the face of chaos. Sitting quietly in meditation is

the traditional mainstay of Eastern religion, but Zen manages to carry

the mental repose born of meditation back into daily life. This

equanimity is the product of inner resources brought into being by

spiritual training. You need not study Zen to have it, but it is Zen's

most tangible goal. The Japanese, whose ability to ignore external

distractions in a hectic world is possibly their best-known national

trait, have deliberately used Zen and Zen arts (such as the tea

ceremony, flower arranging, or ink painting) to counteract the stresses

of modern life.

The follower of Zen is protected from the incursions of the world by an

inverted (in our Western terms) understanding of what is real and what

illusory. One of the all-time favorite _koan_ helps to make this clear.

The _koan_ describes three monks watching a banner flutter in the

breeze. One monk observes, "The banner is moving," but the second

insists, "The wind is moving." Finally, the third monk says, "You are

both wrong. It is your mind that is moving." The point here is that, in

modern times, most Westerners view the physical world as the operative

reality and the unseen, nonphysical world as an abstraction (comforting

or not, depending upon our beliefs or immediate needs, the spiritual

world is said to grow less abstract to those in foxholes). But Zen

takes the opposite tack; it holds that true reality is the fundamental

unity of mind and matter, inner spirit and external world. When life is

viewed in such terms, there can be no success or failure, happiness or

unhappiness; life is a whole, and you are simply part of it. There are

no dualities, hence there is nothing to worry about. The result is

perfect tranquility.

Of course, one small thread remains to be tied. What do you do about

daily life, where the world carries on as though it really does exist,

dualities and all? Quite simply, Zen would have you treat the physical

world exactly as followers of Western religions sometimes treat the

spiritual world--as a convenient fiction whose phenomena you honor as

though they existed, although you know all the while that they are

illusions. The world of strife and relative values may trouble those

who mistake it for the real thing, but the Zen-man echoes the words of

Hamlet, "We that have free souls, it touches us not." The world is in

fact meaningless. It is one's mind that is moving.

However startling such a doctrine may be to Western rationalists, it

has engendered such Japanese phenomena as the _samurai_ swordsmen and

the kamikaze pilot, both of whom could, in the Japanese phrase, live as

if already dead. On a less dramatic scale, it allows the modern

Japanese to be spiritually content and enjoy mental repose in a crowded

subway, or to find solitude in a paper-walled house amid noisy

neighbors. They wrap their cocoon of tranquility about them and become

spiritually apart. Again, it is possible to enjoy this inner repose

without Zen, but only in a Zen culture could it become a national

trait.

The third face of Zen, the deep concern with and understanding of what

constitutes beauty, also preceded Zen culture in Japan to some degree.

As with many of the existing Japanese art forms, the native sense of

taste was co-opted by Zen culture and bent to the rules of Zen.

Aesthetic discernment was as important for social advancement in

medieval, pre-Zen Japan as good grammar is in the West today, and the

characteristic attention to small details, the genuine ability to

notice things, from the feathered pastel hues of a partially opened

blossom to the colored refractions in a drop of dew, was already well

developed. In the centuries before Zen, the notion that aesthetics in

Japan could reflect a philosophical point of view would have seemed

strange. But to the taste-makers of Zen culture the arts were the

handmaiden of spiritual ideas; their arts had to make a statement, and

as a result art became an expression of religion, not so much a direct,

point-blank depiction of religious motifs as in Christian art, but

rather a belief that art itself is an inherently religious concern--an

idea Zen shares with the ancient Greeks. But whereas the Greeks strove

for perfect form as an exemplification of man's kinship with the gods,

the Zen artist carefully avoids final perfection, not wishing to

idealize a physical world whose very existence he finds problematical.

Perhaps the most noticeable principle of Zen art is its asymmetry; we

search in vain for straight lines, even numbers, round circles.

Furthermore, nothing ever seems to be centered. Our first impulse is to

go into the work and straighten things up--which is precisely the effect

the artist intended. Symmetrical art is a closed form, perfect in

itself and frozen in completeness; asymmetrical art invites the

observer in, to expand his imagination and to become part of the

process of creation. The absence of bilateral symmetry mysteriously

compels the observer to reach past surface form and touch the

individuality of a work. Even more important, Zen asymmetry forcefully

draws one away from any mental connection one might have between

completed form and notions of completion and timelessness in material

things. Zen denies the significance of the external world and

underscores the point by never depicting it in static, stable, or

closed terms. Greek art was a tribute to perfection; Zen art is a

statement, if only implicit, that the objective world should never be

taken too seriously.

The ideas taught by asymmetry in the visual arts are paralleled in the

literary arts by the device of suggestion. This quality, first seen in

pre-Zen aristocratic poetry, was brought to new heights by the Zen

Haiku poets. Among other things, a Haiku poem sets you up for the last

line, which kicks your imagination spinning into imagery. The most

famous Haiku poem of all probably demonstrates this quality as well as

any:

_An ancient pond;

A frog leaps in:

The sound of water.

_Try to stop yourself from hearing that splash in your imagination, or

try to stifle the images and details your mind wants to fill in. Just

as with the off-balance picture or garden, the Zen poet has forced you

to be a part of his creation. But more significantly, he has achieved a

depth and reverberation impossible with mere words. Explicit art ends

with itself; suggestive art is as limitless and profound as one's

imagination can make it.

Another obvious quality of Zen art is its simplicity. Again one thinks

of the spareness and purity in Greek art, and again the connection is

wrong. A more useful comparison would be with the diverse, textured

arts of India, whether sensuous statuary or fabrics decorated over

every square inch. Indian art is a celebration of life and vigor,

whereas Zen, with its philosophy that categories and distinctions do

not exist, is naturally unsympathetic to decorative multiplicity. The

happy result of this rather sober outlook is that Zen art seems

surprisingly modern; it is never cluttered, busy, gaudy, overdone. The

forms--whether in the classic Japanese house, the stone garden, or a

simple ceramic pot--are invariably clean and elegant. And by avoiding

overstatement, the Zen artist manages to convey the impression of

disciplined restraint, of having held something in reserve. The result

is a feeling of strength, the sense that one has only glimpsed the

power of the artist rather than experienced everything he had to offer.

The Zen artist may deny one voluptuousness, but in the empty spaces one

senses a hidden plenitude.

Along with simplicity goes naturalness and lack of artifice. Zen art

always seems spontaneous and impulsive, never deliberate, thought-out,

or contrived. To achieve this, the artist must so master his technique

that it never interferes with his intentions. Again the lesson is

contempt for the material world; one must never give the impression of

having taken one's art, or

indeed life itself, too seriously. This deceiving sense of naturalness

is particularly striking in the later Zen ceramic art, in which potters

went out of their way to give their bowls a coarse, uneven finish. They

tried very hard to give the impression that they were not trying at

all. The joinery of the Japanese house is first assembled with the care

even an early European cabinetmaker might find excessive; and then it

is left unpolished, to age naturally! Such is the inverted snobbery of

Zen aesthetics.

Another quality of Zen art is its understatement or restraint. It does

not yield all its secrets on first viewing; there are always depths

which become apparent with further study. This storehouse of latent

profundity is frequently found in the narrative poetry of the No drama,

which, although suggestive in something like the manner of the lighter

Haiku poems, has a cutting edge capable of slowly penetrating the

deeper emotions. Through language seemingly concerned only with

externalities, the characters of the No give us the full sense of their

inner anguish, somehow communicating to us sorrows too deep for words.

In the same way, Zen-inspired stone gardens have hidden qualities.

Unlike formal European or Persian gardens, which are mainly surface and

reward the viewer with all their decorative beauty on the first visit,

Zen gardens present you with new pleasures and insights each time you

study them. Because it conceals its profundity, Zen art is never fully

knowable on first acquaintance; there is always something more when one

is prepared to receive it.

Perhaps the most puzzling, yet curiously rewarding, aesthetic principle

in Zen art is its seeming celebration of the ravages of time. The Zen

Japanese consider a taste for newness the mark of the aesthetic

parvenu. To be sure, Westerners who have acquired a preference for

antiques are sometimes looked upon as more sophisticated than those

preferring the latest machine-made item; yet Zen taste has an important

difference--the Japanese would never "restore" an antique. The signs of

age and wear are to them its most beautiful qualities. This convoluted

attitude actually began in pre-Zen aristocratic times, when courtiers

concluded that the reason cherry blossoms or autumn leaves were so

beautiful was their short season. Soon, the more perishable something

was, the more aesthetically satisfying it became. (One unfortunate

result of this point of view was a lot of mediocre poetry about the

dew.) Later, Zen took over this attitude, extending it to things that

perish slowly, and before long, things old and worn out--already

perished, in a sense--were thought the most beautiful of all. This idea

fitted well with the Zen notion that material things were dross and

should not be accorded excessive importance. The curious thing is that

the idea works; old objects, desiccated and apparently used up, have a

nobility that makes one contemplate eternity and scorn the fashions of

the moment. Broken and patched tea bowls or frayed scrolls seemingly

falling apart are indeed more beautiful than they were when new. The

patina of age is a lesson that time is forever and that you, creature

of an hour, would do well to know humility in the face of eternity.

Finally, the aesthetic principles of Zen culture's third face also

reflect the practical concerns of its second face, tranquility. Zen art

exudes an unmistakable calm and repose of the spirit. Contemplating a

stone garden or viewing the measured movements of the tea ceremony, one

realizes that Zen art is certain of itself, and it imparts this

certainty, this gentle voice of inner calm, to one's spirit. The things

that matter are settled, and those that do not are winnowed out like

chaff in the wind. And here you realize that Zen art is, last and

foremost, a virile creation of strength and surety.

Perhaps the most startling thing about the Zen creations of the counter

mind is that few Japanese are willing even to discuss them, let alone

analyze them. Zen is the enemy of analysis, the friend of intuition.

Analysis is to art what grammar is to a living language, the dull

afterthought of the scholar, and Zen culture despises excessive

interpretation as a leech on the spirit of life. The Zen artist

understands the ends of his art intuitively, and the last thing he

would do is create categories; the avowed purpose of Zen is to

eliminate categories! The true Zen-man holds to the old Taoist proverb,

"Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know." Ask a

Japanese to "explain" a Zen rock garden and he will inspect you

blankly, uncomprehending. The question will never have occurred to him,

and he may try to spare you embarrassment by pretending you never asked

or by changing the subject. Should you persist, he may go out and take

its dimensions for you, thinking by this objective, modern response to

satisfy your Western requirements. When you stop asking and surrender

to a kind of intuitive osmosis, you will have begun the journey into

the culture of the counter mind.

CHAPTER TWO

The Prelude to Zen Culture

_It was a clear, moonlit night . . . Her Majesty . . . sat by the edge

of the veranda while Ukon no Naishi played the flute for her. The other

ladies in attendance sat together, talking and laughing; but I stayed

by myself, leaning against one of the pillars between the main hall and

the veranda.

'Why so silent?' said Her Majesty. 'Say something. It is so sad when

you do not speak.'

'I am gazing into the autumn moon,' I replied.

'Ah yes,' she remarked, 'That is just what you should have said.'

_ From _The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, ca. _A.D. 995

ZEN CULTURE did not spring upon the Japanese islands as an alien force,

dislodging native beliefs, ideals, and values. It could indeed be

argued that precisely the opposite happened, that the Japanese actually

used Zen as a framework over which to organize their own eclectic

beliefs about reverence toward nature, aesthetics, anti-

intellectualism, artistic forms and ideals, and basic attitudes toward

life. The truth, however, lies somewhere between: Zen did not reshape

Japan, but neither did Japan reshape Zen. Rather, the two melted

together, with the resulting amalgam often seeming to be all Zen, while

actually being, in many instances, merely older Japanese beliefs and

ideals in a new guise.

Some of the most fundamental qualities of Japanese civilization had

their origins in high antiquity, when the Japanese had no writing and

worshiped gods found among fields and groves. These early Japanese had

no religious doctrines other than respect for the natural world and the

sanctity of family and community. There were no commandments to be

followed, no concept of evil. Such moral teachings as existed were that

nature contains nothing that can be considered wicked, and therefore

man, too, since he is a child of nature, is exempt from this flaw. The

only shameful act is uncleanliness, an inconsiderate breach of the

compact between man and nature.

The early Japanese left no evidence that they brooded about nature or

required rituals to subdue it. Rather, the natural world was welcomed

as a joyous if unpredictable companion to life, whose beauty alone was

sufficient to inspire love. This reverence for nature, which lay deep

within the Japanese psyche, was in later centuries to become a

fundamental part of Zen culture. Like the early Japanese, the followers

of Zen believed the world around them was the only manifestation of god

and did not bother with sacred icons or idols, preferring to draw

religious symbolism directly from the world as it stood.

The first arrivals on the Japanese archipelago were a Stone Age people,

known today as "Jomon," who left artifacts across a time span beginning

in the fourth millennium B.C. and lasting until the early Christian Era.

Arriving in Japan from northeast Asia via a land bridge now submerged,

they remained primarily in the north, where they lived in covered pits,

buried their dead in simple mounds, and, most importantly for the later

Japanese, developed a ceramic art of low-fired vessels and figurines

whose loving awareness of material and form re-emerged centuries later

as a characteristic of Zen art.

The free, semi-nomadic life of the Jomon was disrupted around the time

of Aristotle by the arrival of various groups of invaders known

collectively as the "Yayoi." These Bronze Age warriors eventually

replaced the Jomon, first driving them farther into the north and

finally eradicating them entirely. The gods and culture of the Yayoi

indicate a tropical origin, perhaps the vicinity of South China. They

settled in the southern islands, where they erected tropical dwellings

and began the cultivation of rice. Soon they were making implements of

iron, weaving cloth, and molding pottery using the wheel and high-

temperature kilns. The descendants of the Yayoi became the Japanese

people.

For the first several hundred years of Yayoi hegemony, their ceramics,

although technically more sophisticated, showed less artistic

imagination than those of the Jomon. In the fourth century A.D.,

however, after the consolidation of their lands into a unified state, a

new era of artistic production began. From this time until the

introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century, an interlude known as

the Mound Tomb era, the arts of Japan blossomed, producing some of the

finest sculpture in the ancient world. The Yayoi mound tombs, often

many acres in size, were filled with the implements of their

aristocratic owners (much as were the pyramid tombs of Egyptian

pharaohs), and around their perimeters were positioned hollow clay

statues, presumably as symbolic guardians. These realistic figures,

ordinarily two or three feet in height, are today known as _haniwa_.

Fashioned in soft brown clay, they portrayed virtually all the

participants in early Japanese life: warriors in armor, horses standing

at the ready, courtiers, rowdy farmers, fashionable laThes-in-waiting,

and even wild boar.

The making of _haniwa_ died out after the sixth century, as Chinese

Buddhist culture gradually took hold among the Japanese aristocracy,

but the underlying aesthetic values were too fundamental to perish.

When Zen culture came to flower in medieval times, all the early

artistic values awoke from what seems to have been only a slumber;

monk-artisans returned to an emphasis on natural materials--whether in

soft clay tea bowls, in unworked garden rocks, in the architecture of

unfinished woods, or in a general taste for unadorned simplicity. These

men created their art and architecture from seemingly rough and

imperfect materials out of deliberate choice rather than necessity--a

preference rare if not unique in human experience.

During the years following the introduction of pre-Zen Buddhism, the

Japanese disowned their native values and artistic instincts as they

slavishly copied Chinese culture and reproduced the ornate and

elaborate arts of mainland Buddhism. The nature-worshiping tribes of

Japan were awed by the seemingly powerful religion of China. They were

no less impressed by the manner in which the Chinese emperor ruled his

land, and shortly after becoming acquainted with China they set about

copying the Chinese form of government. Equally important, the

previously illiterate Japanese adopted a Chinese system of writing--a

confusing arrangement whereby Chinese symbols were used for their

phonetic value rather than for their meaning. This lasted for several

centuries, until the Japanese finally gave up and created a simplified

system which included their own syllabary or alphabet.

Having borrowed Chinese administration and Chinese writing, the

Japanese next decided to re-create a Chinese city, and in the year 710

they consecrated Nara, a miniature replica of the T'ang capital of

Ch'ang-an. The city was soon overflowing with Chinese temples and

pagodas. Newly ordained Japanese priests chanted Buddhist scriptures

they scarcely understood, while the native aristocracy strode about in

Chinese costume reciting verses of the T'ang poets.

Japan had never really had a city before Nara, and its population

quickly rose to some 200,000. Yet less than a century after its

founding it was abandoned by the court--possibly because the new

Buddhist priesthood was getting out of hand-- and a new capital was laid

out on the site of present-day Kyoto. This new city, founded at the

beginning of the ninth century and known as Heian, was deliberately

kept free of Buddhist domination, and within its precincts the first

truly native high culture arose as Chinese models were gradually

transcended. No longer copiers, the aristocrats of Heian turned inward

to bring forth a highly refined secular civilization.

To understand the foundations of Zen beauty, it is necessary to examine

this Heian culture in some detail, for many of the Zen arts and the

aesthetic rules later associated with Zen arose in these early

aristocratic years. If civilization may be gauged by the extent to

which relations are mediated by artificiality, this would surely be the

finest example in all history. Etiquette and sentimentality were the

touchstones. The courtiers occupied their days with elaborate

ceremonies, extravagant costumes, and lightweight versifying, and their

nights with highly ritualized amorous intrigues, conducted in a fashion

so formal that the courtly love of Provence seems brusque in

comparison. Initially the court had modeled its behavior on the T'ang

dynasty, but in the year 894, a hundred years after the founding of

Heian, relations with the T'ang court were suspended. There were few

formal contacts with China until the coming of Zen several centuries

later. Since the country was unified and at peace, interest in affairs

of state gradually disappeared altogether, freeing the aristocracy to

create a misty, artificial world all its own.

This period, whose aesthetic values were the precursor of Zen art, was

also Japan's great age of literature. The idleness of the court

provided an abundance of free time and equally abundant boredom--

circumstances that brought into being rich, textured psychological

novels, some of the earliest and most revealing diaries of the world's

literature, and a concern with poetry never equaled elsewhere, before

or since. These works of literature depict a society preoccupied with

beauty, where life and art merged, and founded on a conviction, later

to become ingrained in Japanese life and Zen art, that the ability to

appreciate beauty was the most important characteristic an individual

could possess.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of this great age of literature is the

fact that the work was produced almost entirely by women. Theirs was

the aesthetic legacy that later became the foundation for Zen taste,

including the overwhelming importance of brushstroke calligraphy, the

subtle sense of what constitutes beauty and what excess, the vocabulary

of aesthetics, the elaborate concern with the use of color, and the

refinement of the poetic form that eventually led to Zen Haiku.

Taste in the use of color is an excellent place to begin examining the

Heian heritage, for in later years the Zen arts would be characterized

by muted, carefully matched natural shades whose application followed

sophisticated rules of taste. The seriousness with which colors were

matched by Heian courtiers is revealed in a famous diary of the era:

_One [of the court ladies' dresses] had a little fault in the color

combination at the wrist opening. When she went before the royal

presence to fetch something, the nobles and high court officials

noticed it. Afterwards, [she] regretted it deeply. It was not so bad;

only one color was a little too pale.1

Episodes in another diary reveal the importance attached to

properly matched shades:

_It is dawn and a woman is lying in bed after her lover has taken his

leave. She is covered up to her head with a light mauve robe that has a

lining of dark violet. . . . The woman . . . wears an unlined orange

robe and a dark crimson skirt of stiff silk. . . . Near by another

woman's lover is making his way home in the misty dawn. He is wearing

loose violet trousers, an orange hunting costume, so lightly coloured

that one can hardly tell whether it has been dyed or not, a white robe

of stiff silk, and a scarlet robe of glossy, beaten silk.2

This interest in the colors (and textures) of materials remains

a Japanese characteristic to this day, perpetuated by Zen and post-Zen

aesthetes, who sensibly realized that this outgrowth of their culture

surpassed that found anywhere else in the world.

As may be gathered from the passage above, celibacy was not part of the

fashionable world of Heian Japan. Marriages were sanctioned only after

the sexual compatibility of the couple had been established, a ritual

carried out by a young man calling at a young lady's quarters for

several nights running before officially announcing his intentions to

her parents. The secret visits were, of course, secret to no one, and

at times a young lady might initiate the test by an open invitation.

Such a letter also allowed the man to judge her handwriting in advance

and thus not waste his time courting a girl wanting in accomplishment.

The following diary passage reveals the curious Heian association of

penmanship and sex:

_I remember a certain woman who was both attractive and good-natured

and who furthermore had excellent hand-writing.

Yet when she sent a beautifully written poem to the man of her choice,

he replied with some pretentious jottings and did not even bother to

visit her. . . . Everyone, even people who were not directly concerned,

felt indignant about this callous behavior, and the woman's family was

much grieved.3

In a society where brushwork was a primary test of social

acceptability, it is not hard to find the roots of Japan's later great

age of Zen monochrome painting, for, as Sir George Sansom has pointed

out, to write beautifully is to solve certain fundamental problems of

art--particularly when that writing is executed with the brush.

The writing materials used by Heian courtiers and the calligraphy they

set down became important tools for the Zen arts. Writers made use of

what the Chinese called the "Four Treasures": a brush of animal hair or

bristle, a block of solid ink made of lampblack and glue, a concave

inkstone for grinding and wetting the dried ink, and a paper or silk

writing surface. These materials are all thought to have been

introduced into Japan by a Korean Buddhist priest sometime near the

beginning of the seventh century, but they already had a long history

in China--possibly as much as a thousand years.

With these materials the Heian calligrapher--and later the Zen

monochrome artist--created a subtle world of light and shade. The

preparation for writing (and later, painting) is itself a ritual of

almost religious significance. The ink, called sumi, must be prepared

fresh each time it is used: a small amount of water is introduced into

the concave portion of the inkstone, and the slightly moistened ink

block is slowly rubbed against the stone until the proper shade is

realized. The brush is soaked thoroughly in water, dried by stroking it

on a scrap of paper, dipped into the new ink, and applied directly to

the writing surface. The writer or artist holds the brush perpendicular

to the paper and spreads the ink in quick strokes, which allow for no

mistakes or retouching.

Where the male scholars of the Heian period labored with complex

Chinese ideograms, the female artists and calligraphers were able to

work in a new, simplified syllabary of approximately fifty symbols,

which had been invented by a Buddhist priest in the early Heian era.

Since this new script was less angular and geometrically formal than

Chinese writing, it lent itself to a sensuous, free style of

calligraphy whose rules later spilled over into Zen aesthetics. The new

"women's script" called for brushstrokes that were a pirouette of

movement and dynamic grace, requiring the disciplined spontaneity that

would become the essence of Zen painting. Indeed, all the important

technical aspects of later Zen monochrome art were present in early

Heian calligraphy: the use of varying shades of ink, the concentration

on precise yet spontaneous brushwork, the use of lines flexible in

width and coordinated with the overall composition, and the sense of

the work as an individual aesthetic vision. The lines record the

impulse of the brush as it works an invisible sculpture above the page;

the trail of the brush--now dry, now flushed with ink--is a linear record

of nuances in black across the white space beneath. The total mastery

of brushwork and the ink line gave the monochrome artists a foundation

of absolute technical achievement, and the Zen calligrapher-poets a

tradition of spontaneity in keeping with Zen ideals.

Another legacy to Zen artists was the creation of spontaneous verse,

which also sharpened the faculties and required a sure mastery of

technique. Since virtually all communication was in the form of poems,

to move in polite circles a man or woman had to be able to compose a

verse on any subject at a moment's notice. A famous female novelist and

diarist recalled a typical episode:

_The Lord Prime Minister . . . breaks off a stalk of a flower-maiden

which is in full bloom by the south end of the bridge. He peeps over my

screen [and] says, "Your poem on this! If you delay so much the fun is

gone" and I seized the chance to run away to the writing box, hiding my

face--

Flower-maiden in bloom--

Even more beautiful for the bright dew,

Which is partial, and never favors me.

"So prompt!" said he, smiling, and ordered a writing box to be brought

[for himself]. His answer-

The silver dew is never partial.

From her heart

The flower-maiden's beauty.4

The quality of such impromptu verse is necessarily strained,

but the spirit of impulsive art revealed in this episode survived to

become an important quality of Zen creations.

The Heian era bequeathed many artistic forms and techniques to later

Zen artists, but even more important was the attitude toward beauty

developed by the Heian courtiers. Their explicit contributions were a

sense of the value of beauty in life and a language of aesthetics by

which this value could be transmitted. One of the more lasting

attitudes developed was the belief that transience enhanced loveliness.

(The idea of transience seems to be one of the few Buddhist concepts

that entered Heian aesthetics.) Beauty was all the more arresting for

the certainty that it must perish. The perfect symbol for this,

naturally enough, was the blossom of the cherry tree, as may be seen

from a poem taken at random from a Heian-period compilation.

_O cherry tree, how you resemble

this transitory world of ours,

for yesterday you were abloom

and gone today your flowers.5

_Many of the later verities of Zen art can be traced to this first

philosophical melancholy over life's transience which developed in the

Heian era. The vehicle for this heritage was a special vocabulary of

aesthetic terms (providing distinctions few Westerners can fully

perceive) which could describe subtle outer qualities of things--and the

corresponding inner response by a cultivated observer--by the use of

fine-grained aesthetic distinctions.6 The word that described the

delicate discernment of the Heian courtiers was _miyabi_, which was

used to indicate aspects of beauty that only a highly refined taste

could appreciate: the pale shades of dye in a garment, the fragile

geometry of a dew-laden spider web, the delicate petal of a purple

lotus, the texture of the paper of a lover's letter, pale yellow clouds

trailing over a crimson sunset. If the beauty were more direct and less

muted, it was described as _en_, or charming, a term marking the type

of beauty as sprightly or more obvious. The most popular aesthetic term

was _aware_, which refers to a pleasant emotion evoked unexpectedly.

_Aware _is what one _feels _when one sees a cherry blossom or an autumn

maple. (This internalization of aesthetic qualities was later to have

great import for the Zen arts, whose reliance on suggestiveness shifted

a heavy responsibility to the perceiver.) As the notion of beauty's

transience became stronger, the term also came to include the feeling

of poignancy as well as pleasure and the awareness that delight must

perish.

These terms of refined aristocratic discernment became thoroughly

ingrained in Japanese life and were passed on to Zen aesthetics, which

added new terms that extended the Heian categories to reverence for

beauty past its prime and for objects that reflect the rigors of life.

The Zen aesthetes also added the notion of _yugen_, an extension of

_aware _into the region of poignant foreboding. At a brilliant sunset

one's mind feels _aware_, but as the shadows deepen and night birds

cry, one's soul feels _yugen_. Thus the Zen artists carried the Heian

aesthetic response into the inner man and turned a superficial emotion

into a universal insight.

The most important aspect of the Japanese character to surface during

the Heian era, at least from the standpoint of later Zen culture and

ideals, was faith in the emotions over the intellect. It was during

this period that the Japanese rejected for all time a rigorously

intellectual approach to life. As Earl Miner wrote in his description

of pre-Zen Heian society, "The respect accorded to correct or original

ideas in the West has always been given in Japan to propriety or

sincerity of feeling. And just as someone without an idea in his head

is archetypally out of our civilization, so the person without a true

feeling in his heart is archetypally out of the Japanese."7 From such an

attitude it is not far to the Zen intuitive approach to understanding.

The early years of Japanese isolation saw a people with a rich nature

religion whose arts revealed deep appreciation for

material and form. The coming of Chinese culture brought with it

Buddhism, which became a national religion and provided a vehicle for

the dissemination of Zen. Finally, the aristocratic civilization of the

Heian era developed Japanese sensitivity to remarkable levels,

providing later generations with a valuable framework of taste and

standards. The court civilization of Heian was ultimately dethroned by

medieval warriors, who themselves soon came under the sway of Zen.

Although the Zen artist-monks of the medieval era brought into being a

new culture with its own rules of taste and behavior, they were always

in the debt of the earlier ages.

CHAPTER THREE

The Rise of Japanese Buddhism

_The new doctrine of the Buddha is exceeding excellent, although

difficult to explain and comprehend. _(Message accompanying the first

image of the Buddha to enter Japan, ca. A.D. 552)

_PRE-BUDDHIST SHINTO SHRINE

DURING THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C., in the rich and reflective civilization

flourishing in what is today northeast India and Nepal, a child was

born to the high-caste family of Gautama. He was later known by various

names, including Siddhartha (the one who has reached the goal),

Sakyamuni (sage of the Sakyas), or simply Buddha (the enlightened). His

childhood was idyllic, and at the age of sixteen he took a wife, who

bore him a son. As a youth he was completely sheltered from the sorrows

of the flesh through the offices of his father, who commanded the

servants never to let him leave the palace compound. Yet finally, the

legends relate, he managed to escape this benign prison long enough to

encounter old age, sickness, and death. Understandably distressed, he

began pondering the questions of human mortality and suffering, a

search which led him to a holy man, whose devoutness seemed to hold the

answers.

True to his convictions, he renounced wealth, family, and position and

embarked upon the life of an ascetic. A spiritual novice at the age of

twenty-nine, he traveled for the next six years from sage to sage,

searching for the teachings that might release him from the prison of

flesh. Finally, with disciples of his own, he left all his teachers and

devoted himself to meditation for another six years, at the end of

which he was close to death from fasting and privation. But he was no

nearer his goal, and abandoning the practices of traditional religion,

he set out to beg for rice. Although his disciples immediately deserted

him as unworthy to be a teacher, he was undeterred and enjoyed his

first full meal since leaving his father's palace. He then had a deep

sleep and learned in a dream that realization would soon be his. He

proceeded to a wood and began his final meditation under the now

legendary Bodhi tree--where he at last found enlightenment. Gautama had

become the Buddha.

For the next forty-nine years he traveled the length of India preaching

a heretical doctrine. To appreciate what he taught, one must grasp what

he preached against. At the time, the predominant religious system was

Brahmanism, which was based upon the Upanishads, a collection of early

Vedic writings. According to this system, the universe was presided

over by the Brahman, an impersonal god-form which was at once a

pantheistic universal soul and an expression of the order, or _dharma_,

of the cosmos. This universal god-form was also thought to reside in

man, in the form of the _atman_, roughly translatable as the soul; and

the individual was believed to be able to rise above his physical

existence and experience the uniting of this _atman _with the larger

god-form through practice of a rigorous physical and mental discipline,

which became known as yoga. Not surprisingly, all formal communications

with the universal

god-form had to be channeled through a special priest class, who called

themselves Brahmans.

The Buddha disputed these beliefs. He taught that there was no

universal god and hence no internal soul, that there is, in fact, no

existence in the world. All perception to the contrary is illusory.

Enlightenment therefore consists not of merging one's atman with the

greater god-head, but rather in recognizing that there actually is

nothing with which to merge. Consequently the aim is to transcend the

more troublesome aspects of perception, such as pain, by turning one's

back on the world--which is nonexistent in any case--and concentrating on

inner peace. The Buddha stressed what he called the "Four Noble Truths"

and the "Eightfold Path." The Four Noble Truths recognized that to live

is to desire and hence to suffer, and the Eightfold Path (right views,

right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right

effort, right mindfulness, right concentration) provided a prescription

for the resolution of this suffering. Followers of the Eightfold Path

understand that the external world is illusory and that its desires and

suffering can be overcome by a noble life, guided by mental fixation on

the concept of nonexistence.

The original teachings of the Buddha are more a philosophy than a

religion, for they admit no supreme god, nor do they propose any

salvation other than that attainable through human diligence. The aim

is temporal happiness, to be realized through asceticism--which was

taught as a practical means of turning one's back on the world and its

incumbent pain. There were no scriptures, no sacred incantations, no

soul, no cycle of rebirth, nothing beyond one's existential life.

Since the Buddha left no writings or instructions regarding the

establishment of a religion in his name, his followers called a council

some ten years after his death to amend this oversight. This first

council produced the earliest canon of Buddhist teachings, a group of

_sutras _or texts purporting to reproduce various dialogues between the

Buddha and his disciples. A second council was held exactly one hundred

years later, supposedly to clarify points raised in the first meeting.

But instead of settling the disagreement which had arisen, the meeting

polarized the two points of view and shattered monolithic Buddhism once

and for all.

As Buddhism spread across India into Ceylon and Southeast Asia, a

distinct sectarian split developed, which might be described as a

controversy between those who strove to preserve the teachings of the

Buddha as authentically as possible and those who were willing to admit

(some might say compromise with) other religions. The purer form, which

was established in Southeast Asia, came to be called Hinayana, or the

Lesser Vehicle (purportedly because of the exclusionary strictness of

its views). The other branch, comprising the beliefs that spread to

China and thence to Japan, was described as Mahayana, or the Greater

Vehicle.

This division also resulted in two versions of the _sutras _being

canonized. That revered by the Hinayanists is known as the Pali Canon

and was set down in the Pali language (a dialect of Indian Sanskrit)

around 100 B.C. The _sutras_ of the eclectic Mahayanists grew over the

centuries, with additions in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and, later, Chinese. In

addition to the original thoughts of the Buddha, they included large

sections of commentary or secondary material. The Chinese,

particularly, had strong speculative minds and thought nothing of

amending the teachings of a simple Indian teacher. The Indians also

found the Buddha's thought a shade too austere for their tastes, but

instead of embellishing it as the Chinese did, they gradually plowed it

back into the theological melange of pantheistic Hinduism until it

finally lost any separate identity.

Buddhism is said to have officially reached China during the first

century A.D., and after some three hundred years of adjusting it to suit

their established teachings of Confucianism and Taoism, the Chinese

embraced it as their own. (It was the admittance of Taoist beliefs into

Chinese Buddhism that laid the foundations for the school of Ch'an

Buddhism, the parent of Japanese Zen.) Buddhism did not replace the two

earlier Chinese religions but, rather, provided an alternative

spiritual framework wherein the Chinese, structured, Confucianist bent

of mind could be merged with their Taoist yearning for mystical

philosophy to produce a native religion at once formal and

introspective. During the third, fourth, and fifth centuries a virtual

parade of Indian Mahayana Buddhist teachers traveled north around the

high Himalayas and into China, there to dispense their own respective

brands of the Buddha's thought. The Chinese, on their part, set about

importing Indian Sanskrit _sutras_ and translating them via a process

whereby Indian philosophical concepts were rendered directly by pre-

existing Chinese terms--the literal pounding of round Indian pegs into

square Chinese holes. Since no more effective way has yet been found to

destroy the originality of foreign ideas than to translate them word

for word into the nearest native approximation, Chinese Buddhism

became, in many ways, merely a rearrangement of existing Chinese

philosopThes.

The date Chinese Buddhism was introduced to Japan has traditionally

been set at A.D. 552. In that year, the records state, a Korean monarch,

fearful of belligerent neighbors, appealed to the Japanese for military

assistance, accompanying his plea with a statue of the Buddha and a

missal of _sutras_. Since the Japanese had for many centuries reserved

their primary allegiance for their sun-goddess, whose direct descendant

the emperor was thought to be, they were wary of new faiths that might

jeopardize the authority of the native deities. After much high-level

deliberation it was decided to give the Buddha a trial period to test

his magical powers, but unfortunately no sooner had the new image been

set up than a pestilence, apparently smallpox, swept the land. The new

Buddha was swiftly consigned to a drainage canal by imperial decree.

Twenty years later a new emperor came to the throne, and he was

persuaded to give the Buddha another try by a political faction which

thought a new religion might undermine the theological position of the

established nobility. By odd coincidence, no sooner had a new Buddha

been imported than another plague broke out. The new Buddha statue and

all accompanying trappings were disposed of, but the plague only

worsened, allowing the pro-Buddhist faction to turn the tragedy to

their advantage by blaming those who had desecrated the statue. After

more political maneuvering, this faction took the somewhat

unprecedented step of assassinating the hesitant emperor in order to

ensure a place for Buddhism in Japanese life. Finally the faith did

catch hold, and, by the beginning of the seventh century, temples and

pagodas were being built.

As interest grew in both the doctrines of the Buddha and the political

innovations of the new T'ang dynasty, which had come to power in China

in 618, the Japanese aristocracy began to copy Chinese civilization,

gradually abandoning much of their indigenous culture. Although new

Japanese monks were soon writing and reciting Chinese _sutras_,

Buddhist ideas, now twice removed from their Indian origins, were

grasped imperfectly if at all by most Japanese. Indeed, few of the

early aristocracy who professed Buddhism viewed it as anything other

than a powerful new form of magic--a supplement to the native gods, or

_kami_, who presided over harvests and health. Given the difficulty

Japanese scholars had in understanding Chinese texts, it is easy to

sympathize with later Zen monks who claimed the _sutras_ were mainly a

barrier to enlightenment.

Three fundamental types of Buddhism preceded Zen in Japan: the early

scholarly sects which came to dominate Nara; the later aristocratic

schools whose heyday was the noble Heian era; and, finally, popular,

participatory Buddhism, which reached down to the farmers and peasants.

The high point of Nara Buddhism was the erection of a giant Buddha some

four stories high whose gilding bankrupted the tiny island nation but

whose psychological impact was such that Japan became the world center

of Mahayana Buddhism. The influence of the Nara Buddhist establishment

grew to such proportions that the secular branch of government,

including the emperor himself, became nervous. The solution to the

problem was elegantly simple: the emperor simply abandoned the capital,

leaving the wealthy and powerful temples to preside over a ghost town.

A new capital was established at Heian (present-day Kyoto), far enough

away to dissipate priestly meddling.

The second type of Buddhism, which came to prominence in Heian, was

introduced as deliberate policy by the emperor. Envoys were sent to

China to bring back new and different sects, enabling the emperor to

fight the Nara schools with their own Buddhist fire. And this time the

wary aristocracy saw to it that the Buddhist temples and monasteries

were established well outside the capital--a location that suited both

the new Buddhists' preference for remoteness and the aristocracy's new

cult of aesthetics rather than religion.

The first of the Heian sects, known as Tendai after the Chinese T'ien-

t'ai school, was introduced into Japan in 806 by the Japanese priest

Saicho (767-822). The Tendai stressed the authority of the Lotus Sutra,

which recognized the Buddha as both an historical person and the

realization in human form of the universal spirit--an identity implying

the oneness of the latent Buddha nature in all matter, animate and

inanimate. Although the school was avowedly eclectic, embracing all the

main Mahayana doctrines, it was bitterly opposed by the Nara schools,

which campaigned unsuccessfully to convert Tendai novices. Saicho

countered their opposition by pointing out that his Buddhism was based

on an actual sutra, purportedly the Buddha's own words, whereas the

schools of Nara had contented themselves primarily with wrangling over

commentaries or secondary interpretations of the Buddha's teachings.

Saicho also introduced the question of individual morality, a concern

conspicuously absent in Nara Buddhism.

The Tendai sect became dominant during the ninth and tenth centuries,

when its center on Mt. Thei (on the outskirts of Kyoto) swelled to over

three thousand buildings. Although Saicho himself appears to have been

benign in nature, practicing the principles of morality he taught, in

later years the Mt. Thei Tendai complex became the base for an army of

irascible monks who frequently descended upon Kyoto to harass courtiers

and citizens alike. In the late sixteenth century, the entire complex

was burned to the ground and thousands of monks slaughtered by a fierce

shogun who was determined to stop the intervention of Tendai monks in

public affairs. Tendai survives today as a religion primarily of the

upper classes, with a membership of something over a million, but even

by the end of the Heian era it had become mainly ceremonial.

The other Buddhist sect to gain prominence during the Heian era was

Shingon, founded by a younger contemporary of Saicho named Kukai (774-

835). He also went to China, where he studied teachings of the Che-yen

school, a type of Buddhism known as "esoteric" because of its kinship

to the mystical Tantrism of Tibet. The elaborate rituals of the

Japanese Shingon temples were an immediate success with the

ceremonially minded Heian aristocracy. Shingon was superb theater, with

chants, incantations, sacred hand signs (_mudra_), and meditation on

the sacred _mandala_--geometrical diagrams purportedly containing the

key to the cosmological meaning of reality. The headquarters for the

Shingon school was established on Mt. Koya, near Kyoto but sufficiently

removed that the monks were not tempted to dabble in state affairs.

Nevertheless, in later years it too became a stronghold for mercenary

warrior-monks, with the result that it also was chastened by an

outraged shogun. Today there are Shingon monasteries in remote mountain

areas, standing regal and awesome in their forested isolation, and the

sect still claims over nine million practitioners, scattered among a

host of offshoots.

The popular, participatory Buddhism which followed the aristocratic

sects was home-grown and owed little to Chinese prototypes. Much of it

centered around one particular figure in the Buddhist pantheon, the

benign, sexless Amida, a Buddhist saint who presided over a Western

Paradise or Pure Land of milk and honey accessible to all who called on

his name. Amida has been part of the confusing assemblage of deities

worshiped in Japan for several centuries, but the simplicity of his

requirements for salvation made him increasingly popular with the Heian

aristocrats, who had begun to tire of the elaborate rigmarole

surrounding magical-mystery Buddhism. And as times became more and more

unstable during the latter part of the Heian era, people searched for a

messianic figure to whom they could turn for comfort. So it was that a

once minor figure in the Buddhist Therarchy became the focus of a new,

widespread, and entirely Japanese cult.

The figure of Amida, a gatekeeper of the Western Paradise, seems to

have entered Buddhism around the beginning of the Christian Era, and

his teachings have a suspiciously familiar ring: Come unto me all ye

who are burdened and I will give you rest; call on my name and one day

you will be with me in Paradise. In India at this time there were

contacts with the Near East, and Amida is ordinarily represented as one

of a trinity, flanked by two minor deities. However, he is first

described in two Indian _sutras _which betray no hint of foreign

influence. During the sixth and seventh centuries, Amida became a theme

of Mahayana literature in China, whence he entered Japan as part of the

Tendai school. In the beginning, he was merely a subject for meditation

and his free assist into Paradise did not replace the personal

initiative required by the Eightfold Path. Around the beginning of the

eleventh century, however, a Japanese priest circulated a treatise

declaring that salvation and rebirth in the Western Paradise could be

realized merely by pronouncing a magic formula in praise of Amida,

known as the _nembutsu: Namu Amida Butsu_, or Praise to Amida Buddha.

This exceptional new doctrine attracted little notice until the late

twelfth century, when a disaffected Tendai priest known as Honen (1133-

1212) set out to teach the _nembutsu_ across the length of Japan. It

became an immediate popular success, and Honen, possibly unexpectedly,

found himself the Martin Luther of Japan, leading a reformation against

imported Chinese Buddhism. He preached no admonitions to upright

behavior, declaring instead that recitation of the _nembutsu _was in

itself sufficient evidence of a penitent spirit and right-minded

intentions. It might be said that he changed Buddhism from what was

originally a faith all ethics and no god to a faith all god and no

ethics.

What Honen championed was actually a highly simplified version of the

Chinese Jodo school, but he avoided complicated theological exercises,

leaving the doctrinal justifications for his

teachings vague. This was intended to avoid clashes with the priests of

the older sects while simultaneously making his version of Jodo as

accessible as possible to the uneducated laity. The prospect of

Paradise beyond the River in return for minimal investment in thought

and deed gave Jodo wide appeal, and this improbable vehicle finally

brought Buddhism to the Japanese masses, simple folk who had never been

able to understand or participate in the scholarly and aristocratic

sects that had gone before.

Not surprisingly, the popularity of Honen's teachings aroused enmity

among the older schools, which finally managed to have him exiled for a

brief period in his last years. Jodo continued to grow, however, even

in his absence, and when he returned to Kyoto in 1211 he was received

as a triumphal hero. Gardens began to be constructed in imitation of

the Western Paradise, while the _nembutsu_ resounded throughout the

land in mockery of the older schools. The followers of Jodo continued

to be persecuted by the Buddhist establishment well into the

seventeenth century, but today Jodo still claims the allegiance of over

five million believers.

An offshoot of the Jodo sect, destined to become even more popular, was

started by a pupil and colleague of Honen called Shinran (1173-1262),

who also left the Tendai monastery on Mt. Thei to become a follower of

Amida. His interpretation of the Amida _sutras _was even simpler than

Honen's: based on his stuThes he concluded that only one truly sincere

invocation of the _nembutsu_ was enough to reserve the pleasures of the

Western Paradise for the lowliest sinner. All subsequent chantings of

the formula were merely an indication of appreciation and were not

essential to assure salvation. Shinran also carried the reformation

movement to greater lengths, abolishing the requirements for monks

(which had been maintained by the conciliatory Honen) and discouraging

celibacy among priests by his own example of fathering six children by

a nun. This last act, justified by Shinran as a gesture to eliminate

the division between the clergy and the people, aroused much

unfavorable notice among the more conservative Buddhist factions.

Shinran was also firm in his assertion that Amida was the only Buddha

that need be worshiped, a point downplayed by Honen in the interest of

ecumenical accord.

The convenience of only one _nembutsu _as a prerequisite for Paradise,

combined with the more liberal attitude toward priestly requirements,

caused Shinran's teachings to prosper, leading eventually to an

independent sect known as Jodo Shin, or True Pure Land. Today the Jodo

Shin, with close to fifteen million followers, enjoys numerical

dominance over other forms of Japanese Buddhism.

The Amadist salvation movement was confronted by its only truly

effective detractor in the person of the extremist Rencho (1222-1282),

who later took for himself the name of Nichiren, or Sun Lotus. An early

novice in the Tendai monastery, he took a different tack from the Amida

teachers, deciding that all essential Buddhist truth was contained in

the Lotus Sutra itself. Although the Tendai school had originally been

founded on the study of the Lotus Sutra, he believed the school had

strayed from the _sutra's _precepts. Denouncing all sects impartially,

he took a fundamentalist, back-to-the-Lotus text for his sermons.

Sensing that most of his followers might have trouble actually reading

a _sutra_, he produced a chanting formula of his own which he claimed

would do just as well. This Lotus "_nembutsu_" was the phrase _namu

myoho renge-kyo_, or Praise to the Lotus Sutra. The chanting Amidists

had met their match.

The Tendai monks on Mt. Thei did not receive this vulgarization of

their teachings kindly, and their urgings, together with his

intemperate pronouncements regarding imminent dangers of a Mongol

invasion, led in 1261 to Nichiren's banishment to a distant province.

Three years later the truth of his warnings became all too apparent and

he was recalled by the government. But on his return he overplayed his

hand, offering to save the nation only if all other Buddhist sects were

eliminated. This was too much for the Japanese ruling circles; they

turned instead to a new band of warriors trained in Zen military

tactics who promptly repelled the invasion without Nichiren's aid.

Persecution of his sect continued, reaching a high point in the mid-

sixteenth century, when a band of rival Tendai monks burned twenty-one

Nichiren temples in Kyoto, slaughtering all the priests, including a

reputed three thousand in the last temple.

The sect has survived, however, and today Nichiren Shoshu and its lay

affiliate, the Soka Gakkai, or Value Creation Society, claim the

membership of one Japanese in seven and control of the country's third

largest political party. The Soka Gakkai recently dedicated a vast new

temple at the foot of Mt. Fuji, said to be the largest religious

structure in existence. With services that often resemble political

conventions, the Nichiren sect has achieved might once have been

thought impossible: it has simplified even further the ingenuous

philosophy of its founder, embellishing the praise of the Lotus Sutra

with marching bands and gymnastic displays in sports-stadium

convocations.

The Japanese reformation represented by Amidism and Nichiren was a

natural outcome of the contempt for the average man that characterized

the early sects. It also opened the door for Zen, which found an appeal

among the non-aristocratic warrior class to equal that of the popular

Buddhist sects among the peasantry and bourgeoisie. As it happened, the

warriors who became fired with Zen also took control of the government

away from the aristocracy after the twelfth century, with the result

that Zen became the unofficial state religion of Japan during its great

period of artistic activity.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Chronicles of Zen

_A special transmission outside the _sutras_; No reliance upon words

and letters; Direct pointing to the very soul; Seeing into one's own

essence. _(Traditional Homage to Bodhidharma)

_Bodhidharma

_THERE IS A ZEN tradition that one day while the Buddha was seated at

Vulture Peak he was offered a flower and requested to preach on the

law. He took the flower, and holding it at arm's length, slowly turned

it in his fingers, all the while saying nothing. It was then that his

most knowing follower smiled in understanding, and the silent teaching

of Zen was born. That wordless smile is believed to have been

transmitted through twenty-eight successive Indian patriarchs, ending

with the famous Bodhidharma (ca. A.D. 470-534), who traveled to China in

520 and founded the school of Ch'an Buddhism, becoming the first

Chinese patriarch.

What Bodhidharma brought to China was the Indian concept of meditation,

called _dhyana _in Sanskrit, Ch'an in Chinese and Zen in Japanese.

Since the transmission of the wordless insights of meditation through a

thousand years of Indian history must, by definition, have taken place

without the assistance of written scriptures or preaching, the identity

and role of the twenty-eight previous Indian patriarchs must be

approached with caution. It has been suggested that the later Chinese

Ch'an Buddhists, striving for legitimacy of their school in the eyes of

colleagues from more established sects, resurrected a line of

"patriarchs" from among the names of obscure Indian monks and

eventually went on to enshroud these faceless names with fanciful

biographies. These Indian patriarchs reportedly transmitted one to the

other the wordless secrets of _dhyana_, thereby avoiding any need to

compose _sutras_, as did the lesser-gifted teachers of the other

schools.

Although Bodhidharma clearly was an historical figure, he made no

personal claims to patriarchy and indeed was distinguished more by

individuality than by attempts to promulgate an orthodoxy. Arriving

from India to teach meditation, he was greeted by an emperor's boasts

of traditional Buddhism's stature in China. Bodhidharma scoffed and

marched away, reportedly crossing the Yangtze on a reed to reach the

Shao-lin monastery, where he sat in solitary meditation facing a cliff

for the next nine years. This famous interview and Bodhidharma's

response were the real foundation of Zen.

Bodhidharma seems to have gone essentially unnoticed by his

contemporaries, and in the first record of his life--Biographies of the

High Priests, compiled in 645--he is included simply as one of a number

of devout Buddhists. He is next mentioned in _The Transmission of the

Lamp_, a sourcebook of Zen writings and records assembled in the year

1004. In point of fact, Bodhidharma, like the Buddha, seems not to have

left a written account of his teachings, although two essays are extant

which are variously attributed to him and which probably maintain the

spirit if not necessarily the letter of his views on meditation. The

most quoted passage from these works, and one which encapsulates the

particular originality of Bodhidharma, is his praise of meditation, or

_pi-kuan_, literally "wall gazing." This term supposedly refers to the

legendary nine years of gazing at a cliff which has become part of the

Bodhidharma story, but it also may be taken as a metaphor for staring

at the impediment that reason places in the path of enlightenment until

at last the mind hurdles the rational faculties. His words are reported

as follows:

_When one, abandoning the false and embracing the true, and in

simpleness of thought abides in _pi-kuan_, one finds that there is

neither selfhood nor otherness. . . . He will not then be guided by any

literary instructions, for he is in silent communication with the

principle itself, free from conceptual discrimination, for he is serene

and not-acting.1

This emphasis on meditation and the denial of reason formed the

philosophical basis for the new Chinese school of Ch'an. By returning

to first principles, it was a denial of all the metaphysical baggage

with which Mahayana Buddhism had burdened itself over the centuries,

and naturally enough there was immediate opposition from the more

established sects. One of Bodhidharma's first and most ardent followers

was Hui-k'o (487-593), who, according to The Transmission of the Lamp,

waited in vain in the snows outside Shao-lin monastery, hoping to

receive an auThence with Bodhidharma, until at last, in desperation, he

cut off his arm to attract the Master's notice. Some years later, when

Bodhidharma was preparing to leave China, he left this pupil his copy

of the Lankavatara Sutra and bade him continue the teachings of

meditation. Today the one-armed Hui-k'o is remembered as the Second

Patriarch of Ch'an.

It seems odd that one who scorned literary instruction should have

placed such emphasis on a _sutra_, but on careful reading the

Lankdvatara, a Sanskrit text from the first century, proves to be a

cogent summary of early Ch'an teachings on the function of the counter

mind. According to this _sutra_,

_Transcendental intelligence rises when the intellectual mind reaches

its limit and, if things are to be realized in their true and essence

nature, its processes of mentation . . . must be transcended by an

appeal to some higher faculty of cognition. There is such a faculty in

the intuitive mind, which as we have seen is the link between the

intellectual mind and the Universal Mind.2

Regarding the achievement of self-realization by meditation, the

_sutra_ states,

_[Disciples] may think they can expedite the attainment of their goal

of tranquilisation by entirely suppressing the activities of the mind

system. This is a mistake . . . the goal of tranquilisation is to be

reached not by suppressing all mind activity but by getting rid of

discriminations and attachments. . . .3

This text, together with the Taoist ideas of the T'ang Chinese, became

the philosophical basis for early Ch'an. Indeed, traditional Zen owes

much of its lighthearted irreverence to the early Taoists, who combined

their love of nature with a wholesome disregard for stuffy

philosophical pronouncements, whether from scholarly Confucianists or

Indian _sutras_.

The Taoists were also enemies of attachments, as exemplified by an

admonition of the famous Chuang Tzu, the fourth-century B.C. Taoist

thinker who established much of the philosophical basis for this

uniquely Chinese outlook toward life:

_Do not be an embodier of fame; do not be a storehouse of schemes; do

not be an undertaker of projects; do not be a proprietor of wisdom. . .

. Be empty, that is all. The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror--

going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing.4

_Bodhidharma, practitioner of "wall-gazing" meditation, probably knew

nothing of Taoism, but he seems to have sensed correctly that China

would provide a home for his Buddhism of nonattachment. The Chinese of

the Tang era (618-907) did indeed find in his teachings a system

remarkably congenial to their own thousand-year-old philosophy of

_tao_, or The Way. Even the practice of _dhyana_, or meditation,

resembled in a sense the Chinese tradition of the ascetic, solitary

hermit, musing on the essence of nature in a remote mountain retreat.

Whether Ch'an was really Buddhism masquerading as Taoism or Taoism

disguised as Buddhism has never been fully established: it contains

elements of both. But it was the first genuine merging of Chinese and

Indian thought, combining the Indian ideas of meditation and

nonattachment with the Chinese practice of nature reverence and nature

mysticism (something fundamentally foreign to the great body of Indian

philosophy, either Hindu or Buddhist).

The Third Patriarch after Bodhidharma was also a wandering mendicant

teacher, but the Fourth chose to settle in a monastery. This

introduction of monastic Ch'an coincided roughly with the beginning of

the T'ang dynasty, and it brought about a dramatic rise in the appeal

of Ch'an to the Chinese laity. It made the new faith respectable and an

acceptable alternative to other sects, for in the land of Confucius,

teachers who wandered the countryside begging had never elicited the

respect that they enjoyed in India. Before long, the Fourth Patriarch

had a following of some five hundred disciples, who constructed

monastery buildings and tilled the soil in addition to meditating on

the _sutras_. The ability to combine practical activities with the

quest for enlightenment became a hallmark of later Zen, accounting for

much of its influence in Japan.

The Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen (605-675), continued the monastery,

although at another spot, which was to be the location of an historic

turning point in the history of Ch'an. Out of it was to come the Sixth

Patriarch, Hui-neng (638-713), sometimes known as the second founder of

Chinese Ch'an, whose famous biographical treatise, The Sutra of Hui-

neng, is revered as one of the holy books of Zen. In this memoir he

tells of coming to the monastery of the Fifth Patriarch as an

illiterate but precocious youth, having been spiritually awakened by

happening to hear a recitation of the Vajracchedika Sutra, better known

as the Diamond Sutra. He made the mistake of revealing his brilliance

and was immediately banished by the Fifth Patriarch to pounding rice,

lest he embarrass the more experienced brothers and be in peril of his

safety. According to his account, he lived in obscurity for many months

until one day the Fifth Patriarch called an assembly and announced that

the disciple who could compose a stanza which would reveal an

understanding of the essence of Mind would be made the Sixth Patriarch.

All the monks assumed that the leading scholar of the monastery, Shen-

hsiu, would naturally win the contest, and all resolved not to bother

composing lines of their own. The story tells that Shen-hsiu struggled

for four days and finally mounted his courage to write an unsigned

verse on a wall corridor at midnight.

_Our body is the Bodhi-tree,

And our mind a mirror bright.

Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,

And let no dust alight.5

This verse certainly demonstrated the concept of the mind's

nonattachment to phenomena, but perhaps it showed an attachment of the

mind to itself. In any case, it did not satisfy the Fifth Patriarch,

who recognized its author and advised Shen- hsiu privately to submit

another verse in two days. Before he had a chance, however, the

illiterate Hui-neng, between sessions of rice pounding, chanced along

the hallway and asked that the verse be read to him. Upon hearing it,

he dictated a stanza to be written next to it.

_There is no Bodhi-tree,

Nor stand of a mirror bright.

Since all is void,

Where can the dust alight_?6

The story says that all were amazed, and the Fifth Patriarch

immediately rubbed away the stanza lest the other monks become jealous.

He then summoned Hui-neng late at night, expounded the Diamond Sutra to

him, and presented him with the robe and begging bowl of Bodhidharma--

together with advice to flee south in the interest of safety.

Thus Hui-neng became the Sixth Patriarch, began the Southern school of

Ch'an, which would later be transmitted to Japan, and established the

Diamond Sutra as the faith's primary scripture. And so it was that the

Lankavatara Sutra of Bodhidharma, a rich moral and spiritual treatise,

was replaced by the more easily understood Diamond Sutra, a repetitive

and self- praising document whose message is that nothing exists:

_notions of selfhood, personality, entity, and separate individuality,

as really existing, are erroneous--these terms are merely figures of

speech. . . . Develop a pure, lucid mind, not depending upon sound,

flavor, touch, odor, or any quality . . . develop a mind which alights

upon no thing whatsoever.7

With this _sutra_ as text, the Southern Ch'an masters turned ever

farther away from intellectual inquiry, since even the mind itself does

not exist. (It has even been suggested that the biography of the

founder of Southern Ch'an was revised in later vears to render him as

unschooled and illiterate as possible, the better to emphasize the

later Ch'an's contempt for scholars and scholarship.)

By the time of Hui-neng's death, China was basking in the cultural

brilliance of the Tang dynasty. Oddly enough, the sect of Southern

Ch'an, which was at odds with the intellectual life of the T'ang, was

the Buddhist sect most prospering. The T'ang became the golden age of

Ch'an, producing the vast majority of great Zen thinkers as well as the

classic techniques for teaching novices. Perhaps the fact that Ch'an

was outside the mainstream of Chinese culture during the T'ang period

contributed to the independent character of its teachers; during the

later Sung dynasty, when Zen became fashionable among scholars and

artists, few dynamic teachers were to be found.

The main objective of the Ch'an teachers was to inculcate a basically

Taoist view of the world using a Buddhist framework. Such famous

Taoists as Chuang Tzu had long demonstrated the irrelevance of logical

inquiry into the mind through the use of absurdist stories which

confounded conventional understanding. To this the Ch'an teachers added

the Buddhist teaching that the mind cannot understand external reality

because it is itself the only reality. The hand cannot grasp itself;

the eye cannot see itself; the mind cannot perceive itself. Quite

obviously, no amount of logical introspection can elicit this truth;

therefore the mind must abandon its pointless questing and simply float

with existence, of which it is merely an undifferentiated part.

But how can such a truth be taught? Teaching ideas is the transmission

of logical constructions from one mind to another, and the essence of

Zen is that logical constructions are the greatest impediment to

enlightenment. In answer, the Zen masters took a page from the Taoists

and began using nonsense conundrums, later known as _koan_, as well as

frustrating question-and-answer sessions, known as _mondo_, to

undermine a novice's dependence on rational thought. A new monk would

be presented with an illogical question or problem by the head of a

monastery, who would then monitor his response. (Examples might

include: Why did Bodhidharma come from the West, that is, from India to

China? Does a dog have Buddha-nature? What was your face before your

mother was born?) If the novice struggled to construct a response using

logical thought processes, he faded; if he intuitively and

nondiscursively grasped the truth within the _koan_, he passed.

This pass-or-fail technique differentiated Ch'an from all previous

Buddhist sects; Ch'an allowed for no gradual progress upward in the

spiritual Therarchy through the mastery of rituals. In the early days

of the Tang dynasty, when the number of initiates was small, the great

masters of Ch'an directly tested the non-rational understanding of

novices; in the later years of the Sung dynasty it was necessary to

develop a more impersonal procedure, such as handing out the same _koan

_to a number of novices during a lecture. The more effective exchanges

between the old T'ang masters and their pupils began to be reused by

later teachers in the Sung, who had neither the genius to create new

challenges for their novices nor the time to tailor-make a special

problem for each new face appearing at the monastery. Out of this there

was gradually canonized what are now the classic _koan _of Zen. Late in

the Tang and early in the Sung period the _koan_ themselves began to be

written down and used as the scriptures, resulting in a catalog said to

number around seventeen hundred today. The _koan_ is a uniquely Zen

creation, a brilliant technique developed by the T'ang masters for

transmitting a religion which revered no scriptures and had no god. It

appears nowhere else in the vast literature of world mysticism.

Several of the greatest masters of the T'ang developed their own

schools of Ch'an, and the two most successful--the Lin-chi (Japanese

Rinzai) and the Ts'ao-tung (Japanese Soto)--were later transmitted to

Japan. The Rinzai school pursued a technique of "sudden" enlightenment;

the Soto school, "gradual" enlightenment. These terms can be

misleading, however, for sudden enlightenment may require more time

than gradual. The gradual school taught that by sitting in meditation

(Japanese _zazen_) for long periods of time--kept awake by thrashings if

necessary--one's mind slowly acquires a detachment from the

world of false reality perceived by one's discriminating senses and

thus achive enlightenment. It is a slow, cumulative process. By

contrast, the sudden school de-emphasizes _zazen _in favor of study of

_koan_. The student struggles with _koan_, building up a kind of

hopeless tension which may last for years, until at last his logical

processes suddenly short-circuit and he attains enlightenment.

Practitioners of the sudden school also use shouts and beatings to jolt

novices out of their linear, sequential thought patterns. Students of

the gradual school are also invited to study _koan_, and those in the

sudden school are encouraged to practice _zazen_, but each school

believes its own approach is best.

Although the latter T'ang era saw the persecution of Buddhism in China,

with the coming of the Sung dynasty, Ch'an basked in the official

encouragement of the court. The _koan _of T'ang masters were compiled

and stuThed, while the _sutras_ of orthodox Buddhism suffered from

neglect. But the real future of Ch'an Buddhism was to lie with the

Japanese. In the latter part of the twelfth century a Japanese Tendai

monk named Eisai (1141-1215), concluding that Japanese Buddhism had

become stagnant and lifeless, journeyed to China to learn the

developments that had taken place during the years that Japan had

isolated herself. He naturally went to a T'ien-t'ai monastery, which

had been the source of so much Japanese Buddhism, but there he

discovered Chinese Buddhists immersed in Ch'an. The new faith seemed a

healthy answer to Japanese needs, and on a second visit he stuThed

Ch'an until he received the seal of enlightenment. A fully accredited

Zen master, he returned to Japan in 1191 to found the first Rinzai

temple, on the southern island of Kyushu.

Although his introduction of a new sect inspired the customary

opposition from the Tendai monks on Mt. Thei, the new faith challenging

the usefulness of scholarship found a receptive audience among the

newly emergent warrior class. Basically illiterate, the warriors often

felt themselves intellectually inferior to the literary aristocracy,

and they were delighted to be informed that a scholarly mind was an

impediment rather than an asset in life. They also found Zen's emphasis

on the quick, intuitive response agreeably in accord with their

approach to armed combat. Eisai soon found himself invited to head a

temple in Kyoto and later in the new warrior capital of Kamakura.

Perhaps his most practical move was the composition of a treatise

designed to win for Zen a place in the hearts of the nationalistic

military establishment and at the same time to conciliate the Tendai

monks on Mt. Thei. In his Propagation of Zen for the Protection of the

Country he described Zen as follows:

_In its rules of action and discipline, there is no confusion of right

and wrong. . . . Outwardly it favors discipline over doctrine, inwardly

it brings the Highest Inner Wisdom.8

Although it may seem paradoxical that a pacifist religion like Zen

found immediate favor with the rough warrior class of Japan, it had an

obvious appeal. As Sir George Sansom has explained it,

_For a thoughtful warrior, whose life always bordered on death, there

was an attraction, even a persuasion, in the belief that truth comes

like the flash of a sword as it cuts through the problem of existence.

Any line of religious thought that helped a man understand the nature

of being without arduous literary stuThes was likely to attract the

kind of warrior who felt that the greatest moments in life were the

moments when death was nearest.9

The Japanese warriors were captured by the irreverent, anti- scholastic

qualities of Rinzai, with its reliance upon anecdotal _koan _and

violent jolts of enlightenment. Thus the ruling warriors of Japan began

studying _koan_, even as the peasantry at large was chanting praises to

Amida and the Lotus Sutra.

The aristocratic priest Dogen (1200-1253), who also left the Tendai

monastery for China and returned to establish the meditative, gradual

school of Soto Zen, is generally considered the second founder of

Japanese Zen. Although he grudgingly

acknowledged the usefulness of _koan _as an aid to instruction, Dogen

considered _zazen _meditation the time-proven method of the Buddha for

acTheving enlightenment. For scriptural support, he preferred to go

back to the earlier Hinayana sutras for their more authentic accounts

of the words of the Buddha, rather than to rely on Mahayana sources,

which had been corrupted over the centuries by an elaborate metaphysics

and polytheism. Dogen had not originally planned to start a school of

Zen but merely to popularize _zazen_, to which end he wrote a small

treatise, General Teachings for the Promotion of Zazen, which has

become a classic. This was followed a few years later by a larger, more

generalized work which was to become the bible of Japanese Soto Zen,

_Shobogenzo_, or _Treasury of Knowledge Regarding the True Dharma_. In

this work he tried to stress the importance of _zazen _while at the

same time acknowledging the usefulness of instruction and _koan_ where

required.

There are two ways in which to set body and mind right: one is

to hear the teaching from a master, and the other is to do pure _zazen_

yourself. If you _hear_ the teachings the conscious mind is put to

work, whilst _zazen_ embraces both training and enlightenment; in order

to understand the Truth, you need both.10

Unlike the conciliatory Eisai, Dogen was uncompromising in his

rejection of the traditional schools of Buddhism, which he felt had

strayed too far from the original teachings of Gautama. He was right,

of course; the chanting, savior-oriented popular Buddhists in Japan

were, as Edwin Reischauer has noted, practicing a religion far closer

to European Christianity of the same period than to the faith started

by the Buddha--an atheistic self-reliance aimed at finding release from

all worldly attachments. Dogen's truths did not rest well with the

Buddhist establishment of his time, however, and for years he moved

from temple to temple. Finally, in 1236, he managed to start a temple

of his own, and gradually he became one of the most revered religious

teachers in Japanese history. As his reputation grew, the military

leaders invited him to visit them and teach, but he would have no part

of their life. Possibly as a result of Dogen's attitude, Soto Zen never

became associated with the warrior class, but remained the Zen of the

common people. Today Soto (with approximately six and a half million

followers) is the more popular version of Zen, whereas Rinzai (with

something over two million followers) is the Zen of those interested in

theological daring and intellectual challenge.

Historically a religion at odds with the establishment--from Bodhidharma

to the eccentric T'ang masters--Zen in Japan found itself suddenly the

religion of the ruling class. The result was a Zen impact in Japan far

greater than any influence Ch'an ever realized in China.

CHAPTER FIVE

Zen Archery and Swordsmanship

_ (THE KAMAKURA ERA--1185-1333)

The anti-scholasticism, the mental discipline--still more the strict

physical discipline of the adherents of Zen, which kept their lives

very close to nature--all appealed to the warrior caste. . . . Zen

contributed much to the development of a toughness of inner fiber and a

strength of character which typified the warrior of feudal Japan. . . .

Edwin Reischauer, _Japan: Past and

Present

THE BEGINNINGS of the Zen era are about the middle of the twelfth century,

when the centuries-long Heian miracle of peace came to an end. The

Japanese aristocracy had ruled the land for hundreds of years

practically without drawing a sword, using diplomatic suasion so

skillful that Heian was probably the only capital city in the medieval

world entirely without fortifications. This had been possible partly

because of the ruling class's willingness to let taxable lands slip

from their control--into the hands of powerful provincial leaders and

rich monasteries--rather than start a quarrel. For occasions when force

was required, they delegated the responsibility to two powerful

military clans, the Taira and the Minamoto, who roamed the land to

collect taxes, quell uprisings, and not incidentally to forge

allegiances with provincial chieftains. The Taira were in charge of the

western and central provinces around Kyoto, while the Minamoto

dominated the frontier eastern provinces, in the region one day to hold

the warrior capital of Kamakura. The astounding longevity of their rule

was a tribute to the aristocrats' skill in playing off these two

powerful families against each other, but by the middle of the twelfth

century they found themselves at the mercy of their bellicose agents,

awakening one day to discover ruffians in the streets of Kyoto as

brigands and armed monks invaded the city to burn and pillage.

The real downfall of the _ancien regime_ began in the year 1156, when a

dispute arose between the reigning emperor and a retired sovereign

simultaneously with a disagreement among the aristocracy regarding

patronage. Both sides turned to the warriors for support--a formula that

proved to be extremely unwise. The result was a feud between the Taira

and Minamoto, culminating in a civil war (the Gempei War) that lasted

five years, produced bloodshed on a scale previously unknown in Japan,

and ended in victory for the Minamoto. A chieftain named Minamoto

Yoritomo emerged as head of a unified state and leader of a government

whose power to command was beyond question. Since Yoritomo's position

had no precedent, he invented for himself the title of shogun. He also

moved the government from Kyoto to his military headquarters at

Kamakura and proceeded to lay the groundwork for what would be almost

seven hundred years of unbroken warrior rule.

The form of government Yoritomo instituted is generally, if somewhat

inaccurately, described as feudalism. The provincial warrior families

managed estates worked by peasants whose role was similar to that of

the European serfs of the same period. The estate-owning barons were

mounted warriors, new figures in Japanese history, who protected their

lands and their family honor much as did the European knights. But

instead of glorifying chivalry and maidenly honor, they respected the

rules of battle and noble death. Among the fiercest fighters the world

has seen, they were masters of personal combat, horsemanship, archery,

and the way of the sword. Their principles were fearlessness, loyalty,

honor, personal integrity, and contempt for material wealth. They

became known as _samurai_, and they were the men whose swords were

ruled by Zen.

Battle for the _samurai_ was a ritual of personal and family honor.

When two opposing sides confronted one another in the field, the

mounted _samurai_ would first discharge the twenty to thirty arrows at

their disposal and then call out their family names in hopes of

eliciting foes of similarly distinguished lineage. Two warriors would

then charge one another brandishing their long swords until one was

dismounted, whereupon hand-to-hand combat with short knives commenced.

The loser's head was taken as a trophy, since headgear proclaimed

family and rank. To die a noble death in battle at the hands of a

worthy foe brought no dishonor to one's family, and cowardice in the

face of death seems to have been as rare as it was humiliating.

Frugality among these Zen-inspired warriors was as much admired as the

soft living of aristocrats and merchants was scorned; and life itself

was cheap, with warriors ever ready to commit ritual suicide (called

_seppuku _or _harakiri_) to preserve their honor or to register social

protest.

Yoritomo was at the height of his power when he was killed accidentally

in a riding mishap. Having murdered all the competent members of his

family, lest they prove rivals, he left no line except two ineffectual

sons, neither of whom was worthy to govern. The power vacuum was filled

by his in-laws of the Hojo clan, who very shortly eliminated all the

remaining members of the Minamoto ruling family and assumed power. Not

wishing to appear outright usurpers of the office of shogun, they

invented a position known as regent, through which they manipulated a

hand-picked shogun, who in turn manipulated a powerless emperor. It was

an example of indirect rule at its most ingenious.

Having skillfully removed the Minamoto family from ruling circles, the

Hojo Regency governed Japan for over a hundred years, during which time

Zen became the most influential religion in the land. It was also

during this time that Zen played an important role in saving Japan from

what was possibly the greatest threat to its survival up to that time:

the invasion attempts of Kublai Khan. In 1268 the Great Khan, whose

Mongol armies were in the process of sacking China, sent envoys to

Japan recommending tribute. The Kyoto court was terrified, but not the

Kamakura warriors, who sent the Mongols back empty-handed. The sequence

was repeated four years later, although this time the Japanese knew it

would mean war. As expected, in 1274 an invasion fleet of Mongols

sailed from Korea, but after inconclusive fighting on a southern

beachhead of Kyushu, a timely storm blew the invaders out to sea and

inflicted enough losses to derail the project. The Japanese had,

however, learned a sobering lesson about their military preparedness.

In the century of internal peace between the Gempei War and the Mongol

landing, Japanese fighting men had let their skills atrophy. Not only

were their formalized ideas about honorable hand-to-hand combat totally

inappropriate to the tight formations and powerful crossbows of the

Asian armies (a _samurai_ would ride out, announce his lineage, and

immediately be cut down by a volley of Mongol arrows), the Japanese

warriors had lost much of their moral fiber. To correct both these

faults the Zen monks who served as advisers to the Hojo insisted that

military training, particularly archery and swordsmanship, be

formalized, using the techniques of Zen discipline. A system of

training was hastily begun in which the _samurai_ were conditioned

psychologically as well as physically for battle. It proved so

successful that it became a permanent part of Japanese martial tactics.

The Zen training was urgent, for all of Japan knew that the Mongols

would be back in strength. One of the Mongols' major weapons had been

the fear they inspired in those they approached, but fear of death is

the last concern of a _samurai _whose mind has been disciplined by Zen

exercises. Thus the Mongols were robbed of their most potent offensive

weapon, a point driven home when a group of Mongol envoys appearing

after the first invasion to proffer terms were summarily beheaded.

Along with the Zen military training, the Japanese placed the entire

country on a wartime footing, with every able-bodied man engaged in

constructing shoreline fortifications. As expected, in the early summer

of 1281 the Khan launched an invasion force thought to have numbered

well over 100,000 men, using vessels constructed by Korean labor. When

they began landing in southern Kyushu, the _samurai_ were there and

ready, delighted at the prospect of putting to use on a common

adversary the military skills they had evolved over the decades through

slaughtering one another. They harassed the Mongol fleet from small

vessels, while on shore they faced the invaders man for man, never

allowing their line to break. For seven weeks they stood firm, and then

it was August, the typhoon month. One evening, the skies darkened

ominously in the south and the winds began to rise, but before the

fleet could withdraw the typhoon struck.

In two days the armada of Kublai Khan was obliterated, leaving hapless

onshore advance parties to be cut to ribbons by the _samurai_. Thus did

the Zen warriors defeat one of the largest naval expeditions in world

history, and in commemoration the grateful emperor named the typhoon

the Divine Wind, Kamikaze.

The symbols of the Zen _samurai _were the sword and the bow. The sword

in particular was identified with the noblest impulses of the

individual, a role strengthened by its historic place as one of the

emblems of the divinity of the emperor, reaching back into pre-Buddhist

centuries. A _samurai's _sword was believed to possess a spirit of its

own, and when he experienced disappointment in battle he might go to a

shrine to pray for the spirit's return. Not surprisingly, the

swordsmith was an almost priestly figure who, after ritual

purification, went about his task clad in white robes. The ritual

surrounding swordmaking had a practical as well as a spiritual purpose;

it enabled the early Japanese to preserve the highly complex formulas

required to forge special steel. Their formulas were carefully guarded,

and justifiably so: not until the past century did the West produce

comparable metal. Indeed, the metal in medieval Japanese swords has

been favorably compared with the finest modern armorplate.

The secret of these early swords lay in the ingenious method developed

for producing a metal both hard and brittle enough to hold its edge and

yet sufficiently soft and pliable not to snap under stress. The

procedure consisted of hammering together a laminated sandwich of

steels of varying hardness, heating it, and then folding it over again

and again until it consisted of many thousands of layers. If a truly

first-rate sword was required, the interior core was made of a sandwich

of soft metals, and the outer shell fashioned from varying grades of

harder steel. The blade was then heated repeatedly and plunged into

water to toughen the skin. Finally, all portions save the cutting edge

were coated with clay and the blade heated to a very precise

temperature, whereupon it was again plunged into water of a special

temperature for just long enough to freeze the edge but not the

interior core, which was then allowed to cool slowly and maintain its

flexibility. The precise temperatures of blade and water were closely

guarded secrets, and at least one visitor to a master swordsmith's

works who sneaked a finger into the water to discover its temperature

found his hand suddenly chopped off in an early test of the sword.

The result of these techniques was a sword whose razor- sharp edge

could repeatedly cut through armor without dulling, but whose interior

was soft enough that it rarely broke. The sword of the _samurai _was

the equivalent of a two-handed straight razor, allowing an experienced

warrior to carve a man into slices with consummate ease. Little wonder

the Chinese and other Asians were willing to pay extravagant prices in

later years for these exquisite instruments of death. Little wonder,

too, that the _samurai _worshiped his sidearm to the point where he

would rather lose his life than his sword.

Yet a sword alone did not a _samurai_ make. A classic Zen anecdote may

serve to illustrate the Zen approach to swordsmanship. It is told that

a young man journeyed to visit a famous Zen swordmaster and asked to be

taken as a pupil, indicating a desire to work hard and thereby reduce

the time needed for training. Toward the end of his interview he asked

about the length of time which might be required, and the master

replied that it would probably be at least ten years. Dismayed, the

young novice offered to work diligently night and day and inquired how

this extra effort might affect the time required. "In that case," the

master replied, "it will require thirty years." With a sense of

increasing alarm, the young man then offered to devote all his energies

and every single moment to studying the sword. "Then it will take

seventy years," replied the master. The young man was speechless, but

finally agreed to give his life over to the master. For the first three

years, he never saw a sword but was put to work hulling rice and

practicing Zen meditation. Then one day the master crept up behind his

pupil and gave him a solid whack with a wooden sword. Thereafter he

would be attacked daily by the master whenever his back was turned. As

a result, his senses gradually sharpened until he was on guard every

moment, ready to dodge instinctively. When the master saw that his

student's body was alert to everything around it and oblivious of all

irrelevant thoughts and desires, training began.

Instinctive action is the key to Zen swordsmanship. The Zen fighter

does not logically think out his moves; his body acts without recourse

to logical planning. This gives him a precious advantage over an

opponent who must think through his actions and then translate this

logical plan into the movement of arm and sword. The same principles

that govern the Zen approach to understanding inner reality through

transcending the analytical faculties are used by the swordsman to

circumvent the time-consuming process of thinking through every move.

To this technique Zen swordsmen add another vital element, the complete

identification of the warrior with his weapon. The sense of duality

between man and steel is erased by Zen training, leaving a single

fighting instrument. The _samurai _never has a sense that his arm, part

of himself, is holding a sword, which is a separate entity. Rather,

sword, arm, body, and mind become one. As explained by the Zen scholar

D. T. Suzuki:

_When the sword is in the hands of a technician-swordsman skilled in

its use, it is no more than an instrument with no mind of its own. What

it does is done mechanically, and there is no [nonintellection]

discernible in it. But when the sword is held by the swordsman whose

spiritual attainment is such that he holds it as though not holding it,

it is identified with the man himself, it acquires a soul, it moves

with all the subtleties which have been imbedded in him as a swordsman.

The man emptied of all thoughts, all emotions originating from fear,

all sense of insecurity, all desire to win, is not conscious of using

the sword; both man and sword turn into instruments in the hands, as it

were, of the unconscious. . . .1

Zen training also renders the warrior free from troubling frailties of

the mind, such as fear and rash ambition--qualities lethal in mortal

combat. He is focused entirely on his opponent's openings, and when an

opportunity to strike presents itself, he requires no deliberation: his

sword and body act automatically. The discipline of meditation and the

mind-dissolving paradoxes of the _koan _become instruments to forge a

fearless, automatic, mindless instrument of steel-tipped death.

The methods developed by Zen masters for teaching archery differ

significantly from those used for the sword. Whereas swordsmanship

demands that man and weapon merge with no acknowledgment of one's

opponent until the critical moment, archery requires the man to become

detached from his weapon and to concentrate entirely upon the target.

Proper technique is learned, of course, but the ultimate aim is to

forget technique, forget the bow, forget the draw, and give one's

concentration entirely to the target. Yet here too there is a

difference between Zen archery and Western techniques: the Zen archer

gives no direct thought to hitting the target. He does not strain for

accuracy, but rather lets accuracy come as a result of intuitively

applying perfect form.

Before attempting to unravel this seeming paradox, the equipment of the

Japanese archer should be examined. The Japanese bow differs from the

Western bow in having the hand grip approximately one-third of the

distance from the bottom, rather than in the middle. This permits a

standing archer (or a kneeling one, for that matter) to make use of a

bow longer than he is tall (almost eight feet, in fact), since the

upper part may extend well above his head. The bottom half of the bow

is scaled to human proportions, while the upper tip extends far over

the head in a sweeping arch. It is thus a combination of the

conventional bow and the English longbow, requiring a draw well behind

the ear. This bow is unique to Japan, and in its engineering principles

it surpasses anything seen in the West until comparatively recent

times. It is a laminated composite of supple bamboo and the brittle

wood of the wax tree. The heart of the bow is made up of three squares

of bamboo sandwiched between two half-moon sections of bamboo which

comprise the belly (that side facing the inside of the curve) and the

back (the side away from the archer). Filling out the edges of the

sandwich are two strips of wax-tree wood. The elimination of the

deadwood center of the bow, which is replaced by the three strips of

bamboo and two of waxwood, produces a composite at once powerful and

light. The arrows too are of bamboo, an almost perfect material for the

purpose, and they differ from Western arrows only in being lighter and

longer. Finally, the Japanese bowstring is loosed with the thumb rather

than the fingers, again a departure from Western practice.

If the equipment differs from that of the West, the technique, which

verges on ritual, differs far more. The first Zen archery lesson is

proper breath control, which requires techniques learned from

meditation. Proper breathing conditions the mind in archery as it does

in _zazen _and is essential in developing a quiet mind, a restful

spirit, and full concentration. Controlled breathing also constantly

reminds the archer that his is a religious activity, a ritual related

to his spiritual character as much as to the more prosaic concern of

hitting the target. Breathing is equally essential in drawing the bow,

for the arrow is held out away from the body, calling on muscles much

less developed than those required by the Western draw. A breath is

taken with every separate movement of the draw, and gradually a rhythm

settles in which gives the archer's movements a fluid grace and the

ritual cadence of a dance.

Only after the ritual mastery of the powerful bow has been realized

does the archer turn his attention to loosing the arrows (not, it

should be noted, to hitting the target). The same use of breathing

applies, the goal being for the release of the arrow to come out of

spontaneous intuition, like the swordsman's attack. The release of the

arrow should dissolve a kind of spiritual tension, like the resolution

of a _koan_, and it must seem to occur of itself, without deliberation,

almost as though it were independent of the hand. This is possible

because the archer's mind is totally unaware of his actions; it is

focused, indeed riveted in concentration, on the target. This is not

done through aiming, although the archer does aim--intuitively. Rather,

the archer's spirit must be burned into the target, be at one with it,

so that the arrow is guided by the mind and the shot of the bow becomes

merely an intervening, inconsequential necessity. All physical actions--

the stance, the breathing, the draw, the release--are as natural and

require as little conscious thought as a heartbeat; the arrow is guided

by the intense concentration of the mind on its goal.

Thus it was that the martial arts of Japan were the first to benefit

from Zen precepts, a fact as ironic as it is astounding. Yet meditation

and combat are akin in that both require rigorous self-discipline and

the denial of the mind's overt functions. From its beginning as an aid

in the arts of death, Zen soon became the guiding principle for quite

another form of art. In years to come, Zen would be the official state

religion, shoguns would become Zen patrons extraordinaire, and a

totally Zen culture would rule Japan.

Part II

THE AGE OF HIGH CULTURE:

ASHIKAGA (1333-1573)

CHAPTER SIX

The Great Age of Zen

_For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we

cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.

_Pericles, ca. 430 B.C.

_SILVER PAVILION, KYOTO 1482

_Golden Pavilion, Kyoto

_THE FLOWERING of Zen culture might be described as the Periclean age of

Japan. As with fifth-century Greece, this was the era that produced

Japan's finest classical art at the same time that rampant plagues and

internecine warfare bled the land as never before. Government, such as

it was, rested in the hands of the Ashikaga clan, men ever ready to

sacrifice the general good in furtherance of personal interests. That

these interests happened to include Zen and the Zen arts probably

brought scant solace to their subjects, but today we can weigh their

selfishness against the culture they sponsored. In any case, all who

admire the classic Zen cultural forms should be aware that their price

included the heartless taxation of and disregard for the entire peasant

population of Japan.

The historical backdrop for the Ashikaga era reads like a Jacobean

tragedy peopled by cutthroat courtiers ever alert to advantage in

chambers or in battle. The political shape of the Ashikaga era began to

emerge in the early years of the fourteenth century as the once

invincible Kamakura rule of the Hojo family dissolved, plunging Japan

into a half-century of war and feuding over the identity of the

rightful emperor. Throughout much of the century the provincial _daimyo

_warlords and their _samurai _warred up and down the length of the

land, supporting first one emperor, then another. It was during this

time and the two centuries following that Zen became the official state

religion and Zen monks served as foreign diplomats, domestic advisers,

and arbiters of taste.

The political troubles that ended the Kamakura warrior government and

unseated the Hojo seem to be traceable to the war against the Mongols.

It was a long and costly operation which left most of the _samurai_

impoverished and angered at a government that could give them only

cheerful thanks rather than the lands of the vanquished as was

traditional practice. The general discontent found a focus in the

third decade of the fourteenth century when a Kyoto emperor named

Godaigo attempted to unseat the Hojo and re-establish genuine imperial

rule. After some minor skirmishes, the Hojo commissioned an able

general nanied Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358) from an old Minamoto family

to march on Godaigo and settle the difficulty. Along the way Takauji

must have thought things over, for when he reached Kyoto instead of

attacking the emperor's forces he put the Hojo garrison to the sword.

Shortly thereafter, another general supporting the imperial cause

marched out to Kamakura and laid waste the Hojo capital. The last few

hundred Hojo supporters committed suicide en masse, and the Kamakura

age was ended.

Godaigo gleefully set up the new Japanese government in Kyoto, and soon

it was like old times, with aristocrats running everything. In a

serious miscalculation, he assumed that the

provincial warlords had joined his cause out of personal loyalty rather

than the more traditional motive of greed, for he gave the Hojo estates

to his favorite mistresses while regarding warriors like Takauji as

hardly more than rustic figures of fun. As might have been expected,

another war soon broke out. This time the conflict lasted for decades,

with almost unbelievable convolutions, including a number of decades in

which Japan had two emperors. At one point Takauji found it necessary

to poison his own brother, and it has been estimated that his military

exploits cost some sixty thousand lives, not to mention the general

ruin of the country at large. The end result was that the forces of

Godaigo were defeated, leaving Japan in the hands of the Ashikaga

family.

For all his bloodletting, Takuji was also a patron of the Zen sect,

giving it a formal place in the national life and encouraging its

growth and dissemination. One of his closest advisers was the great Zen

prelate Muso Soseki (1275-1351), whose influence made Rinzai Zen the

official religion of the Ashikaga era. An astutely practical man, Muso

established the precedent for doctrinal flexibility which allowed Zen

to survive while emperors and shoguns came and went:

_Clear-sighted masters of the Zen sect do not have a fixed doctrine

which is to be held to at any and all times. They offer whatever

teaching the occasion demands and preach as the spirit moves them, with

no fixed course to guide them. If asked what Zen is, they may answer in

the words of Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu, or else in

terms of the doctrines of the various sects and denominations, and also

by using popular proverbs.1

Like many Zen teachers, Muso enjoyed the company of the powerful. He

began his career in statecraft as a supporter and confidant of the ill-

fated Emperor Godaigo. When Godaigo was deposed, he adjusted his

allegiance and became the high priest of the Ashikaga house. He was

soon the constant companion of Takauji, advising him on policy,

flattering his taste in Zen art, and secretly trying to give him a bit

of polish. Although Takauji could scarcely have had time for extensive

meditation amid his continual bloodletting, Muso preached to him in odd

moments and soothed his occasionally guilty conscience.

Since Takauji was clearly haunted by his treatment of Godaigo, Muso

suggested that the former emperor's ghost might find repose if a

special Zen temple was built in his memory. The project was well

underway when funds ran low, whereupon the resourceful Muso suggested

sending a trading vessel to China to raise foreign-exchange cash. The

venture was so successful that before long regular trade was

established-- naturally enough under the guidance of Zen monks. In later

years a special branch of government was established devoted

exclusively to foreign trade and directed by well-traveled prelates of

Zen. (The Chinese regarded this trade as the exchange of Chinese gifts

for Japanese tribute, but the Japanese were willing to overlook the

insult in the interest of profit.) Muso's other lasting contribution to

the growth of Zen influence was persuading Takauji to build a Zen

temple in each of the sixty-six provinces, thereby extending state

support of the religion outside of Kyoto ruling circles.

Takauji was the founder of a line of Ashikaga shoguns who gave their

name to the next two centuries of Japanese history. His entire life was

spent on the battlefield, where he concentrated his energies on

strengthening the shogunate through the liberal application of armed

might. In a sense he prefigured the attitude of John Adams, who once

lamented that he must study war so that his grandsons might fashion art

and architecture. Indeed, Takauji's grandson was the famous aesthete

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408), who ascended to shogun in 1368 and

soon thereafter brought to flower a renaissance of the Zen artistic

tradition of Sung China.

Yoshimitsu was only nine years of age when he became shogun, so the

early years of his reign were guided by regents of the Hosokawa clan,

who put to rest any remaining dissidence. Consequently, when Yoshimitsu

came of age, he felt secure

enough in his office to tour the country, visiting religious shrines

and establishing his place in the pageant of Japanese history. More

significantly for the rise of Zen culture, he also turned his eyes

abroad, encouraging the trade with China by stabilizing political

relations and becoming the best customer for the silks, brocades,

porcelains, and--most important--Sung paintings brought back by the Zen

monks.

In a very short time, Yoshimitsu had become addicted to the Chinese

finery and antique Ch'an art of the Sung which his monks were

importing. He was fortunate that the country was stable and peaceful

enough to allow him his whims, especially since he almost entirely lost

interest in all functions of government save taxation, which he found

necessary to apply to the peasants in ever greater measure in order to

support his patronage of the arts. Absorbed with aesthetics and Zen

art, he became a cloistered sovereign whose luckless subjects were left

on their own to weather fortunes that alternated between starvation and

the plague, leavened by intermittent wars among provincial chieftains.

The peasantry, however, was not blind to his callous priorities, and it

is said that his reputation survived into the nineteenth century,

maintained by country folk who would trek to a certain temple to revile

an old statue of the Ashikaga shogun.

His personal failings notwithstanding, Yoshimitsu was the key figure in

bringing about the rise of Zen art. His contributions were manifold: he

founded a Zen monastery which became the school for the great landscape

painters of the era; his personal patronage was largely responsible for

the development of the No drama; his example and encouragement did much

to bring into being the identification of Zen with landscape garden

art; his own practice of _zazen _under the guidance of a famous Zen

monk set an example for the warrior court; his interest in tea and

poetry served both to set the stage for the development of the tea

ceremony as an aesthetic phenomenon and to temper the literary tastes

of his warrior followers; and, finally, his interest in Zen-inspired

architecture was responsible for the creation of one of the most famous

Zen chapels in Japan.

When Yoshimitsu retired in 1394 to enter Zen orders, leaving the

government to his nine-year-old son, he ensconced himself in a palace

in the Kyoto suburbs and proceeded to build a chapel for Zen

meditation. The Golden Pavilion, or_ Kinkaku-ji_, as it came to be

known, was a wooden teahouse three stories high whose architectural

beauty is now legendary.

There were few if any previous examples of this type of multistory

structure, although it has been suggested that the idea may have been

copied from a comparable temple in southern China. (The turn-of-the-

century American critic Ernest Fenollosa suggested that it was modeled

after the structure Kublai Khan constructed for a garden in Shang-tu,

which Coleridge called Xanadu, after the translation of the name by

Marco Polo: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree.")

Whatever its origins, the building superficially resembled a low-rising

pagoda--each successive story was a more or less smaller version of the

one below. The two lower floors were used for evening entertainments of

music, poetry, and incense, while the top floor was a tiny meditation

chapel (whose ceiling was covered with gold leaf, thereby giving the

building its name). Set in the midst of a beautiful landscape garden,

the sweeping roofs, painstaking wooden joinery, and exquisite unpainted

woods of the Golden Pavilion were a landmark of Zen taste destined to

influence the course of Japanese architecture for centuries.

The Golden Pavilion was the crowning act of Yoshimitsu's career, a

fitting monument to the man who, more than any other, was responsible

for the rise of Zen culture. Under his rule, Japanese monks first

brought back from China the finest examples of Ch'an-inspired art, from

which they derived and mastered the artistic principles of the vanished

Sung era and went on to re-create if not surpass the great Sung age of

artistic production. The momentum for Zen culture produced by

Yoshimitsu lasted through the reign of his grandson Yoshimasa (1435-

1490), the last great Ashikaga patron of Zen art.

As a shogun, Yoshimasa was even more distracted by Zen than his famous

grandfather. He concentrated on encouraging

the school of Sung-style ink painting, the Zen ritual of ceremonial

tea, the art of flower arranging, and new styles of Zen-influenced

architecture. Unfortunately, his apparently hereditary absence of

interest in affairs of state ultimately brought about the

disintegration of the Japanese political fabric. As the office of

shogun weakened to the point of symbolism, Yoshimasa's power to tax

became so frail that he was finally forced to borrow from the Zen

monasteries. The real power in the land passed to the local feudal

lords, or _daimyo_, men who governed entire domains, raised their own

armies, and exercised far greater power than the _samurai_ of earlier

times.

What remained of Yoshimasa's power came to be exercised by his

mistresses and his scheming wife, Tomi-ko. By his late twenties he was

ready to retire entirely, the better to pursue Zen and its arts, but

none of the women in the palace had yet presented him with a son who

could become titular shogun. By 1464 Yoshimasa's patience was exhausted

and he turned to one of his brothers who was in monastic orders and

persuaded him to begin an apprenticeship for the shogunate. The brother

wisely hesitated, pointing out that Tomi-ko, who was still in her

twenties, might yet produce a son; but Yoshimasa won him over with

solemn assurances that all sons who arrived would be made priests.

Less than a year later Tomi-ko did indeed bear a son, setting the stage

for the struggle that would eventually destroy Kyoto and signal the

decline of the Ashikaga age of Zen culture. As it happened, there was

already an animosity between Yoshimasa's principal adviser, Hosokawa

Katsumoto, and Hosokawa's father-in-law, Yamana Sozen. When the child

was born, Hosokawa, a member of the historic family of Ashikaga

regents, favored retaining Yoshimasa's brother as shogun, so the

ambitious Tomi-ko turned to Yamana to enlist his aid in reverting the

office of shogun back to Yoshimasa and thence to her son. With a

natural excuse for conflict finally at hand, the two old enemies Yamana

and Hosokawa gathered their armies--both numbering near eighty thousand--

outside Kyoto. The impending tragedy was obvious to all, and Yoshimasa

tried vainly to discourage the combatants. By that time, however, his

voice counted for nothing, and in 1467 the inevitable conflict, now

known as the Onin War, began.

The war raged for a decade, until virtually all the majestic temples of

Kyoto were burned and pillaged. Ironically, one of the few temples to

escape destruction was Yoshimitsu's Golden Pavilion, which fortunately

had been situated well outside the

precincts of the main city. Although both Hosokawa and Yamana Thed in

1473, the fighting continued, as participants on both sides defected,

changed leaders, and fought among themselves until no one could recall

what the original war had been about. Finally, after ten full years of

almost constant fighting, it became apparent that the carnage had

accomplished nothing. One dark night the two armies folded their tents

and stole away--and the war was no more. A remarkably senseless

conflict, even by modern-day standards, the Onin War effectively

obliterated all evidence in Kyoto of the marvelous Heian civilization,

as well as the early Ashikaga, leaving nothing but a scorched palette

for the final century of Zen art.

Yoshimasa, in the meantime, had long since removed himself from affairs

of state. Since his shogun brother had switched sides during the war

and become a general for Yamana, the succession question was

simplified. Tomi-ko took time out from her vigorous war-profiteering to

prevail upon Yoshimasa to appoint her son, then four years old, shogun.

She thereby became de facto shogun herself, encouraging Yoshimasa in

his desire to retire while enriching herself handsomely with

imaginative new taxes. The war proved a windfall for Tomi-ko, who lent

funds to both sides to keep it going, and her cupidity played no small

role in the final destruction of ancient Kyoto.

Immersed as he was in the world of Zen and Zen culture, Yoshimasa

seemed oblivious to the sea of official corruption around him, and

indeed there was probably little he could have done to prevent it. He

loved the refined company of women and avoided warriors, whose rough

manner offended him but in whose hands lay the only real power in the

country. As the government disintegrated, he made his own contribution

as a connoisseur and patron of the fine arts, bringing to culmination

the movement in Zen art that left Japan a legacy far more lasting than

any that mere diplomacy could have left. Like his European

counterparts, the Medici, Yoshimasa balanced his failings in politics

with faultless aesthetic judgment, endowing the Zen arts with new

standards in architecture, painting, gardening, the No theater, the tea

ceremony, and ceremonial flower arranging. Perhaps he should not be

faulted for doing what he understood best.

Yoshimasa also left a physical monument intended to rival the Golden

Pavilion. In 1466, as he contemplated retirement, he began plans to

construct a villa for meditation. With the outbreak of war he was

forced for a number of years to devote his attentions to the repair of

the imperial residence, but after the war he renewed his intentions to

retire into Zen aesthetics. His decision was strengthened by family

troubles, including Tomi-ko's displeasure with the number of his

mistresses, a problem that finally exploded when her young son, the

shogun, demanded to marry one of them rather than a girl of Tomi-ko's

choosing. In 1482, amid the general ruin and confusion, Yoshimasa

resolved to begin the construction of his retirement villa. Financial

circumstances had changed since his original plan eighteen years

earlier, and his interest in Zen was even deeper, so instead of the

sumptuous palace once planned, he built a small pavilion of exquisite

taste and restraint. It stands today, a forerunner of the traditional

house, and is known as the Silver Pavilion, or _Ginkaku-ji_, because of

the popular belief that he originally planned to cover portions with

silver leaf. _Ginkaku-ji _has two stories, the first in Zen temple

style and the second in _shoin _style. The deliberately unpainted wood

exterior of the two-story chapel has weathered to the color of bark,

and it has all the dignity its five hundred years demand.

There were almost a dozen Ashikaga shoguns after Yoshimasa, but none

had any influence on the course of history. The century after his

retirement is known as the Age of the Country at War, and it is

remembered for almost continuous civil strife among _daiymo_, the

provincial chieftains who had swallowed up the _samurai_. In this

period Japan was less a nation than several hundred small fiefdoms,

each controlled by a powerful family and constantly in arms against its

neighbors. Little wonder that many of the greatest Zen artists left

Kyoto never to return; the capital was a desolate ruin, without power

and without patrons. This condition prevailed until late in the

sixteenth century, when individuals of sufficient military genius to

reunite the country again appeared.

The influence of Zen was probably as pervasive in medieval Ashikaga

Japan as Christianity was in medieval Europe. A Zen monk was the first

Ashikaga shogun's closest adviser, and in later years Zen monasteries

virtually took over foreign policy. (Indeed, Zen monks were the only

Japanese educated enough to deal with the Chinese.) Yoshimitsu

formalized the relationship between Zen and the state, setting up an

official Therarchy among the Zen temples in Kyoto (the so-called "Five

Mountains" or Gozan, of Tenryu-ji, Shokoku-ji, Kennin-ji, Tofuku-ji,

and Manju-ji). These state temples became the resident schools for Zen

painters and artists and also provided diplomats and government

officials for the China trade. (They made Yoshimitsu so ardent a

Sinophile that he once had some Japanese pirates who were troubling

Chinese trading vessels captured and boiled alive.) Under the reign of

Yoshimasa the China trade dwindled, but Zen monks continued to

influence the government in directions that best suited their own

interests. Wealthy from their commercial undertakings, they were in a

position to finance some of Yoshimasa's more lavish projects, and in

later years they helped him design the garden of the Silver Pavilion,

including a detached building for tea drinking and meditation--the

forerunner of the modern teahouse. This was the finest hour of Zen

influence in official circles, for Yoshimasa was the last Ashikaga

shogun whose preferences had any influence on the course of Japanese

life. After his death, the artists who had surrounded him scattered to

the provinces to find patrons. Within a decade the Silver Pavilion and

its garden were virtually abandoned. Zen as a religion also went to the

provinces, and gradually its following grew as sympathetic teachers who

no longer cared for the company of the mighty were content to explain

the rewards of nonattachment to the people at large.

The many faces of Japanese Zen were paradoxical indeed. The Kamakura

warriors turned to Zen for strength on the battlefield, whereas the

Ashikaga court found in it aesthetic escapism and spiritual solace in a

crumbling world. That an age such as the Ashikaga could have nourished

high arts has puzzled historians for centuries, and no entirely

satisfactory explanation has yet been advanced. Perhaps art flourishes

best when social unrest uproots easy conventions. Fifth-century Athens

produced its most enduring art at a time when the land was rent by the

fratricidal Peloponnesian War and the city itself was haunted by the

plague. Renaissance Florence is another example. Today Kyoto, like

modern Athens and modern Florence, is a living museum, concerned more

with traffic and tourist hotels than with the long-forgotten blood

baths which once raged in its streets. Seemingly forgotten, too, are

the warring Ashikaga, at whose behest the noble Zen arts of Japan were

shaped.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Zen and the Landscape Garden

_To see a World in a grain of sand,

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.

_William Blake

_Renge-ji Temple, Kyoto

_Tenryu-ji Temple, Kyoto, ca.1343

FOR AT LEAST a millennium before the coming of Zen to Japan, gardens had

been constructed in China which were founded on underlying religious

motives, but only with the rise of Zen in Japan did gardens become

deliberately symbolic of the human quest for inner understanding.

During the Heian era Japanese aristocrats copied Chinese pleasure

parks, and during the Kamakura many of them were translated by

practitioners of the Jodo sect into fanciful reproductions of Amida's

Western Paradise. After the rise of Zen influence among artists and

intellectuals of the Ashikaga age, the gay polychrome of these earlier

gardens was supplanted by a sober blend of rocks, trees, sand, and

water--Japanese copies of, first, Sung Chinese gardens and, later, Sung

monochrome landscape paintings. In their landscape "painting" gardens,

Zen artists captured the reverence for nature which, for them, was a

cornerstone of Zen philosophy.

The origins of Far Eastern landscape gardens have been traced to an

obscure Chinese legend which predates the Christian Era. It describes

five holy islands, situated off the shores of Shantung province, whose

peaks soared thousands of feet into the ocean mist and whose valleys

were a paradise of perfumed flowers, snow-white birds, and immortals

who plucked the trees for pearls. These islanders, who lived in palaces

of precious metals, enjoyed eternal youth and had the capacity to

levitate at will, although for extended journeys they might choose to

ride on the backs of docile flying cranes. However, like Adam and Eve,

these paradise dwellers wanted more. Since their islands were floating

rather than attached to bedrock, they complained to the ruling deity,

requesting more substantial support. The supreme ruler of ancient China

was more understanding than the God of Mesopotamia; instead of evicting

the island immortals, he obligingly sent out a flotilla of giant

tortoises to hold the islands on their backs and secure them in place.

During the Han era (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) various Chinese emperors

reportedly sent out expeditions to locate these islands, but they were

always unsuccessful. Finally, the Han Emperor Wu hit upon the notion

that if he were to construct an idealized landscape on his estate, the

immortals might abandon their misty ocean isles for his park, bringing

with them the secrets of eternal life. A garden park was built on a

scale intended to rival that of paradise; and to make the immortals

feel even more welcome, various rocks symbolizing cranes and tortoises

were installed, items the Japanese would one day include in their

gardens as symbols of longevity. No immortals materialized, but the

Chinese landscape garden was launched in considerable style.

During the ensuing Six Dynasties era (A.D. 220-589), Chinese gardens

began to reflect the beliefs of the new religion of

Buddhism. The lake-and-island gardens of the aristocracy ceased to

represent the legend of the misty isles and became instead a symbol of

the Western Paradise of Amida Buddha. As time passed, the growing

influence of Taoism deepened the Chinese feeling for nature itself

without reference to any particular legend. In later years, as scholars

sought out mountain retreats in the rugged south of China, soaring

peaks came to be part of the standard landscape garden, a need

sometimes realized by situating the garden against a backdrop of

distant mountains or by piling up rocks on the island in the garden

lake.

The interest in garden art continued to grow during the T'ang dynasty

(618-907), as poets and philosophers increasingly turned to nature for

religious and artistic inspiration. Interestingly enough, their

perception of nature was not idealized in the manner of the Florentine

landscapists but rather emphasized the rugged, untamed qualities of the

mountains and streams. It was this sense of nature as the embodiment of

a free spirit that they tried to capture in their gardens. Theirs was a

reverence for nature as it was in the wild; if it must be domesticated

into a garden, the sense of freedom should be preserved as far as

possible.

When the Shinto nature worshipers of Japan encountered the advanced

civilization of China, they may have recognized in the Chinese Taoist

feeling for nature a similarity to their own beliefs. It had never

occurred to the Japanese to construct a domestic abstraction of nature

for contemplation, but the new idea of a garden seems to have had its

appeal. When a copy of the Chinese capital was created in Nara, the

Japanese architects were careful to include a number of landscape

gardens around the imperial palace. After the government moved to Kyoto

and launched the regal Heian era, a rage for things Chinese became the

consuming passion of the Japanese aristocracy; Heian nobles built

Chinese-style houses and lake-and-island gardens, complete with

Chinese-style fishing pavilions extending out over a lake. Since these

pleasure parks were intended for parties of boaters and strollers, they

had few religious overtones. Instead the lake became a thoroughfare for

pleasure barges, on which idle courtiers cruised about dressed in

Chinese costume, and reciting Chinese verses. These gardens were rich

with plum and cherry trees, pines, willows, and flowering bushes, and

often included a waterfall near at hand, in keeping with Chinese

convention. The central island gradually lost its original symbolism as

an Elysian holy isle as the nobles linked it to shore with stone

footbridges. In these grand parks the Heian nobles gave some of the

most sophisticated garden parties ever seen.

After relations with China fizzled to a stop around the beginning of

the tenth century, the Japanese garden began to evolve on its own. It

was always an emblem of power, making it essential that when the

warrior government moved to Kamakura a leader no less imposing than

Minamoto Yoritomo should oversee the creation of the main garden at the

new capital. Significantly, the garden in Kamakura was constructed as

part of the Buddhist establishment, rather than as an extension of

Yoritomo's private estate. Perhaps this transformation of the garden

into Buddhist temple art was a consequence of the Western Paradise

beliefs of Amadism (a forerunner had been the late-Heian Western

Paradise garden outside Kyoto at Uji); perhaps it was the first

implicit acknowledgment of the nature mysticism of Zen; or perhaps the

Kamakura warriors simply believed that a private garden would smack too

much of the decadence of Kyoto. Whatever the reason, the coming of Zen

seems to have been coincidental with a new attitude toward the

connection between gardens and religion. The frivolous polychrome of

the Heian pleasure park was clearly a thing of the past; gardens became

solemn and, as the influence of Zen grew, increasingly symbolic of

religious ideas.

The monks who visited China to study Ch'an (as well as Ch'an monks who

migrated to Japan) were, of course, familiar with the landscape gardens

of the Sung Chinese. These gardens had purged many of the more

decorative elements of the T'ang-period pleasure parks and reflected

the reverential attitudes of the Taoists and Ch'an Buddhists toward the

natural world. At least one of these Sung-style gardens was produced in

Kyoto during the early years of renewed contacts with China. Oddly

enough, however, it was the Sung ink paintings that would eventually

have the greatest influence on Zen landscape gardens. The Sung

paintings captured perfectly the feeling Japanese Zen monks had for the

natural world, leading them to conclude that gardens too should be

monochromatic, distilled versions of a large landscape panorama.

Not surprisingly, the attitude that a garden should be a three-

dimensional painting sparked the long march of Japanese garden art into

the realm of perspective and abstraction. In fact, the manipulation of

perspective advanced more rapidly in the garden arts than in the

pictorial. Without going into the Chinese system of perspective in

landscape painting, let it be noted that whereas the Chinese relied in

part upon conventions regarding the placement of objects on a canvas to

suggest distance (for example, the relative elevation of various tiers

of landscape elements on the canvas was often an indication of their

distance), the Zen artists learned to suggest distance through direct

alteration of the characteristics our eye uses to scale a scene. And

since many of these gardens were meant to be viewed from one vantage

point, they became a landscape "painting" executed in natural

materials.

The manipulation of perspective may be divided roughly into three main

categories: the creation of artificial depth through overt

foreshortening, thereby simulating the effects of distance on our

visual sense; the use of psychological tricks that play on our

instinctive presumptions regarding the existence of things unseen; and

the masterly obliteration of all evidence of artifice, thereby

rendering the deception invisible.

Zen gardeners' discovery of the use of foreshortening in a garden took

place at almost the same time that the Florentine artist Uccello (1397-

1475) began experimenting with natural perspective in his landscape

oils. Although this example of artistic convergence can hardly be more

than coincidence, certain of the devices were similar. As the American

garden architect David Engel has observed, the Japanese learned that

the apparent depth of a scene could be enhanced by making the objects

in the distance smaller, less detailed, and darker than those in the

foreground.1 (In the garden of Yoshimitsu's Golden Pavilion, for

example, the rocks on the spectator side of the garden lake are large

and detailed, whereas those on the far side are smaller and smoother.)

As time went by, the Japanese also learned to use trees with large,

light-colored leaves at the front of a garden and dark, small-leafed

foliage farther back. To simulate further the effects of distance, they

made paths meandering toward the rear of a garden grow narrower, with

smaller and smaller stones. The pathways in a Japanese garden curve

constantly, disrupting the viewer's line of sight, until they are

finally lost among trees and foliage set at carefully alternated

levels; streams and waterfalls deceptively vanish and reappear around

and behind rocks and plantings. Zen artists also found that garden

walls would disappear completely if they were made of dark natural

materials or camouflaged by a bamboo thicket, a thin grove of saplings,

or a grassy hillock.

Many methods of psychological deception in a Zen garden exploit

instinctive visual assumptions in much the same way that a judo expert

uses his victim's body for its own undoing. A common trick is to have a

pathway or stream disappear around a growth of trees at the rear of a

garden in such a way that the terminus is hidden, leading the viewer to

assume it actually continues on into unseen recesses of the landscape.

Another such device is the placement of intermittent obstructive

foliage near the viewer, causing the diminution in perception that the

mind associates with distance. Japanese gardeners further enhance the

sense of size and depth in a garden plot by leaving large vacant areas,

whose lack of clutter seems to expand the vista. Dwarfing of trees is

also a common practice, since this promotes the illusion of greater

distance. And finally, flowers are rigidly excluded, since their

appearance would totally destroy all the subtle tricks of perspective.

Zen garden masters prefer to display their flowers in special vase

arrangements, an art known as Ikebana.

The manipulation of perspective and the psychological deception of the

Zen garden are always carefully disguised by giving the garden an

appearance of naturalness and age. Garden rocks are buried in such a

manner that they seem to be granite icebergs, extruding a mere tip from

their ancient depths, while the edges of garden stones are nestled in

beds of grass or obscured by applications of moss, adding to the sense

of artless placement. Everything in the garden--trees, stones, gravel,

grass--is arranged with a careful blending of areas into a seemingly

natural relationship and allowed to develop a slightly unkempt, shaggy

appearance, which the viewer instinctively associates with an

undisturbed natural scene. It all seems as uncontrived as a virgin

forest, causing the rational mind to lower its guard and allowing the

garden to delude the viewer with its artificial depth, its

psychological sense of the infinite.

The transformation in garden art the Zen artists wrought can perhaps

best be emphasized by comparing the traditional Chinese garden with the

abstract landscape created by Japanese artists of the Ashikaga and

later eras. 'The Japanese regarded the garden as an extension of man's

dwelling (it might be more accurate to say that they saw the dwelling

as an extension of the garden), while the Chinese considered the garden

a counterpoise for the formality of indoor life, a place to disown the

obligations and conventions of society. It has been suggested that the

average Chinese was culturally schizophrenic; indoors he was a sober

Confucian, obedient to centuries-old dictates of behavior, but in his

garden he returned to Taoism, the joy of splendor in the grass, of

glory in the flower.

In spite of this, the Chinese garden was more formal than the type that

developed in Japan, and it included numerous complicated corridors and

divisions. The Chinese gardens of the T'ang aristocracy were intended

for strolling rather than viewing, since the T'ang aesthetes

participated in nature rather than merely contemplating it.

Accordingly, Chinese gardens (and Heian copies of them) included

architectural features not included in the later Zen landscapes. The

Chinese apparently believed that if one is to duplicate the lakes and

mountains, then all the items normally seen in the countryside should

be there, including the artifacts of man. The Chinese garden welcomed

the physical presence of man, whereas the landscape gardens developed

in Japan are at their finest when viewed without people, if only

because the presence of man acts as a yardstick to destroy the illusion

of perspective and exaggerated distance. (However, a Zen-inspired form

of Japanese stroll garden for use in connection with the tea ceremony

did develop, as will be noted later.)

The plaster wall of a Chinese garden was often an integral element of

the decoration, and its shape and topping were part of the overall

aesthetic effect. The Japanese, on the other hand, chose to de-

emphasize the presence of the wall. Stated differently, the purpose of

the wall around a Chinese garden was to keep outsiders from seeing in,

whereas the wall of a Japanese garden was to prevent those inside from

having to see out--a fundamental difference in function and philosophy.

The dissimilarity in Chinese and Japanese attitudes toward garden rocks

also deserves mention. The Japanese preferred interesting naturalness

in their stones; they avoided blandness, but were wary of freakish,

distracting shapes. The Chinese, in contrast, were charmed by

curiosities, and they sought out garden rocks with fantastic, even

grotesque contours. This preference seems to have grown out of a desire

to duplicate the craggy mountainsides so often seen in Sung landscape

paintings. They searched for unnaturally shaped stones in lake bottoms,

where the action of water had honeycombed them. (In fact, this

particular passion, which became known as "rockery," led to a bit of

forgery during the latter part of the Ming era, when ordinary rocks

were carved to the desired shape and then placed under a waterfall

until they were smoothed sufficiently to disguise the deception.)

The presence of so many unnatural features in Chinese gardens tended to

give them a rococo quality, which Zen artists were careful to avoid,

and the hemispherical, symmetrical motif of Chinese gardens was

transformed into the angular, asymmetrical style that suited Zen

aesthetic theory. The fundamental impression a Chinese garden gives is

that of skilled artifice, of being a magical, slightly fabulous

landscape of dreams. Zen artists transformed this into a symbolic

experience of the world at large, distilled into a controlled space but

suggesting the infinite. The result was to change a form that has been

essentially decorative into something as near to pure art as can be

wrought with the primeval elements of tree, water, and stone. Gardens

had been used before to approximate this or that monarch's conception

of paradise, but never before had they been employed to express an

otherwise ineffable understanding of the moral authority of the natural

world.

Zen gardens differ even more greatly from Western garden

design. The geometrical creations of Europe, such as the palace garden

at Versailles, were fashioned to provide wide-open vistas reaching

toward the horizon, while the naturalistic Zen garden is closed in upon

itself like a form of curved space, producing the illusion of an

infinite wilderness in a few acres. It is intended primarily for

viewing; there are no grassy dells for loitering. It is expected to

serve functions ordinarily reserved for art in the West: it both

abstracts and intensifies reality, being at once symbolic and explicit

in design, and the emotion it evokes in the viewer gives him a deeper

understanding of his own consciousness.

The four gardens in Kyoto that perhaps best demonstrate the principles

of early Zen landscape were all constructed under the patronage of the

Ashikaga: the first two, Saiho-ji (ca. 1339) and Tenryu-ji (ca. 1343),

were designed by the Zen monk Muso under the reign of Takauji; the

garden of the Golden Pavilion (1397) was executed under the influence

of Yoshimitsu; and the garden of the Silver Pavilion (1484) was guided

by Yoshimasa. All four were created on the sites of earlier gardens

dating from the Heian or Kamakura eras which Zen artists both purified

and modified, making changes roughly analogous to the reworking of a

rococo marble statue of a rotund courtier into a free-standing muscular

nude. It is also illustrative of the age that these one-time private

estates were transformed into what were to become essentially public

parks, albeit under the management of Zen temples.

The first of the gardens to be designed was the one at Saiho-ji, a

temple on the western edge of Kyoto, popularly known as the "Moss

Temple," or Kokedera. During the Heian and Kamakura eras this site

belonged to a prominent family who constructed two temple gardens

toward the close of the twelfth century in honor of Amida and his

Western Paradise. Fashioned long after contacts with China had been

broken, these Amida gardens already disowned many of the decorative

motifs in the earlier, Tang-style parks. They were self-contained and

natural and had no pretense of being symbolic. This was to change,

however, around the time that Ashikaga Takauji assumed power, when the

owner hit upon the notion of converting these gardens of the Jodo sect

into something appropriate to the new school of Zen. The project was

begun with the understanding that the famous Zen priest Muso Soseki

would come to preside over the new temple as abbot, and work was begun

under his guidance.

The resulting garden is on two levels, like the original dual garden of

Amida, but the Zen designer used the levels to suggest many of the

features of a larger universe. It was not yet a fully developed

landscape, but rather a contemplative retreat for strolling which

strove to emphasize minor aspects of the natural features of rocks,

ponds, trees, grasses, and moss. Even so, many of the features of later

landscape gardens are traceable to Muso's design here, particularly the

rugged rockwork of the islands in the large lake on the lower level,

which later inspired the rockwork of Yoshimitsu's Golden Pavilion

garden. Located up the hill is a "dry cascade," suggested by the

skillful arrangement of round, flat-topped stones carefully set in a

place where water never ran. Already, the obligatory waterfall of the

Chinese garden had been abstracted into a quiet symbolism. The garden

bespeaks a sober, ancient grace and dignity--and reveals aesthetic

concepts peculiar to Zen.

The garden of Tenryu-ji is at the temple founded by Takauji, at the

suggestion of Muso, as a site for the repose of the soul of the Emperor

Godaigo, whom Takauji had driven out of Kyoto. It will be recalled that

the expense associated with building this temple was the occasion of

Takauji's again opening trade with China, an act that led to the real

explosion of Zen art. Muso also became the official abbot of the temple

and is thought to have contributed to the redesign of its garden--it had

previously been part of an imperial country villa. Muso's contribution

is questionable, however, since the garden shows evidence of influence

from the "landscape-painting" design of Sung China and the peculiarly

Sung usage of "rockery." It may have been laid out earlier by some

emigrant Chinese Ch'an monk who was aware of the latest Sung garden

theory. The rock shapes are not grotesque, however, but rather show the

crisp angularity later to become a Japanese trademark. A small islet of

three stones suggests the three levels of a landscape painting, and at

the back there is a simulated waterfall of rugged dry stones. The lake

and its islands are monochromatic and severe, and the footbridge

traditional to Sung landscape gardens is represented by three long flat

stones crossing a narrow portion of the rear part of the lake. This

garden is probably the only Sung-style creation in Japan, but its

impact on Zen gardeners was considerable, since it showed the effects

Ch'an Buddhism had had on Chinese garden art. Muso undoubtedly

recognized the garden as a worthy model for Zen artists, and he

probably did no more than put a few final Japanese touches on the work.

By the time of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, builder of the third Zen landscape

garden, Ch'an garden concepts were undoubtedly

better understood in Japan than in China. Yoshimitsu had often gone to

Saiho-ji to meditate in the garden, and he knew exactly what was

required for the landscape garden to surround his Golden Pavilion. He

selected a site known as the North Hill Villa, an estate originally

built by an aristocratic family using funds they had got serving as

spies to report the activities of the Kyoto aristocracy to the Kamakura

warlords. Constructed in 1224, the original garden represented the last

flowering of the Heian- (or T'ang Chinese) style garden; that is, it

was a purely decorative boating pond. When Yoshimitsu acquired the

site, he immediately demolished the Chinese-style residence with its

fishing pavilion projecting out onto the lake. Then he turned his

attention to the garden, paring down the central island and adding

smaller islands by bringing in massive stones from the surrounding

hills. To obtain the necessary trees, he simply selected those that

caught his eye in the gardens of the powerless aristocracy.

Today the garden at the Golden Pavilion covers approximately four

and a half acres (although it seems much larger), with a lake occupying

about one-third of the total area. The pavilion sits at the lake's

edge, but in past times before the waters shifted, it was in its midst.

When viewed from the pavilion, as was the original intention, the

garden seems a landscape vista. Several of the small islets scattered

about the lake have their own dwarf pines, while others are no more

than massive protruding stones, chosen for an abstract resemblance to a

tortoise or cane. In the portion of the lake closest to the pavilion

everything is wrought in great detail, whereas stones on the far side

are vague and diffuse, so that the distant shoreline seems lost in

misty recesses. The hillsides surrounding the garden are covered with

foliage, and there is no clear demarcation between the garden and the

hills. Executed at a time when resources were almost limitless, the

garden of the Golden Pavilion is one of the finest Zen landscape

gardens ever created. It stands as a watershed between the modification

of Chinese styles and the maturity of Japanese Zen art.

Yoshimasa, architect of the fourth great Zen landscape garden, was also

fond of Saiho-ji and had studied its garden, as well as that of the

Golden Pavilion, with great care. But the Silver Pavilion and its

garden were built after the disastrous Onin War, when the available

resources were nothing like those of the earlier Ashikaga shoguns.

Although he was surrounded by a coterie of Zen aestheticians, it

appears Yoshimasa designed the garden himself, assisted by a new class

of professional garden workers drawn from the outcast _eta_ class

(outcast because they were associated with the meat and hides industry

and thus pariahs to all good Buddhists), who had been engaged by the

Zen priests to take care of the heavy work involved in stone movement

and placement. Many of these _eta_ became famous for their artistic

discernment, and one, the famous Zen-ami, is regarded as one of the

foremost garden architects of the Ashikaga era.

The garden at the Silver Pavilion was modeled after the one at Saiho-ji

and made the same use of bold, angular stones-- a mixture of flat-

topped, straight-sided "platform" rocks and tall slim stones

reminiscent of Sung landscape paintings of distant mountains. Like

Saiho-ji, the garden is on two levels, with the rear reminiscent of a

mountain waterfall. At one side of the garden the pond is spanned by a

stone footbridge connecting either side of the shore with the central

island. Shaped dwarf pines abound, and the surface of the water,

interrupted here and there with massive stones, is peaceful and serene.

Little wonder Yoshimasa preferred his tasteful pavilion and its

distilled microcosm of landscape to the ravaged ruins of Kyoto. Here he

could rest in meditation, letting his eye travel over the placid

waters, past the flowering trees which framed the symbolic waterfall,

upward to the silhouette of the towering pines on the far hillside to

watch the moon rise in the evening, bathing his world in silver. In

this peaceful setting he could relish the last, closing years of the

great Ashikaga age of Zen art.

The art of the landscape garden did not end with Yoshimasa, of course;

rather, it shifted in its direction and purpose. Already beginning was

the next phase of Zen garden art, the abstract sand-and-stone gardens.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Stone Gardens of Zen

_ And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in

trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones . . .

_As You Like It

_Daisen-in Temple, Kyoto, ca. 1513

Ryoan-ji, Kyoyo, 1490

IN THE CLOSING decade of the fifteenth century, the long evening parties

of Zen aesthetics were over; Kyoto lay in ruins after the Onin War, and

a new, sober mood gripped the land. Virtually all the temples and

estates in Kyoto, together with their gardens, were abandoned relics;

and the once indulgent patronage of aristocrats and shoguns was gone

forever. A reflective, contemplative mood settled over the houses of

Zen. Out of this era of penurious disarray developed a style of temple

garden which many hold to be the most profound expression of Zen art:

the dry landscape, or _kare sansui_. Fashioned from the most austere

materials, sand and stone, these waterless vistas were the final step

in the creation of three-dimensional reproductions of Sung ink

paintings. They condensed the universe into a single span, and they

were primarily, if not wholly, monochromatic. More importantly, they

were intended exclusively for meditation. Whereas earlier landscape

gardens had always striven for a quality of scenic beauty, these small

temple gardens were meant to be a training ground for the spirit, a

device wherein the contemplative mind might reach out and touch the

essence of Zen. These later Zen gardens were also reduced in size and

scope, since a temple yard in such diminished times could not

accommodate the spacious parks once available to the aristocracy.

Stylized, often abstract representations of nature, they dispensed with

all decorative possibilities the better to promote the serious business

of meditation.

Perhaps the best example of this type of monochrome "painting" garden

is the famous creation at Daisen-in, a part of the Daitoku-ji temple

compound in Kvoto. The sand-and-stone garden here is on all sides of

the temple building, placing the viewer literally in the middle of a

Sung landscape. The focus of the painting, however, is in one small

corner of the grounds, where a pair of head-high vertical stones have

been used to represent Sung mountain peaks while striated white sand

placed around and among the larger background mountains, together with

smaller flat-topped rocks in the foreground, suggest the inrush of

water from a symbolic waterfall. The simulated stream of white sand

winds among river rocks as it passes across the front of the viewing

platform. Included in the design are a stone bridge crossing one

portion of the sandy stream and a large boat-shaped stone enhancing the

symbolism of water. The water seems to disappear under the temple

veranda and emerge on the other side as a shimmering white sea.

Adjacent to the tall mountain stones are several ancillary rocks

approximately waist-high, over which flow rivulets of white sand,

suggesting a cataract captured in monochrome. Just as an expert Zen

painter extracts the details of a scene in a few strokes of the brush,

so the master of Daisen-in succeeded in distilling from the natural

world precisely those elements that excite the spirit.

This classical _kare sansui _garden is thought to have been designed

around 1513, reconstructed from one of the run-down temples left after

the Onin War. Credit for the design is traditionally (but probably

erroneously) given to the artist So'ami (1472-1525), a well-known

painter. The distinction between painting and garden art was

necessarily blurred, since these gardens were in fact intended to copy

paintings more than nature. The true mark of a Zen painter was his

ability to handle rocks and mountains in the prescribed manner, with

sharp, angular brushstrokes devoid of softness or sentimentality.

Naturally enough, stones with this same quality were essential for the

_kare sansui _gardens, but such stones were extremely rare and prized

almost beyond price. Trees could be grown; stones had to be found in

the mountains and moved somehow to Kyoto.

During the heyday of the Kamakura and Ashikaga glory, there were

resources at hand to find, move, and position stones--and at times

armies of over a thousand men were impressed into service for this

task. After the Onin War no such battalions were available, but there

was a ready source of superb stones: the burned-out temple and estate

gardens of old Kyoto. Furthermore, monks from many of the earlier

temples had systematically pillaged the estates of Heian nobles for

stones, using the cream of the stone collections from earlier centuries

to create their small gardens. So when the builders of Daisen-in began

to collect stones, they had the finest examples of centuries of

collecting at their disposal. Hence the magnificent stones at Daisen-in

actually represent the _creme de la creme_ of garden stonework, rising

phoenix-like out of the destruction of older estates.

What were the qualities of these stones that they should have been

hauled for hundreds of miles and prized by shoguns and Zen aesthetes

alike? What did Zen artists look for when they scavenged the

surrounding mountains for special rocks? They wanted rocks that looked

like the mountains and crags in ink paintings. This meant light-colored

stones with striated sides and sharp edges, with no hint of the hand of

man about them. They looked not so much for odd formations as for

natural shapes that possessed an authoritative, monumental quality. One

particularly prized shape was flat-topped and vertical-sided, looking

like a massive tree stump cut off about a foot above the ground.

Another valuable stone was shaped like a steep-sided volcanic island

which, nestled in a bed of sand, gave the impression of rising from the

depths of the ocean. Oblong stones with lengthwise striations or

incisions were valued for their similarity to towering vertical

mountains; and rounded, flat-bottomed stones, for their resemblance to

natural river rocks. The subjective "feel" of a stone was important;

perfectly smooth stones or those with no memorable characteristics had

no place in _kare sansui_. Those used must have the vigorous face of

centuries, the weathered texture of antiquity.

Daisen-in was unquestionably the best of the Zen "painting" gardens:

possibly designed by an experienced Zen painter, it contained the

finest stones from an entire era of intensive collecting; and it was

heir to centuries of garden mastery, from which was distilled the

essence of landscape art. Its understated authority is the product of a

long development of such Zen ideals as simplicity, starkness,

austerity, and spareness. One would be tempted to declare it the finest

example of the Zen _kare sansui _art were it not for an even more

striking garden of the same era: Ryoan-ji.

Unlike Daisen-in, the garden at Ryoan-ji is not a symbolic mountain

scene. It is instead a work of abstract art on a canvas of sand which

goes beyond a symbolic representation of a landscape scene to provide a

distillation of the very universe. It is internationally regarded as

the very essence of Zen, and it is almost impossible to describe, in

either words or pictures. It has a spirit that seems to rise up for

those who come into its presence, evoking an immediate response even in

someone who has no understanding of Zen.

Ryoan-ji was apparently built around 1490, which makes it roughly

contemporaneous with Yoshimasa's Silver Pavilion. As early as 985 the

site of Ryoan-ji had been used as the location of a private chapel for

retired Heian emperors, and in the twelfth century a government

minister of the Heian took it over and constructed a country villa, to

which his grandson added a lavish Chinese-style lake and island garden

in 1189. Thus the site had abundant water, something missing from other

_kare sansui _gardens--although the style dictated that no water be used

in the final Zen garden. After the fall of Heian and throughout the

Kamakura deluge, the lake became a sort of lingering _ancien regime

_touch, recalling the elegance of former days. (The remains of the

lake, undoubtedly much modified through the centuries, still survive as

part of the Ryoan-ji temple complex.)

The original Heian owners retained possession of the site until

approximately 1450, when it was purchased by Katsumoto Hokusawa,

adviser to the Ashikaga and one of the instigators of the Onin War.

During his period of ownership, Katsumoto built a country villa

overlooking the lake-and-island garden, and like Yoshimitsu, he

requested that his villa be made into a Zen temple when he Thed. As it

turned out, the Onin War caused his wishes to be executed sooner than

he might have expected; shortly after the villa was built the estate

was transferred to the Myoshin-ji branch of the Rinzai sect, which also

controlled a nearby temple called Ryoan-ji. Not long after Katsumoto's

death, his villa and other estate buildings were set on fire during the

Onin War and joined the general ruin of much of the rest of Kyoto.

In the last decade of the fifteenth century the burned-out estate was

restored by Katsumoto's son, but in replacing the buildings he chose a

new style of Zen architecture known as _shoin_, which included a

special bay window and desk modeled after those in Chinese Ch'an

monasteries. The _shoin _style had been recently popularized in Kyoto

by Yoshimasa, who chose the design for several buildings surrounding

his Silver Pavilion. The _shoin _window overlooked the lake-and-island

garden, but since the later Zen monks who controlled the estate had no

interest in decorative landscape art, they walled off a small courtyard

in front of the window and installed a flat _kare sansui _garden for

contemplation, which soon eclipsed in interest the older lake-and-

island landscape. Shortly thereafter the _shoin_ building was in turn

destroyed by fire, giving the monks an excuse to bring in a pavilion

with a long viewing veranda from the neighboring Seigen-in temple. This

veranda, which was positioned along the long axis of the _kare sansui

_garden, now permits group meditation, something not possible from the

single window of the earlier _shoin _structure.

Modern visitors to Ryoan-ji still pass through the older landscape

garden en route to the main temple pavilion. From this vantage point

only the outer wall of the sand-and-stone garden can be seen; there is

no hint of what lies inside. On the temple steps the fragrance of

incense mingles with the natural perfume of the ancient trees which

line the pathways of the lake. As one enters the dimly lighted hallway

of the temple, street shoes are replaced by noiseless, cushioned

slippers. Shod in silence, visitors walk along the temple hallways onto

the long hojo veranda facing the garden, where the brilliance of the

shimmering sand washes unexpectedly over the senses. The effect is

sudden and striking.

What one sees, in purely prosaic terms, is an area of rippled sand

about the size of a tennis court, set about with fifteen not

particularly unusual (by Ashikaga standards) stones arrayed in five

distinct clusters. The white sand is raked lengthwise (a routine task

for a lay brother), and concentric circles are traced around each of

the stones, imparting an illusion of ripples. In the garden proper

there is not a tree, indeed not a blade of grass, to be seen; the only

suggestion of living matter is the bed of ancient moss in which each

group of stones lies nestled. On the three sides of the garden opposite

the veranda stands the ancient courtyard wall, whose oil-stained

earthen brown contrasts splendidly with the pure white sand. Above the

wall, which is capped with black clay tile in Chinese fashion, one can

see the tall trees of the landscape garden, obscuring what must once

have been a grand view of old Kyoto to the south.

Each of the five clusters of stones seems balanced around its own

center of gravity, and the clusters, in turn, appear to be balanced

with one another--with the two groups of stones on the left being

approximately equal in mass to the three groups on the right. As is the

case in most Ashikaga gardens, each grouping is dominated by one

obviously assertive member, against which the smaller, less

authoritative stones strain for prominence, producing a sense of

tension. Simultaneously, there is a feeling of strength about each of

the groups, since each cluster is set on an island of mossy soil, which

acts as a base to unite the assemblages. Aesthetic stability is also

achieved by the placement of the stones at sufficient depth (or

apparent depth) within their nest of moss so that only their tips seem

to protrude above the floor of the garden.

The stones are set in two groups of two stones, two groups of three,

and one group of five. Each of these groupings displays one or another

of the various Ashikaga garden conventions. Both groups of two stones

make explicit use of contrasting shapes between their members, a

standard Zen device. One of the pairs is composed of a long, vertical

rock set like an upturned blade in the sand, with a companion that is

hardly more than a negligible lump, a token foil. The other pair has

one sharp-sided vertical stone with a flat plateau as a top,

accompanied by a larger round rock which spreads at the base. As has

been noted, the Ashikaga gardeners prized flat-topped stones highly

because of their resemblance to the angular brushstrokes of certain Zen

ink painters. Life, in this case, was made to imitate art, or rather

sculptural art was made to imitate the pictorial. Both pairs of stones

are situated slightly off the lengthwise axis of the garden,

maintaining the asymmetry considered so essential.

In the two groups of three stones, the intent is to establish the

visual pre-eminence of the largest member and to flank it with two

comparatively insignificant smaller stones--usually differentiated in

shape and attitude--thereby forming a vertical triangle with the peak of

the largest stone representing the apex. This particular arrangement

was so common in Ashikaga gardens that it became known as the "three-

deity" stone setting, supposedly a pious reference to a Buddhist legend

but probably merely a convenient tag for a standardized artistic

device. The last grouping is five stones, since arrangements of four

were considered too symmetrical by Zen gardeners. In this case, the

group is dominated by one large central boulder with four ancillary

rocks spread about its base like the feet of a granite beast.

Such, in physical terms, is the arrangement of the garden, and when so

described it seems undeserving of all the acclaim. Its subjective

qualities tell a bit more of the story. It seems clear that the

inclination of the stones is intended to evoke a sense of motion, for

they have all been placed with their longer axis corresponding to that

of the garden. This quality is further enhanced by the practice of

raking the sand lengthwise, which makes the observer's eye sweep from

left to right or right to left. And although the overall purpose of the

garden is to induce mental repose, it has a dynamic tension, such as a

high-speed photograph of surging rapids in a mountain stream might

catch. But the sand, like the blank spaces in a Chinese ink drawing, is

as important as the placement of the stones. The empty areas both

emphasize the stones and invite the mind to expand in the cosmological

infinity they suggest.

This interaction between form and space is one of the keys to Ryoan-

ji's compelling suggestiveness. Evoking a sense of infinity in a

strictly confined space, it is a living lesson in the Zen concept of

nothingness and nonattachment. It expresses a timelessness unknown in

earlier landscape gardens, particularly those of the Heian era, which,

with their fading blossoms and falling leaves, were attuned to the

poignant transience of life. In the Ryoan-ji garden, the Heian

aesthetic concept of _aware_, the thought that beauty must die, has

been replaced by the Zen idea of _yugen_, which means, among other

things, profound suggestiveness, a reduction to only those elements in

a creative work that move the spirit, without the slightest concession

to prettiness or ornament. The number and placement of stones seem

arbitrary, but they are intuitively perfect--like a phrase from

Beethoven that, with the alteration of a single note, could be

transformed into a comic tune. Like all masterpieces, Ryoan-ji has

simplicity, strength, inevitability.

Between them, the gardens at Daisen-in and at Ryoan-ji encompass the

range of _kare sansui _gardening in Ashikaga Japan. The first is a

symbolic landscape of parched waterfalls and simulated streams drawn in

monochromatic granite; the second, a totally non-representative

abstraction of stone arrangements in the sand-covered "flat-garden"

style. The _kare sansui _flat-garden style, in particular, has no real

counterpart in world art. Imagine the Egyptians, Greeks, or Florentines

collecting rocks, strewing them about a bed of sand in a courtyard, and

calling it religious art. Ryoan-ji seems strikingly modern today and in

fact it was only after a critical following for abstract art developed

in the West that the Zen _kare sansui_ was "discovered." As recently as

the 1930s Ryoan-ji was ignored, an unkempt sandpile the monks rarely

bothered to rake; and only in 1961 was the garden at Daisen-in restored

to what is believed to be its original condition. Ryoan-ji is now the

most celebrated site in Japan and so internationally appreciated that a

full-sized replica has been constructed in the Brooklyn Botanic

Gardens, New York.

Zen gardeners were sophisticated aestheticians, and one can

recognize in their work at least two artistic techniques that the West

did not discover until this century. The first is the Surrealist

principle, derived from the earlier Dadaist idea, of _objets trouves_,

that is, the use of aesthetically interesting natural or accidental

materials as part of an artistic composition. The stones of Ryoan-ji

and other Ashikaga gardens were left in the condition in which they

were discovered and used in the gardens as stones, yet they were also

symbols for something larger than themselves. The second "modern"

artistic principle found in Zen gardens is the reliance on abstract

expressionism. Flat gardens like Ryoan-ji are not meant to depict a

natural scene; they are exercises in the symbolic arrangement of mass

and space. The Zen gardeners actually created a new mode of artistic

expression, anticipating the West by several centuries.

Perhaps Ryoan-ji went unnoticed for so long because it was not

explicitly intended as a work of art, but rather as a statement in

physical terms of the essence of mystical truth. One's reaction upon

first coming into the presence of Ryoan-ji is like the famous Western

mystic Meister Eckhart's description of the realization of Oneness,

called _satori_ in Zen: "Then at once, God comes into your being and

faculties, for you are like a desert, despoiled of all that was

particularly your own. . . ." Ryoan-ji presents this desert in physical

terms, a place of no attachments and no antagonistic polarities. This

is Zen art at its most noble; beauty and aesthetics are present, but

they are secondary to a realm of the spiritual.

CHAPTER NINE

Zen and the Ink Landscape

_Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

_ John Keats

_Sesshu (1420-1506) _ Shin _style

ASHIKAGA MONOCHROME ink painting is one of the finest moments of Japanese

art. Monochrome painting, which began in China as a logical extension

of brush calligraphy, came to be the ultimate medium for the

transmission of Japanese Zen. A Zen painter has been described as a man

who studies technique for twenty years and then throws himself on the

mercy of inspiration. The works of Zen artists often seem to have been

tossed off without effort, but this is the deliberate deception of the

consummate master. Like the slash of the Zen swordsman, the absolute

accuracy of the Zen artist's brushstroke can come only from one whose

mind and body are one. The purpose of Zen painting is to penetrate

beyond the perceptions of the rational mind and its supporting senses,

to show not nature's surface but its very essence. The artist paints

the enlightenment of a moment, and there is therefore no time to labor

over each stroke; the technique must flow thoughtlessly, from deep

within, capturing the fleeting images of the inner sense, beyond mind

and beyond thought.

To watch a Zen painter is to receive a lesson in the discipline of Zen.

As he sets out to create a work, he first brings to hand the essential

artistic materials: brush, inkstone, ink, paper. Kneeling on the floor,

he spreads the paper out before him, and as he grinds and mixes the

ink, begins to envision the outline and scope of his work. Like a

_samurai_ warrior before a battle, he banishes thoughts of the world

and in a state of contemplation organizes his energies for a burst of

action. When the ink is ready, the paper smoothed, an appropriate brush

tested for point and feel, and his spirits composed, he strikes.

The ink is absorbed almost immediately by the fibrous rice paper

preferred by Zen artists, allowing no alteration of a line once it has

been set down. If the artist is dissatisfied with a stroke, he attempts

no corrections but tears up the work and begins another. In contrast to

conventional Western oil painting, which allows for retouching, an ink

brushstroke on paper (or silk, which is sometimes used) becomes dull

and lifeless if it is painted over, and corrections are always obvious

when the painting dries. The work must flow out of the Zen discipline

of no-mind. The artist never pauses to evaluate his work; the ink flows

in an unending flurry of strokes--heavy or sparing, light or dark, as

required--producing a sense of rhythm, movement, form, and the artist's

vision of life's inner music.

The discipline of ink painting was only one of the qualities that

endeared it to Zen painters. Equally important was the understated,

suggestive art it made possible. Learning from the Chinese, Ashikaga

Japanese discovered that black ink, carefully applied to suggest all

the tones of light and shade, could be more expressive and profound

than a rainbow of colors. (A similar lesson has been learned by modern

photographers, who

often find black and white a medium more penerating than color.) The

Chinese painters of the T'ang and Sung dynasties were the first to

discover that black ink could be made to abstract all pigments and

thereby suggest, more believably than actual color paintings, the real

tones found in nature. Whereas the medium of ink has been used in the

West primarily for line drawings and lithographs, the Eastern artists

use ink to produce the illusion of color--an illusion so perfect that

viewers must at times remind themselves that a scene is not in full

polychrome. And just as the seemingly unfinished artistic statement

nudges the viewer into participating in a work, the suggestive medium

of monochrome with its implied rather than explicit hues tricks the

viewer into unwittingly supplying his own colors.

The Zen insight that the palette of the mind is richer than that of the

brush has been best described by a Japanese artist and critic, who

explained the rich suggestiveness of black ink, called _sumi_ by the

Japanese:

_At first glance, this bit of ink on a sheet of white paper seems dull

and plain, but as one gazes at it, it transforms itself into an image

of nature--a small part of nature, to be sure, seen dimly, as though

through a mist, but a part that may guide one's spirit to the

magnificent whole. Armed with pigments by the dozen, artists have tried

for centuries to reproduce the true colors of nature, but at best

theirs has been a limited success. The _sumi-e _[ink painting], by

reducing all colors to shades of black, is able, paradoxically, to make

one feel their genuine nuances. . . . By recognizing that the real

colors of nature cannot be reproduced exactly, the _sumi-e _artist has

grasped one of the most fundamental truths of nature. He is, therefore,

more in tune with her than the painter who tries to engage her in oils

and water colors.1

Zen painting seems to have been created, like the religion itself, by

antischolastic thinkers of the latter T'ang dynasty. The eccentric

monks who invented _koan_ paradoxes also seem to have been fond of

calligraphy and monochrome painting. These monks, together with non-

Buddhist painters at odds with academic styles, loved to outrage their

conservative colleagues by flinging ink at the paper and smearing it

about with their hands, their hair, or sometimes the body of an

assistant. Even those who restricted themselves to the brush delighted

in caricature and unconventional styles. The school of painting

represented by disaffected Tang literati and Ch'an monks came to be

well respected (much like the abstract expressionist school of today)

and was given the name of "untrammeled class." During the Sung dynasty,

Ch'an monks became respectable members of Chinese society, and

gradually three distinct types of Ch'an-influenced painting were

established. One, known in Japanese as _zenkiga_, featured didactic

figure paintings (_zenki-zu_) illustrating Ch'an parables, depicting

Bodhidharma in some legendary situation, recording the critical moment

of a _koan_, or simply illustrating a Zen adept practicing self-

discipline through some humble task.

The second type was portraiture, known as _chinzo_. These solemn,

reverential studies of well-known teachers, sometimes executed in muted

pastels as well as in ink, clearly were intended to represent the

physical likeness of the sitter as closely as possible. They must be

ranked among the world's finest portraits. The insight into character

in the _chinzo_ is not so harsh as that of Rembrandt nor so formal as

that of the Renaissance Florentines, but as sympathetic psychological

studies they have rarely been surpassed.

The third type of painting associated with Ch'an is the monochrome

landscape. Landscape was not originally a major Ch'an subject, but

Ch'an monks experimented with the traditional Chinese treatment of such

scenes and so influenced Chinese landscape painting that even academic

paintings during the Sung dynasty reflected the spontaneous insights of

Ch'an philosophy. Landscapes represent Chinese painting at its finest,

and the Japanese Zen painters who embraced the form made it the great

art of Zen.

The technical mastery of landscape painting had been achieved late in

the T'ang dynasty when the problems of

perspective, placement, and vantage point were solved. The classic

rules for the genre, which were formalized during the early Sung

dynasty, were respected for several hundred years thereafter in both

China and Japan. One must appreciate these rules if one is to

understand the Far Eastern landscape. To begin with, the objective is

not photographic accuracy, but a representation of an emotional

response to nature, capturing the essentials of a landscape rather than

the particular elements that happen to be present in a single locale.

(In fact, Japanese Zen landscapists frequently painted Chinese scenes

they had never seen.) Nature is glorified as a source of meditative

insight, and the artist's spontaneity is expressed within a rigid

framework.

Certain specific items are expected to appear in every painting:

mountains, trees, rocks, flowing water, roads, bridges, wildlife,

houses (or at least thatched huts). The mountainsides vary with the

seasons, being lush and sensuous in spring, verdant and moist in

summer, crisp and ripe in autumn, and austerely bare in winter. The

tiny human figures show the dignity of retired Sung officials at a

hermitage; there are no genuine farmers or fishermen. The paintings

have no vanishing point; receding lines remain parallel and do not

converge. The position of the viewer is that of someone suspended in

space, looking down on a panorama that curves up and around his range

of sight.

To depict distances extending from the immediate foreground to distant

mountain ranges, a painting is divided into three distinct tiers, each

representing a scene at a particular distance from the viewer. These

include a near tableau close enough to show the individual leaves on

the trees and ripples on the water, a middle section where only the

branches of three trees are delineated and water is usually depicted as

a waterfall, and a far section containing mountain peaks. Since these

three levels represent quantum jumps in distance, fog or mist is often

introduced to assist in slicing the painting into three planes.

These landscape conventions were the subject of volumes of

analysis and interpretation during the Sung dynasty. According to the

painter Han Cho in a work dated 1121:

_In paintings of panoramic landscapes, mountains are placed in ranges

one above the other; even in one foot's space they are deeply layered;

. . . and proper order is adhered to by first arranging the venerable

mountains followed by the subservient ones. It is essential that . . .

forests cover the mountain. For the forests of a mountain are its

clothes, the vegetation its hair, the vapor and mists its facial

expressions, the scenic elements its ornaments, the waters its blood

vessels, the fog and mists its expressions of mood.2

Two characteristics of Sung landscape paintings that were later to

become important elements in the canon of Zen aesthetic theory were the

use of empty space as a form of symbolism, later to be found in all of

Zen art from rock gardens to the No theater, and the specific treatment

of rocks and trees, elements that the Zen school would one day take as

metaphors for life itself. These characteristics have been eloquently

described by the Western critics Osvald Siren and Ernest Fenollosa,

respectively:

_We hardly need dwell on the well-known fact that the Chinese painters,

and particularly those who worked in Indian ink, utilized space as a

most important means of artistic expression, but it may be pointed out

that their ideas of space and their methods of rendering it were far

from the same as in European art. Space was not to them a cubic volume

that could be geometrically constructed, it was something illimitable

and incalculable which might be, to some extent, suggested by the

relation of forms and tonal values but which always extended beyond

every material indication and carried a suggestion of the infinite.3

The wonderful twisted trees, mighty mountain pines and cedars, loved by

these early Chinese and later Japanese, which our Western superficial

view first ascribed to some barbarian taste for monstrosities, really

exhibit the deep Zen thinker in their great knots and scaly limbs that

have wrestled with storms and frosts and earthquakes--an almost

identical process through which a man's life-struggles with enemies,

misfortunes, and pains have stamped themselves into the wrinkles and

strong muscular planes of his fine old face. Thus nature becomes a vast

and picturesque world for the profound study of character; and this

fails to lead to didactic overweighting and literary conceit, as it

would do with us, because character, in its two senses of human

individuality and nature individuality, are seen to become one.4_

During the early years of the Sung dynasty, two distinct styles of

landscape painting developed, which today are known as "Northern" and

"Southern," reflecting their geographical locations. Although it is

extremely dangerous to venture generalizations about painting schools,

it might be said that the Northern school produced comparatively

formal, symmetrical works done in sharp, angular, ax-like brushstrokes

which distinguished clearly between ink line and ink wash and in which

the distant mountains were generally portrayed as crisply as the

foreground. In contrast, the Southern school as a rule preferred a more

romantic treatment of landscape elements, with rounded hills and misty

valleys. Distant mountains were portrayed in graded washes of ink,

suggesting mysterious recesses bathed in fog, while the middle ground

was filled with rolling hills mellowed by a sense of diffuse lighting.

A Chinese critic of the period described a Northern artist's work as

all brush and no ink, and a Southern artist's as all ink and no brush--a

simplified but basically accurate characterization of the two schools.

The Northern style was originally centered around the northern capital

of Kaifeng and the Southern around Nanking in the Yangtze valley, but

when the Sung court fled to the South after the fall of the northern

capital in 1127, the styles of the two schools were merged to some

degree in a new academy that was established in the lovely southern

city of Hangchow. Painters of the Southern Sung dynasty, as this later

era came to be known, often were masters of both styles, sometimes

producing jagged Northern landscapes, sometimes misty Southern vistas,

or sometimes combining the two in a single painting. In time, however,

as the mood of the age grew increasingly romantic and Ch'an Buddhism

became more influential in academic circles, the jagged brushstrokes of

the Northern painters retreated farther and farther into the mist,

leaving the landscapes increasingly metaphorical, with contorted trees

and rugged, textured rocks.

This new lyrical style, which predominated in the last century of the

Sung painting academy, was primarily the creation of two artists, Ma

Yuan (active ca. 1190-1224) and Hsia Kuei (active ca. 1180-1230), whose

works were to become the models for Ashikaga Zen landscapes. They both

experimented with asymmetry and the deliberate juxtaposition of

traditional landscape elements. Space became an element in its own

right, particularly in the works of Ma Yuan, whose "one-corner"

compositions were often virtually blank save for a bottom corner. An

eclectic stylist, he frequently depicted the foreground in the ax-cut

brushstrokes and sharp diagonals of the North, while distant mountains

in the same painting were treated by the soft, graded washes of the

South. Hsia Kuei did much the same, except that he took a marked

interest in line and often painted foreground trees and rocks in sharp

silhouette. In later years, after the Ming dynasty came to power,

Chinese tastes reverted to a preference for the Northern style, but in

Japan the so-called Ma-Hsia lyric school was revered and copied by Zen

artists who found the subjective treatment of nature a perfect

expression of Zen doctrines concerning intuitive insight.

The Southern Sung academy did not deliberately produce

Ch'an art; it was the Japanese who identified the Ma-Hsia style

explicitly with Zen. However, during the early years of the thirteenth

century, an expressionist, Ch'an school of art-- the heir of the earlier

T'ang eccentrics--arose and produced a spontaneous style of painting as

unpredictable as Zen itself. The center for this protest school of

landscape art was not the Sung academy but rather a Ch'an monastery

near Hangchow, and its leader was a monk named Mu-ch'i (ca. 1210-ca.

1280), who painted all subjects--landscapes, Ch'an _koan_, and

expressionistic still-lifes--with brushstrokes at once skillfully

controlled and deceptively casual. His was a disciplined spontaneity. A

master of technique, he deliberately disregarded all the conventions.

As time passed, various staid painters of the Sung academy heard his

siren call of ecstasy and abandoned their formal styles, ending their

days drinking with the Ch'an monks in monasteries around Hangchow, lost

in the sheer exhilaration of ink and brush.

When Japanese monks began traveling to China, their first encounter

with landscape painting was in these monasteries. Consequently, the

styles and the paintings of the Ch'an Mu-ch'i school were the first to

be sent to Japan. In later years, after the Northern school of painting

was again in vogue in China, Ming Chinese were only too happy to unload

outdated Southern Sung monochromes on the eager Japanese. The

emissaries of Yoshimitsu (as well as earlier traveling monks) had their

pick of these works, with the result that the very best examples of the

spontaneous Mu-ch'i and the lyric Ma-Hsia styles of Sung painting are

today in Japan.

The paintings of Mu-ch'i, the first Chinese monochrome art to be seen

in Japan, were an instant success, and Zen monks rapidly took up the

style. The most successful imitator was a Japanese priest-painter named

Mincho (1351-1431), who before long was producing landscapes virtually

indistinguishable from Mu-ch'i's. It was almost as though Mu-ch'i had

risen from the dead and begun a new career in Japan a century later.

Subsequently, the landscapes of the Ma-Hsia school found their way to

Japan, and before long a second "Sung dynasty" was in full swing under

the Ashikaga. Japanese Zen had found its art, and soon Yoshimitsu had

established a painting academy at the temple of Shokoku-ji, where

painter-monks gathered to study each new boatload of Sung works and to

vie with one another in imitating Chinese brush styles.

The head of the Zen academy was the priest Josetsu (active ca. 1400-

1413), who took full control after Yoshimitsu's death in 1408.

Josetsu's famous "Man Catching a Catfish with a Gourd," a parable of

the elusiveness of true knowledge, is a perfect example of Japanese

mastery of Sung styles, with its sharp foreground brushwork and misty

distant mountains. The Zen academy dominated Japanese art until well

after the Onin War, exploring and copying the great Sung works, both

those in the lyric academic style and those in the spontaneous Ch'an

style. Josetsu was succeeded by his pupil Shubun (flourishing 1423-d.

ca. 1460), whose vast (attributed) output of hanging scrolls and

sixfold screens was a precise re-creation of the Sung lyric style. He

was not a mere imitator, but rather a legitimate member of a school

long vanished, with a genuine understanding of the ideals that had

motivated the Southern Sung artists. Shubun was a perfect master, a Zen

Raphael, who so disciplined his style that it seemed effortless. His

paintings are things of beauty in which the personality of the artist

has disappeared, as was the intention of the Sung masters, resulting in

works so perfectly of a type that they stand as a foundation on which

others might legitimately begin to innovate.

However, under Shubun's successor Sotan (1414-1481), the academy

continued to copy the techniques of dead Sung artists (as so often

happens when art is institutionalized), producing works that showed no

glimmer of originality. Zen art had reached maturity and was ready to

become its own master; but it needed an artist who would place more

trust in his own genius than in the dictates of the academy.

The individual who responded to this need is today looked upon as the

finest Japanese artist of all time. Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506) was a pupil

of Shubun and very nearly the contemporary of Sotan. Painting out of a

profound sense of the spirit of Zen, Sesshu was able to dismantle the

components of Sung landscapes and reassemble them into an individual

statement of Zen philosophy. It is thought that he became a Zen priest

early in life and spent his formative years in an obscure rural village

on the Inland Sea. However, records show that at the age of thirty-

seven he was a priest in a reasonably high position at Shokoku-ji,

under the patronage of Yoshimasa, and a member of the academy presided

over by Shubun. He apparently studied under Shubun until shortly before

the Onin War, when he left Kyoto for a city on the southwestern coast

and soon was on his way to China aboard a trading vessel.

Traveling as a Zen priest and a painter of some reputation, Sesshu was

immediately welcomed by the Ch'an centers of painting on the mainland

and by the Ming court in Peking. Although he was able to see and study

many Sung paintings not available in the Kyoto Ashikaga collection, he

was disappointed in the Ming artists he encountered and returned to

Japan declaring he had found no worthy teacher in China except her

streams and mountains. He also pronounced Josetsu and Shubun the equals

of any Chinese painters he had met--probably the first time in history

such a statement could have gone unchallenged. He never again returned

to Kyoto, but established a studio in a western seaside village, where

he received the mighty and passed his years in painting, Zen

meditation, and pilgrimages to temples and monasteries. According to

the traditional account, he declined an opportunity to become Sotan's

successor as head of the Kyoto academy, recommending that the post be

given to Kano Masanobu (1434-1530), who did in fact assume a position

as official painter to the shogun in the 1480s. It later passed to

Masanobu's son Kano Motonobu (1476-1559). This launched the decorative

Kano school of painting which dominated Japanese art for centuries

thereafter.

Sesshu was a renegade stylist who mastered the Sung formulas of Shubun

early in his career and then developed striking new dimensions in ink

painting. Despite his scornful assessments of Ming art, he learned a

great deal in China which he later used, including an earthy realism

that freed him from Shubun's sublime perfection, a sense of design that

allowed him to produce large decorative sixfold screens which still

retained the Zen spirit, and, perhaps most importantly, the Ch'an-

inspired ''flung ink" technique which took him into the realm of semi-

abstraction. In his later years he became famous for two distinct

styles which, though not without Chinese precedents, were strongly

individualistic.

In the first of these, known as _shin_, the polished formulas of Shubun

were supplanted by a controlled boldness, with rocks and mountains

outlined in dark, angular brushstrokes seemingly hewn with a chisel.

The landscapes were not so much sublimely unattainable as caught and

worked to his will. The reverence for nature remained, but under his

hand the depiction was almost cubist; the essence of a vista was

extracted in an intricate, dense design of angular planes framed in

powerful lines. Delicacy was replaced by dominance. Precursors of this

style can be found in the works of Ma Yuan and Hsia Kuei, both of whom

experimented in the hard, Northern-influenced techniques of

brushstroke, but it was Sesshu who was the true master of the

technique. Writing in 1912, the American critic Ernest Fenollosa

declared him to be the greatest master of the straight line and angle

in the history of the world's art.

Sesshu's second major style was _so_, an abstraction in wash combining

the tonal mastery of the Southern Sung school with the "flung ink," or

_haboku_, of the Ch'an school--a style in which line is almost entirely

ignored, with the elements of the landscape being suggested by

carefully varied tones of wash. A viewer familiar with the traditional

elements of the Sung landscape can identify all the required

components, although most are acknowledged only by blurred streaks and

seeming dabs of ink which appear to have been applied with a sponge

rather than a brush. In contrast to the cubist treatment of the _shin

_style, the _so _defines no planes but allows elements of the landscape

to blend into one another through carefully controlled variations in

tonality. As effortless as the style appears to be, it is in fact a

supreme example of mastery of the brush, an instrument intended for

carving lines rather than subtle shading and blending of wash.

Because Sesshu chose to live in the secluded provinces, he did not

perpetuate a school, but artists in Kyoto and elsewhere drew on his

genius to invigorate Zen painting. One artist inspired by him was

So'ami, a member of the Ami family which flourished during the

academy's heyday. The earlier members of the family had produced

acceptable works in the standard Sung style, but So'ami distinguished

himself in a number of styles, including the _so_. The other artist

directly influenced by Sesshu was the provincial Sesson (ca.1502-

ca.1589), who took part of the earlier master's name as his own and

became adept in both _shin _and _so _techniques. Although he, too,

avoided strife-ridden Kyoto, he became famous throughout Japan, and his

works suggest what the academy might have produced had Sesshu chosen to

remain part of the Zen establishment. Yet even in Sesson's work one can

detect a polished, effortless elegance that seems to transform Sesshu's

hard-earned power into an easy grace, a certain sign that the creative

phase of Zen art had ended.

The Ashikaga era of Japanese monochrome landscape is really the story

of a few inspired individuals, artists whose works spanned a period of

something more than one hundred and fifty years. As men of Zen, they

found the landscape an ideal expression of reverence for the divine

essence they perceived in nature. To contemplate nature was to

contemplate the universal god, and to contemplate a painting of nature,

or better still to paint nature itself, was to perform a sacrament. The

landscape painting was their version of the Buddhist icon, and its

monochrome abstraction was a profound expression of Zen aesthetics.

Like the artists of the Renaissance, the Ashikaga artists worshiped

through painting. The result is an art form showing no gods but

resonant with spirituality.

CHAPTER TEN

The Zen Aesthetics of Japanese Architecture

_Architecturally [the Zen-inspired Silver Pavilion's] chief interest

lies in the compromise which it exhibits between religious and domestic

types, and a new style of living apartments (called _shoin_) which

specialists regard as the true forerunner of the Japanese dwelling.

_George B. Sansom_, Japan: A Short Cultural History

Traditional Zen-style house

_Traditional interior w/ Zen art alcove

ASK ANY JAPANESE why the traditional Japanese house is bitterly cold in

winter and uncomfortably hot in summer, and he will unfailingly tell

you that the design is historically adapted to the climate. Inquire

about his purpose in rejecting furniture, thus to kneel daylong on a

straw floor mat, and he will explain that the mat is more comfortable.

Question his preference for sleeping on a wadded cotton floor pallet

instead of a conventional mattress and springs, and he will reply that

the floor provides surer rest. What he will not say, since he assumes a

Westerner cannot comprehend it, is that through these seeming physical

privations he finds shelter for the inner man.

The exquisite traditional Japanese house has been compared to an

outsized umbrella erected over the landscape, not dominating its

surroundings but providing a shaded space for living amid nature. The

outside resembles a tropical hut, while the inside is an interworking

of Mondrian geometries. Together they represent the culmination of a

long tradition of defining and handling interior space, using natural

materials, and integrating architecture and setting. The Japanese house

is one of those all too rare earthly creations that transcend the

merely utilitarian, that attend as closely to man's interior needs as

to his physical comfort.

The classic house evolved over two millennia through the adaptation and

blending of two dissimilar architectural traditions--the tropical nature

shrine, which was part of the Shinto religion of the early immigrants

to Japan, and the Chinese model, beginning with the palace architecture

of the T'ang dynasty and culminating in the designs used in the

monasteries of Chinese Ch'an Buddhism. The early immigrants, the Yayoi,

today are believed to have arrived from points somewhere to the South,

bringing a theology that defied the earth, the sun, and all the

processes of nature. Their shrines to these gods were like conventional

Oceanic huts. Thanks to a peculiar quirk of Shinto, which dictates that

certain of these wood-and-thatch shrines be dismantled and built anew

every two decades, it is still possible to see these lovely structures

essentially as they were two millennia ago. Spartan and elegant in

their simplicity, they were lyrically described by the nineteenth-

century Western Japanophile, Lafcadio Hearn:

_The typical shrine is a windowless oblong building of un-painted

timber with a very steep overhanging roof; the front is a gable end;

and the upper part of the perpetually closed doors is a wooden

latticework--usually a grating of bars closely set and crossing each

other at right angles. In most cases the structure is raised slightly

above the ground on wooden pillars; and the queer peaked facade, with

its visorlike apertures and the fantastic projections of beamwork above

its gable-angle, might remind the European traveler of old gothic forms

of dormer There is no artificial color. The plain wood soon turns,

under the action of rain and sun, to a natural gray varying according

to surface exposure from a silvery tone of birch bark to a somber gray

of basalt.1

_Although the early immigrants lived first in caves and later in roofed

pits dug into the earth, by the beginning of the Christian Era the

aristocracy was building elevated dwellings on posts, with roofs

supported not by the walls but by a central horizontal ridge pole

suspended between two large columns at either end of the structure.2

It was, in fact, identical to the Shinto shrine design described by

Hearn. As a home for the Shinto gods, this tropical design may well

have been adequate, since nature spirits are presumably adapted to the

rigors of a Japanese winter, but the Yayoi must have found that it

enforced an unwelcome communion with the seasons. Even so, Hearn's

description could be applied almost without alteration to the external

qualities of the traditional dwelling as it finally evolved. One still

finds the thatch roof, the use of pillars to suspend the floor above

the ground, unfinished natural wood, and the virtual absence of nails.

During the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. the early Japanese became

aware of the complex Chinese culture on the Asian mainland, and by the

beginning of the eighth century they had forsworn the primitive

tropical architecture of Shinto and begun to surround themselves with

palaces and temples modeled on the Chinese. During the Heian era, a

Chinese-inspired aristocrat dwelling developed which represented a

compromise between Japanese requirements and Chinese models. Although

influenced by T'ang Chinese palaces, it was the first indigenous

Japanese architectural style and is known as _shinden_.

The _shinden _mansion was a sprawling complex dominated by a main

building facing a pond, around which were flanked ancillary structures

connected to it by open galleries protected only by a roof. These open

galleries, being very much the fashion, were also built around the

outside of all the larger rooms and served as passageways. There were

no solid walls inside the buildings; privacy was obtained by curtains

and two-part horizontal doors hinged at the top and attached to the

ceiling. Adopting Chinese construction methods, Japanese began roofing

the buildings with dark clay tiles instead of native thatch, and walls

were frequently surfaced with clay rather than wood planks or woven

straw. Exterior woods were painted Chinese vermilion instead of being

left to age naturally.

Furnishings were meager, and rooms were not identified according to

usage; the building was one large area temporarily divided according to

the needs of the moment. Instead of chairs there were movable floor

mats of woven straw, while around the exterior of the rooms there were

heavy shutters; these could be removed in summer or replaced by light

bamboo blinds, which rolled down like window shades. Lighting was not a

prominent feature of _shinden _mansions, and in winter the aristocracy

huddled around a smoky fire in almost total darkness, the price of

seeing being to open the blinds and freeze.

The _shinden_ style suppressed for a time the indigenous affection for

simplicity and unadorned natural materials revealed in the earlier,

pre-Heian dwellings. However, it was never really naturalized, and it

was eventually to be remembered in Japan's architectural history

largely as an aberrant interlude, whose major legacy was the sense of

openness or fluid space in the classic Zen house.

When the _samurai _warriors of the Kamakura era (1185-- 1333) assumed

power, they did not immediately disown the architectural styles of the

Heian nobles, but merely added (or, in some cases, removed) features in

response to their martial needs and their new Zen outlook. As the

country was at war, there was no logic in detached rooms and open

galleries, and the _samurai _immediately tightened up the design,

putting the entire house under one roof. They eliminated the pond and

added a surrounding board fence for protection, even as interior

curtains and hinged doors were replaced by sliding doors of paper over

a wooden frame. And as rooms became more clearly identified, they were

defined in terms of function. The early influence of Zen was seen most

noticeably in the gradual disappearance of the ornamental aspects of

_shinden _design as the _samurai _came to prize austerity and

frugality.

During the Ashikaga era (1333-1573) which followed, when Zen monks

assumed the role of advisers and scribes for the illiterate military

rulers, a special writing desk, called a _shoin_,

appeared in the houses of the more influential _samurai_. The _shoin

_was a window alcove with a raised sill, which overlooked a private

garden and was used by the monks for reading and writing. Next to this

was a _chigai-dana_, a wall cabinet recessed in a niche and used for

storing papers and writing, utensils. (These new domestic appointments

had been lifted by the Zen monks directly from the chief abbot's study

in Chinese Ch'an monasteries.) The _shoin _study room immediately

became a focus of fashion among the _samurai_, even those who could

neither read nor write, and before long it was the finest room in a

house. Guests began to be received there and another feature from Zen

monasteries was added: the art-display alcove, or tokonoma. (In Chinese

Ch'an monasteries the _tokonoma _was a special shrine before which

monks burned incense, drank ceremonial tea, and contemplated religious

artwork. That such a shrine should appear in a reception room of a

social-climbing _samurai_'s house is vivid testimony to the pervasive

influence of the Zen monk advisers.) The _samurai_ also added an entry

vestibule called a _genkan_, still another feature drawn from Zen

temples. As a result of all these additions and modifications,

_shinden_ architecture was completely transformed into a functional

_samurai _house whose style became known as _shoin_. Forgotten were the

Chinese tile roofs and vermilion paint; thatch and unfinished woods

reappeared. Paradoxically, the supplanting of _shinden _design by

_shoin _was in many ways merely the ousting of a T'ang Chinese style by

a Sung Chinese style. However, the T'ang architecture had been that of

the Chinese court, whereas the Sung was drawn from Ch'an monasteries

and coincidentally contained many of the aesthetic ideals of the

earlier native Japanese dwellings and shrines.

By the waning years of the Ashikaga era, the _shoin _design had

influenced virtually every aspect of Japanese architecture, bringing

into being almost all the qualities of what is now thought of as the

traditional Japanese house. The movable floor mats were replaced by

wall-to-wall _tatami_, woven straw mats bound with a dark fabric band

at either end and standardized to a size of approximately three by six

feet. Soon rooms were being defined in terms of the number of _tatami

_required for the floor--and modular architecture had been invented.

Sliding, but removable paper partitions called _fusuma_ became the

standard room dividers, and the _tokonoma_ became less a religious

shrine than a secular display case where vertical monochrome scrolls

and flower arrangements were put on view. Oddly enough, one of the few

Chinese innovations the Japanese persistently chose to ignore was the

chair. As a result, a Japanese residence has always maintained an entry

vestibule where footwear is removed, something unnecessary for the

Chinese, who had no reason to consider the floor a couch and could keep

their shoes on. One important side effect of this choice is that eye

level in the Japanese room--that is, the level from which the room, its

art, and its appointments are viewed--has remained significantly lower

than in houses with furniture, a characteristic that influences the

placement of art as well as the layout of the accompanying garden.

The culminating style of Japanese architecture was the sukiya house,

essentially a free-hand rendering of the formal _samurai shoin_. The

_sukiya_ style reflected a number of aesthetic and architectural ideas

embodied in the Zen-inspired Japanese teahouse, and it allowed for

considerable experimentation with materials and design. Less powerful

and more delicate than the _shoin_, it was in many ways the ultimate

extension of Zen austerity, even to the point where walls were often

left unplastered. The _shoin_ had been the house of warriors; the

_sukiya _was a style for the common man and as such has contributed

significantly to the overall tradition of Japanese architecture.

_Shoin_ and _sukiya _houses, heirs to the legacy of Zen monks and later

Zen aesthetes, are the reference point for what is now understood to be

the traditional Japanese dwelling.

The deceptively fragile appearance of the house makes it appear at

first an impractical invention for a land faced with recurrent

earthquakes. Yet its lightness and flexibility, like those of a judo

expert, actually contribute to its safety. Part of the reason is its

foundation, which "floats" with the earth rather than being anchored

rigidly. The traditional house is not held up by walls but by stout

columns, almost a half-foot in diameter, embedded at their base in

niches sunk into large, individually placed stones which are only

partially buried. These columns reach through the house to the ceiling,

whose weight secures them in their precarious foundation. In ordinary

houses, the roof is a steeply sloping, four-sided pyramid whose light

underframe is covered with multiple layers of shingles made from the

tough bark of the _hinoki_ tree.

A second set of shorter posts, similarly supported bv partially buried

stones, holds up the platform that is the floor, a wooden deck of

closely fitted planks set about two feet above the earth. The outer

perimeter of the flooring becomes a veranda or walkway, called the

_engawa_, and the inner space is partitioned into rooms by light walls

of paper, plaster, and wooden grillwork. The outer walls of the house,

which serve no structural purpose, are sliding latticework panels

called _shoji_, which are covered with translucent white rice paper,

bathing the exterior rooms in a soft daytime light. The _shoji_,

ordinarily installed in pairs approximately six feet high and three

feet wide, unite rather than divide the interior and exterior; during

the summer they slide open to provide fresh air and direct

communication with the outdoors. If greater insulation or safety is

required, a second set of sliding panels, or _amado_, similar in

appearance to Western doors, may be installed outside the _shoji_.

Between columns too narrow to accommodate a pair of _shoji_ there may

be a solid wall consisting of a two-inch-thick layer of clay pressed

into a bamboo and rice-straw framework and finished inside and out with

a thin veneer of smooth white plaster. Similar walls may be built

inside the house where appropriate, and they and the columns are the

house's only solid surfaces. The dull white color and silken texture of

the plaster walls contrast pleasantly with the exposed natural grain of

the supporting columns.

Interior rooms are separated by partitions consisting of light wooden

frames covered in heavy opaque paper, often decorated with unobtrusive

designs. These paper walls, called _fusuma_, are suspended from tracks

attached to overhead crossbeams. They slide to form instant doorways,

or when removed entirely, convert two smaller rooms into one large

apartment. _Fusuma_ provide little privacy between rooms except a

visual screen, and it is rumored that this undesired communication

increasingly inhibits lovemaking by modern parents.

The overhead crossbeams, installed between the columns at a height of

slightly over six feet, are similar to the columns in diameter and

appearance. The ceiling of the rooms is roughly two feet above the

crossbeams, or _kamoi_, with the intervening space usually filled

either by a vertical open wooden latticework, the _ramma_, or a

plaster-and-board combination, the _nageshi_. On exterior walls of the

_ramma_ is ordinarily a solid extension of the _shoji_ which inhibits

air flow from the outside. The _kamoi_, _nageshi_, and _ramma _have a

structural as well as aesthetic obligation; they are the only solid

lateral supports between the upright columns. The ceiling itself is a

light wood latticework over which has been laid a platform of thin

boards still in their natural state, as is all the woodwork.

Visitors enter through the _genkan _portico, where street shoes are

replaced by soft-soled slippers, to prevent scratches on the exposed

wooden veranda and hallways. At the entrance to a _tatami_-carpeted

room, the slippers too are relinquished, and host and guests are both

in stocking feet, a state that encourages familiarity. The reception

room is empty as a cell, and as it basks in the diffuse light of the

_shoji_, it seems suspended in time--heedless of the season. The only

furniture may be a small central table around which guests and host

seat themselves on square cushions. Or perhaps there are lamps with

rice-paper shades, one or two knee-high chests of drawers, and if the

weather requires it, one or more charcoal braziers, either a small

moveable hibachi for hand warming or a larger heater sunk into a center

recess in the flooring, often beneath the table, or both. The purpose

of these is apparently more symbolic than functional, for they do

little to influence the temperature in the paper-walled rooms.

Arrangements for summer cooling are equally metaphysical; the _shoji

_are simply thrown open in hopes of snaring wayward breezes, whose

meager cooling is enhanced psychologically by the tinkle of wind bells

hung in the verandas.

The aesthetic focus of the room is the _tokonoma_, or picture recess,

set into one of the plaster walls, with a raised dais for its floor and

an artificial, lowered ceiling. The _tokonoma _has a small _shoji_-

covered window at one side which illuminates a hanging scroll, and

there is usually an incense burner (in recognition of its original

monastic function) or a simple flower arrangement on its floor.

Adjacent to the _tokonoma_ is the _chigai-dana_, a shelved storage area

hidden by sliding panels, which may be used to store _kimonos_ or

bedding rather than the writing implements of Zen monks as in the past.

The _tokonoma _and _chigai-dana _are separated by a thin dividing wall

whose outer edge is fronted by a single polished post, the _toko-

bashira_, a natural tree trunk stripped of its bark to reveal its

gnarled surface texture. The _toko-bashira _has the quality of polished

driftwood, intended to bring a touch of raw nature to the otherwise

austere and monastic ambience of the room.

As the guest kneels on the cushions and sips green tea, the host may

slide aside a rear _shoji _to reveal the roofless garden of the inner

courtyard, his private abstraction of the natural landscape. Flowers

are purposely absent, but in their place may be tiny shaped pines, a

pond, and receding, rocky pathways. The mossy stones glisten with dew

(or with water from a recent dousing by the host in preparation for his

guests), and the air is fresh with the scent of greenery. Only upon

careful inspection does the deception evaporate and the garden reveal

itself to be a tiny plot surrounded by a bamboo and plaster fence; the

natural world has been extracted and encapsulated into a single view,

at once as authentic as the forest and as artfully detailed as a

Flemish miniature. This view--a heritage of Zen _shoin _design--is vital

to the aesthetic magic of the house, for it brings the works of man and

nature together in a way that blurs their distinction. Exterior space

is united with interior space just as Zen philosophy identifies the

external world as an extension of man's inner life.

Indeed, all the subjective aspects of the Japanese house are Zen-

inspired. The most apparent design feature is the clean lines that mark

the boundaries of space, from the geometrical delineation of floor

areas, brought out by the dark bindings of the tatami, to the exposed

skeletal framework of columns and horizontal beams. By deliberately

excluding curved lines (whose implied sensuality would be at odds with

Zen ideals of austerity) in the partitioning of space, the house

achieves a geometrical formality both elegant and pure. This sense of

free space is further realized by the rigorous exclusion of extraneous

ornamentation (again a Zen aesthetic precept) and by placing all

essential furnishings in the center of the room rather than around the

sides, as in the West. Design aesthetics are also served by the

emphasis on the natural texture of materials and the contrast realized

when different materials (such as clay walls and exposed wood) are

placed side by side. Finally, the indirect lighting provided by the

_shoji _gives daytime rooms a subjective sense of perpetual afternoon,

mellowing the visual properties of the materials, softening harsh

colors to pastels, and enhancing the overall feeling of naturalness in

the exposed woods.

The removable partitions, both internal and external, create a sense of

interdependent yet fluid space so startling to Westerners that it is

often the first thing they notice in a Japanese house. The concept is,

of course, derived from a basic philosophical presumption inherent in

all Zen art, from ink paintings to ceramics, that freedom is most

keenly perceived when it is exercised within a rigorous framework of

constraints and discipline. More important, and more difficult to

define, is the Zen concept of _shibui_, the studied restraint that

might be described as knowing when to stop. _Shibui_, perhaps more than

any other aesthetic principle, typifies the influence of Zen on

Japanese ideals. It means many things, including the absence of all

that is not essential; a sense of disciplined strength deliberately

held in check to make what is done seem effortless; the absence of the

ornate and the explicit in favor of the sober and the suggestive; and

the elegance that can be realized when the purest of natural materials

are integrated in a formal, balanced orchestration.3

In addition to the aesthetic aspects, there is also a quality of

psychological suggestion stemming from Zen in the Japanese house. Zen

monks early realized that the cell-like austerity of a room could be

used to manipulate the consciousness of those caught in its precincts.

The impact of this was well described by the early-twentieth-century

traveler Ralph Adams Cram:

_There is something about the great spacious apartments, airy and full

of mellow light, that is curiously satisfying, and one feels the

absence of furniture only with a sense of relief. Free from the rivalry

of crowded furnishings, men and women take on a quite singular quality

of dignity and importance.4

'The "singular quality of dignity and importance" is one of the most

fundamental discoveries of Zen interior designers. In the absence of

decorative distractions, one must concentrate on his own mind and on

the minds of others present. Host and guest find their focus on one

another has been deliberately enhanced, breaking down the barriers of

separateness and individual identity. Each word, each gesture is

rendered richer, more significant. Heinrich Engel, who understood the

source of the mysterious effects which Ralph Adams Cram could only

describe in bewilderment, has explained this phenomenon:

_[The individual interior room] provides an environment that requires

man's presence and participation to fill the void. Room in the Western

residence is human without man's presence, for man's memory lingers in

the multiple devices of decoration, furniture, and utility. Room in the

Japanese residence becomes human only through man's presence. Without

him, there is no human trace. Thus, the empty room provides the very

space where man's spirit can move freely and where his thoughts can

reach the very limits of their potential.5

Stated differently, the Japanese room forces introspection on those who

enter it alone--a function completely in keeping with the interests of

Zen. Souls who have felt the weight of too much liberty (and undeserved

decorator's license) will find here a solemn retreat and a heightened

sense of internal awareness. Here as never before one's mind is one's

own, undistracted by the prosaic implements of living with which

Westerners ordinarily engulf themselves. One should be warned, however,

that this liberation of the consciousness is powerful stuff. The

Japanese Zen room is a concentration cell which, although it can unite

the minds of those who share it, can often tell those who enter it

alone more than they want to know about their own interior lives.

The restraining discipline taught by Zen has both made the traditional

Japanese house possible and reconciled its inhabitants to the practical

difficulties of living in it. Although few Westerners would accept the

inconvenience and sometime discomfort of these houses, many of the

early Zen designers' ideals have begun to be seen in architecture and

design in the West. It is well known that the Japanese integration of

house and environment influenced Frank Lloyd Wright and that a purging

of ornamentation was the credo of the Bauhaus. The Japanese principle

of modular design is now influential in the West, and we have finally

discovered the possibilities for multiple uses of space, with modern

"efficiency" apartments that combine all living functions, from dining

to entertaining to sleeping, in a single room. Interest has grown

recently in the texture of interior materials, which it is now realized

provide a necessary visual warmth, and there is increasing integration

of living areas with gardens, patios, and the outdoors, and a blessed

reduction in superfluous decoration, with the re-establishment of

emphasis on clean lines, open space, and the quality of light. Perhaps

most important of all, we in the West are finally taking to heart what

the Japanese Zen monks knew in medieval times: that domestic

architecture and interiors can and should fulfill a requirement in our

lives that is ordinarily served by art.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The No Theater

_It is not, like our theatre, a place where every fineness and

subtlety must give way; where every fineness of word or of word-cadence

is sacrificed to the "broad effect"; where the paint must be put on

with a broom. It is a stage where every subsidiary art is bent

precisely upon upholding the faintest shade of difference; where the

poet may be silent while the gestures consecrated by four centuries of

usage show meaning.

_Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa_, Classic Noh Theatre of Japan

Noh actor with mask

_Noh stage with chorus

THE ASHIKAGA age of Zen art is remembered today not only for gardens,

painting, and architecture but also for drama and poetry. The leading

political figure of the era, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, was himself an

accomplished poet in the short verse forms once so popular with Heian

courtier-aesthetes. But the most exalted poetry of the age was that

written for the No drama, a literary art form born of Zen and at once

as austere as a stone garden and as suggestive as a monochrome

painting. The No is performed today virtually as it was six hundred

years ago, and in its ritual symbolism it seems at times a cross

between the Christian Mass and an Aeschylean tragedy. The essence of

Zen aesthetic theory is evoked throughout its haunting poetry, its

understated but intense style of acting, its delicately carved masks,

and its mournful music and songs.

Like other Zen arts, the No was fashioned out of materials from distant

times and places. The first Japanese dramatic arts were derived from

various forms of Chinese farces and court dances. The farces, or

_gigaku_, were popular with the Nara aristocracy, while the dances, or

_bugaku_, came into favor with the more refined Heian court. Although

the _bugaku _form undoubtedly influenced Japanese ideas on the blending

of drama and dance, by the end of the Heian era it had become a

lifeless ceremony for the emperor and his court--a role it still enjoys

on occasions when performances are staged for the imperial family.

The real origins of the No are traceable to a somewhat lustier Chinese

import, a circus-type entertainment called by the Japanese _sarugaku_.

In addition to the display of various physical feats of daring, the

_sarugaku _included farcical playlets and suggestive, sometimes

indecent dances. A common theme seems to have been the lampooning of

clergy, both Buddhist and Shinto. (In this respect, the development of

native drama in Japan ran parallel with the resurgence of dramatic art

in Europe after the Middle Ages, as citizens on both sides of the globe

taunted the theological enslavement of feudal society by burlesques and

dances ridiculing hypocritical authority figures.)

The studied indecency of early _sarugaku _was undoubtedly intended to

parody the pomposity of Shinto rituals. But as time went by, the rustic

dance-stories evolved into a more structured drama, the _sarugaku-no-

No_, which was the thirteenth-century Japanese equivalent of the

European morality play. The earlier farces were transformed into

comedies known as _kyogen _(in which wily servants repeatedly tricked

their masters), which today serve as interlude pieces to relieve the

gravity of a program of No plays, just as the early Greek satyr plays

were performed after a trilogy of tragedies in the Athenian theater.

In the early versions of the sarugaku-no-No, the performers sang and

danced, but as the form matured a chorus was added to supply the verses

during certain segments of the dance. By the middle of the fourteenth

century, about the time of Chaucer's birth, Japanese No was already an

established dramatic form, containing all the major elements it has

today. It was, however, merely village drama, and so it might have

remained except for a chance occurrence in the year 1374.

In that year Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, already shogun at age seventeen,

attended a performance of the _sarugaku-no-No _for the first time. The

entertainment was a great favorite with his subjects, and he was trying

to establish himself as a man of the people. A particularly well-known

actor was scheduled to perform in Kyoto, and Yoshimitsu went to see

him. The actor was Kannami (1333-1384), today famous as the father of

the No. Yoshimitsu was excited by Kannami, but he was even more

enthralled by the actor's handsome eleven-year-old son Zeami (1363-

1444), who also appeared in the play. Yoshimitsu became Kannami's

patron, but young Zeami he took to his couch (a common enough

occurrence in _samurai_ circles of the age). Zeami was devoted to the

No, even as Yoshimitsu became devoted to Zeami, and thus began the long

marriage of Zen culture and the No theater.

Through Yoshimitsu the _sarugaku-no-No _came under the influence of the

circle of Zen aesthetes surrounding him, and what had once been a broad

popular entertainment became an aristocratic art. Supported by

Yoshimitsu's patronage, Zeami became the Shakespeare of the No, writing

the finest plays in the repertoire as well as several volumes of essays

on aesthetic theories and acting technique. Although Zeami claimed to

have learned everything from his father, the austere and poetic No that

came to perfection during the Ashikaga was largely his own creation.

His poetry has never been equaled, and his handbook of technique has

remained the No actor's bible. Yet he might never have been heard of

had it not been for Yoshimitsu, who, in the words of Donald Keene,

found the No brick and left it marble.

The classic No stage is a splendid example of Zen-influenced

architecture. The stage is a platform of golden, polished wood

covered by a heavy arched roof supported by stout pillars at each of

the four corners. The entire structure projects out into the audience,

almost as though a wooden shrine had been reconstructed in the middle

of the auditorium. The actors approach the platform along a wide entry

ramp that leads off stage right to a curtained entranceway at the rear

of the auditorium. The ramp has three small pine trees spaced evenly

along its length, while on the backdrop of the stage proper there is a

painting of a massive gnarled pine. As though to suggest Shinto origins

for the drama, the stage and entrance ramp are symbolically separated

from the audience by an encircling expanse of white sand, spanned at

the very front of the stage by a small symbolic wooden stair. The

acting platform is square, approximately twenty feet by twenty, with an

additional rear area to accommodate the musicians and another area at

stage left where the chorus kneels. Underneath the stage, unseen by the

audience, are a number of large clay pots, a traditional acoustic

device to amplify the resonance of the actors' voices. The few

properties used in the plays are introduced and removed through an

auxiliary entrance at the rear of the stage.

The beginning of the play is signaled offstage by the high- pitched

wail of a bamboo flute. Two attendants with bamboo poles lift back the

variegated brocade curtain covering the doorway to the ramp, and the

musicians, either three or four in number, enter single file and

position themselves in the prescribed order along the rear of the

stage--the flautist sitting on the floor Japanese style, and the two

major drummers on stools they carry with them. (If a bass drum is

required, its player must join the flautist on the floor.) The No flute

is not particularly unusual, except for an exceptionally strident tone,

but the two primary No drums are unlike anything in the West. Although

they are of different sizes, both resemble a large hourglass with an ox

hide drawn over either end and held taut by heavy leather cords. The

smaller drum, whose hide surface the players must periodically soften

with his breath, is held on the player's right shoulder and struck with

the right hand. Its sound is a muffled, funereal boom, lower in pitch

than that of the other, larger drum, the larger drum is held on the

player's left knee and struck with the fingers of the left hand, which

may be protected by thimbles of leather or ivory. It produces a sharp,

urgent click, used to punctuate the cadence of the performance. The

bass drum used in certain dramas is played with drumsticks in the

Western manner. The drummers also sometimes provide rhythm by

interjecting monosyllabic shouts between drumbeats.

As the musicians enter, so does the chorus, eight or ten men dressed in

formal Japanese "black tie" kimonos. They seat themselves Japanese

style in two rows along stage left, where they must remain immobile for

the duration of the play (which may be well over an hour). Since

younger Japanese are less resigned to the persistent ache accompanying

the traditional seating posture than their elders, the chorus usually

tends to be well on in years. The chorus fills in dialogue for the

actors during dance sequences; it makes no commentary on the action as

does the chorus in Greek tragedy, nor does it have any special identity

as part of the cast. Its members merely take up the voice of the actors

from time to time like a dispassionate, heavenly choir.

With chorus and orchestra present, the overture begins. The first

sounds are the piercing lament of the flute and the insistent crack of

the drums, against which the drummers emit deep-throated, strangled

cries. This stunning eruption of sound signals the entrance of the

dramatis personae as the brocade curtain is again drawn aside for the

first cast member, usually a _waki_, or supporting actor, who enters

with measured, deliberate pace onto the entrance ramp, where he

advances with a sliding, mechanical tread toward the stage.

The _waki_, often representing an itinerant monk dressed in subdued

black robes, begins telling the story, either in his own voice or aided

by the chorus, establishing the locale and circumstances of the scene

about to unfold, after which he retires to a corner of the stage and

seats himself to await the entrance of the protagonist, or _shite_. The

brocade curtain parts again to reveal the _shite_, richly costumed and

frequently masked, who approaches to sing and dance out his story

before the waiting _waki_. The _shite's _splendid costume contrasts

strikingly with the austerity of the stage and the other costumes.

On first appearance the _shite _ordinarily is intended to be a human

form, albeit often a troubled one, but as his tale unfolds he becomes

not so much an actual being as the personification of a soul. If the

play is in two parts, in the second part he may assume his real

identity, often only hinted in the first, of a spirit from the dead.

Prefiguring the Shakespearean soliloquy, the confessional song of the

_shite _speaks for the universal consciousness as he pours out his

tortured inner emotions. As the _shite _sings, the knowing _waki

_serves as confessor and provides a foil for any dialogue. The play

climaxes with the dance of the _shite_, a stiff, stylized, sculptural

sequence of mannered postures and gestures which draw heavily upon

traditional Shinto sacred dances. With this choreographic resolution

the play closes, and all exeunt single file as they entered--to the

restrained acknowledgment of the audience.

The No repertoire contains five primary categories of plays. There are

"god plays," in which the shite is a supernatural spirit, frequently

disguised, whose divinity is made manifest during the final dance. In

"warrior plays," the _shite _may be a martial figure from the Kamakura

era who speaks in universal terms about his own personal tragedy.

"Woman plays" are lyric evocations of a beautiful woman, often a

courtesan, who has been wronged in love. The fourth category includes a

grab bag of dramas often focusing on an historical episode or on the

_shite _being driven to madness by guilt or, in the case of a woman,

jealousy. Finally, there are "demon plays," in which the shite is a

vengeful ogre, often sporting a flowing red or white wig, who erupts

into a frenzied dance to demonstrate his supernatural displeasure over

some event.

Many of the classic plays are a study of the tortured mental world of

the dead. Even in warrior plays and woman plays the central character

is frequently a spirit from the nether world who returns to chronicle a

grievance or to exact some form of retribution from a living

individual. Plot is deliberately suppressed. Instead of a story, the

play explores an emotional experience or a state of mind--hatred, love,

longing, fear, grief, and occasionally happiness. The traditional

components of Western drama--confrontation, conflict, characterization,

self-realization, development, resolution--are almost entirely absent.

In their place is the ritualized reading of an emotional state that

rarely grows or resolves during the play; it is simply described.

The artistic content of the No is embodied in the masks, dances, and

poetry, all of which deserve to be examined. The masks carved for the

No drama are the only representative sculptured art form of Zen;

indeed, Zen was basically responsible for the disappearance of a

several-hundred-year-old tradition of Buddhist sculpture in Japan.

During the late Kamakura era, Japanese wood sculpture went through a

phase of startling

realism; but the Zen monks had no use for icons or statues of Buddhist

saints, and by the beginning of the Ashikaga era Japanese statuary was

essentially a thing of the past. However, the Japanese genius for wood

carving had a second life in the No masks. No plays required masks for

elderly men, demons, and sublime women of all ages. (The No rigidly

excluded women from the stage, as did the Kabuki until recent times.)

No masks, especially the female, have a quality unique in the history

of theater: they are capable of more than one expression. No masks were

carved in such a way that the play of light, which could be changed by

the tilt of the actor's head, brought out different expressions. It was

a brilliant idea, completely in keeping with the Zen concept of

suggestiveness. No companies today treasure their ancient masks, which

frequently have been handed down within the troupe for centuries, and

certain old masks are as famous as the actors who use them.

For reasons lost to history, the masks are somewhat smaller than the

human face, with the unhappy result that a heavy actor's jowls are

visible around the sides and bottom. They also cup over the face,

muffling to some extent the actor's delivery. The guttural No songs,

which are delivered from deep in the chest and sound like a curious

form of tenor gargling, are rendered even more unintelligible by the

mask. This specialized No diction, which entered the form after it had

passed from popular entertainment to courtly art, is extremely

difficult to understand; today even cognoscenti resort to libretti to

follow the poetry.

The slow-motion movement around the stage, which goes by the name of

"dance" in the No, is one of its more enigmatic aspects for Western

viewers. As R. H. Blyth has described it, "the stillness is not

immobility but is a perfect balance of opposed forces."1 Such movements

as do transpire are subtle, reserved, and suggestive. They are to

Western ballet what the guarded strokes of a _haboku _ink landscape are

to an eighteenth-century oil canvas. They are, in fact, a perfect

distillation of human movement, extracting all that is significant--much

as a precious metal is taken from the impure earth. The feeling is

formal, pure, and intense. As described in a volume by William Theodore

de Bary:

_When a No actor slowly raises his hand in a play, it corresponds not

only to the text he is performing, but must also suggest something

behind the mere representation, something eternal--in T. S. Eliot's

words, a "moment in and out of time." The gesture of an actor is

beautiful in itself, as a piece of music is beautiful, but at the same

time it is the gateway to something else, the hand that points to a

region as profound and remote as the viewer's powers of reception will

permit. It is a symbol, not of any one thing, but of an eternal region,

of an eternal silence.2

The evocation of an emotion beyond expression--of "thoughts that do

often lie too deep for tears"--is the special Zen aesthetic realm of

_yugen_. The quality, heightened to almost unendurable levels by

poetry, is that of a Zen landscape: sparse, monochromatic, suggestive.

Universal human emotions are cloaked in obscurity rather than set forth

explicitly. The passion is open-ended, a foreboding sonnet with the

last line left for the listener to complete. Zeami and other No poets

believed that the deepest sentiments cannot be conveyed by language;

the poetry merely sets the stage and then sends the listener's

imagination spinning into the realm of pure emotion, there to discover

an understanding too profound for speech. In Western terms, if King

Lear were a _shite_, he would speak in understated terms of the

darkness of the heath rather than chronicle his own anguish.

The concept of _yugen_, the incompleteness that triggers, poetic

emotions in the listener's mind is, as has been previously noted, an

extension of the Heian concept of _aware_. Like _yugen_, _aware

_describes not only the properties of some external phenomenon but also

the internal response to that phenomenon. _Aware _originally meant the

emotional lift and sense of poignancy experienced in contemplating a

thing of beauty and reflecting on its transience. Yugen extends this

into the realm of eternal verities; not only beauty but all life fades,

happiness always dissolves, the soul passes alone and desolate. In an

art form that transmits _yugen_, none of this is stated; one is forced

to feel these truths through suggestion, the degree of feeling

depending, of course, upon the sensitivity of the individual. One can

find excellent examples of _yugen _in almost any No drama of the

fifteenth century, like the following from "The Banana Tree" (Basho),

by Komparu-Zenchiku:

_Already the evening sun is setting in the west,

Shadows deepen in the valleys,

The cries of homing birds grow faint.3

Here the sense of universal loneliness at nightfall, the

emptiness one feels in a desolate locale, the Gothic coldness that

penetrates from the physical senses into one's interior emotions, are

all much more fully realized through the simple evocation of the scene

than would be possible by detailing them explicitly. The mournful call

of evening birds in the bleak, empty, windswept fields cuts, like the

No flute, to the very core of one's feelings.

The No is perhaps the most difficult Zen art for Westerners to enjoy.

The restrained action transmits virtually nothing of what is occurring

onstage, and the poetry does not translate well. (As Robert Frost once

observed, in translations of poetry, it is the poetry that is lost.)

The music is harsh to the Western ear; the chorus interrupts at

intervals that seem puzzling; the strange cries and dances befog the

mind. Most important of all, the concept of _yugen _is not a natural

part of Western aesthetics. The measured cadences of the No have, for

the Westerner, all the mystery of a religious ceremony wrought by a

race of pious but phlegmatic Martians. Yet we can admire the taut

surface beauty and the strangely twentieth-century atonality of the

form.

Its enigmatic remoteness notwithstanding, the No remains one of the

greatest expressions of Ashikaga Zen art. Some of Zeami's texts are

ranked among the most complex and subtle of all Japanese poetry. For

six hundred years the No has been a secular Zen Mass, in which some of

mankind's deepest aesthetic responses are explored.

Part III

THE RISE OF POPULAR ZEN CULTURE:

1573 TO THE PRESENT

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bourgeois Society and Later Zen

_God has given us the Papacy; let us enjoy it.

_ Pope Leo X, 1513

THE ASHIKAGA was the last era in Japan entirely without knowledge of

Europe. In 1542 a Portuguese trading vessel bound for Macao went

aground on a small island off the coast of southern Japan, and the

first Europeans in history set foot on Japanese soil. Within three

years the Portuguese had opened trade with Japan, and four years after

that Francis Xavier, the famous Jesuit missionary, arrived to convert

the heathen natives to the Church. For the eclectic Japanese, who had

received half a dozen brands of Buddhism over the centuries, one

additional religion more or less hardly mattered, and they listened

with interest to the new preaching, far from blind to the fact that the

towns with the most new Christians received the most new trade. Indeed,

the Japanese appear to have first interpreted Christianity as an exotic

form of Buddhism, whose priests borrowed the ancient Buddhist idea of

prayer beads and venerated a goddess of mercy remarkably like the

Buddhist Kannon. In addition to bringing a new faith, the Portuguese,

whose armed merchant ships were capable of discouraging pirates, were

soon in full command of the trade between China and Japan--a mercantile

enterprise once controlled by Zen monks.

Still, the direct influence of Europe was not pronounced. Although

there was a brief passion for European costume among Japanese dandies

(similar to the Heian passion for T'ang Chinese dress), the Japanese by

and large had little use for European goods or European ideas. However,

one European invention won Japanese hearts forever: the smoothbore

musket. The Japanese, sensing immediately that the West had finally

found a practical use for the ancient Chinese idea of gunpowder, soon

made the musket their foremost instrument of social change. Overnight a

thousand years of classical military tactics were swept aside, while

the Japanese genius for metal-working turned to muskets rather than

swords. Musket factories sprang up across the land, copying and often

improving on European designs, and before long Japanese warlords were

using the musket with greater effect than any European ever had. The

well-meaning Jesuits, who had arrived with the mission of rescuing

Japanese souls, had succeeded only in revolutionizing Japanese capacity

for combat.

The musket was to be an important ingredient in the final unification

of Japan, the dream of so many shoguns and emperors in ages past. The

process, which required several bloody decades, was presided over by

three military men of unquestioned genius: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582),

Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616). The

character of these three men is portrayed in a Japanese allegory

describing their respective attitudes toward a bird reluctant to sing.

Nobunaga, the initiator of the unification movement and one of the

crudest men who ever lived, ordered bluntly, "Sing or I'll wring your

neck." Hideyoshi, possibly the most skillful diplomat in Japanese

history, told the bird, "If you don't want to sing, I'll make you."

Ieyasu, who eventually inherited the fruits of the others' labor,

patiently advised the bird, "If you won't sing now, I'll wait until you

will." Today the years dominated by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi are known as

the Momoyama era, and the following two centuries of peace presided

over by Ieyasu and his descendants are referred to as the Tokugawa.

After the Onin War, which had destroyed the power of the Ashikaga

shogunate and the aristocratic Zen culture of Kyoto, Japan had become a

collection of feudal fiefdoms. The emperor and Ashikaga shoguns in

Kyoto were titular rulers of a land they in no way governed. Into this

regional balance of power came Nobunaga, who began his military career

by killing his brother in a family dispute and taking control of his

home province. Shortly thereafter he defeated a powerful regional

warlord who had invaded the province with an army far outnumbering his

own. The victory made him a national figure overnight and destroyed the

balance of dynamic tension that had preserved the system of autonomous

_daimyo_ fiefs. Rival _daimyo_, covetous of their neighbors' lands,

rushed to enlist his aid until, in 1568, he marched into Kyoto and

installed a shogun of his own choosing.

When the Buddhists on Mt. Hiei objected to Nobunaga's practices of land

confiscation, he marched up the hill and sacked the premises, burning

the buildings to the ground and killing every last man, woman, and

child. This style of ecumenicity had been practiced often enough among

the Buddhists themselves as one sect warred against the other, but

never before had a secular ruler dared such a feat. This act and the

program of systematic persecution that followed marked the end of

genuine Buddhist influence in Japan.

Nobunaga's armies of musket-wielding foot soldiers were on the verge of

consolidating his authority over all Japan when he was unexpectedly

murdered by one of his generals. The clique responsible for the

attempted coup was dispatched in short

order by Nobunaga's leading general, the aforementioned diplomat

Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi, who later became known as the Napoleon of Japan,

was not of _samurai _blood and had in fact begun his military career as

Nobunaga's sandal holder. He was soon providing the warlord with astute

military advice, and it was only a matter of time until he was a

trusted lieutenant. He was the first (and last) shogun of peasant

stock, and his sudden rise to power caused aristocratic eyebrows to be

raised all across Japan. Physically unimposing, he was one of the

seminal figures in world history, widely acknowledged to have been the

best military strategist in the sixteenth-century world, and he

completed the process of unification. The anecdotes surrounding his

life are now cherished legends in Japan. For example, a favorite

military stratagem was to bring a recalcitrant _daimyo_ to the very

brink of ruin and then fall back, offering an incredibly generous

peace. However unwise such a tactic might be in the West, it had the

effect in Japan of converting a desperate enemy into an indebted

subordinate.

With the country at peace, foreign trade flourishing, and a rigorous

system of taxation in force, Hideyoshi found himself with an excess of

time and money. His response was to launch the Momoyama age of Japanese

art. With more power than any ruler since Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, he was

in a position to direct taste, if not to dictate it. This time there

were few Zen monks in attendance to advise him on expenditures

(Hideyoshi continued to keep the Buddhists under close guard, a

practice as pleasing to the Jesuits as his harem was displeasing), and

his flamboyant taste had full reign. Momoyama art became, in many ways,

the antithesis of Zen aesthetics. Hideyoshi ordered huge screens to be

covered in gold leaf and decorated with explicit still-lifes painted in

vibrant primary colors. Yet he was no stranger to Zen ideals; he kept a

famous tea-ceremony aesthete as adviser and lavished huge sums on the

special ceramics required for this ritual. In many ways, the Zen tea

ceremony and tea ceramics became for Hideyoshi what Zen gardens,

painting, and the No were for the Ashikaga. His patronage not only

inspired a flourishing of ceramic art; the tea ceremony now became the

vehicle through which Zen canons of taste and aesthetics were

transmitted to the common man. The patronage of the Ashikaga had

furthered Zen art among the _samurai _and the aristocracy; Hideyoshi's

patronage opened it to the people at large.

Ironically, the Zen arts profited from Hideyoshi's military blunders as

well as from his patronage. At one point in his career he decided to

invade China, but his armies, predictably, never got past Korea. The

enterprise was unworthy of his military genius, and puzzled historians

have speculated that it may actually have been merely a diversion for

his unemployed _samurai_, intended to remove them temporarily to

foreign soil. The most significant booty brought back from this

disastrous venture (now sometimes known as the "pottery campaign") was

a group of Korean potters, whose rugged folk ceramics added new

dimensions to the equipment of the tea ceremony.

Having maneuvered the shogunate away from Nobunaga's heirs, Hideyoshi

became increasingly nervous about succession as his health began to

fail, fearing that his heirs might be similarly deprived of their

birthright. The problem was particularly acute, since his only son,

Hideyori, was five years old and scarcely able to defend the family

interests. In 1598, as the end approached, Hideyoshi formed a council

of _daimyo_ headed by Tokugawa Ieyasu to rule until his son came of

age, and on his deathbed he forced them to swear they would hand over

the shogunate when the time came. Needless to say, nothing of the sort

happened.

Tokugawa Ieyasu was no stranger to the brutal politics of the age,

having once ordered his own wife's execution when Nobunaga suspected

her of treason, and he spent the first five years after Hideyoshi's

death consolidating his power and destroying rival _daimyo_. When

Hideyoshi's son came of age, Ieyasu was ready to move. Hideyori was

living in the family citadel at Osaka defended by an army of

disenfranchised _samurai _and disaffected Christians, but Ieyasu held

the power. In the ensuing bloodbath Hideyoshi's line was erased from

the earth, and the Christians' faulty political judgment caused their

faith eventually to be forbidden to all Japanese under threat of death.

Christianity continued to be practiced on a surreptitious basis,

however, as the Christians found shelter in, of all places, the Zen

monasteries.

With the passing of Hideyoshi's line, the Tokugawa family became the

only power in Japan, a land at last unified and with an imposed peace.

Viewing foreign influences as a source of domestic unrest, the Tokugawa

moved to bring down a curtain of isolationism around their shores:

Christian Europeans were expelled and Japanese were forbidden to travel

abroad. Ieyasu established a new capital at Edo (now Tokyo) and

required the local _daimyo_ to spend a large amount of time and money

in attendance. Thus he craftily legitimatised his own position while

simultaneously weakening that of the _daimyo_--a technique used with

equal effect almost a century later by Louis XIV, when he moved his

court from Paris to Versailles to contain the French aristocracy.

Content with the status quo, members of the Tokugawa family felt it

could best be preserved by extreme conservatism, so they sent forth a

volley of decrees formalizing all social relationships. Time was

brought to a stop, permitting the Tokugawa to rule unhindered until the

middle of the nineteenth century, when the country was again opened to

foreign trade under the guns of American warships.

During the Tokugawa regime another Chinese "religion" assumed

the place in the hearts of the shoguns that Buddhism had enjoyed in

centuries past. This was Confucianism, more a philosophy than a

religion, which in its original form had taught a respect for learning,

the ready acceptance of a structured hierarchy, and unquestioning

obedience to authority (that of both elders and superiors). The

Tokugawa perverted Confucianism to establish a caste system among their

subjects, separating them into the _samurai_ class, the peasant class,

and the merchant and artisan classes--the order given here denoting

their supposed status. However, as the Japanese social system began to

evolve, the idea backfired, causing great difficulties for the

government. The reasons for this are interesting, for they bear

directly upon the eventual role of Zen culture in Japanese life.

For centuries, Japan's major source of income had been agriculture. The

_samurai_ were local landholders who employed peasants to grow their

rice and who were beholden to a local _daimyo_ for protection. Money

played no large part in the economy, since most daily needs could be

obtained by barter. But the sudden wealth brought into being by the

European traders had nothing to do with the amount of rice a _samurai's

_peasants could produce; it accrued instead to the merchants in port

cities. Furthermore, the accommodations required to keep the _daimyo

_and their families in the capital city of Edo called for artisans and

merchants in great number. Thus the Tokugawa government had mistakenly

decreed the agricultural _samurai_ and peasants the backbone of the

economy at the very moment in history when Japan was finally developing

an urban, currency-based culture. Predictably, the urban merchants, who

were at the bottom of the Confucianist social system, soon had their

supposed social betters, the _samurai_, completely in hock.

The Tokugawa struggled hard to keep the townspeople, now the

controllers of the economy, in their place. Merchants were forbidden to

build elaborate houses or wear elaborate clothes, and they were

expected to defer to the penurious _samurai _in all things. Japan had

never before had a bourgeoisie--the traditional divisions were

aristocracy, warriors, and peasants-- and consequently popular taste had

never really been reflected in the arts. Much to the dismay of the

Tokugawa (and to the detriment of classical Zen culture), this was

changing. While the aristocrats and warrior families in Kyoto preserved

the older arts of Zen, in the bourgeois city of Edo there were new

popular art forms like the Kabuki theater and the woodblock print, both

eons removed from the No and the monochrome landscape. Classical Zen

culture was largely confined to aristocratic Kyoto, while in boisterous

Edo the townspeople turned to explicit, exciting arts full of color and

drama.

In spite of this democratic turn of events, the Zen aesthetics of Kyoto

continued to be felt, largely through the tea ceremony, which had been

officially encouraged in the Momoyama age of Hideyoshi. Later in the

Tokugawa era the poetic form of Haiku developed, and it too was highly

influenced by the Zen idea of suggestiveness. Domestic architecture

also maintained the ideals of Zen, as did Ikebana, or flower arranging,

and the Japanese cuisine, which employed Zen ceramics. Thus Zen

aesthetics seeped into middle-class culture in many forms, tempering

taste and providing rigid rules for much of what are today thought of

as the traditional arts and crafts of the Japanese.

Traditional Buddhism did not fare well during the Momoyama and Tokugawa

ages: the militaristic Buddhist strongholds were either put to rout or

destroyed entirely during the Momoyama, and Confucianism had

considerably more influence under the Tokugawa than did Buddhism. The

great upsurge of Buddhism with its fiery teachers and believing shoguns

was over, as the faith settled into empty ritual and a decidedly

secondary station in a basically secular state. The only Buddhist sect

demonstrating any vigor at all was Zen.

The brief flourishing of Zen during the Tokugawa era was actually a

revival, for the faith had become static and uninspired during the

years of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. The formalized practice of Zen at the

end of the seventeenth century was described by a visiting Jesuit

Father:

_The solitary philosophers of the Zenshu sect, who dwell in their

retreats in the wilderness, [do not] philosophize with the help of

books and treatises written by illustrious masters and philosophers as

do the members of the other sects of the Indian gymnosophists. Instead

they give themselves up to contemplating the things of nature,

despising and abandoning worldly things; they mortify their passions by

certain enigmatic and figurative meditations and considerations [koan]

which guide them on their way at the beginning. . . . [s]o the vocation

of these philosophers is not to contend or dispute with another with

arguments, but they leave everything to the contemplation of each one

so that by himself he may attain the goal by using these principles,

and thus they do not teach disciples.1

The good Father was describing a Zen faith that had become a set piece,

devoid of controversy but also devoid of life.

The man who brought Zen out of its slumber and restored its vigor was

the mystic Hakuin (1685-1768), who revived the _koan _school of Rinzai

and produced the most famous _koan_ of all times: "You know the sound

of two hands clapping; what is the sound of one hand clapping?" Hakuin

gave a new, mystical dimension to the Rinzai school of Zen, even as

Hui-neng created nonintellectual Chinese Ch'an Buddhism out of the

founding ideas of Bodhidharma. Hakuin was also a poet, a painter, and

the author of many commentaries on the _sutras_. Yet even when he

enjoyed national fame, he never lost his modesty or his desire for

enlightenment.

Hakuin lived the greater part of his life in the small rural village of

his birth. A sensitive, impressionable child, he was early tormented by

an irrational fear of the fires of the Buddhist hell as dwelt upon by

the priests of his mother's sect, the Nichiren. For relief he turned to

the Lotus Sutra, but nothing he read seemed to ease his mind. Finally

he became a wandering Zen monk, searching from temple to temple for a

master who could give him enlightenment. He studied under various

famous teachers and gradually achieved higher and higher levels of

awareness. At the age of thirty-two he returned to his home village and

assumed control of the ramshackle local Zen temple, which he eventually

made the center of Rinzai Zen in Japan. Word of his spiritual intensity

spread and soon novices were flocking to him. His humility and humanity

were a shining light in the spiritual dark age of the Tokugawa, and he

breathed life and understanding back into Zen.

Despite Hakuin, official Zen never regained its influence in Japan.

Someday perhaps the modern-day Western interest in Zen will give it new

life somewhere outside Japan, but this life will almost certainly be

largely secular. Indeed, the influence of Zen in the Momoyama and

Tokugawa ages was already more pronounced in the secular world than in

the spiritual. The bourgeois arts of these later years were notably

less profound than those of the Ashikaga, but the spirit of Zen spread

to become infused into the very essence of Japanese life, making the

everyday business of living an expression of popular Zen culture.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Tea Ceremony_

Chazen ichimi _(Zen and tea are one.)

Traditional Japanese expression

_The "dewy path" to teahouse

THE TEA CEREMONY combines all the faces of Zen--art, tranquility,

aesthetics. It is in a sense the essence of Zen culture. Yet this Zen

ritual has been explained to the West in so many volumes of wordy gush

that almost any description, including the above, deserves to be met

with skepticism. There has to be more to the tea ceremony than meets

the eye--and there is. But before unraveling the unseen threads of this

Zen fabric, let us pause for a moment to consider the beverage itself.

The drinking of tea seems almost to have been the world's

second oldest profession. One legend claims that tea was discovered in

the year 2737 B.C., when leaves from a tea bush

accidentally dropped into the campfire cauldron of a Chinese emperor-

aesthete. Early Chinese texts are sometimes vague about the identity of

medicinal plants, but it is clear that by the time of Confucius (around

500 B.C.) tea was a well-known drink. During the Tang dynasty (618-907),

tea leaves were treated with smoke and compressed into a semimoist

cake, slices of which would subsequently be boiled to produce a

beverage--a method that was perpetuated for many centuries in Russia.

The Chinese spiced this boiled tea with salt, a holdover from even

earlier times when a variety of unexpected condiments were added,

including orange peel, ginger, and onions.

The refined courtiers of the Sung dynasty (960-1279) apparently found

brick tea out of keeping with their delicate tastes, for they replaced

it with a drink in which finely ground tea leaves were blended with

boiling water directly in the cup. Whipped with a bamboo whisk, this

mixture superficially resembled shaving lather in texture, although the

color could be a fine jade green if fresh leaves were used. (This green

powdered tea was the drink one day to become enshrined in the Zen tea

ceremony.) The Chinese chronicle of tea ends with the Ming dynasty

(1368-1644), which saw the rise of the familiar steeping process, now

the commonly accepted practice worldwide. Our ignorance of the earlier

methods of tea preparation may be attributed to the West's discovery of

China after the older methods had been discarded.

Unlike its misty origins in China, the use of tea in Japan is well

authenticated. In the year 792 the Japanese emperor surprised the court

by holding a large tea party at which Buddhist monks and other notables

were invited to sample a curious beverage discovered by his emissaries

to the T'ang court. Tea drinking soon became a fashionable pastime,

occupying a position comparable to taking coffee in eighteenth-century

Europe, but tea remained an expensive import and little thought was

given to cultivation in Japan. This changed early in the ninth century

when tea drinking came to be associated with the new Buddhist sects of

Tendai and Shingon. Under the supervision of the court, tea growing was

begun near Kyoto, where the emperor blessed the bushes with a special

_sutra_ in the spring and autumn. Tea remained an aristocratic habit

for several centuries thereafter and did not become really popular

until the late twelfth century, when the famous Zen teacher Eisai

"reintroduced" the beverage upon his return from China. Eisai also

brought back new seeds for planting, the progeny of which are still

growing.

Chinese Ch'an monks had long been devoted to tea. In fact, a famous but

apocryphal legend attributes the tea bush to Bodhidharma, relating that

during his nine years of meditation outside Shao-lin monastery he found

himself nodding and in anger tore off his eyelids and flung them to the

ground, whereupon tea plants sprang forth. There was a reason for the

legend. Tea had long been used to forestall drowsiness during long

periods of meditation. (A cup of modern steeped tea contains an average

three-quarters of a grain of caffeine, about half the amount in a cup

of coffee.) The drinking of tea became ritualized in Ch'an monasteries,

where the monks would congregate before an image of Bodhidharma and

take a sacrament of tea from a single shared bowl in his memory. This

ritual was gradually adopted by Japanese Zen monasteries, providing the

forerunner of the solemn moment of shared tea which became the basis of

the tea ceremony.

The Japanese aristocracy and the warrior class also took up tea, and

borrowing a custom from the Sung court, gave tea-tasting parties,

similar to modern wine-tasting affairs. From the time of Ashikaga

Takauji to Ashikaga Yoshimasa, these parties were an accompaniment to

many of the courtly evenings spent admiring Sung ceramics and

discussing Sung art theories. Although Zen monks played a prominent

role in these aesthetic gatherings, the drinking of tea in monasteries

seems to have been a separate activity. Thus the ceremonial drinking of

tea developed in two parallel schools: the aristocracy used it in

refined entertainments while the Zen monks drank tea as a pious

celebration of their faith.

These two schools were eventually merged into the Zen-

inspired gathering known simply as the tea ceremony, _cha-no-yu_. But

first there was the period when each influenced the other. Zen

aesthetic theory gradually crept into the aristocratic tea parties, as

taste turned away from the polished Sung ceramic cups toward ordinary

pottery. This was the beginning of the tradition of deliberate

understatement later to be so important in the tea ceremony. Zen ideals

took over the warrior tea parties. During his reign, Yoshimasa was

persuaded by a famous Zen monk-aesthetician to construct a small room

for drinking tea monastery-style. The mood in this room was all Zen,

from the calligraphic scroll hanging in the tokonoma art alcove to the

ceremonial flower arrangements and the single cup shared in a sober

ritual. After this, those who would serve tea had first to study the

tea rituals of the Zen monastery. Furthermore, warriors came to believe

that the Zen tea ritual would help their fighting discipline.

By the sixteenth century the discipline and tranquility of the ceremony

had become fixed, but the full development of _cha-no-yu _as a vehicle

for preserving Zen aesthetic theory was yet to come. Gradually, one by

one, the ornate aspects of the earlier Sung tea parties were purged.

The idea took hold that tea should be drunk not in a room partitioned

off from the rest of the house, but in a special thatch-roofed hut

constructed specifically for the purpose, giving tea drinking an air of

conspicuous poverty. The elaborate vessels and interior appointments

favored in the fifteenth century were supplanted in the sixteenth by

rugged, folk-style pottery and an interior decor as restrained as a

monastery. By stressing an artificial poverty, the ceremony became a

living embodiment of Zen with its distaste for materialism and the

world of getting and spending.

It remained for a sixteenth-century Zen teacher to bring all the

aesthetic ideas in the tea ceremony together in a rigid system. He was

Sen no Rikyu (1521-1591), who began as the tea instructor of Nobunaga

and continued to play the same role for Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi was

devoted to the tea ceremony, and under his patronage Rikyu formalized

the classic rules under which _cha-no-yu _is practiced today.

The most famous anecdote from Rikyu's life is the incident remembered

as the "tea party of the morning glory." As the son of a merchant in a

port city, Rikyu developed a taste for the new and exotic. At one time

he began the cultivation of imported European morning glories, a novel

flower to the Japanese, which he sometimes used for the floral display

accompanying the tea ceremony. Hideyoshi, learning of these new

flowers, informed Rikyu that he wished to take morning tea with him in

order to see the blossoms at their finest. On the selected date,

Hideyoshi arrived to find that all the flowers in the garden had been

plucked; not a single petal was to be seen. Understandably out of

temper, he proceeded to the tea hut--there to discover a single morning

glory, still wet with the dews of dawn, standing in the _tokonoma

_alcove, a perfect illustration of the Zen precept of sufficiency in

restraint.

Tea ceremonies today are held in special backyard gardens, equipped for

the purpose with a waiting shelter at the entrance and a tiny teahouse

at the far end. When one arrives at the appointed time, one joins the

two or three other guests in the garden shed for a waiting period

designed to encourage a relaxed state of mind and the requisite Zen

tranquility. The tea garden, known as the _roji_, or "dewy path,"

differs from conventional Japanese temple gardens in that it is merely

a passageway between the waiting shelter and the teahouse. Since the

feeling is meant to be that of a mountain path, there are no ponds or

elaborate stone arrangements. The only natural rocks in evidence are

the stepping stones themselves, but along the path are a carved stone

in the shape of a water basin and a bamboo dipper, so that one can

rinse one's mouth before taking tea, and a stone lantern to provide

illumination for evening gatherings. The unpretentious stones of the

walkway, set deep in natural mossy beds, divide the garden into two

parts, winding through it like a curving, natural path. Dotted about

the garden are carefully pruned pine trees, azalea bushes clipped into

huge globes, or perhaps a towering cryptomeria whose arching branches

protect guests against the afternoon sun. Although the garden floor is

swept clean, it may still have a vagrant leaf or pine needle strewn

here and there. As one waits for the host's appearance, the garden

slowly begins to impose a kind of magic, drawing one away from the

outside world.

When all the guests have arrived, they sound a wooden gong, and

the host silently appears to beckon them to the tea room. Each guest in

turn stops at the water basin for a sip. At closer range, the teahouse

turns out to be a rustic thatch-roofed hut with gray plaster walls and

an asymmetrical supporting framework of hand-hewn woods. The floor is

pitched above the ground as in the traditional house, but instead of a

doorway there is a small square hole through which one must climb on

his knees--a psychological design feature intended to ensure that all

worldly dignity is left outside. Only the humble can enter here, for

each must kneel in the sight of the others present.

The interior of the tea room may feel cramped at first. Although the

room is virtually bare, there seems little space left after the other

guests have knelt about the central hearth. The room is in the _sukiya

_style favored by Rikyu, with the walls a patchwork of dull plaster,

raw wood, a few _shoji _rice-paper windows, and a small _tokonoma_ art

alcove. The only decoration is a single object on the _tokonoma_ dais

and the hanging scroll against the back wall. This impression of simple

rusticity is deliberately deceptive, however, for the tea room is

actually fashioned from the finest available woods and costs

considerably more per unit area than the host's home. It is ironic that

the sense of poverty and anti-materialism pervading the tea room can be

achieved only at enormous expense, yet this deceit is one of the

outstanding creations of Zen culture. The room and its psychological

impact have been eloquently analyzed by the Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki.

As I look around, in spite of its obvious simplicity the room betrays

every mark of thoughtful designing: the windows are irregularly

inserted; the ceiling is not of one pattern; the materials used, simple

and un-ornamental . . . the floor has a small square opening where hot

water is boiling in an artistically-shaped iron kettle.

The papered _shoji_ covering the windows admit only soft light,

shutting out direct sunshine. . . . As I sit here quietly before the

fireplace, I become conscious of the burning of incense. The odor is

singularly nerve soothing. . . . Thus composed in mind, I hear a soft

breeze passing through the needle leaves of the pine tree; the sound

mingles with the trickling of water from a bamboo pipe into the stone

basin.1

The tea ceremony is intended to engage all the senses, soothing each in

turn. As described by Suzuki, the organs of sight, hearing, and smell

are all embraced even before the ceremony begins. The purpose, of

course, is to create a feeling of harmony and tranquility conducive to

the reverential spirit of the Zen sacrament. The surroundings massage

your mind and adjust your attitude. This point is particularly stressed

by Suzuki.

_Where [tranquility] is lacking, the art will lose its significance

altogether. . . . The massing of rocks, the trickling of water, the

thatched hut, the old pine trees sheltering it, the moss-covered stone

lantern, the sizzling of the kettle water, and the light softly

filtering through the paper screens--all these are meant uniformly to

create a meditative frame of mind.2

If a multicourse ceremony is in store, a light meal of _hors d'oeuvres

_and sake is served first. If the dinner hour is near, it may in fact

be a substantial repast, all of which is eaten from lacquer or

porcelain bowls set on a tray on the floor. After the food is consumed,

the guests file out of the teahouse and wait for the host to announce

the beginning of the actual tea ceremony. When they return, the

ambience of the tea room has been subtly changed: the hanging scroll

has vanished from the _tokonoma _to be replaced by a simple vase

containing one or two partially opened buds; and a cheerful charcoal

fire, seasoned with pine needles and a touch of incense, glows from the

sunken hearth in the center of the room there. Water is boiling in a

kettle, emitting a sound that suggests wind in a pine forest, a subtle

aural effect caused by small bits of iron attached to the bottom of the

vessel.

Beside the seated host are the implements of the ceremony: a lacquer or

ceramic tea caddy with the powdered green tea

(_koicha_), a jar of cold water for replenishing the kettle, a bamboo

dipper, a new bamboo whisk, a receptacle for waste water, a linen

napkin for the bowl, and, finally, the tea bowl itself, best described

as a Zen loving cup or chalice. All the utensils have been selected for

their special aesthetic qualities, but the bowl is always the

unchallenged _piece de resistance_ and may well be an heirloom from the

hand of a seventeenth-century potter. Each guest is also provided with

tiny sweet cakes, to salve his mouth against the bitter tea.

With everything at hand, the host begins to prepare the whipped green

tea. It is a seated dance, an orchestrated ritual, as deliberate,

paced, and formal as the elevation of the host in a Catholic Mass. All

the gestures have been practiced for years, until they fit together in

a fluid motion. First the bowl is rinsed with hot water from the kettle

and wiped with a napkin. Next the bamboo scoop is used to transport the

powdered _koicha _from the caddy into the bowl, after which boiling

water is added from the bamboo dipper. The host then proceeds, with

measured motions, to blend the tea with the bamboo whisk, gradually

transforming the dry powder and boiling water into a jade blend as

exquisitely beautiful as it is harshly bitter.

The guest of honor has the first taste. Taking the bowl, he salutes the

host and then samples the preparation, complimenting the host on its

quality. After two more precise sips, he wipes the lip with a napkin he

has brought for that purpose, rotates the bowl, and passes it to the

next guest, who repeats the ritual. The last to drink must empty the

bowl. Curiously enough, only the host is denied a taste of his

handiwork. After the formal drinking of _koicha_, the bowl is rinsed

and a second batch of tea is made--this time a thinner variety known as

_usucha_. Although it is also whipped Sung-style, it is considerably

lighter in consistency and taste.

After the second cup of tea, the formal part of the ceremony is

completed, and the guests are at liberty to relax, enjoy sweets, and

discuss Zen aesthetics. The focus of conversation is usually the tea

bowl, which is passed around for all to admire in detail. Comments on

the flower arrangement are also in order, as is a bit of poetry

appropriate to the season. What is not discussed--indeed, what no one

wants to discuss--is the world outside the garden gate. Each guest is at

one with himself, his place, and the natural setting. Values have been

subtly guided into perspective, spirits purified, appreciation of

beauty rewarded; for a fleeting moment the material world of dualities

has become as insubstantial as a dream.

The tea ceremony is the great parable of Zen culture, which teaches by

example that the material world is a tThef depriving us of our most

valuable possessions--naturalness, simplicity, self-knowledge. But it is

also much more; its underlying aesthetic principles are the foundation

of latter-day Zen culture. It is a perfect blending of the three faces

of Zen. First there are the physical art forms themselves: the tea

ceremony deeply influenced architectural tastes, bringing into being

the informal _sukiya_ style to replace the rigid _shoin _formulas of

the _samurai _house; the art of flower arrangement, or Ikebana, owes

much to the floral arrangements required for the ceremony; painting and

calligraphy were influenced by the understated decorative requirements

of the _tokonoma_ hanging scroll; lacquer ware developed in directions

designed to complement the artistic principles of the ceremony

utensils; and, finally, the growth of Japanese ceramic art from the

fifteenth century onward was largely due to the particular aesthetic

and practical needs of the tea ceremony.

The second face of Zen, tranquility in a troubled world, found its

finest expression in _cha-no-yu_, which demonstrates as no sermon ever

could the Zen approach to life.

The third face of Zen is that of aesthetics. By becoming a vehicle for

the transmission of Zen aesthetic principles, _cha-no-yu _has preserved

Zen culture for all times. It has given the people at large a standard

of taste, guaranteeing that certain basic ideals of beauty will always

be preserved against the ravages of mechanical civilization. And it is

in this connection that we must examine the special features of the tea

ceremony introduced by Hideyoshi's tea master, Sen no Rikyu. To the

ancient Zen ideas of _yugen _and _sabi _he brought the new concept of

_wabi_.

_Yugen_, the realization of profundity through open-ended suggestion,

found its finest expression in No poetry. _Sabi _grew out of the Heian

admiration for lovely things on the verge of extinction. By the period

this curious attitude was extended to things already old, and so

entered the idea of _sabi_, a term denoting objects agreeably mellowed

with age. _Sabi_ also brought melancholy overtones of loneliness, of

age left behind by time. New objects are assertive and striving for

attention; old, worn objects have the quiet, peaceful air that exudes

tranquility, dignity, and character. Although there is no word in a

Western language precisely equivalent to _sabi_, the ideal is well

understood. For example, we say that the sunburned face of a fisherman

has more character than that of a beardless youth. But to the Japanese

_sabi_ is first and foremost the essence of beauty, whether in a

weathered house or temple, the frayed golden threads of fabric binding

a Zen scroll, a withered bough placed in the _tokonoma_ alcove, or an

ancient kettle rusty with time. The ideal of _sabi_, which became part

of the Zen aesthetic canon of beauty, was perfectly at home in the tea

ceremony, where even the utensils were deliberately chosen for their

weathered look.

_Sabi_, however, seemed an incomplete ideal to Sen no Rikyu. The fact

that rich objects are old does not make them less rich. _Sabi_ can

still encompass snobbery. As tea master for both Nobunaga and

Hideyoshi, Rikyu was so pained by their ostentation that he eventually

revolutionized the tea ceremony and created a new aesthetic standard:

_wabi_, a deliberate restraint, which is exemplified in his tea party

of the single morning glory. _Wabi_, now a cornerstone of Zen aesthetic

theory, is well described in a poem by Rikyu, which includes the lines:

_How much does a person lack himself,

Who feels the need to have so many things.

In a sense, _wabi _is the glorification of artificial poverty,

artificial because there must be the element of forced restraint and in

genuine poverty there is nothing to restrain. The _wabi _tea ceremony

permits no hint of wealth to be in evidence; those who enter the tea

garden must leave their worldly status at the gate. Similarly, the

_sukiya_-style teahouse must look like a rustic hut--not made out of

something new, for that would destroy _sabi_, but not out of expensive

antique woods, either. This ideal extends even to the floral

arrangement, one or at most two buds; the clothes one wears, simple not

dressy; the pots and cups, plain and undecorated.

_Wabi _purged the tea ceremony of all its lingering aristocratic

qualities, bringing into being _cha-no-yu _as it is practiced today.

Today many Japanese, even those who practice neither tea drinking nor

Zen, know and appreciate the ideals preserved in the ceremony. In

recent years the concept of _wabi _has become the rallying point for

those who regret the intrusions of the modern West into traditional

Japanese culture, and _cha-no-yu _is valued as never before as a

lesson in life's true values.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Zen Ceramic Art

_ Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity.

_ John Keats, _Ode on a Grecian Urn

Shino tea bowl

Raku tea bowl

_ALTHOUGH JAPAN had been a nation of potters almost from prehistoric

times, it was only after the rise of Zen influence and a popular

interest in the tea ceremony that ceramics was raised from craft to

high art. The great age of Japanese ceramics occurred several hundred

years after the heroic periods of Chinese ceramic art in the T'ang and

Sung dynasties, but, as in other cases, the Japanese eventually equaled

and in some ways surpassed their mainland teachers.

The Stone Age Jomon tribes in Japan created some of the richest

figurine art of any of the world's prehistoric peoples. These Jomon

figurines, fired at low temperatures and rarely over six or eight

inches in height, are a classic puzzle to anthropologists and art

historians, for they sometimes seem Polynesian, sometimes pre-

Columbian, and sometimes pure abstraction in the modern sense of the

term. Indeed, certain Jomon figurines could pass as works of Picasso or

Miro. At times the features of the body were rendered recognizably, but

usually they were totally stylized and integrated into the figure as

part of some larger interest in material and pure form. It was a noble

beginning for what would be a permanent Japanese interest in the look

and feel of natural clay.

When the Jomon were displaced around the third century B.C. by the

Yayoi, their beautiful figurine art disappeared, and for several

centuries Japan produced mainly pedestrian crocks and drinking vessels.

The few figurines created retained little of the sophisticated Jomon

abstraction. Around the turn of the fourth century A.D., however, Yayoi

potters found their metier, and began the famous _haniwa _figurines,

hollow-eyed statuettes in soft brown clay which were used to decorate

aristocratic tombs, and simple but elegant vases and water pots in low-

fired brown clay, which often were dyed with cinnabar and which give

evidence of being thrown on some form of primitive wheel.

This domestic ware was in such demand that a class of professional

potters came into being--inevitably leading to a gradual falling off of

the individualistic character of the pots, as craftsmen began to mass-

produce what had previously been a personal art form. The Korean

Buddhist culture which reached Japan in the fifth and sixth centuries

brought the Japanese new techniques for high-firing their stoneware

pots, introducing a process whereby ashes from the kiln were allowed to

adhere to the surface of a piece to produce a natural glaze. These new

high-temperature pots had a hard surface texture and an ashen- gray

color, while the existing native wares of low-fired porous clays

retained their natural brown hues.

Typically the average Japanese preferred the natural-colored, soft clay

vessels, and so the two types of pottery continued to be produced side

by side for several hundred years, with the aristocracy choosing the

hard-surfaced mainland-style gray works

and the common people continuing to use the simpler, underrated brown

vessels, which were often fashioned by hand. The importance of this

instinctive Japanese reaction for the later acceptance of Zen-inspired

ceramic art cannot be over-stressed. Not only did the Japanese love of

natural clay make them reject glazes for centuries after they had

learned the necessary techniques, they also seem to have had little

spontaneous interest in decorating their pots or using high-firing or

mechanized techniques for their production, perhaps because the

technology came between man and object, distancing the potter too far

from his handiwork. Japanese potters cherished their regional

individuality, and they continued to express their personal

sensibilities in their work, so there were a multiplicity of rural

kilns and a wide variety of styles.

The passion for Chinese culture during the Nara period of the eighth

century led to a brief fling with Tang Chinese-style three-color glazed

wares among the imitative Japanese aristocracy; but these seem to have

been too much at odds with native instincts, for they were soon

forgotten. After the government moved to Kyoto and launched the Heian

era, both the indigenous pottery techniques--the low-fired, brown,

porous pots for the common people and the high-fired, gray, polished

bowls for the aristocracy--continued to thrive side by side. However,

technical advances in the high-firing kilns brought about subtle

changes in the mock-glazes of the aristocratic wares. It was discovered

that if they were fired in an atmosphere where there was abundant

oxygen, the fused particles of fueled ash on the surface would turn

amber, whereas if oxygen was excluded from the kiln, the surface ash

would fuse to a pastel green. Thus by varying the baking process, Heian

potters could produce a variety of light colors, creating a pottery

considerably more delicate than had been possible before. Aside from

this refined technique for firing, however, the Japanese steadfastly

refused to change their traditional methods of making pots.

For this reason, Japanese ceramics were deliberately kept at a

technically primitive stage until the early part of the thirteenth

century while the Chinese were making considerable advances in the art.

During the years from the ninth to the thirteenth century, while the

Japanese isolated themselves from the mainland, the Sung Chinese were

learning of new glazes far more subtle and refined than those employed

during the T'ang. In the early years of the thirteenth century, when

Japanese monks journeyed to China to study the new faith of Zen, they

were dazzled by the sophisticated new Chinese wares they encountered.

Through the offices of Zen a second revolution in Japanese ceramics

occurred.

The instrument for this second revolution (according to tradition) was

the priest Dogen, founder of Japanese Soto Zen, who on one of his trips

to China was accompanied by a Japanese potter known as Toshiro. Toshiro

stayed in China for six years, studying the Sung techniques of glazing,

and on his return he opened a kiln at Seto, where he began copying Sung

glazed wares. Although he has been called the father of modem Japanese

ceramics, his attempts to duplicate the highly praised Sung products

were not entirely successful. Furthermore, the wares he did produce,

decorative and thick-glazed, found no acceptance except among the

aristocracy and priesthood, both of whom favored Seto wares for the new

pastime of drinking Chinese tea. But while the Zen aesthetes and tea

drinkers amused themselves with Seto's fake Sung celadons, the

commoners continued to use unglazed stoneware.

All this changed dramatically around the middle of the sixteenth

century with the rise of an urban middle class and the sudden

popularity of the Zen tea ceremony among this new bourgeoisie. Zen,

which had brought Chinese glazes to Japan in the thirteenth century,

sparked the emergence of a brilliant era of glazed ceramic art in the

sixteenth. No longer content with primitive stoneware or reproductions

of Chinese vessels, the potters of Japan finally developed native

styles at once uniquely Japanese and as sophisticated as any the world

has seen. It was another triumph for Zen culture. Rural kilns with long

traditions of stoneware water vessels converted to the production of

tea-ceremony wares, and throughout the land the search was on for

colored glazes. The craze reached such heights that the shogun generals

Nobunaga and Hideyoshi rewarded their successful military commanders

not with decorations but with some particularly coveted tea-ceremony

utensils.

Although ceramic tea caddies and water jars were required for the

ceremony, the real emphasis was on the drinking bowl, for this was the

piece that was handled and admired at close range. A proper bowl, in

addition to being beautiful, had to be large enough and deep enough to

allow sufficient tea for three or four drinkers to be whisked; it had

no handle and consequently had to be of a light, porous, nonconducting

clay with a thick, rough glaze to act as a further insulator and to

permit safe handling between drinkers; the rim had to be thick and

tilted slightly inward, to provide the participants with a pleasant

sensation while drinking and to minimize dripping. In other words,

these bowls were as functionally specialized in their own way as a

brandy snifter or a champagne glass of today.

A number of styles of tea bowl developed during the sixteenth century,

reflecting the artistic visions of various regional potters and the

different clays available. What these bowls had in common, beyond their

essential functional characteristics, was an adherence to the

specialized dictates of Zen aesthetic theory. Equally important, they

were a tribute to the historic Japanese reverence for natural clay.

Even though they were glazed, portions of the underlying clay texture

were often allowed to show through, and the overall impression was that

the glaze was used to emphasize the texture of the underlying clay, not

disguise it. The colors of the glazes were natural and organic, not

hard and artificial.

The social unrest preceding the rise of Nobunaga caused a number of

potters to leave the Seto area, site of the fake Sung production, and

resettle in the province of Mino, where three basic styles of tea bowl

eventually came to prominence. First there was the Chinese-style tea

vessel, which had been the mainstay of the older Seto kilns. Yellow

glazes, once the monopoly of Seto, were also used at Mino, but

different clays, combined with advancing technical competence and a new

willingness to experiment, produced a new "Seto" ware that was a rich

yellow and considerably more Japanese than Chinese. Second there was a

new, thoroughly Zen-style bowl developed by the Mino potters. It was

broader-based than the Chinese style, with virtually straight sides,

and it was covered with a thick, creamy off-white glaze. Warm and

endearing in appearance, with a flowing sensuous texture inviting to

the touch, it became known as Shino.

Some say Shino bowls were named after a celebrated master of the tea

ceremony, while others maintain the term was taken from the Japanese

word for white, _shiro_. Whatever the case, this was the first glazed

ware of truly native origins; and it marked the beginning of a new

Japanese attitude toward pottery. No longer inhibited by reverence for

Chinese prototypes, the makers of Shino let their spontaneity run wild.

The new white glaze was deliberately applied in a haphazard manner,

often covering only part of the bowl or being allowed to drip and run.

Sometimes part of the glaze was wiped off after it had been applied,

leaving thin spots where the brown under-clay could show through after

the firing. Or bubbles, bums, and soot were allowed to remain in the

glaze as it was fired. Sometimes the white glaze was bathed in a darker

coating in which incisions were made to allow the white to show

through. At other times, sketchy designs, seemingly thrown down with a

half-dry brush, were scribbled on the white bowls so that they appeared

to be covered with Zen graffiti. Throughout all these innovations, the

potters seemed to want to produce works as rough, coarse, and

unsophisticated as possible. Before long they had a gray glaze as well,

and finally they produced a shiny black glaze whose precise formulation

remains one of the unsolved mysteries of Momoyama art.

The next color to enter the Mino repertory, after yellow, white, gray,

and black, was a stunning green. This was the third style of Mino tea

bowl, and it was invented by a disciple of Rikyu whose name, Oribe, has

been given to an incredible variety of wares--tea bowls, tea caddies,

water jars, incense burners, and a host of dishes for serving food.

Sometimes the wares were solid green, but Oribe also had a habit of

splashing the green over one section of a piece, or allowing it to run

into one corner of a plate and freeze there in a limpid puddle. The

portions of Oribe wares not covered with the splash of green were dull

shades, ranging from gray to reddish brown, and on this background

artists began to paint decorative designs- flowers, geometrical

figures, even small sketches or still-lifes--something new and

revolutionary for Japanese ceramics, but the forerunner of the

profusion of decorative wares that appeared after the Momoyama. Shino

had broken the bonds of the centuries of unglazed stoneware and proper

copies of Chinese pots by introducing a native style of glazing and a

new aesthetic freedom; Oribe led the way into a new world of anything-

goes pottery, with half-glazes, painted decorative motifs, and

experimentation in new, hitherto unknown shapes and types of vessels.

While the native Japanese potters at Mino were expanding their craft,

another important development with far-reaching consequences for the

Zen arts was taking place in the far south of the Japanese archipelago

near the Korean peninsula. The ceramic arts of Korea were quite

advanced at the beginning of the sixteenth century, with high-fired

glazed wares as heavy and sturdy as the peasant stock from which they

sprang. But the pots were made by building up coils of clay and beating

them into a solid walled vessel rather than throwing them on a wheel.

This combination of high and low seems to have appealed to the Japanese

clans living near the Korean mainland, for they brought a number of

Korean potters to the southern city of Karatsu and started an industry.

The staple product of the Korean craftsman was a crude medium-sized

bowl with sloping sides, used in their homeland for individual servings

of rice. The primitive quality of these bowls perfectly suited the

growing inverse snobbery of the tea ceremony, and soon Japanese

aesthetes were drinking tea and admiring the Zen beauty in the Korean

rice bowl. While the Mino potters were deliberately making the Sung tea

bowl rougher and rougher (that is, adding _wabi_), those in Karatsu

found themselves with a foreign bowl ready-made for tea.

When Hideyoshi invaded Korea during the last decade of the sixteenth

century, he and his generals were careful to kidnap as many Korean

potters as possible, whom they settled over a large part of Japan. No

longer restricted to a small area in the south, the Koreans injected a

vigorous transfusion of peasant taste into all of Japanese ceramic art,

extinguishing the last remnants of the refined Sung ideals. The

Momoyama tea masters were given a new but still foreign standard of

rustic chic perfectly in accord with _wabi_ tea.

Not surprisingly, it was Sen no Rikyu who synthesized the new native

freedom and the fresh influx of mainland technology to create the

undisputed glory of Japanese ceramics--the famous _raku_. Unquestionably

Japan's most original contribution to the history of ceramics, _raku

_is produced in a manner entirely different from earlier techniques,

and it is impossible to speak of _raku _without speaking of Zen. As

might be expected, _raku_ was invented in the Zen center of Kyoto, a

city with no previous history of ceramic production, and it came into

being when Rikyu happened to take a fancy to the roof tiles being

produced by a Korean workman named Chojiro. Rikyu hit upon the notion

that the texture and feel of these tiles would be perfect for _wabi_-

style tea, and he encouraged Chojiro in the making of a few tea bowls

with the materials and firing techniques used for tiles.

The bowls Chojiro made were neither thrown on a wheel nor built up from

coils, but molded and carved like sculpture.

A mixture of clays was first blended to gain the desired consistency of

lightness and plasticity, after which a spatula and knife were used to

shape a rough-sided, textured bowl whose sense of process was flaunted

rather than obscured--an overt tactile quality perhaps first seen in the

West in the rough-hewn sculptures of Rodin. These bowls were fired in a

most unconventional manner: rather than being placed cold in a wood-

burning kiln and gradually heated, baked, and cooled over a period of

days, they, like the tiles, were thrust directly into a torrid charcoal

kiln for a blistering thermal shock, which gave them an instant look of

the ravaged face of ancient _sabi_. Raku wares were first made in black

with an iron-like glaze that is almost like frozen lava, but the later

repertory included glazes that were partly or wholly red or off-white.

Unlike the Shino and Oribe bowls, _raku _pieces were not decorated with

designs or spots of color; they were _wabi _and _sabi _with

unpretentious, weathered grace. The last term you think of when seeing

_raku _is ornate.

Rikyu found _raku_ bowls perfect for the tea ceremony; they were

austere, powerful, seemingly wrenched from melted rock. In shape they

were broad-based with gently rounded, one might almost say organically

rounded, sides leading to an undulating lip, wrapping in slightly over

the tea, thereby holding the heat and preventing drips. Not only were

they light and porous, allowing for minimal heat conduction and

comfortable handling, their center of gravity was so low they were

almost impossible to tip over, permitting easy whisking of the powdered

tea as they rested on the _tatami_-matted floor of the tea room. (It

should be noted that special bowls for summer usage de-emphasized

certain of these characteristics: they were thinner-walled and

shallower, since the object in hot months was to dissipate heat rather

than conserve it.) But the most appealing qualities of the _raku _were

its sculptural sense of natural plastic form and its soft, bubbly,

almost liquid glaze, which virtually invites one to hold it in his

lips. Also, the colors of the glazes just happen to contrast

beautifully with the pale sea-green of the powdered tea.

This was the end of the search for the perfect Zen tea bowl, and

Hideyoshi was so pleased with Chojiro's handiwork that he gave the

potter's family a seal bearing the word that would give the form its

name: _raku_, meaning pleasure or comfort. Chojiro's descendants became

the _raku _dynasty, as generation after generation they set the

standards for others to follow.

Hideyoshi's act of official recognition meant that Japanese potters

were no longer merely craftsmen, but fully accredited artists. In later

years, Japanese ceramics became distinguished in many areas--from the

traditional wares produced at a multiplicity of local kilns to a vast

new nationwide porcelain industry producing decorative works for both

export and home consumption. Tea-ceremony vessels were created in great

profusion as well, but, unfortunately, genuine art cannot be mass-

produced. By the eighteenth century, the great age of Zen ceramic art

was over, never to be recovered. Today the early wares of the Zen

Momoyama artists command their weight in gold, perhaps platinum. This

is the great irony of the _wabi _tea vessels, if not of all Zen

culture.

Tea bowls, the major expression of Zen art, seem at once both primitive

and strikingly modern. To begin to understand this contradiction we

must go back to our own nineteenth century in the West, when tastes ran

to decoration for its own sake and the rule of perfect, symmetrical,

polished form was the aesthetic ideal. Into this smug, serene sea of

aesthetic sureties, which in some ways reached back to the ancient

Greeks, the English critic John Ruskin threw a boulder when he wrote:

_Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some

practical or noble end. . . . [t]he demand for perfection is always a

sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. . . . Imperfection is in

some sort essential to all we know of life. It is the sign of life in a

mortal body. . . . To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to

check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better,

lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been

divinely appointed.1

Ruskin was rediscovering a large piece of Zen aesthetic theory

while laying the groundwork for many of our modern ideals of beauty.

To see the similarity, let us examine for a moment a few of the finer

points of Zen aesthetic theory as exemplified in the classic tea bowls.

In form the bowls are frequently asymmetrical and imperfect; the glaze

seems to be a species of moss still in the process of spreading over

portions of the sides it somehow never managed to reach, and it is

uneven, marred by cracks, lumps, scratches, and foreign contaminants.

If imperfection is the goal, these bowls extend well beyond Ruskin's

original standards. But not only are they imperfect, they also seem old

and weathered, with the natural patina of a dried-up riverbed. They

show absolutely no evidence that any conscious attempt was made to

create a work of art; they appear to be completely functional.

It is all a deception. Master potters spend literally decades

perfecting the Zen art of the controlled haphazard. One of the first

principles they honor is _wabi_, which deplores nonfunctional

decorative objects, polished surfaces, artificiality in shape or color,

and anything unnatural to the materials used. Works of art without

_wabi_ may have superficial external beauty, but they forfeit inner

warmth. Bowls out of shape, with cracks, blobs, and ashes in the glaze,

invite us to partake of the process of creation through their asymmetry

and imperfection. They also lead us past the surface by virtue of its

being deliberately marred.

Making a bowl with _wabi _is considerably more difficult than

making a smooth, symmetrical, perfectly glazed piece. The creation of

contrived "accidents," on which much of the illusion of artlessness

depends, is particularly difficult. Everywhere there are scars,

contaminants, spotty glaze--all as deliberate as the decoration on a

Dresden plate; connoisseurship consists in admiring how the artist

managed to make it seem so natural and unavoidable.

The same skill goes to make a piece look old, the essential quality of

_sabi_. By suggesting long years of use, the bowls acquire humility and

richness. There is no need to "wear the new off" in order to give them

character; they are already mellow and unpretentious. The potter's

genius has gone to create the sense of wear, a quality considerably

more difficult to realize than an aura of newness.

The potter wants the Zen connoisseur to understand what he has done: to

see the clay, to feel and admire its texture, to appreciate the reasons

for the type and color of the glaze. 'The pieces are carefully

contrived to draw attention to both their original elements and the

process by which these elements were blended. For example, a bowl whose

glaze only partially covers its clay provides a link with the natural

world from which it came. Its texture springs out, like that of a piece

of natural driftwood. At the same time, the bald clay, the streaks of

glaze, the hand-formed sculpture, allow one to recognize the materials

and the process of formation. When the potter keeps no secrets, one

enters into the exhilaration of his moment of creation. Once again,

this is a deliberate aesthetic device, reminding one that the potter is

an individual artist, not a faceless craftsman. The look and feel of

Zen ceramics make them seem forerunners of the modern craft-pottery

movement, but few modern potters are blessed with the rich legacy of

Zen aesthetic ideals that made these ceramics possible. The secret lies

deep in ancient Zen culture, which taught the Momoyama masters how the

difficult could be made to seem effortless.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Zen and Haiku

_Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory--

_Percy Bysshe Shelley

HAIKU IS REGARDED by many as the supreme achievement of Zen culture. The

supposedly wordless doctrine of Zen has been accompanied throughout its

history by volumes of _koan _riddles, _sutras_, and commentaries, but

until Haiku was invented it had never enjoyed its own poetic form, nor

might it ever have if the rise of popular Zen culture had not happily

coincided with a particularly receptive stage in the evolution of

traditional Japanese poetry--an accident seized upon by a great lyric

poet of the early Edo period to create an exciting new Zen form. Haiku

today is a worldwide cult, with California poets striving to capture in

English the spareness and fleeting images that seem so effortless in

the Japanese of the early Zen masters.

On first acquaintance Japanese seems an unlikely language for poetry.

It is a syllabic tongue with each syllable ending in a vowel or the

nasal n; consequently there are only five true rhymes in the entire

language. Italian poets overcame a somewhat similar handicap, but their

language is stressed, which Japanese is not. With no usable rhymes and

no stress, how can the music of poetry be created? Over the centuries,

the Japanese solved this problem by replacing meter with a system of

fixed syllables--either five or seven--for each line. (This means that

some lines of Japanese poetry may have only one word, but the system

seems to work.) In place of rhyme, Japanese poets learned to

orchestrate the pitch of individual vowels within a single line to give

a sense of music. This device was illustrated by the American poet

Kenneth Rexroth using a poem from the classical era. (The vowels are

pronounced as in Italian.)

_Fu-ta-ri yu-ke-do

Yu-ki su-gi ga-ta-ki

A-ki ya-ma wo

I-ka-de ka ki-mi ga

Hi-to-ri ko-ge na-mu

In his analysis of this particular poem, Rexroth has pointed out that

the first and last lines contain all five vowels in the language,

whereas the middle lines contain various combinations and repetitions,

which produce a pronounced musical effect.1 The ability to create such

music without rhyme, one of the finer achievements of Japanese poetry,

is far more difficult than might at first be imagined and leads

naturally to assonance, or the close repetition of vowel sounds, and

alliteration, the repetition of similar consonant sounds. Some of the

vowels have psychological overtones, at least to the sensitive Japanese

ear: u is soft, a is sharp and resonant, o connotes vagueness tinged

with profundity.2 Various consonants also convey an emotional sense in a

similar manner.

Another clever device of the early Japanese versifiers was the use of

words with double meanings. One example of this is the so-called pivot

word, which occurs approximately halfway through a poem such as the

above and serves both to complete the sense of the first part of the

poem with one meaning and to begin a new sense and direction with its

second meaning. This can at times produce a childish effect, and it

does not always elevate the overall dignity of the verse. Another use

of double meaning is far more demanding. Since the Japanese kana script

is entirely phonetic and allows for no distinction in spelling between

homonyms, words which sound alike but have different meanings, it is

possible to carry two or more ideas through a poem. (A somewhat labored

example in English might be, "My tonights hold thee more," "My two

knights hold the moor." If these were written alike and pronounced

alike, then the poem could mean either or both.) The first meaning may

be a concrete example of a lover pining for his love, and the second a

metaphor. Ideally, the two meanings support each other, producing a

resonance said to be truly remarkable.

The early Japanese poets overcame the limitations of the Japanese

language both by attuning their ears to the music of the words and by

capitalizing on the large incidence of homonyms. They settled the

matter of meter, as noted, by prescribing the number of syllables per

line, with the principal form being five lines with syllable counts of

5,7,5,7, and 7. This thirty-one-syllable poem, known as the _waka_,

became the Japanese "sonnet" and by far the most popular poetic form

during the Heian era. Almost all a poet can do in five lines, however,

is to record a single emotion or observation. The medium governed the

message, causing Japanese poets early on to explore their hearts more

than their minds. The _waka_ became a cry of passion; a gentle

confirmation of love; a lament for the brevity of blossoms, colored

leaves, the seasons, life itself. A sampling of _waka _from the early

classical era shows the aesthetic sense of the seasons and lyric charm

of these verses.

_Tsuki ya aranu

_ Can it be that the moon has changed?

_Haru ya mukashi no

_ Can it be that the spring

_Haru naranu

_ Is not the spring of old times?

_Waga mi hitotsu wa

_ Is it my body alone

_Moto no mi nishite

_ That is just the same?3

Judged on its concentrated power alone, for this is virtually all an

English reader can evaluate, this poem is a masterpiece. Its content

can be condensed into five lines because much of its impact lies in its

suggestiveness. It is, however, closed-ended, with no philosophical

implications other than a wry look at human perceptions. Haiku added

new dimensions to Japanese poetry.

The early aristocratic era gave Japanese poetry its form, the five-line

_waka_, and its subject matter, nature and the emotions. Later the

familiar Japanese idea that life is but a fleeting moment and all

things must blossom and fade was added. One critic has noted that as

this idea took hold, poems gradually changed from praise of the plum

blossom, which lasts for weeks, to praise of the cherry blossom, which

fades in a matter of days.

_Hisakata no

_On a day in spring

_Hikari nodokeki

_When the light throughout the sky

_Haru no hi ni

_Warms with tranquility.

_Shizugokoro naku

_Why is it with unsettled heart

_Hana no chiru ran

_That the cherry flowers fall?4

Japanese poetry of the pre-Zen period has been handed to us primarily

in a few famous collections. The first great anthology of Japanese

poetry is the Manyoshu, a volume of verses from the middle of the

eighth century. A glance through the Manyoshu shows that the earliest

poets did not confine themselves to five-line verses, but indulged in

longer verses on heroic subjects, known as _choka_. The tone, as Donald

Keene has observed, is often more masculine than feminine, that is,

more vigorous than refined. As sensibilities softened in the early part

of the Heian era and native verse became the prerogative of women,

while men struggled with the more "important" language of China, the

feminine tone prevailed to such an extent that male writers posed as

women when using the native script. The next great collection of verse,

the Kokinshu, published in the tenth century, was virtually all five-

line _waka _concerned with seasons, birds, flowers, and fading love,

and embracing the aesthetic ideals of _aware_, _miyabi_, and _yugen_.

As the aristocratic culture gradually lost control in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries, a new verse form, derived from the _waka_, came

into being: _renga_. This form consisted of a string of verses in the

repeated sequence of 5,7,5 and 7,7 syllables per line--in reality a

related series of _waka _but with the difference that no two

consecutive two-or three-line verse sequences could be composed by the

same individual. At first this new form seemed to offer hope of freeing

poets from the increasingly confining range of subject matter

prescribed for the _waka_. Unfortunately, the opposite happened. Before

long the _renga_ was saddled with a set of rules covering which verse

should mention what season; at what point the moon, cherry blossoms,

and the like should be noted; and so forth. Little creativity was

possible under such restrictions. Versifying became, in fact, a party

game much in favor with provincial _samurai_ and peasants alike in

times. While the remaining Kyoto aristocrats tried to keep their _renga

_in the spirit of the classical _waka_, with allusions to Chinese poems

and delicate melancholy, the provincials threw _renga _parties whose

only aesthetic concern was adherence to the rules of the game. During

the Ashikaga age, _renga_ and sake parties were the most popular forms

of entertainment, but _renga's _only genuine contribution to Japanese

poetry was the use of the vernacular by provincial poets, which finally

broke the stranglehold of Heian feminine aesthetics.

By the beginning of the Momoyama era, linked verse had

run its course and the time was ripe for a new form. The new form was

Haiku, which was nothing more than the first three lines of a renga.

The _waka_ had been aristocratic, and the best _renga _provincial, but

the Haiku was the creation of the new merchant class. (To be rigorously

correct, the form was at first called _haikai_, after the first verse

of the _renga_, which was called the _hokku_. The term "Haiku" actually

came into use in the nineteenth century.) Although the Haiku was a

response to the demands of the merchant class, its composers almost

immediately split into two opposing groups, superficially similar in

outlook to the older classical and provincial schools. One group

established a fixed set of rules specifying a more or less artificial

language, while the other turned to epigrams in the speech of the

people. The form was on the way to becoming yet another party game when

a disenchanted follower of the second school broke away and created a

personal revolution in Japanese verse. This was the man now considered

Japan's finest poet, who finally brought Zen to Japanese poetry: the

famous Haiku master Basho (1644-1694).

Basho was born a _samurai_ in an age when it was little more than an

empty title, retained by decree of the Edo (Tokyo) government. He was

fortunate to be in the service of a prosperous _daimyo_ who transmitted

his interest in Haiku to Basho at an early age. This idyllic life ended

abruptly when Basho was twenty-two: the lord died, and he was left to

shift for himself. His first response was to enter a monastery, but

after a time went to Kyoto to study Haiku. By the time he was thirty he

had moved on to Edo to teach and write. At this point he was merely an

adequate versifier, but his technical competence attracted many to what

became the Basho "school," as well as making him a welcome guest at

_renga _gatherings. His poems in the Haiku style seem to have relied

heavily on striking similes or metaphors:

Red pepper pods!

Add wings to them,

and they are dragonflies!5

This verse is certainly "open-ended" insofar as it creates a

reverberation of images in the mind, and, what is more, the effect is

achieved by the comparison of two concrete images. There is no comment;

the images are simply thrown out to give the mind a starting point. But

the overall impact remains merely decorative art. It reflects the

concept of _aware_, or a pleasing recognition of beauty, rather than

_yugen_, the extension of awareness into a region beyond words.

When he was about thirty-five, Basho created a Haiku that began to

touch the deeper regions of the mind. This is the famous_

Kare-eda ni

_ On a withered branch

_karasu-no tomari-keri

_a crow has settled--

_aki-no-kure

_autumn nightfall.6

As a simple juxtaposition of images the poem is striking enough, but it

also evokes a comparison of the images, each of which enriches the

other. The mind is struck as with a hammer, bringing the senses up

short and releasing a flood of associations. Its only shortcoming is

that the scene is static; it is a painting, not a happening of the sort

that can sometimes trigger the sudden sense of Zen enlightenment.

Perhaps Basho realized that his art had not yet drunk deeply enough at

the well of Zen, for a few years after this poem was written he became

a serious Zen student and began to travel around Japan soaking up

images. His travel diaries of the last years are a kind of Haiku

"poetics," in which he extends the idea of _sabi_ to include the aura

of loneliness that can surround common objects. Zen detachment entered

his verses; all personal emotion was drained away, leaving images

objective and devoid of any commentary, even implied.

More important, the Zen idea of transience appeared. Not the transience

of falling cherry blossoms but the fleeting instant of Zen

enlightenment. Whereas the antilogic _koan _anecdotes were intended to

lead up to this moment, Basho's Haiku were the moment of enlightenment

itself, as in his best-known poem:

_Furu-ike ya

_An ancient pond

_kawazu tobi-komu

_A frog jumps in

_mizu-no-oto

_The sound of water.

These deceptively simple lines capture an intersection of the timeless

and the ephemeral. The poem is said to have described an actual

occurrence, an evening broken by a splash. The poet immediately spoke

the last two lines of the poem, the ephemeral portion, and much time

was then devoted to creating the remaining static and timeless part.

This was as it should be, for the inspiration of a Haiku must be

genuine and suggest its own lines at the moment it occurs. Zen eschews

deliberation and rational analysis; nothing must come between object

and perception at the critical moment.

With this poem Basho invented a new form of Zen literary art, and Haiku

was never the same afterward. To write this kind of poem, the artist

must completely disengage--if only for an instant--all his interpretive

faculties. His mind becomes one with the world around him, allowing his

craft to operate instinctively in recording the image he perceives. For

a moment he is privy to the inexpressible truth of Zen--that the

transient is merely part of the eternal--and this instantaneous

perception moves directly from his senses to his innermost

understanding, without having to travel through his interpretive

faculties. Earlier Zen writings in both Japan and China had described

this process, but none had captured the phenomenon itself. By catching

the momentary at the very instant of its collision with the eternal,

Basho could produce a high-speed snapshot of the trigger mechanism of

Zen enlightenment. In a modern metaphor, the Haiku became a Zen

hologram, in which all the information necessary to re-create a large

three-dimensional phenomenon was coded into a minuscule key. Any

interpretation of the phenomenon would be redundant to a Zen adept,

since the philosophical significance would re-create itself

spontaneously from the critical images recorded in the poem. Thus a

perfect Haiku is not about the moment of Zen enlightenment; it is that

moment frozen in time and ready to be released in the listener's mind.

Haiku is the most dehumanized of all poetry. Instead of the artist's

sensations and feelings, we get simply the names of things. By Western

standards they are hardly poems at all, merely a rather abbreviated

list. As the critic-poet Kenneth Yasuda has pointed out, a Haiku poet

does not give us meaning, he gives us objects that have meaning; he

does not describe, he presents.7 And unlike the poetry of the No, Haiku

seems a form strangely devoid of symbolism. The tone seems matter-of-

fact, even when touching upon the most potentially emotional of

subjects. Take, for example, Basho's poem composed at the grave of one

of his beloved pupils.

_Tsuka mo ugoke

_Grave mound, shake too!

_waga naku koe wa

_My wailing voice--

_aki-no-kaze

_the autumn wind.8

No betrayal of emotion here, simply a comparison of his grief-

ridden voice, a transient thing, with the eternal autumn wind. It is a

Zen moment of recognition, devoid of emotion or self-pity, and yet

somehow our sympathies spring alive, touching us in a way that the

early classical poems on the passage of time never could.

Love in Haiku is directed toward nature as much as toward man or woman.

Part of the reason may be the stylistic requirement that every Haiku

tell the reader the season. This is done by the so-called season word,

which can either be an outright naming of the season (such as the

"autumn" wind above) or some mention of a season-dependent natural

phenomenon, such as a blossom, a colored leaf (green or brown), a

summer bird or insect, snow, and so on. The tone is always loving,

never accusatory (a tribute to the nature reverence of ancient Japan),

and it can be either light or solemn. Chirps of insects, songs of

birds, scents of blossoms, usually serve as the transient element in a

Haiku, whereas water, wind, sunshine, and the season itself are the

eternal elements.

_Ume-ga-ka ni

_With the scent of plums

_notto hi-no deru

_on the mountain road--suddenly,

_yama-ji kana

_ sunrise comes!9

This is nature poetry at its finest, full of all the detached reverence

and affection of Zen. It is also impassive and accepting: nature is

there to be enjoyed and to teach the lessons of Zen. Basho's Haiku

discover an instant of heightened awareness and pass it on unaltered

and without comment. The poem is as uncolored with emotion as is the

world it so dispassionately describes. It is up to the reader to know

the proper response.

It hardly needs to be said that Basho's poems must be interpreted on

several levels: not only do they describe a moment in the life of the

world, they are also symbols or metaphors for deeper truths, which

cannot be stated explicitly. Underneath a vivid image of a physical

phenomenon is a Zen code pointing toward the nonphysical. Not only was

Basho Japan's finest lyric poet, he was also among the finest

interpreters of Zen.

Basho left a large following. The Haiku was established as Japan's

foremost poetic form, and to touch upon every Haiku poet would require

an encylopedia. However, three other Haiku masters were outstanding.

The first is Buson (1715-1783), also a well-known painter, whose blithe

if somewhat mannered style reflected the gradual dissolution of severe

Zen ideals in favor of the lighter touch preferred by the prosperous

merchant class.

Buson was also master of the classical double entendre so beloved by

the aristocratic poets of the classical era. The first example given

here is a subtle reference to the theme of transience, set in the

context of an exchange of love poems, while the second is a somewhat

ribald jest about the one-night stand.

_Hen-ka naki

_No poem you send

_ao-nyobo yo

_in answer--Oh, young lady!

_kure-no haru

_Springtime nears its end.10

_Mijika yo ya

_The short night is through:

_kemushi-no ue ni

_on the hairy caterpillar,

_tsuyu-no-tama

_little beads of dew.11

Buson could also be serious and moving when he tried, as with the

following, one of his most admired works.

_Mi-ni-shimu ya

_The piercing chill I feel:

_bo-sai-no kushi

_my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,

_neya ni fumu

_under my heel . . .12

Buson clearly had less Zen about him than Basho, but his verses suited

the temper of his age, and he strongly influenced both students and

contemporaries, although not the next great Haiku master, Issa (1762-

1826), who was a romantic provincial through and through, immune to the

fancy phrasing of the sophisticated Buson school.

Issa is the sentimental favorite in the canons of Japanese Haiku. He

used simple, even colloquial language, and he brought heartfelt love to

all things he touched, great and small. Although he was not immersed in

the heavier aspects of Zen, his lighthearted approach to life was well

in accord with the latter clays of the Zen revival. His Haiku style

seems the literary equivalent of the comic Zen drawings of Hakuin

(1685--1768) or Sengai (1751-1837). There is also a Zen quality to his

rejection of the literary conventions of the time. Yet Issa was not

consciously a rebel; rather, he was a simple, sincere man who wrote

sincerely of simple things. His approach to nature was as honest in its

own way as Basho's, but Issa was happy to let his own personality and

response shine through, while Basho deliberately circumvented his own

emotions.

Orphaned at an early age and seeing to the grave all the children born

during his lifetime (as well as two of his three wives), Issa seems to

have known little but hardship. Much of his life was spent as an

itinerant poet-priest, an occupation that allowed him to learn the life

of the people while also keeping him close to the earth. A compendium

of his life's experiences and a fine sampling of his Haiku were

recorded in his famous book The Year of My Life, which seems to have

been his answer to Basho's travel diaries. However, his humanity was

far distant from Basho's lonely sabi. For condensed effect, compare the

following with Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper."

_Yabu-kage ya

_In the thicket's shade,

_tatta hitori-no

_and all alone, she's singing--

_ta-ue-uta

_the rice-planting maid.13

Perhaps his most touching poem, which shames into oblivion all the

"transient dew" posturing of a thousand years of classical Japanese

verse, is the famous Haiku written on the death of one of his children.

_Tsuyu-no-yo wa

_The world of dew

_tsuyu-no-yo nagara

_Is the world of dew

_sari nagara

_And yet . . . And yet . . .14

Issa's rustic, personal voice was not a style to be copied, even if the

city poets had wished to do so, and Haiku seems to have fallen into the

hands of formula versifiers during the mid- nineteenth century. In the

waning years of the century, the last of the four great Haiku masters

rose to prominence: Shiki (1867-1902), whose life of constantly failing

health was as adversity-plagued as Issa's, but who actively took up the

fight against the insincere parlor versifiers then ruling Haiku. No

wandering poet-priest, Shiki was a newspaperman, critic, and editor of

various Haiku "little magazines." The Zen influence that ruled Basho's

later poetry is missing in Shiki, but the objective imagery is there--

only in a tough, modern guise. Shiki's verse is an interesting example

of how similar in external appearance the godless austerity of Zen is

to the existential atheism of our own century. (This superficial

similarity is undoubtedly the reason so much of Zen art seems "modern"

to us today--it is at odds with both classical and romantic ideals.)

Thus a completely secular poet like Shiki could revolutionize Haiku as

a form of art-for-art's-sake without having to acknowledge openly his

debt to Zen.

_Hira-hira to

_A single butterfly

_Kaze ni nigarete

_Fluttering and drifting

_Cho hitotsu

_In the wind.15

With the poems of Shiki, the influence of Zen had so permeated Haiku

that it was taken for granted. Much the same had occurred with all the

Zen arts; as the dynamic aspects of the faith faded away, all that was

left were the art forms and aesthetic ideals of Zen culture. The rules

of the ancient Zen masters were there as a theme for the modern arts,

but mainly as a theme on which there could be variations. Zen culture

as an entity was slowly dissolving, becoming in modern times merely a

part of a larger cultural heritage.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Private Zen: Flowers and Food

_European food--

Every wretched plate

Is round.

_ Traditional Japanese poem

THE SPREAD OF ZEN culture from the mansions of the _samurai _to the houses

of the bourgeoisie meant ultimately that Zen aesthetics would touch

even the most routine features of daily life. Nowhere, perhaps, is this

more noticeable than in Japanese cuisine and flower arranging. As we

have seen, the tea ceremony was the great preserver of higher Zen

ideals of art, but this ceremony, for all its pretensions to refined

poverty, is essentially the province of the prosperous. It requires

space for a garden, a special--and frequently expensive--house, and

utensils whose properly weathered look can be obtained only at a price.

Even a simple Zen garden is hardly available to a modern Japanese

living in a cinderblock apartment building.

Everyone, however, can practice the classical art of arranging flowers

in a manner reflecting the precepts of Zen. A flower arrangement is to

a large garden what a Haiku is to an epic poem--a symbolic, abbreviated

form whose condensed suggestiveness can encapsulate the larger world.

Similarly, the Zen ideals of _wabi_, or deliberate understatement, and

_sabi_, the patina of time, can be captured almost as well in the

display of food--in both its artistic arrangement on a plate and the

tasteful ceramics employed--as in the arts and ceramics of the tea

ceremony. Thus a properly conceived serving of seasonal and subtly

flavored foods accompanied by a Zen-inspired flower arrangement can be

an evervday version of the tea ceremony and its garden, embodying the

same aesthetic principles in a surrogate form just as demanding of Zen

taste and sensibility.

It will be recalled that Zen itself is said to have originated when the

Buddha silently turned a blossom in his hand before a gathering on

Vulture Peak. The lotus blossom was one of the foremost symbols of

classical Buddhism for many centuries; indeed the earliest Japanese

flower arrangements may have been merely a lotus floating in a water-

filled vessel set before a Buddhist altar. To the ancient Buddhists,

the flower was a symbol of nature, a momentary explosion of beauty and

fragrance embodying all the mysteries of life's cycle of birth and

death. The early Japanese, who saw in nature the expression of life's

spirit, naturally found the flower a congenial symbol for an abstract

philosophy like Buddhism. In the years preceding Zen's arrival in

Japan, a parallel but essentially secular taste for flowers permeated

the aristocratic court civilization of the Heian, where lovers attached

sprays of blossoms to letters and eulogized the plum and cherry as

symbols of life's transient happiness. Indeed, it is hardly an

exaggeration to describe blossoms as the foremost symbol of Japan's

great age of love poetry.

Exactly when the Japanese began the practice of arranging

flowers in pots for decorative purposes has never been satisfactorily

determined. Perhaps not surprisingly, the first well- known exponent of

floral art seems to have been the famous Zen aesthete Ashikaga

Yoshimasa (1435-1490), builder of the Silver Pavilion. However,

Yoshimasa merely popularized an art that was considerably more ancient.

Ikebana, or flower arranging, had for some time been transmitted as a

kind of secret cult by a line of priests who had called themselves

Ikenobo. Just what role Zen and Zen art theory played in this priestly

art is questionable, for early styles were florid and decorative. At

first glance, it may seem strange that the flower arrangements of the

Ikenobo priests should have captured the interest of Yoshimasa and his

circle of Zen aesthetes during the high age of Zen culture, since the

Ikebana of this period, far from showing the spareness characteristic

of Zen garden arts, was an exuberant symbol of the world at large,

rather like a complex mandala diagram of some esoteric sect wherein all

components of the universe are represented in a structured spatial

relationship.

This early style of formal flower arranging, now known as Rikka, was

later codified into seven specific elements, each symbolizing some

aspect of nature--the sun, the shade, and so forth. There were three

main branches in an arrangement and four supporting branches, each with

a special name and a special aesthetic-symbolic function. As with most

art forms preceding the modern age, the distinction between religious

symbolism and purely aesthetic principles was not well defined, and

artists often preferred to use philosophical explanations as a means of

transmitting those rules of form they instinctively recognized to be

most satisfying. Not surprisingly, given the Zen ideals of the age,

Rikka-style flower arrangements were asymmetrical and intended to

suggest naturalness as far as possible. Although complex, they were by

no means artificial, seeming instead a happy accident of nature. As

with Zen gardens, great artifice was used to give the impression of

naturalness.

Since the elaborate Rikka style was supported by an equally

elaborate theory and required total discipline, flower arranging

acquired many of the qualities of a high art. Certainly the arrangement

of flowers in the West never approached anything like the formality and

rules of technique surrounding Japanese floral displays, and for this

reason we sometimes have difficulty in accepting the idea that it can

be considered a genuine art form. But then we have never seriously

considered the flower a primary religious symbol--a role that, to the

Eastern mind, automatically makes it a candidate for artistic

expression. The religion of Zen, with no particular god to deify,

turned to flowers and gardens as symbols of the spirit of life.

The influence of Zen on the Rikka arrangement was more implicit than

direct, and a wholly Zen flower style had to await the coming of the

famous tea-ceremony master, Sen no Rikyu. Rikyu predictably found the

Rikka style entirely too lavish for understated _wabi _aesthetics and

introduced a new style known as Nageire, which was informal and

spontaneous in appearance. Since it was for display at the tea

ceremony, it was called _chabana_, or tea flowers. Instead of an

elaborate seven-point design, the teahouse Nageire-style consisted of

one or two blossoms stuck in a pot without any hint of artificiality.

The Nagiere was not, of course, an undisciplined art--it was merely

intended to seem so. Great care was taken to position the bud and its

few surrounding sprigs into a perfect artistic composition that would

seem natural and spontaneous. The _chabana _version of the Nageire

style is the ultimate Zen statement in living materials. Pared down

from the Rikka style, it became a powerful, direct expression of Zen

ideals. The difference has been well expressed by Shozo Sato:

_Rikka arrangements grew ultimately from a philosophic attempt to

conceive of an organized universe, whereas Nageire arrangements

represent an antiphilosophic attempt to achieve immediate oneness with

the universe. The Rikka arrangement is an appropriate offering to be

placed before one of the many icons of traditional Buddhism, but the

Nageire arrangement is a direct link between man and his natural

surroundings. One style is conceptual and idealistic; the other,

instinctive and naturalistic. The difference is similar to that between

the arduous philosophic study associated with traditional Buddhism and

the direct enlightenment of Zen Buddhism. _(_The Art of Arranging

Flowers_. New York: Abrams, 1965). _

Although the Nageire is still the preferred style for the teahouse, it

is a bit too austere, not to mention demanding, for the average

Japanese home. The rising middle class of the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries sought a compromise between the Rikka and Nageire,

and finally developed a simplified Rikka style known as Seika, which

made use of only the three main stems of the full Rikka arrangement.

Today various styles flourish, together with experimental modern

schools which permit rocks, driftwood, and other natural materials in

their compositions. Yet throughout all the schools--and they number in

the thousands--the idea remains that flowers are a shorthand

representation of man's connection with nature. Zen ideals are never

far distant, even in the most abstract modern compositions.

If the Japanese attitude toward flowers differs from that of the West,

their approach to dining differs even more. The almost universal

Western attitude toward Japanese cuisine was voiced many centuries ago

by the European visitor Bernardo do Avila Giron, who declared, "I will

not praise Japanese food for it is not good, albeit it is pleasing to

the eye, but instead I will describe the clean and peculiar way in

which it is served."2 Beauty counts as heavily as taste at a formal

table, and to say Japanese food is "served" is like calling the members

of a string quartet fiddlers. The Japanese devote more artistic

resources to the rites of food than any other people on earth. Entire

magazines are devoted to supplying housewives with the latest culinary

creations: not new recipes but new ways to display dishes created

according to well-known formulas. A new condiment is not sought so much

as a new color, and a new sauce is of less interest than a new saucer.

Indeed, a fine restaurant may prize its ceramics almost as much as its

chef.

Yet for all its beauty, the food seems to be oddly deficient in

pronounced flavors. This characteristic a Japanese will be the first to

admit, but with pride rather than apology. Strong flavors are to a

modern Japanese what bold colors were to the Heian aesthetes--unrefined,

obvious gratifications for those lacking in cultivated discernment. A

connoisseur is one who can distinguish the subtle difference in taste

among various species of raw mushrooms or different fermentations of

bean curd. A cultivated Japanese can tell you not only what species of

raw fish he is tasting, but the number of hours it has been away from

the sea. A conscientious Japanese chef would no more think of serving a

vegetable not scrupulously fresh than he would drown it in a heavy

sauce. Furthermore, he would most prefer to serve it entirely raw,

thereby preserving intact all its subtle natural flavor and texture.

Japanese cuisine, which is a water-based art as compared to the oil-

based cooking of China or the butter-based dishes of France, is now

known and appreciated worldwide. Dining in a Japanese restaurant in the

far-flung corners of the globe can be as formal as a fine Continental

meal or as expedient as a grilled-chicken-and-noodle emporium. However,

whether formal or casual, it will lack the air of solicitude that a

really discerning Japanese host can bring to a specially planned

banquet. Since dining at his own home would do no honor to you, the

guest, chances are he will entertain you at an inn or restaurant where

he knows the chef, but he will still plan the meal, working out all the

finer details with the cook. There will be few surprises on the menu,

for the food is governed by the season. Only the freshest vegetables--

preferably those ripening to their finest that week--and the primest sea

fare will be permitted.

Upon entering the dining room you will know you have been selected as

the guest of honor when you are requested to sit with your back to the

art alcove, or tokonoma, a practice dating from rowdier days of the

ambush when this represented the one location in a paper-walled room

sure to be backed by a solid wall. After seating formalities are

resolved, the host will call for tea. If the season is spring, the

variety selected may be _shincha_, a dainty green brew steeped from the

freshly plucked early leaves of the Japanese tea bush. When you realize

that even your beverage has been brought fresh from the fields, you

begin to understand the subtleties of seasonal tastes in store. Indeed,

in late spring and summer the table will present delicacies only hours

from the soil.

First to arrive may be a tray crowded with ceramic saucers, no two

alike in shape or glaze, each offering a condiment or plant of the

season. Slices of dark, pickled ginger, the traditional astringent, may

be arranged on a diminutive round plate of blue and white porcelain,

which stands adjacent to a rough-textured, gray square bowl heaped with

slivers of fresh cucumber, its brilliant green contrasting with the

splash of vellow from a bouquet of its own blossoms sprinkled across

one corner of the dish. These may be joined by tender bamboo shoots

from the hillside. (Slowly you begin to notice that the color and

texture of each dish has been chosen to contrast and complement those

of its contents.) Added to this fanciful course may be a pale brown

dish of lotus-root slivers, each garnished with a mound of green

horseradish. Next at hand might well be a pale yellow saucer holding

sheets of dried seaweed alongside a thin slice of the porous white

Japanese turnip, sliced so thin as to be transparent. If the season is

fall instead of spring, there could be a thin rectangular dish with a

crinkled black glaze containing a single maple leaf, on which might be

displayed thinly sliced raw mushrooms skewered with pine needles and

set in a display of gourd strands.

Next may come a cold omelet, whose fluffy strata of egg have been

wrapped like a cinnamon roll around layers of dark seaweed. The

omelet's exterior will have been glazed to an almost ceramic polish and

garnished with a white radish sauce, light and piquant. After the

omelet may come fish, raw sashimi in a plethora of varieties from

freshwater carp to sea bream to the (sometimes lethal) fugu. The

subtleties in taste and texture between the many species available are

to the Japanese what fine wines are to the Western connoisseur. Yet the

chef's real genius has gone into the careful cutting and display of the

fish. The red back meat of the tuna must be cut into thick slices

because of its tenderness, but the fatty pink meat from the belly can

be cut into thin strips. The size of the slices governs how they are

displayed. The display and garnishing of the sashimi is an important

testing ground for the chef's artistic originality. After all, the fish

are raw, and beyond making sure that they are fresh and of high

quality, there is little to be done about the flavor. Therefore the

chef must become an artist if the sashimi are to be memorable.

The banquet may continue with soup, often created from fish stock and

fermented soybean paste called miso. The soup arrives in closed lacquer

bowls, on the lids of which will be embellished a design of the season,

perhaps a bamboo shoot or a chrysanthemum blossom. Beneath this lid is

a tranquil sea of semitransparent marine broth, tinted amber and

seasoned with delicate green scallion rings and cubes of bland white

soybean curd. The bottom of the bowl may shelter a family of thumbnail-

sized baby clams, still nestled in their open shells. The soup hints of

the field and the sea, but in delicate nuances, like an ink painting

executed in a few suggestive strokes.

The parade of tiny dishes continues until the host's imagination

falters or your appetite is conquered. Green beans, asparagus, lotus

root, carrots, tree leaves, legumes . . . the varieties of plants will

seem virtually endless. Each taste and texture will be slightly

different, each color subtly orchestrated. Yet it all seems perfectly

natural, as though the world of mountain and sea had somehow presented

itself at your table to be sampled. You become acutely aware of the

natural taste of the plants ripening in the fields outside at that very

moment. But to enjoy this cuisine you must sharpen your senses; no

flavor is allowed to be dominant, no spice overwhelming. You must reach

out with your sensibilities and attune yourself to the world around

you.

The haute cuisine of Japan is known as _kaiseki_, the name of the

special meal served with the Zen tea ceremony. _Kaiseki _is the great

preserver of cuisine aesthetics in Japan. The tea ceremony, the supreme

transmitter of Zen culture, also happens to be the preserver of Japan's

finest ideals in the realm of food. The governing principle of

_kaiseki_ is that the foods served should be natural, even as an

unpainted traditional house reveals its fresh woods. Whereas

artificiality would draw a diner's spirit away from the real world,

naturalness brings him closer to it. The colors, of both the foods and

the ceramics, are meant to suggest nature. The servings are simple,

never elaborate or contrived, and the foods chosen must never be

obviously expensive. A host is expected to display his skill and

imagination in combining delicate flavors, not his wealth or

extravagance in being able to buy the most expensive items he can find.

Again it is the Zen idea of _wabi_, a deliberate turning away from the

ostentatious.

But to speak of Zen dining in terms of flavor is to miss a good part of

the pleasure. The display of glazed ceramic dishes on a Japanese table

is carefully orchestrated by color and shape to form a unified,

naturalistic, asymmetrical aesthetic whole. The sensitive Japanese

regards the Western weakness for marshaled arrays of matched china as a

demonstration of limited artistic vision. All the concepts of beauty

developed in the tea ceremony have been transmitted to the Japanese

formal dining experience, and a dimension has been added: in a formal

meal the ceramics are decorated with foods; the various foods are

positioned, down to the last bean, with care almost worthy of the

stones in a Zen garden, and the color and texture of each is attuned to

the color and texture of its dish. Thus dining becomes a display of art

and design that tests the aesthetic discernment of both host and guest.

Perhaps in no other land is the serving of food so manifestly both a

form of art and an expression of philosophy. But it seems less

incredible if viewed merely as the last convolution of Zen culture.

From monks to modern housewives, Zen culture has touched every aspect

of Japanese life. There are, of course, other voices and other rooms in

the complex world of Japanese cultural history, but when you think of

the finest moments in Japanese civilization, more often than not you

find yourself thinking of Zen.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Lessons of Zen Culture

_It is not surprising if the religious need, the believing mind, and

the philosophical speculations of the educated European are attracted

to the symbols of the East, just as once before the heart and mind of

men of antiquity were gripped by Christian ideas.

Carl Gustav Jung_, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

EVERY MAJOR ZEN cultural form is designed to operate on the mind in some

manipulative, non-Western fashion. If we look carefully, we find that

not one of the Zen forms has a real counterpart in Western culture. Zen

archery and swordsmanship seem almost a species of hypnotism. Zen

gardens are a bag of tricks and specifically designed to deceive one's

perception. Zen painting is a product of the nonrational counter mind;

although it requires training at least as rigorous as any that a

Western academy could supply, at the critical moment the training is

forgotten and the work becomes wholly spontaneous. No drama uses clever

devices of suggestion to push the mind into areas of understanding too

profound for words, while the open-ended Haiku is a spark igniting an

explosion of imagery and nonrational perception in the listener's mind.

The traditional Japanese house is a psychological chamber from floor to

ceiling. Zen ceramics by subtle deceptions destroy our impulses to

categorize, forcing us to experience directly materials, process, and

form. The tea ceremony is still another exercise in deliberately

altering one's state of mind, this time under the guise of a simple

social occasion. It seems almost as if the Zen arts were intended to be

an object lesson to us on the limitations of the senses in defining

reality. Just as the _koan_ taunt the logical mind, the Zen arts, by

toying with perception, remind us that there is a reality not subject

to the five senses. In Eastern philosophy, although "seeing" involves

the senses, it must ultimately transcend them.

Zen culture has been devised over the centuries to bring us in touch

with a portion of ourselves we in the West scarcely know--our

nonrational, nonverbal side. Whereas Ch'an masters of a thousand years

ago were devising mind exercises to short-circuit and defeat the

limiting characteristics of the rational side of the mind, the idea of

the counter mind has only recently found experimental validation--and

hence intellectual respectability--in the rationalist West. (As one

example of many, recent experiments at Harvard University found that

"questions demanding . . . verbal . . . processes result in the

greatest left [brain] hemispherical activation . . . [while] emotional

questions elicit the greatest right hemispheric activation."1)

Apparently not only did the Ch'an masters intuitively realize the

existence of the nonverbal half of the mind during the T'ang era (618-

907), but they, and later the Japanese, used it to create a spectrum of

art and cultural forms which exploits, strengthens, and sharpens these

same nonverbal faculties.

Zen cultural forms are the perfect physical proof of the strength of

the counter mind. Even those using language (the No and Haiku) rely

more on suggestion than on words. Indeed, the very language of Japan

was recently described by a Japanese scholar in terms that make it

sound almost like an intuitive,

counter-mind phenomenon: "English is a language intended strictly for

communication. Japanese is primarily interested in feeling out the

other person's mood, in order to work out one's own course of action

based on one's impression."2 This difference in approach to language, in

which it is seen as a virtual barrier to communicating what is really

significant (one's subjective response), appears to be a side effect of

Zen culture. As a Japanese critic recently observed,

_A corollary to the Japanese attitude toward language might be called

the "aesthetics of silence"---making a virtue of reticence and a

vulgarity of verbalization or open expression of one's inner thoughts.

This attitude can be traced to the Zen Buddhist idea that man is

capable of arriving at the highest level of contemplative being only

when he makes no attempt at verbalizations and discounts oral

expression as the height of superficiality.3

Finally, Zen cultural forms use the nonverbal, nonrational powers of

the mind to produce in the perceiver a complete sense of identification

with the object. If a Zen art work is truly successful, the perceiver

has no sense of "I" and "it." If reflection or analysis is required,

the work is of no more use than a joke whose punch line needs

explanation. One's mind must immediately experience something beyond

the work. Even as the eye cannot see itself without a mirror, so it is

with the mind. The inducing of introspection turns out to be a

deliberate function of Zen art--the forcing of the mind past the surface

form of an art work and into a direct experience of a greater truth.

The Zen arts are, we realize at last, completely internalized. They

depend as much on the perception of the viewer or participants as they

do on any of their own inherent qualities. For this reason they can be

sparing and restrained. (They also happen to be perfectly suited to a

land that, over the centuries, has been as physically impoverished as

Japan.) By using small- scale, suggestive arts that depend to a large

extent on the special perception of the audience for their impact, Zen

artists were able to provide immense satisfaction with only a minor

investment of resources. It is rather like the relation of radio to

television drama. Given an audience with a good imagination, a radio

dramatist or a Zen artist can achieve the intended effect through

suggestion. This is what Sir George Sansom had in mind when he remarked

upon the

_important part played by aesthetic feeling in the enrichment of

Japanese life. Among Japanese of all classes, an instinctive awareness

of beauty seems to compensate for a standard of well-being which to

Western judgement seems poor and bleak. Their habit of finding pleasure

in common things, their quick appreciation of form and color, their

feelings for simple elegance, are gifts which may well be envied by us

who depend so much for our happiness upon quantity of possessions and

complexity of apparatus. Such happy conditions, in which frugality is

not the enemy of satisfaction, are perhaps the most distinctive

features in the cultural history of Japan.4

Zen culture, working with the already highly developed vocabulary and

capacity for perception developed in the Heian era, unlocked powerful

new techniques that have made Japanese culture a special case in the

annals of world civilization. Perhaps the best case in point is the

stone garden at Ryoan-ji, which is a triumph of pure suggestiveness. It

is clearly a symbol--but a symbol of what? It is clearly an invitation

to open one's perception--but open it to what? The work gives no hint.

With Ryoan-ji Zen artists finally perfected the device of

suggestiveness to the point where it could stand on its own. The garden

seems almost to be a natural object, like a sunset or a piece of

driftwood. The impact of a traditional Zen room is similar. It simply

amplifies whatever powers of understanding the viewer already

possesses. Of itself it is a void.

By relying so strongly on perception, the Japanese have created a

strikingly original way of using and experiencing art. Western critics

for several hundred years have argued about the function of art, the

responsibilities of the audience vis-a-vis a work of art, the varying

types of perception, and so on, but they have never dealt with the

peculiar phenomenon of Zen art, where the work can be merely a device

to start the mind going. How do you write a critical analysis of a work

of art that only takes shape after it gets inside your head? It is

interesting to watch critic after critic struggling with Ryoan-ji,

trying to explain its power, only to collapse at last in defeat.5

Similarly, the most effective Haiku are those about which the least can

be said. Ryoan-ji takes your breath away when you first see it; like a

good Haiku it slams you against a moment of direct experience. Yet when

you try to analyze it, you find there is nothing significant to say.

Ryoan-ji may not even be a work of art by our Western definition; it

may be some sort of mind device for which we have no word. Similarly,

Haiku's relation to Western poetry may be limited to typography. The

arts of the West--painting, poetry, drama, literature, sculpture--are all

enhanced by critical analysis. When we speak of Milton, we really speak

of Milton as seen through many layers of critical explanation and

interpretation. The Zen arts have inspired no such body of critical

analysis, perhaps because they do not have many of those qualities we

normally think of as aesthetic. Does Ryoan-ji have beauty in any

conventional sense? It merely exists. It is, if anything, anti-art.

If we in the West wish to borrow from the complex world of Zen culture,

we must first begin to train and intensify our powers of perception. In

this regard, one is tempted to speculate that the Japanese must have

learned to turn these powers down as well as up. How else can one

explain the Japanese ability to ignore so much of the blight of modern

civilization while maintaining a national fetish for such purely

aesthetic phenomena as cherry blossoms? As Donald Richie observed,

"Japan is the most modern of all countries perhaps because, having a

full and secure past, it can afford to live in the instantaneous

present."0 Alongside all the aesthetic indignities of the twentieth

century, the ancient sense of taste appears to have survived

undiminished. A concern for beauty is still very much a part of

everyday life in Japan. Whereas the appreciation of art is usually the

pursuit of a privileged few in Western countries, in Japan the

aesthetic quality of everyday objects is commonly acknowledged to be

fully as important as their function. It is not uncommon to discover a

rustic day laborer arranging flowers, practicing the tea ceremony, or

fashioning a garden in his spare time. The peasant may be as sure a

judge of tea bowls as the prince. Even the match boxes from the

sleaziest bars are minor works of art, as are bundles and packages from

even the most modern commercial establishments. A sense of beauty is

not considered unmanly; indeed, it is regarded as essential to the good

life, harking all the way back to the virile _samurai_.

Zen culture's primary lesson is that we should start trying to

experience art and the world around us rather than analyzing

them. When we do this, we find that everything suddenly comes alive. If

we can take this power of direct perception, sharpened by the devices

of Zen art, back to everyday activities, we will find a beauty in

common objects that we previously ignored. Flowers--indeed individual

petals--become objects of the most intense loveliness. When we see the

world with a Zen-honed awareness, our sense of the beauty in objects

supplants our desire to possess them. If we allow the ancient creators

of Zen culture to touch our lives, we open wider the doors of

perception.

* * *

References

CHAPTER 2 THE PRELUDE TO ZEN CULTURE

1. "The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu," from Diaries of Court Ladies of Old

Japan, trans. Omori, Annie Shepley, and Kochi Doi (Tokyo, 1935; reprint

ed., New York, AMS Press), p. 147.

2. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, trans. Ivan Morris (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 40.

3. Ibid., p. 214.

4. "The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu," p. 74.

5. The Kokin Waka-shu, trans. H. H. Honda (Tokyo: Hoku-seido Press,

1970), p. 35.

6. See Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 1

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1958).

7. Earl Miner, An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry (Stanford,

Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968), p. 9.