[ST (Jan 10, 2006)]
There is in Kyoto a famous Zen garden in a temple called Ryoan. Written in the leaflets they provide with the entrance ticket the visitor can read that this garden represents the quintessence of Zen art. The garden is surprising, to say the least - it is a dry garden, it contains no trees, no plants, no flowers. Rather, it contains gravel (carefully ploughed, furrows visible) and stones, fifteen in total. The garden is geometrically shaped in the form of a big rectangle of about ten meters wide and twenty meters long, which is isolated from the rest of the temple by a low wall of clay (containing oil in the inside, my personal leaflet warns me; time has gradually managed to draw finger-shaped stains of oil in the wall). The location of the fifteen stones, while seemingly arbitrary, is what gives the garden its beauty, its distinction, its sought (and found) harmony. (Only fourteen stones can be simultaneously identified, irrespective of the vantage point chosen.) Any other distribution, while equally valid in principle for the purpose, i.e. for the harmony, would not match, presumably, the appealing appearance of the current setup. My knowledge of Zen is not in the least sufficient to capture the meaning of the garden, let alone to understand what is it that makes it stand out among all other existing gardens, what gives it its individualism, its singularity as the major achievement of Zen art. Certainly the detachment of the venue from the outside and the monochromatic background provided by the whitish gravel into which the fifteen stones are scattered (let me remind once again, strategically, purposely, with a clearcut aim in mind) may facilitate concentration and promote inner thinking. To me, any arbitrary place to locate the stones would be just as good (or as bad). The modern tourist, Eastern or Western, Catholic or Buddhist or Shintoist, following a prototypical anesthetic ritual of present-day tourism, enters the temple in his bare feet already predisposed to be moved (the ultimate goal) and sits in the wooden terrace to contemplate the garden - gravely, solemnly. The bizarre parody is taken a bit further by some, notably Westerns as far as I can tell from my short inspection, who sit cross-legged in the lotus position, mantra in their whispers, and which supposedly take advantage of the handy setup to cut shortly in the hazardous path to meditation and trance. It looks as if they're after a bit of fast and easy spirituality (the religious equivalent to a short afternoon nap). Mere pitiable showing off, that's what these attitudes seem to me, and mere mercantilism what religions (any religion) do with their worship places, shamelessly engaged with the down-to-earth purpose of making money.
There is in Kyoto a famous Zen garden in a temple called Ryoan. Written in the leaflets they provide with the entrance ticket the visitor can read that this garden represents the quintessence of Zen art. The garden is surprising, to say the least - it is a dry garden, it contains no trees, no plants, no flowers. Rather, it contains gravel (carefully ploughed, furrows visible) and stones, fifteen in total. The garden is geometrically shaped in the form of a big rectangle of about ten meters wide and twenty meters long, which is isolated from the rest of the temple by a low wall of clay (containing oil in the inside, my personal leaflet warns me; time has gradually managed to draw finger-shaped stains of oil in the wall). The location of the fifteen stones, while seemingly arbitrary, is what gives the garden its beauty, its distinction, its sought (and found) harmony. (Only fourteen stones can be simultaneously identified, irrespective of the vantage point chosen.) Any other distribution, while equally valid in principle for the purpose, i.e. for the harmony, would not match, presumably, the appealing appearance of the current setup. My knowledge of Zen is not in the least sufficient to capture the meaning of the garden, let alone to understand what is it that makes it stand out among all other existing gardens, what gives it its individualism, its singularity as the major achievement of Zen art. Certainly the detachment of the venue from the outside and the monochromatic background provided by the whitish gravel into which the fifteen stones are scattered (let me remind once again, strategically, purposely, with a clearcut aim in mind) may facilitate concentration and promote inner thinking. To me, any arbitrary place to locate the stones would be just as good (or as bad). The modern tourist, Eastern or Western, Catholic or Buddhist or Shintoist, following a prototypical anesthetic ritual of present-day tourism, enters the temple in his bare feet already predisposed to be moved (the ultimate goal) and sits in the wooden terrace to contemplate the garden - gravely, solemnly. The bizarre parody is taken a bit further by some, notably Westerns as far as I can tell from my short inspection, who sit cross-legged in the lotus position, mantra in their whispers, and which supposedly take advantage of the handy setup to cut shortly in the hazardous path to meditation and trance. It looks as if they're after a bit of fast and easy spirituality (the religious equivalent to a short afternoon nap). Mere pitiable showing off, that's what these attitudes seem to me, and mere mercantilism what religions (any religion) do with their worship places, shamelessly engaged with the down-to-earth purpose of making money.
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