Ume-ga-ka niWith the scent of plumsnotto hi-no deruon the mountain road—suddenly,yama-ji kanasunrise comes!9This 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 nakiNo poem you sendao-nyobo yoin answer—Oh, young lady!kure-no haruSpringtime nears its end.10Mijika yo yaThe short night is through:kemushi-no ue nion the hairy caterpillar,tsuyu-no-tamalittle beads of dew.11Buson could also be serious and moving when he tried, as with the following, one of his most admired works.Mi-ni-shimu yaThe piercing chill I feel:bo-sai-no kushimy dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,neya ni fumuunder my heel . . .12Buson 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 yaIn the thicket's shade,tatta hitori-noand all alone, she's singing—ta-ue-utathe rice-planting maid.13Perhaps 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 waThe world of dewtsuyu-no-yo nagaraIs the world of dewsari nagaraAnd yet . . . And yet . . .14Issa'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 toA single butterflyKaze ni nigareteFluttering and driftingCho hitotsuIn the wind.15With 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 SIXTEENPrivate Zen:Flowers and FoodEuropean food—Every wretched plateIs round.Traditional Japanese poemThe spread of Zenculture from the mansions of thesamuraito 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 ofwabi, or deliberate understatement, andsabi, 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 arrangingflowers 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 equallyelaborate 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 understatedwabiaesthetics 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 calledchabana, 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. Thechabanaversion 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."2Beauty 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 beshincha, 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 askaiseki, the name of the special meal served with the Zen tea ceremony.Kaisekiis 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 ofkaisekiis 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 ofwabi, 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 SEVENTEENThe Lessons of Zen CultureIt 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 UnconsciousEvery major Zencultural 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 thekoantaunt 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."2This 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.3Finally, 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 theimportant 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.4Zen 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-à-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.5Similarly, 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."0Alongside 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 virilesamurai.Zen culture's primary lesson is that we should start trying to experience art and the world around us rather than analyzingthem. 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.* * *ReferencesChapter2The Prelude to Zen Culture1. "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.Chapter4The Chronicles of Zen1. Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series, trans. D.T.Suzuki (London: Grove Press, 1949), p- 181.2. Translated in A Buddhist Bible, ed. Dwight Goddard (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 315.3. Ibid., p. 323.4. Chuang Tzu, Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 94.5. The Sutra of Hui Neng, trans. A. F. Price and Wong Mou- Lam (Berkeley: Shambala,1969)p.1 5.6.Ibid., p.18.7.The Diamond Sutra, trans. A. F. Price and Wong Mou-Lam (Berkeley: Sliambala,1969),p.37.8.de Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1:236.9.George Sansom, A History of Japan to 1334 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,1958),p.429.10.Dogen Zenji, Selling Water by the River, trans. Jiyu Kennett (New York: Pantheon,1972),p.115.Chapter 5 Zen Archery and Swordsmanship1.D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 146.Chapter 6 The Great Age of Zen1. de Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1: 255.Chapter 7 Zen and the Landscape Garden1.DavidH. Engel, Japanese Gardens for Today (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle,1959).Chapter 9 Zen and the Ink Landscape1.Seiroku Noma, Artistry in Ink (New York: Crown,1957),p.3.2. Two Twelfth-Century Texts on Chinese Painting, trans. R. J. Maeda (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No.8, 1970),p.17.3.Osvald Siren, The Chinese on the Art of Painting (New York: Schocken,1963),p.97.4. Ernest F. Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (New York: Dover,1963), 2: 11.(Reprint.)Chapter 10 The Zen Aesthetics of Japanese Architecturex. Lafcadio Hearn, Gleanings in Buddha-Fields (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, 1971), p. 1. (Reprint.)2. For a fuller discussion of early Japanese architecture, see Arthur Drexler, The Architecture of Japan (New York: Arno Press, 1955)3.An excellent discussion ofshibuimay be found in Anthony West's essay, "What Japan Has That We May Profitably Borrow," House Beautiful, August1960.4.Ralph Adams Cram, Impressions of Japanese Architecture (New York: Dover,1966)p.127.(Reprint.)5.Heinrich Engel, The Japanese House (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle,1964)pp.373-374.Chapter 11 The No Theater1. R. H. Blyth, Eastern Culture (Tokyo: Hokuseido,1949), 1: 146.2.de Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1:278.3.Charles K. Tuttle, The Noh Drama (Nippon: Giakujutsu Shinkokai, 1955), p. 130.Chapter 1 2 Bourgeois Society and Later Zen1.Joao Rodrigues, This Island of Japan, trans. Michael Cooper (Tokyo: Kodansha,1973),pp.272-273.Chapter 13 The Tea Ceremony1.Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, p.299.2.Ibid., p.305.Chapter 14 Zen Ceramic ArtRuskin, John, The Stones of Venice, Volume II(1853),from Selected Prose of Ruskin, Matthew Hodgart, ed. (New York: New American Library,1970),pp.119and124.Chapter15 Zen andHaiku1.See Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (New York: New Directions,1964).2. See Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite, eds., 'I'he Penguin Book of Japanese Verse (Baltimore: Penguin,1964).3.Ibid., p.71.4.Miner, An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry, p.91.
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 Zenculture from the mansions of thesamuraito 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 ofwabi, or deliberate understatement, andsabi, 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 understatedwabiaesthetics 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 calledchabana, 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. Thechabanaversion 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."2Beauty 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 beshincha, 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 askaiseki, the name of the special meal served with the Zen tea ceremony.Kaisekiis 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 ofkaisekiis 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 ofwabi, 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 Zencultural 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 thekoantaunt 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."2This 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-à-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.5Similarly, 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."0Alongside 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 virilesamurai.
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.
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Chapter2The 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.
Chapter4The Chronicles of Zen
1. Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series, trans. D.T.Suzuki (London: Grove Press, 1949), p- 181.
2. Translated in A Buddhist Bible, ed. Dwight Goddard (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 315.
3. Ibid., p. 323.
4. Chuang Tzu, Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 94.
5. The Sutra of Hui Neng, trans. A. F. Price and Wong Mou- Lam (Berkeley: Shambala,1969)p.1 5.
6.Ibid., p.18.
7.The Diamond Sutra, trans. A. F. Price and Wong Mou-Lam (Berkeley: Sliambala,1969),p.37.
8.de Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1:236.
9.George Sansom, A History of Japan to 1334 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,1958),p.429.
10.Dogen Zenji, Selling Water by the River, trans. Jiyu Kennett (New York: Pantheon,1972),p.115.
1.D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 146.
1. de Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1: 255.
1.DavidH. Engel, Japanese Gardens for Today (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle,1959).
1.Seiroku Noma, Artistry in Ink (New York: Crown,1957),p.3.
2. Two Twelfth-Century Texts on Chinese Painting, trans. R. J. Maeda (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No.8, 1970),p.17.
3.Osvald Siren, The Chinese on the Art of Painting (New York: Schocken,1963),p.97.
4. Ernest F. Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (New York: Dover,1963), 2: 11.(Reprint.)
x. Lafcadio Hearn, Gleanings in Buddha-Fields (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, 1971), p. 1. (Reprint.)
2. For a fuller discussion of early Japanese architecture, see Arthur Drexler, The Architecture of Japan (New York: Arno Press, 1955)
3.An excellent discussion ofshibuimay be found in Anthony West's essay, "What Japan Has That We May Profitably Borrow," House Beautiful, August1960.
4.Ralph Adams Cram, Impressions of Japanese Architecture (New York: Dover,1966)p.127.(Reprint.)
5.Heinrich Engel, The Japanese House (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle,1964)pp.373-374.
1. R. H. Blyth, Eastern Culture (Tokyo: Hokuseido,1949), 1: 146.
2.de Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1:278.
3.Charles K. Tuttle, The Noh Drama (Nippon: Giakujutsu Shinkokai, 1955), p. 130.
1.Joao Rodrigues, This Island of Japan, trans. Michael Cooper (Tokyo: Kodansha,1973),pp.272-273.
1.Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, p.299.
2.Ibid., p.305.
Chapter15 Zen andHaiku
1.See Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (New York: New Directions,1964).
2. See Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite, eds., 'I'he Penguin Book of Japanese Verse (Baltimore: Penguin,1964).
3.Ibid., p.71.
4.Miner, An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry, p.91.