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| Ritsurin Koen, Takamatsu |
Fresh in mind from a recent visit to Japan I am reminded of the importance of texture to our perception and reception of
Japanese garden. Texture is something that we tend to take for
granted visually, our eyes seek out forms in a vague belief that these hold the key to
the garden. We scan a garden view flitting from rock to rock, plant grouping to
plant grouping, from tree to tree, sensing in these concrete aspects of the
garden that there is some notion of idea here. If there is idea inherent in the
forms, then we can find ‘meaning’, and so make ‘real’ our relationship with the
garden. The fact that I couch certain key words within apostrophe marks is
indicative of a hesitancy in expression, as I unconsciously recognise that what
I have written is only partially true at best.
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| Saiho-ji, Kyoto |
Time after time as I sat and observed garden scenery it came
to me that what I was responding to was only partially the forms within the
garden, but it was moreover the textures of the garden that made somehow the
greater sense, the greater impact on myself as a responsive being absorbing the
garden. It is the textures of the raked gravel, the texture of light playing
across water, the texture of stone surfaces, the texture of the plants, and so
on. My experience of the garden is an interplay between the substantive and the
ephemeral aspects before me. These forms I respond to and recognise primarily
with my visual senses, and given the relative importance of the visual senses
therefore I tend to grade these as being the dominant elements of the garden.
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| Adachi Museum, Shimae Prefecture |
But my senses are tricking my cognitive brain into an
illusion of sorts. The essential magic of the garden does not lie primarily in
the visual realm. When I am viewing garden scenery I am responding to much more
than visual clues. Emotionally I am also profoundly engaged with the textural
qualities of the garden. These qualities of texture I seem to recognise
primarily through senses other than the visual. On further reflection I can begin to
understand that the principal source of contact with texture is through the
heart as an organ of perception. The heart does not discriminate,
intellectualise, nor categorise what it perceives. It simply responds without
analysis to any given situation. Ordering our experience takes place in the
brain through cognitive process we apply to the information we garner from our
environment. The illusion is that we take for granted that this filtered
experience has some primacy of reality, that it is our experience. In fact the gestalt of our experience is
unfiltered and beyond discrimination, nor is it fixed in time and space. The
garden we are viewing is constantly shifting and metamorphosing before out
eyes, as what we experience is constantly in a process of change.
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| D T Suzuki Museum, Kanazawa |
Texture is what it is because of the interplay of light
across substance. The texture of bark is a result of the falling of light
across the surface of the tree. The texture of water is the interplay of light
falling across the skin of the pond or stream. The quality of light is
constantly changing from moment to moment, the gradations may be
infinitesimally small, but they are in a process of ceaseless change and shift.
This is the reason a photograph of a garden cannot do justice to what we
experience whilst observing, as the camera lens freezes a particular aspect
representing say 1/500th or 1/125th of our immediate experience
(the image is further inhibited by the technical limitations inherent in the
camera itself), which is in itself on-going.
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| Ryugin-an, Kyoto |
The Zen masters of old teach us not to be attached to what
we understand through the intellect, not to accept the apparent forms of the
world as being an ultimate source of reality. To do so would be to elevate a
photograph, a ‘snap shot’, of our perceptions as an absolute representation of
something that is infinitely complex. Perceiving texture gives us an
understanding that the nature of the reality we are dealing with in
experiencing a garden (and indeed all aspects of our environment) is a process
that is in constant motion, constant transformation and evolution. The genius
of the Japanese garden is that it recognises just that a garden is not merely
an assemblage of forms; but a process which may appear to be stable, but is
actually in ceaseless movement and change. All the interpretations as to the
‘meaning’ of a garden are just that, interpretations after the event of
perception. In engaging with the Japanese garden we are brought closer to an
awareness of being in the very moment of the creation of the world about us; the
creation of which we are wholly engaged with as an active participant in the
process.
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If you enjoyed this, or any other post, please let me know! If there are specific aspects of the Japanese garden tradition you are interested in, please let me know. Thanks.
