Working Methods and Japanese style Garden Creation

The journey of learning how to create Japanese style gardens has fascinated me for 35 years and counting. Over this time my perception and awareness of what I am trying to create has shifted and evolved; the way I see a garden now is quite different to what I saw then. How different the perception of the Japanese gardener and a more horticultural orientated gardener. In the West, the garden tradition leans heavily on the idea of the garden as a place of display of plants. The average back garden is a home to species from a variety of geographical areas of the world. The measure of a Western gardener is his or her plant knowledge, and the ability to create the ‘right conditions’ for such a cornucopia. The skill and insight of a Japanese gardener is judged by his skill with arranging stones and the sculpting of plant material, typically trees such as pines.

Ryoan-ji, Kyoto

The first garden I ever set eyes on in Japan was Ryoan-ji. I have never been the same since. Sitting contemplating this apparently simple arrangement of stones, wall and gravel, must have moved something in my soul. All gardens are derived from the notion of the garden representing paradise. In this sense of the garden being an expression of a state of grace, of being in harmony with, in utter union with, the world about us. All the efforts, dreams and desires of the gardener of whatever tradition, are to reconnect with that state of union. Creating gardens is, in my opinion, capable of being an art form of the highest order. The apparent simplicity hides a deep complexity ranging across time and space. The gardener works with the most elemental of forces, earth, air, fire and water. The gardener is part alchemist and part trickster figure. The gardener conjures an illusion, a shimmering curtain waved before our eyes, and we can believe in the dream, the illusion.

In the first instance I wanted to know, ‘how do these gardens work here in Japan?’ ‘Why do they seem to have this atmosphere, this particular quality to be so engrossing?’ You look at the rocks, the plantings, and the myriad components of a scene before you; somehow it looks just as it should, there is a balance, an order. You look and you seek to imitate what you see.

Private garden, Surrey, UK

The idea of creating gardens arrived in Japan from China. The Japanese absorbed and modified those forms to that which were in harmony with their own appreciation of beauty. They also recognised the ability of gardens to communicate with the viewer. This way there is more to a garden than that which meets the eye. Now we are doing the same, we look to Japan as providing a model, a way of creating gardens, and we are bringing those ideas to our own cultural environment. The form of the garden altered in the shift from China to Japan, and there will be a shift as the transference moves West. We are really at the beginning of that process in any serious way, we are still finding a way forward in how to integrate these new ideas into our perception of gardens we know and recognise. As the forms and ideas are absorbed, we search for ways to make them speak to us in a tongue we recognise as being our own. Thus, it becomes paramount to retain the spirit of the insight, and acknowledge this is the key component that needs to be transferred.

Stone setting, Cheshire, UK

My garden sensei, or teacher, Kobayashi san spoke to us apprentices about the garden being more than we could see, and that there was another world beyond the apparent world in front of us. It took me a long time to really understand the significance of what he was pointing our attention towards.  Form is form; it is apparently something fixed, immutable and settled. Yet, a garden is never still, it is always in flux and change, from one season to the next, from one moment to the next. Form, or what we recognise as form, coalesces with local cultural norms of any given time. Forms, design and the content of gardens change according to their place.  The spirit or essence of the process of creation operates beyond apparent form. Form gives voice, colour, and mass, and by that means layers significance into the creation. The garden now becomes an entity which can interact with the one who views. It is as if a dialogue has begun.

As the garden creator deepens his understanding and intuitive feel, the role of technique in creation lessens in importance. Once you have mastered a technique you no longer need to have your attention fixed on particular ‘rules and regulations’. No longer is it so pressing to copy or imitate what you see in Japan. Once the reliance on technique is let go of, then, the garden creator can begin to respond more intuitively from the level of the heart. The elements of the garden are seen as energy represented by form, be it a pond, a rock, a tree, and so on. Each is its own song, its own voice. Garden creation is the assembly of a variety of natural forms into one whole composition; a composition that includes garden creator, site and viewer.

Members of the Japanese Garden Society moving large stepping stone slabs, Willowbrook Hospice, Lancs

Setting stones is a crucial work in creating a Japanese style garden. Perhaps it is the manner in which stones are placed that distinguishes the gardens of Japan. In the West traditionally stone is set in layers, the emphasis is on the horizontal plane. In the East garden the setting of stones is done using in the vertical, diagonal and horizontal planes. Principal stones, that is key placements to an arrangement, are almost invariably set upright. Stone arrangement forms the skeleton of the garden, around which is wrapped a ‘skin’ of planting. Setting stones is best done slowly and steadily. I like to run my hands over the flanks of a stone before setting it. This is done as well as a through visual examination of the stone. You are trying to fix the shape, the form of the stone in your mind, so that you can visualise its precise location, height in the ground and attitude, and also that it forms a comfortable relationship with other stones around, and the developing sight lines across the garden space. Running bare hands over the flank of a stone enables you to embody the memory of the form, holding that memory deep in tissue and bone.

Sometimes a stone will seem to immediately find its place. Other times it may be necessary to manipulate the position until the stone itself finds it’s own resting place. Every stone set in the garden will tell the garden creator how and where it is best used. The garden creator need of course to have made a measured and imaginative initial choice of stone for delivery to site. The choice will be based on an interior image of the stone arrangements suitable to the location. The stones themselves should feel charged with potential energy. Often, in my experience there can be an almost audible click sound, as you guide a stone into just the right place and attitude. It comes as a moment of clarity that seems to flash in one’s mind, I hear it as a click sound. This is the stone settling into its rightful place. It is unmistakeable when it happens, and I always have believed that it is the stone itself melding with the unconscious creative mind. Ideally there is little or no intervention of the conscious, analytical mind, the garden creator is streaming an internal vision of the garden overall. At this point there are two gardens, one the internal vision sitting in the mind of the garden creator, the other the garden begging to rise in form from the ground of the site. The process of creation is a constant movement toward definition and refinement of the scene.

Turtle Island, Osmosis garden, CA

The creative process of creating a garden is a shamanic journey into another world to see, then to bring back a vision of completeness and harmony. All through the creation process, which can occupy several months, the garden creator needs to hold that vision in mind Be able to access the vision whilst looking at a scenery that is in transformation and development, holding that vision within. The vision is externalised through the garden creator as a gateway and is fully expressed by the space and its arrangement of forms throughout the site.

Ultimately the garden becomes a blending of the vision of the garden creator with the site itself, but the effort and skill by all who work on a garden becomes imprinted into the fabric of the garden. It is important the everyone is aware of this, as each brings his or her own energy to a site at the time when the space is open to energy from every source. Working with a positive mental attitude is so important, as this too with become part of the totality of experience that the visitor will engage with. Quality of materials used, but also a quality of attitude of mind, both are essential to the creation of the garden as sacred, mindful space.

Stream detail, Cheshire, UK

The ‘rules’ of composition, such as they are, will include such notions as, everything placed in the garden is charged with some level of significance, and serves a particular purpose. Part of that ‘significance’ or meaning is acquired through time. For instance the tea garden, or roji, brought the water-basin, lanterns, re-used materials (such as temple foundation stones) and stepping stone paths into prominent use in the Japanese garden as a whole. Also, that the various garden elements are arranged according to asymmetrical triangular relationships, and that ’empty’ space is acknowledged as a positive quality. Visual variety and interest is built up by creating deliberate contrasts of mass and texture. Seasonality is emphasised by the contrast between those elements that apparently do not change (stone) and those elements that change constantly (plants). Nature is constantly as a state of flux and transformation, so too the garden, so too the viewer. Above all, the Japanese gardener comes to see with the eyes of a philosopher/sculptor who appreciates form represents energy at any one particular moment in time.

Woodland feeling, Surry, UK

The mind-set of a creator guiding the emergence of a garden becomes crucial to the process. The training of a gardener in Japan is as much about the refining one’s the perception of space, and the way in which the patterns of energy combine. For example, seeing the spaces between the forms as being as important as the forms themselves. This is referred to as ‘ yohaku’, or white space, and acquaints to the areas of a painting that are deliberately left blank. The apparently ‘empty’ spaces define the forms, giving them contrast, depth and dimension. A carefully selected and displayed stone, or pine, will reveal its presence, its form. The viewer will sense its energy, and be moved by it. It is a characteristic of the Japanese approach that the viewer is placed at the centre of the creation process. When creating a garden, I am constantly thinking and aware of how does the viewer discover and observe the scenery being created. What is to be seen from this point, from that? Does each position reveal a sense of harmony and balance? What is the journey the viewer has to make to get from this point to the next, what will they see, what will they experience?

Hotei laughs by the stream. Surrey, UK

In the Japanese style garden the viewer’s attention is directed towards the quality of things. The patina of stone, wood and water; each will have its own particular quality, and so its own emotional resonance in the viewer. The garden creator becomes fine tuned to the quality of things. First evoking ‘instability’ and then resolving that issue creating Balance. A central key stone is placed and another stone is added until a grouping is formed, usually of three, five or seven elements. A principal feature plant is set in a certain place with purpose and deliberation. Garden scenery is built up element by element, layer by layer. An important difference in creating gardens in Japan and in the West is that whenever possible, all the planting elements are planted at a size and bulk that is near as possible to full height and ultimate shape. Plant nurseries in Japan produce material that is mature and have been guided, sometimes over generations, into a variety of shapes. At the completion of the build process the garden is complete in itself. It is rarely possible to do this in the Western garden context, as the plant material is rarely available at the same level of maturity. Here the gardener has to develop that material him or herself, or else also try and incorporate existing material to the best effect. It seems only logical that there should be scope to incorporate a wider range of planting the Japanese style garden, based in the plant knowledge of the Western gardener. One needs to be looking at plants (trees, shrubs and even herbaceous material) for what they can offer as textures, as well as forms, and how these may work in the context of what gives a sense of visual interest and emotional harmony to the person experiencing the garden. Just as the landscape painters of Sung dynasty China sought more than a representation of landscape, so the garden creator seeks to express something of the spirit of landscape, its soul. In so doing it is necessary to identify with, and align us with, the ‘spirit’ being sought. This is a question of allowing the forms, the patterns of energy to speak for them selves, so allowing them to reveal themselves for what they are. A tree has a different energy to a rock, as it has to a shrub, or a patch of moss, grass, blue sky or clouds.

Tea house by pond, Oxford, UK

This is to recognise that landscape is inherently sacred. In most cultures the landscape has been recognised as being the ultimate source of spiritual and moral authority. It was in the landscape that humans communicated with the deities at sites identified as being saturated with potent energy. Landscape was understood as being seen as a reflection of self. Through the landscape we humans come to know ourselves in relation to our environment. We can see ourselves, as an integral element of the world we live in, not separated from but inseparable from the environment that supports us. The garden is an abstraction of the relationship between us and our environment, and an attempt to distil that quality and so to bring it closer to our daily life experience.

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Zen And The Japanese Garden. Part 3/3

All gardens are modelled after the notion of the garden representing paradise, or an idealised state of being. This idea is inherent in the Zen garden as with every other type of garden. Given the Zen viewpoint outlined above then one can understand that the Zen garden (that is a garden created through a Zen perspective) will be rich in potential to communicate and ‘interact’ with the viewer. The garden will become a perfect vehicle for symbolic content, and that through the inclusion of symbolic content the experience of the garden can be enriched even further. It should be noted though that any symbolism expressed in a garden is only as a finger pointing out a direction, in itself the symbolic content has no concrete reality nor absolute meaning. Several Zen temple gardens in Japan today are associated with symbolic content. The garden at Daisen-in (part of the Daitoku-ji complex in Kyõto is a case in point. Initially laid out at the beginning of the 16^th century, the stonework of the garden is a masterpiece of garden design. Drawing much on the concepts of Chinese landscape painting, the garden layout has a powerful imagery that seems to be associated with a depiction of the types of landscapes so beloved by Sung painters. Today the visitor to the garden is regaled with the interpretation of the garden being symbolic of the passage of the individual through life, as represented by the birth of the flow of water high in the mountains as it subsequently makes its way to the sea. Every stone grouping and many individual stones that make up the bulk of the garden are ascribed symbolic content or ‘meaning’, and the visitor may well come away with the idea that a Zen garden is primarily composed of symbolic content. It must be said that it is highly unlikely that this was in the minds of the original creator or creators of the garden. Far more possible is that they sought to create a general notion of landscape, to express something of the quality of Chinese landscape painting. The role of any symbolic content in a Zen garden is to be a finger pointing, directing attention inwards, not to present an external idea or interpretation of the garden in the mind of the viewer. Many contemporary garden creators have adopted the notion of the garden holding symbolic content. Shigemori Mirei, a well known 20^th century garden creator responsible for revitalising the garden tradition in the modern era, created many karesansui gardens, which often carried as their principal modus symbolic content, he realised the narrative potential of the karesansui garden.

The Zen garden is not the romanticized vision (mono no aware) of landscape as espoused by the Heian era (785-1185) courtly poets, but a vision that saw landscape as capable of expressing profound spiritual teaching. Mono no aware was a term that can be translated as the ’pathos of things’[1]. Though the term had a Buddhist resonance, in recognizing the fragile seasonality of all living things, its emphasis is on the emotional response of the viewer, for example the brief glory of cherry blossom. The Zen view penetrates even deeper than emotion, attempting to see the landscape beyond apparent form. In the Zen view all matter seen with even a trace of ego-mind is an illusion. Absolute reality lies beyond the complexity of such a view, indeed it cannot be expressed by an intellectual process which inevitably brings its own limitations and parameters. Musō Soseki (夢窓 疎石, 1275 – 1351) the greatest Rinzai teacher of his day wrote the following poem, entitled’ A Rhyme on an Artificial Mountain’:

Without a speck of dust

A high peak rises,

Without a drop of water

A loud waterfall plunges.

On one or two evenings

The wind and the moon

Enable the right person

To create and play within the scene.[2]

The artificial mountain of the title refers to a ‘mountain’ in a garden setting. In the Chinese garden this could literally be a piling up of stones to make a tall mountain-like feature. The Japanese preferred to make a similar statement of intent, but by using single pieces of stone standing upright, or stones grouped into arrangements by the mystic numbers 3, 5, or 7. By opening the poem with the line, “Without a speck of dust”, Musō indicates the scenery being observed has been created by an enlightened mind, and hence the scenery is able to take on a transcendental aspect and become an extension of sacred space.

When the mind sees without discrimination, sees beyond the limitations of duality, then it is possible to see a mountain in a stone. To see a ‘high peak’ rising out of a garden stone, and likewise to see, hear and feel a waterfall without the presence of water. An arrangement of stones that simply suggests a waterfall would require insight to allow a viewer to see and hear as a ‘loud waterfall plunges’. It requires effort and to a certain extent training to look at landscape in non-conceptual ways to fully grasp what Musō is saying. More than to just grasp intellectually the concept, but to see a stone and experience a mountain; to see a dry waterfall (such as the one at Tenryū-ji temple, reputedly designed by Musō) and experience the full knowing of water flowing. To the Zen mind, to see things as they are, in their ‘original state’, is to grasp something beyond duality, beyond relational forms. It is to intuitively see and grasp the essential nature of the object in question. To see something in an undifferentiated state, is not to apply judgement nor discrimination, as these attributes are something we bring with us, they are not part of the original state.

In the final two lines of the poem Musō indicates a way to approach a garden landscape.  The broad undifferentiated gaze ‘enables the right person, to create and play within the scene.’ The ‘right person’ referred to here is someone who has grasped the actuality of non-duality, someone who sees without discrimination. Furthermore because this person sees in this way then they become enabled to ‘create and play within the scene. That is they are able to conjure mountains out of stones, to create in their own imagination, landscapes that can be traversed, explored, discovered and enjoyed, every bit as much as if one were travelling through nature itself. In the liberation from duality comes a sense of play with the very nature of perceived reality, an educated person such as Musō, brings to the play a deep knowledge of Chinese poetry and literature, as well as a appreciation of his own native landscape settings. Just as a child can take beach sand and pebbles and construct a world of its own making, one that is as embodied as a landscape untainted by a speck of dust.

Zen recognizes that essentially any work of art is “a subjective projection into the world of an artificial reality.”[3] A stone is not a mountain, nor raked gravel flowing water. What is important is the heart-mind that sees beyond apparent form in whatever guise it may appear. Zen is saying all apparent notions of reality are ultimately illusory. Yet the illusion can be turned upon itself, by recognizing the illusion the viewer comes closer to seeing ‘true’ reality. In this light even ‘ true’ and ‘illusion’ are themselves subjective terms. When a viewer sees through such paradoxical notions, then he or she steps closer to seeing all things as inseparable and wholly interdependent. The garden one looks at is an extension of oneself, and the viewer is another element of the garden. All matter, animate or inanimate are patterns of energy manifested in form. Form appears to the mind, and is so created by mind. Yet mind and form are also inseparable in their interdependence.

“One should not take outward beauty for reality. He who does not understand this mystery will not obtain the truth.” [4]

Daichi-ji, Shiga Prefecture

“One particle of dust is raised and the great earth lies therein; one flower blooms, and the universe rises with it. The inner treasure is the essence of the mind, the Buddha-nature or spiritual consciousness, that which sees and grasps things without deliberation or definitions.” ”[5]

Ryugin-an, Kyoto

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[1] The World of the Shining Prince. Ivan Morris. Oxford University Press, 1964.

[2] Translated by Sharon Nakazoto

[3] Parker, see above.

[4] Ching Hao, Sung dynasty painter, 10th C

[5] Yüan-wu (1063-1135), Chinese Zen teacher Sung dynasty.

If you enjoyed this blog then try my Facebook page, Robert Ketchell Garden Design. Feel free to leave comments there. Good gardening. 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.

Zen And The Japanese Garden. Part 2/3

A key figure to begin to begin to understand the relationship of landscape (and by extension gardens) to the individual in the Zen context is Dõgen. In his ‘Landscape Sutra’ ((Sansuikyõ) he sketches out his thinking. The text opens with the following commentary: “ Mountains and waters right now are the actualization of the ancient Buddha way. Each abiding in its phenomenal expression, realizes completeness. Because mountains and waters have been active since before the Empty Eon, they are alive at this moment. Because they have been the self since before form arose they are emancipation-realization.

Because mountains are high and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached in the mountains; the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely in the mountains.”[1]

Dogen Zenji, founder of the Soto Zen school in Japan

Dõgen states from the outset that the landscape in which people live can be interpreted as an expression of Buddhist perception. Furthermore that he does not perceive any separation between the individual and landscape. It is in and through the landscape that the individual can achieve enlightenment (“soaring in the wind”). This view had already by Dõgen’s time had a long tradition both in Japan and also in China, where the landscape was deeply associated with religious and artistic practice. The landscape was the abode of divine connection and spiritual practice, across East Asia it was in the landscape itself that people communicated with the deities, and through this identified both specific landscape locations (sacred mountains), as well as landscape in general, with the confirmation of political, moral and artistic development. In Japan the animistic religion Shinto that was already centuries old by the time of the introduction of Buddhism, was essentially practiced in the landscape, and was closely associated with agriculture. In Japan and China, the landscape was the prime source of imagery of the poetic traditions, and in China landscape painting was also regarded as one of the most profound medium of artistic expression. Dogen  comments: “Mountains have been the abode of great sages from the limitless past to the limitless present. Wise people and sages all have mountains as their inner chamber, as their body and mind. Because of wise people and sages, mountains appear.”

Huang shan mountains, China

The gardens of the tradition in Japan are expressions of nature, their form and content derived from nature. In the opening sentences of the Sakuteiki  (‘Records of Garden Making’ compiled in the 11^th century), can be found the exhortation: “Visualise the famous landscapes of our country and come to understand their most interesting points. Recreate the essence of those scenes in the garden, but do so interpretively, not strictly.”[2] This principal has underlain all garden creation in Japan and continues to this day, as a garden apprentice it is one of the first lessons one learns. Following this basic assumption the gardens that appear in Zen temples are essentially interpretations of the natural landscape, condensed and concentrated in their expression.

Landscape painting by Guo Shi

Much of Zen landscape iconography was drawn from Chinese (especially Sung dynasty) sources through both poetry and paintings. The monks of the temples of Kamakura and Kyõto were city bound; they lived most of their lives in an urban setting. Yet, important to them was the notion of the reclusive hermit who lived out a life far from urban centres. This cultural and philosophical model had had a long precedent in China, and there were certainly individuals there and in Japan who retired from society to live deep in remote mountain areas. Landscape was associated with a spiritual and moral purity that could be corrupted or distorted by metropolitan life, hence the term arose, ‘the dust of the world’. The Sung dynasty poet Yang Wan-li wrote;

“The flowering plum grove is like a recluse.

Full of the spirit of open space,

Free from the spirit of worldly dust.”[3]

Yang-li and many others considered it possible to connect with the greater landscape by recreating landscapes through gardens. The elements that went into creating gardens could contain and express symbolic content that went far beyond the apparent limitation of form. Zen monks who engaged with creating gardens realised the potential of this way of seeing. By integrating images of nature into their urban bound lives they were able to benefit from the idea of nature itself, and so imbue their lives with such qualities. Also, in doing so, they were conceptually able to overcome the dualism of city versus nature. In creating gardens, however small, they could ‘live in nature’, and assume some of the qualities of the mountain hermit whilst living out a life of spiritual practice and culture in the midst of a metropolitan area.

Ryogen-in, Kyoto 16th C

 

This is in line with the Zen concept of ‘attaining in the mind’, that is being able to fuse subjective and objective conceptions of the world within a singularity of the perception of the individual. When something is ‘attained in the mind’, then there is no objectification, no separation into ‘here and there’, no duality exists.  This way, the inherent ego driven dualism is overcome and the individual is freed of the constraints of dualistic thinking, he or she escapes the clutches of samsara into liberation (nirvana). In this way the Zen adept looking at a courtyard featuring only arranged stones and raked gravel, can see beyond the apparent forms before them. They are free to infuse the scenery through their own imagination. Rocks can become mountains, islands or even continents. The lines of the raked gravel can become as flowing water, streams, rivers or oceans. Once the separation between the viewer and the garden is dissolved then a freedom is attained, the garden is born again as refined landscape, sacred internalised landscape. A landscape through which the viewer can move at will, creating and recreating scenery of which he or she is indisputably the co-creator; as the one dances with the other in a cosmically inspired dance of creation. 

Daigo Sambo-in, Fushimi.

[1] Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma. Trans Arnold Kotler and Kazuaki Tanahashi

[2] Sakuteki.  Visions of the Japanese Garden. Takei and Keane. Tuttle. 2001

[3] Quoted in Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan. Joseph Parker. State University of New York Press. 1999.

If you enjoyed this blog then try my Facebook page, Robert Ketchell Garden Design. Feel free to leave comments there. Good gardening. 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.