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]
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| 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.”
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| Huang shan mountains, China |
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| 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.
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| Daigo Sambo-in, Fushimi. |
[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.
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