From "The Japanese Garden"by Donald Richie
Nearly all the makers of these gardens were, as one might expect, also tea-ceremony masters. These men, whether samurai, priests, or tradesmen, shared a series of presumptions about nature and consequently about gardens.The aesthetic is contained in one of the more famous anecdotes about Rikyu. Having once carefully swept his tea-garden and raked all the fallen leaves out of the way, he went to the tree and shook it. Several leaves fell. These he left as they were. It was these leaves which made his garden natural.
One arranged nature but only to an extent, and that extent was gauged by an extremely refined aesthetic sensibility. It was not a question of contrivance; it was a question of control. This control extended in the same direction in which nature itself extended. The desired end was to reduce and hence heighten effect. Flowers were never used in the garden because, since flower arrangements were used within the tea-house itself, blossoms in the garden would detract from the blossoms inside. One makes an effect by reducing; less always means more; a whisper captures attention when a shout cannot. The technique for this was called sashiai (literally, 'mutual interference'), and its understanding is central to any comprehension of Japanese aesthetics.
In this regard, one comes upon two words, one of which we met earlier: sabi and wabi. The former, which was translated as 'patina,' indicates that kind of elegance created by time alone. The elegance of wabi is somewhat different. The wabi quality makes much, indeed, everything, of very little or nothing at all. Its apparent poverty is its salient attribute. Another Rikyu anecdote illustrates the point.
He had a garden in which were growing a large number of marvelous morning-glories. It was arranged that a party come to view them. They arrived early but discovered not one. All had been uprooted and the area was nothing but sand and pebbles. Inside the teahouse, however, arranged in the small alcove, set in a plain holder, was one single, perfect morning-glory. Just as the whole of the garden, the whole nature of all morning-glories everywhere, was contained in that single flower, so, wabi insists, the entire world is found in but one of its varied aspects.
Thus the architecture of the tea-house and the design of the garden itself were purposely rustic, deliberately unostentatious. Man's most'natural' architecture, that which derived most visibly from nature itself, was considered proper for the house, the environment it sought to create, and the attached garden. Here, beauty was discovered, surprised as it were-a concept called mitate, literally, the discovery of a new way of viewing.
To insist upon the perfection of a few fallen leaves, or a single common flower-this led to mitate. Forced to look, led to observe, one suddenly sees, as though with new eyes, a world of beauty in the most ordinary things.
To accept yourself completely you must also accept your own mortality, and this is what, somehow, and admittedly at an enormous expense, some Asians have been able to do. They can celebrate the changes of the seasons and still not feel that April is the cruelest month: they may contemplate the truly permanent with a dignity, which does not allow easy if ironic thought of Ozymandias. Though sometimes sentimental and unusually given to the pathetic fallacy, the Japanese rarely allows the merely anthropomorphic to cloud his perhaps unique vision of the timeless.This is because by sacrificing an urge to immortality, and through a knowing acceptance of himself and his world, he stops time. He has found a way to freeze it, to suspend it, to make it permanent. He does this, not through pyramids and ziggurats, but by letting it have its own way.
This is seen no better than in the Japanese garden where the seasons may change nature's skin, but the bones-rocks, water-are always visible, always unchanged. The Japanese garden is like a still picture-a frozen moment which is also all eternity. It remains the same no matter the season because the seasons are acknowledged, and this acknowledgment is spiritual, a combination of idea and emotion. As an old saying has it: ". . . gazing upon the mountain one's knowledge is widened: looking upon the water one's feelings are increased."
A mountain for intelligence, a lake for feelings; solid stone and fluid water. These are the antipodes of Asia. Its mountains and its seas are its only realities. Rocks to make mountains, waters to make oceans--the everyday stone and the commonplace pool allowed to express their natures, allowed to whisper their meaning. This is what the Japanese garden has been about from the beginning. It is a celebration of the elementals, a glimpse of nature bare, an analysis of the world in which we live.
In Zen Buddhism one does not seek to analyze the truth. Rather, one grasps the truth as a whole. "Not logically, but intuitively," goes the phrase, "does one seek the truth." This spiritual ideal presumes an awareness and acceptance of the entire universe. The dry garden with its sand and stones is a kind of Zen lesson. It is a garden abstracted, a world created in all of its diversity, yet unified. It is not realistic because it is real. It goes one step beyond the expected and moves toward the ideal. Each element in it is natural, yet this combination of elements is an embodiment of Zen philosophy, a model of Zen thought.
From the first gardens to these last gardens, down to the modern gardens of our own age, the Japanese attitude toward nature is revealed as the continuous endeavor to extract the essence of a stone, a tree, a view. In order to do so one recognizes the nature of each, insists upon it, allows this nature to display itself.The original stone or tree is never natural enough for the Japanese. Rather than working against nature, however, clipping the tree or squaring the stone, the Japanese gardener has from the beginning worked with nature, worked along its grain, as it were. There is pruning and placing but this results in the revealing of a line which nature itself created and then obscured in its own plentitude.
That the Japanese idealize is true enough, but the method of idealization is, as has been indicated, to perceive and then to free that which already exists.
The assumption of this act, as we have seen during the course of this book, is that nature and man are one. By its acceptance of the transitory it emphasizes both the timeless and the instant which is now. By discovering unity in variety, it discovers the forever unique.
In Japan one clearly sees the passing of this philosophy from one generation to another, from one age to the next. It is more than a tradition. It is living thought. And, being alive, it is also variously interpreted.
As the great poet Matsuo Basho said, centuries ago: one should never imitate that which has been inherited from one's forebears; one should, instead, strive after that for which one's forebears strove.
He was speaking of haiku, but he could have been speaking of many things, so common is the attitude expressed. He could have been speaking of gardens, for, no matter the form-paradise garden, tour garden, water garden, sand garden, island garden-behind each is the same attitude toward nature. It is one which remains the same despite its changing forms.
The modern gardener, living in this age of express highways and jet travel, continues to 'strive after that for which one's forebears strove. It is a belief in the identity of man and nature, one which humbles in its insistence upon the transitory nature of the merely human, but which, at the same time, dignifies by its equal insistence that we are all a part of something larger than ourselves.