Zen Culture Part 1

Zen Culture.

by Thomas Hoover.

Foreword

ANYONE WHO EXAMINES the Zen arts is immediately struck by how modern they seem. Many of the most famous stone gardens are abstract expressionism pure and simple, created out of found objects. The ceramics of the sixteenth-century Zen artists could be interchanged with the rugged pots of our own contemporary crafts movement and few people would notice a difference. Ancient Zen calligraphies, bold and slas.h.i.+ng, suggest the monochromes of Franz Kline or Willem de Kooning, and if the word "impressionistic" has any real meaning left, the spontaneous, intuitive, impulsive Zen painters should have first claim to it. The apparent nonsense and illogic of Zen parables established the limitations of language long before the theater of the absurd decided to ridicule our modern doublespeak; indeed, our new-found skepticism about language as a medium for communication was a commonplace to j.a.panese artists who created both a drama (the No) and a poetry (the Haiku) that neatly circ.u.mvent reliance on mere words for expression--and in two entirely different ways. Four-hundred-year-old Zen architecture appears to be virtually a copy of contemporary design ideas: modular sizing, exposed woods and materials, movable part.i.tions, multifunctional rooms, bare walls and uncluttered s.p.a.ce, indirect lighting effects, and a California marriage of house and garden. The celebrated tea ceremony might be considered an early form of j.a.panese group therapy, while Zen landscape gardens are nothing less than a masterful deception masquerading as the "natural" look.

If all this were not coincidence enough, consider for a moment our present-day artistic conventions and aesthetic ideals. Like much of what we consider "modern," Zen arts tend to be as simple as possible, with clean, even severe, lines. Decoration for its own sake is virtually nonexistent; Zen artists had no more taste for the ornate than we do today. The works of medieval Zen artists were rough and asymmetrical, with a skillful exploitation of deliberate imperfections and blemishes to make the viewer aware of both the materials used and the process of creation. If it is true that cla.s.sic art makes one aware of the form and romantic art makes one aware of the artist, Zen art makes one aware of the work of art itself.

We have absorbed into our Western culture almost unawares such Zen cultural forms and aesthetic principles as j.a.panese ideas of architecture, gardens, and flower arranging. Other forms, such as Haiku poetry and Zen-style ceramics, we have borrowed in a more open-handed way, freely acknowledging the source. Actually, none of the Zen arts is really out of our reach, and a critical following has developed in the West for almost all of them. The great Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats embraced the Zen-inspired No drama, although he probably knew next to nothing about Zen. (For that matter, we should recall that no English-language books were written on Zen until well into the twentieth century.) It seems fair to say that the Zen arts have touched us because they express some view of the world that we have, several hundred years later, quite independently come to share.

Yet for all the seeming familiarity, there remains an alien quality. We are not always aware of the really quite extraordinary mind manipulation inherent in Zen art. Why, for instance, does a j.a.panese garden often seem much larger than it really is? How does the j.a.panese- style room alter human perception in such a way that people's experience of each other is intensified? Why do Zen ceramics always manage to make one take special notice of their surface? This subtle manipulation of perception is all done by ingenious but carefully hidden tricks. But since the Zen arts appear so modern, we are lulled out of looking below the surface to find the fundamental differences.

Most important of all, it is easy to miss what is surely the most significant quality of Zen arts--their ability to unlock our powers of direct perception. Since Zen teaches that categories and systematic a.n.a.lysis hinder real understanding of the outer

(or inner) world, many Zen arts are specifically designed to awaken our latent ability to perceive directly. They appear innocent enough on the surface, but they involve a subtle mind- ma.s.sage not obvious to a casual observer. It is this added dimension of Zen art that truly sets it apart from anything we have produced in the twentieth century.

In these pages I will attempt to trace the history and characteristics of both Zen and the Zen arts--to explain where they came from, why they arose, what they were intended to do, and how they go about doing it. I have also included some Western-style a.n.a.lysis of their very non- Western qualities. The aesthetic ideas embedded in Zen culture and its perception-inducing works of art are among the most stunning achievements in world art history. Zen culture, concerned as it is with the process of perception as much as with actual works of art, can open our senses so that we experience anew the arts of both East and West, ancient and modern.

Part I

THE BEGINNINGS: PREHISTORY TO 1333

CHAPTER ONE

Zen Culture and the Counter Mind

_ Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

_Matthew 6:28

_Pre-Buddhist clay figure _(haniwa)

THE ZEN TRADITION extends back some fifteen hundred years to a wandering Indian teacher of meditation named Bodhidharma. As Indian gurus are fond of doing, Bodhidharma left his homeland and journeyed abroad, following what was in those days a well-beaten trail to China. Upon reaching Nanking, he paused to visit the Chinese Emperor Wu, a man known to be a particularly devout Buddhist. The emperor was delighted to receive his famous Indian guest and proceeded immediately to boast of his own accomplishments. "I have built many temples. I have copied the sacred _sutras_. I have led many to the Buddha. Therefore, I ask you: What is my merit: What reward have I earned?" Bodhidharma reportedly growled, "None whatsoever, your Majesty." The emperor was startled but persisted, "Tell me then, what is the most important principle or teaching of Buddhism?" "Vast emptiness," Bodhidharma replied, meaning, of course, the void of nonattachment. Not knowing what to make of his guest, the emperor backed away and inquired, "Who exactly are you who stands before me now?" To which Bodhidharma admitted he had no idea.

Sensing that the emperor was not yet prepared for such teachings, Bodhidharma left the palace and traveled to a mountain monastery to begin a long career of meditation. Over the years his reputation for wisdom gradually attracted many followers--dissident Chinese who rejected cla.s.sical Buddhism and all its rigmarole in favor of Bodhidharma's meditation, or _dhyana_, a Sanskrit term they p.r.o.nounced as Ch'an--later to be called Zen by the j.a.panese. This teaching of meditation and vast emptiness shared very little with other branches of Chinese Buddhism. Ch'an had no sacred images because it had no G.o.ds to wors.h.i.+p, and it de-emphasized the scriptures, since its central dogma was that dogma is useless. Handed down from master to pupil was the paradoxical teaching that nothing can be taught. According to Ch'an (and Zen), understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and heeding the instincts, the intuition.

Thus Zen became the religion of the antirational, what might be called the counter mind. The counter mind has taken on more concrete significance in recent years with the discovery that the human mind is not a single ent.i.ty but is divided into two quite different functional sections. We now know that the left hemisphere of the brain governs the logical, a.n.a.lytical portion of our lives, whereas the right hemisphere is the seat of our intuitive, nonverbal perception and understanding.

As far back as the ancient Greeks, we in the West have maintained an almost unshakable belief in the superiority of the a.n.a.lytical side of the mind, and this belief may well be the most consistent distinguis.h.i.+ng quality of Western philosophy. By contrast, the East in general and Zen in particular have advanced the opposite view. In fact, Zen masters have deliberately developed techniques (like illogical riddles or _koan_) to discredit the logical, verbal side of the mind so that the intuitive perceptions of the right hemisphere, the counter mind, may define reality.

What is the counter mind really like? What is there about it that has caused Western thinkers to disavow its functions for so many centuries?

The answer to these questions is not simple, but the path leading to it is directly before us. Zen has produced a rich culture which we may now examine at length. As the scholar-diplomat Sir George Sansom has pointed out, "The influence of [Zen] upon j.a.pan has been so subtle and pervading that it has become the essence of her finest culture." And in the cla.s.sical culture of j.a.pan it is possible to find the most revealing examples of the arts of the counter mind. Zen culture invites us to experience reality without the intervening distractions of intellect, categories, a.n.a.lysis. Here we may find the best evidence of what the intuitive side of the mind can produce--evidence all the more fascinating because it repudiates many of the most cherished a.s.sumptions of Western civilization.

When examined closely, Zen culture in j.a.pan reveals at least three interrelated aspects or faces. First there are the fine arts, creations of beauty but also devices whereby the Zen masters transmit otherwise inexpressible insights. Interestingly enough, the Zen masters did not trouble to invent new art forms but rather co-opted existing j.a.panese (and sometimes Chinese) forms and revised them to suit Zen purposes.

During medieval times, the Chinese-style gardens so favored by the j.a.panese aristocracy were adopted for use around Zen temples, but not before they were first converted into small-scale landscape "paintings"

and later into monochrome abstractions. Chinese ink painting, both that of the Sung academy and that of eccentric Chinese Ch'an monks, was imported and made the official art of Zen. Ideas from s.h.i.+nto architecture were combined with design details from mainland Ch'an monasteries to produce the Zen-inspired cla.s.sic j.a.panese house. Various types of rustic dramatic skits popular among the j.a.panese peasants were converted by Zen aesthetes into a solemn theater experience called the No, whose plays and narrative poetry are so austere, symbolic, and profound as to seem a kind of Zen Ma.s.s.

In the later years of popular Zen culture, poets revised the standard j.a.panese poetic form, which might be compared loosely to the Western sonnet, into a shorter, epigrammatic expression of the Zen outlook--the seventeen-syllable Haiku. Zen ceramics are a curious mixture of j.a.panese folk craft and Chinese technical sophistication; flower arranging is a link between Zen and the j.a.panese love of nature, blossoms and beauty; even formal j.a.panese cuisine is often more a celebration of Zen ideals than a response to hunger. The famous j.a.panese tea ceremony evolved from a Chinese party game into a solemn episode for the celebration of ideal beauty, inner calm, and the Zen concept of living.

The second face of Zen culture is best seen in the way in which j.a.panese life differs from our own. This is not to suggest that every j.a.panese is a living exemplar of Zen, but rather that many of the peculiarities--both good and bad--of the way of life we now think of as j.a.panese are traceable to att.i.tudes stemming from Zen. In the military sphere, Zen influence began as a special approach to swordsmans.h.i.+p and archery and ended as a disciplined contempt for death beyond what any other religion has inspired, save possibly in a few saints. In the military arts, as in other areas of life, Zen both led and followed j.a.panese culture--molding that culture and also presenting a vehicle for the expression of tendencies far older than Zen, among them the historic j.a.panese love of nature, the acceptance of hards.h.i.+p as uplifting to the spirit, the refusal to distinguish between the religious and the secular, and the capacity for the most unpleasant sorts of self-discipline. It might be said that the ideals of Zen struck a respondent chord in the j.a.panese character, bringing harmony where once there had been random notes.

Zen also brought something new to the j.a.panese which might be described as a religion of tranquility, or the idea that tranquility is the main objective of religion. The underside of this tranquility is its sense of humor. Zen, with its absurdist _koan_, laughs at life much the way the Marx brothers did. What exactly can you make of a philosophical system whose teacher answers the question, "How do you see things so clearly?" with the seeming one-liner, "I close my eyes"? Zen has long used the comic view of life to deflate those who start believing in their own systems and categories. It is easier to be tranquil about existence when you recognize the pointlessness of solemnity.

The other side of the religion of tranquility is the need to maintain peace of mind in the face of chaos. Sitting quietly in meditation is the traditional mainstay of Eastern religion, but Zen manages to carry the mental repose born of meditation back into daily life. This equanimity is the product of inner resources brought into being by spiritual training. You need not study Zen to have it, but it is Zen's most tangible goal. The j.a.panese, whose ability to ignore external distractions in a hectic world is possibly their best-known national trait, have deliberately used Zen and Zen arts (such as the tea ceremony, flower arranging, or ink painting) to counteract the stresses of modern life.

The follower of Zen is protected from the incursions of the world by an inverted (in our Western terms) understanding of what is real and what illusory. One of the all-time favorite _koan_ helps to make this clear.

The _koan_ describes three monks watching a banner flutter in the breeze. One monk observes, "The banner is moving," but the second insists, "The wind is moving." Finally, the third monk says, "You are both wrong. It is your mind that is moving." The point here is that, in modern times, most Westerners view the physical world as the operative reality and the unseen, nonphysical world as an abstraction (comforting or not, depending upon our beliefs or immediate needs, the spiritual world is said to grow less abstract to those in foxholes). But Zen takes the opposite tack; it holds that true reality is the fundamental unity of mind and matter, inner spirit and external world. When life is viewed in such terms, there can be no success or failure, happiness or unhappiness; life is a whole, and you are simply part of it. There are no dualities, hence there is nothing to worry about. The result is perfect tranquility.

Of course, one small thread remains to be tied. What do you do about daily life, where the world carries on as though it really does exist, dualities and all? Quite simply, Zen would have you treat the physical world exactly as followers of Western religions sometimes treat the spiritual world--as a convenient fiction whose phenomena you honor as though they existed, although you know all the while that they are illusions. The world of strife and relative values may trouble those who mistake it for the real thing, but the Zen-man echoes the words of Hamlet, "We that have free souls, it touches us not." The world is in fact meaningless. It is one's mind that is moving.

However startling such a doctrine may be to Western rationalists, it has engendered such j.a.panese phenomena as the _samurai_ swordsmen and the kamikaze pilot, both of whom could, in the j.a.panese phrase, live as if already dead. On a less dramatic scale, it allows the modern j.a.panese to be spiritually content and enjoy mental repose in a crowded subway, or to find solitude in a paper-walled house amid noisy neighbors. They wrap their coc.o.o.n of tranquility about them and become spiritually apart. Again, it is possible to enjoy this inner repose without Zen, but only in a Zen culture could it become a national trait.

The third face of Zen, the deep concern with and understanding of what const.i.tutes beauty, also preceded Zen culture in j.a.pan to some degree.

As with many of the existing j.a.panese art forms, the native sense of taste was co-opted by Zen culture and bent to the rules of Zen.

Aesthetic discernment was as important for social advancement in medieval, pre-Zen j.a.pan as good grammar is in the West today, and the characteristic attention to small details, the genuine ability to notice things, from the feathered pastel hues of a partially opened blossom to the colored refractions in a drop of dew, was already well developed. In the centuries before Zen, the notion that aesthetics in j.a.pan could reflect a philosophical point of view would have seemed strange. But to the taste-makers of Zen culture the arts were the handmaiden of spiritual ideas; their arts had to make a statement, and as a result art became an expression of religion, not so much a direct, point-blank depiction of religious motifs as in Christian art, but rather a belief that art itself is an inherently religious concern--an idea Zen shares with the ancient Greeks. But whereas the Greeks strove for perfect form as an exemplification of man's kins.h.i.+p with the G.o.ds, the Zen artist carefully avoids final perfection, not wis.h.i.+ng to idealize a physical world whose very existence he finds problematical.

Perhaps the most noticeable principle of Zen art is its asymmetry; we search in vain for straight lines, even numbers, round circles.

Furthermore, nothing ever seems to be centered. Our first impulse is to go into the work and straighten things up--which is precisely the effect the artist intended. Symmetrical art is a closed form, perfect in itself and frozen in completeness; asymmetrical art invites the observer in, to expand his imagination and to become part of the process of creation. The absence of bilateral symmetry mysteriously compels the observer to reach past surface form and touch the individuality of a work. Even more important, Zen asymmetry forcefully draws one away from any mental connection one might have between completed form and notions of completion and timelessness in material things. Zen denies the significance of the external world and underscores the point by never depicting it in static, stable, or closed terms. Greek art was a tribute to perfection; Zen art is a statement, if only implicit, that the objective world should never be taken too seriously.

The ideas taught by asymmetry in the visual arts are paralleled in the literary arts by the device of suggestion. This quality, first seen in pre-Zen aristocratic poetry, was brought to new heights by the Zen Haiku poets. Among other things, a Haiku poem sets you up for the last line, which kicks your imagination spinning into imagery. The most famous Haiku poem of all probably demonstrates this quality as well as any:

_An ancient pond;

A frog leaps in:

The sound of water.