Accompanying his post are photos I recently took at the Morikami Japanese Gardens in Florida.
Zen Gardens Part II:
I have seen this expression used in reference to different
groups, but it is certainly true of Zen adepts: you ask two of them about
something (unless it’s a fairly narrow and settled doctrinal matter—although,
even then…) and you’ll get three opinions. This would certainly apply to the
question of what it means to approach gardening in the spirit of Zen.
Some would undoubtedly talk about not getting too attached
to the final results, staying in the flow, accepting change, and expecting the
unexpected. Good points (albeit beaten half to death), but I’ve learned
from experience that one must be careful with the concept of
non-attachment—without long and deep meditation practice, it is too easily
confused with not caring; and accepting change gets swapped for an extreme
version of “stiff upper lip” stoicism.
When you see several years of your labor destroyed by a
hurricane, you feel upset—you don’t stop there, you start rebuilding—but trying
to shrug off your very natural grief because “everything is empty” or any other
such undigested Zen bit, is not recommended.
Others would talk about discipline and commitment, about
approaching the gardening time with the same seriousness and concentration as
you would approach any other practice. Also good, but watch out for that
seriousness and focus turning into self-righteous rigid prissiness!
Still others will talk about peace, which, in the case of
gardening, seems a bit redundant. I haven’t met many gardeners who would be
uprooting weeds like waging a war or look at some healthy, thriving plants, and
break out into an MMA* or WWF* victory dance, complete with shouts of “take
that!” I mean, one could imagine a scenario for each of these occurrences
(that’s what imagination is for), but really….
So, anyway, we could be playing this game much longer, but
let me just fast-forward to the conclusion, which is my very personal two
cents on what it means to approach gardening in the spirit of Zen.
Cent number one: plants are sentient beings. Oh, come on,
put down the phone, there is no need for “nice young people in their
clean white coats.” It is a different kind of sentience, and I don’t have
much truck with some of the New Age types who will literally talk to the
flowers and hug the trees and effuse about communing with nature (actually,
many of those who are most prone to such proclamations are urban to the core,
with no real experience of gardening or agriculture). But sentient, the plants
are. So, for me, gardening “while in Zen” would definitely include listening to
your plants, trying to understand what they want, being aware of their moods,
being open to the feeling of mutual energy exchange—not necessarily
highfalutin' “communing” or exaltation,
but routine day-to-day communication and the sensation of mutual
dependence and gratitude.
May all sentient beings be free from suffering. May all
sentient beings achieve happiness.
Cent number two: Zen is very tightly intertwined with a specific
type of aesthetics, characterized by spareness, austerity, incompleteness,
contrast (almost contradictoriness), the feeling of space, a certain melancholy,
and raw, wild refinement.
The actual Japanese gravel Zen gardens are consciously
designed to embody those features, but many of these elements are scattered
around in all kinds of gardens, including a single indoor plant. Much is in the
eye of the beholder. From the Zen perspective, this aesthetic is not random or
valuable for its own sake. It is there to dislodge the observer from the
auto-pilot of daily routine, to bring him or her to the unique moment that is
now, while evoking the acute feeling of the transitory in that moment—and its
boundlessness. I most recently encountered this sensibility, in abundance, in a
book on…New
Orleans gardens!
Of course, like all aesthetic judgments, this one may be
disputed, but the point is—take a look. Go ahead, pause and take a look. It may
so happen that from this particular angle in your chair, the shape, the color,
the velvety texture of that African violet combines and contrasts just so with
the sleek, cool, metal whiteness of the table lamp—and there you are, having a
Zen moment.
Gesundheit, and happy gardening!
*Mixed martial arts and World Wrestling Federation, for all
of you with no taste for theatricalized aggression!
