Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Zen Garden
A view from the other side of this attractive Zen style gravel garden with two storey pagoda in the distance. From Kanyou Zen Temple in Kano, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
The Zen Garden represents the cosmos I have heard it said. It seems to me that many a Zen garden look like geographies in miniature so that looking at one for a while ones mind starts to play tricks, and the gravel looks like the sea and the rocks like, or patches of grass like islands. The significance of this is, in my opion, like the Kanon bodhisattva statue that appears to be in motion even though it is stationary, to encourage the viewer to realise that scale and motion are in the mind of the beholder. Or that ultimately everything is in the mind of the beholder, and that the data, the pure experience is "mu" (chaos, nothing, Buddha nature) .
禅の庭は宇宙を表しているといわれていると思いますが、自分的に上のような庭はもっと規模の大きい風景を思い浮かばせます。禅の庭をみていると砂利が海にみえたり岩が島に見えたりするという錯覚が生じます。これは動いていないのに、動いているように見える観音菩薩像と同様、規模や動きは見ている人の心の問題であって、知覚されるデータ、その「純粋体験」に内在するものではなく、後者は「無」・「仏心」であることを示しているように思います。
The Zen Garden represents the cosmos I have heard it said. It seems to me that many a Zen garden look like geographies in miniature so that looking at one for a while ones mind starts to play tricks, and the gravel looks like the sea and the rocks like, or patches of grass like islands. The significance of this is, in my opion, like the Kanon bodhisattva statue that appears to be in motion even though it is stationary, to encourage the viewer to realise that scale and motion are in the mind of the beholder. Or that ultimately everything is in the mind of the beholder, and that the data, the pure experience is "mu" (chaos, nothing, Buddha nature) .
禅の庭は宇宙を表しているといわれていると思いますが、自分的に上のような庭はもっと規模の大きい風景を思い浮かばせます。禅の庭をみていると砂利が海にみえたり岩が島に見えたりするという錯覚が生じます。これは動いていないのに、動いているように見える観音菩薩像と同様、規模や動きは見ている人の心の問題であって、知覚されるデータ、その「純粋体験」に内在するものではなく、後者は「無」・「仏心」であることを示しているように思います。
Labels: authenticopy, japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, 日本文化
This blog represents the opinions of the author, Timothy Takemoto, and not the opinions of his employer.