Thomas Hoover

“ At the same time, the bald clay, the streaks of glaze, the hand-formed sculpture, allow one to recognize the materials and the process of formation. When the potter keeps no secrets, one enters into the exhilaration of his moment of creation. Once again, this is a deliberate aesthetic device, reminding one that the potter is an individual artist, not a faceless craftsman. The look and feel of Zen ceramics make them seem forerunners of the modern craft-pottery movement, but few modern potters are blessed with the rich legacy of Zen aesthetic ideals that made these ceramics possible. ”

“ The wonderful twisted trees, mighty mountain pines and cedars, loved by these early Chinese and later Japanese, which our Western superficial view first ascribed to some barbarian taste for monstrosities, really exhibit the deep Zen thinker in their great knots and scaly limbs that have wrestled with storms and frosts and earthquakes—an almost identical process through which a man's life-struggles with enemies, misfortunes, and pains have stamped themselves into the wrinkles and strong muscular planes of his fine old face. ”

“ The early Japanese, who saw in nature the expression of life's spirit, naturally found the flower a congenial symbol for an abstract philosophy like Buddhism. In the years preceding Zen's arrival in Japan, a parallel but essentially secular taste for flowers permeated the aristocratic court civilization of the Heian, where lovers attached sprays of blossoms to letters and eulogized the plum and cherry as symbols of life's transient happiness. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to describe blossoms as the foremost symbol of Japan's great age of love poetry. ”

“ Unlike Daisen-in, the garden at Ryoan-ji is not a symbolic mountain scene. It is instead a work of abstract art on a canvas of sand which goes beyond a symbolic representation of a landscape scene to provide a distillation of the very universe. It is internationally regarded as the very essence of Zen, and it is almost impossible to describe, in either words or pictures. It has a spirit that seems to rise up for those who come into its presence, evoking an immediate response even in someone who has no understanding of Zen. ”

“ 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 Japanese phenomena as the samurai swordsmen and the kamikaze pilot, both of whom could, in the Japanese phrase, live as if already dead. ”

“ The almost universal Western attitude toward Japanese cuisine was voiced many centuries ago by the European visitor Bernardo do Avila Giron, who declared, "I will not praise Japanese food for it is not good, albeit it is pleasing to the eye, but instead I will describe the clean and peculiar way in which it is served."2 Beauty counts as heavily as taste at a formal table, and to say Japanese food is "served" is like calling the members of a string quartet fiddlers. The Japanese devote more artistic resources to the rites of food than any other people on earth. ”

“ Just as with the off-balance picture or garden, the Zen poet has forced you to be a part of his creation. But more significantly, he has achieved a depth and reverberation impossible with mere words. Explicit art ends with itself; suggestive art is as limitless and profound as one's imagination can make it.
Another obvious quality of Zen art is its simplicity. Again one thinks of the spareness and purity in Greek art, and again the connection is wrong. ”

“ These terms of refined aristocratic discernment became thoroughly ingrained in Japanese life and were passed on to Zen aesthetics, which added new terms that extended the Heian categories to reverence for beauty past its prime and for objects that reflect the rigors of life. The Zen aesthetes also added the notion of yugen, an extension of aware into the region of poignant foreboding. At a brilliant sunset one's mind feels aware, but as the shadows deepen and night birds cry, one's soul feels yugen. ”

“ Virtually all the temples and estates in Kyoto, together with their gardens, were abandoned relics; and the once indulgent patronage of aristocrats and shoguns was gone forever. A reflective, contemplative mood settled over the houses of Zen. Out of this era of penurious disarray developed a style of temple garden which many hold to be the most profound expression of Zen art: the dry landscape, or kare sansui. Fashioned from the most austere materials, sand and stone, these waterless vistas were the final step in the creation of three-dimensional reproductions of Sung ink paintings. ”

“ This idea fitted well with the Zen notion that material things were dross and should not be accorded excessive importance. The curious thing is that the idea works; old objects, desiccated and apparently used up, have a nobility that makes one contemplate eternity and scorn the fashions of the moment. Broken and patched tea bowls or frayed scrolls seemingly falling apart are indeed more beautiful than they were when new. The patina of age is a lesson that time is forever and that you, creature of an hour, would do well to know humility in the face of eternity. ”

“ Tea bowls, the major expression of Zen art, seem at once both primitive and strikingly modern. To begin to understand this contradiction we must go back to our own nineteenth century in the West, when tastes ran to decoration for its own sake and the rule of perfect, symmetrical, polished form was the aesthetic ideal. Into this smug, serene sea of aesthetic sureties, which in some ways reached back to the ancient Greeks, the English critic John Ruskin threw a boulder when he wrote:
Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end. ”

“ The Ashikaga era of Japanese monochrome landscape is really the story of a few inspired individuals, artists whose works spanned a period of something more than one hundred and fifty years. As men of Zen, they found the landscape an ideal expression of reverence for the divine essence they perceived in nature. To contemplate nature was to contemplate the universal god, and to contemplate a painting of nature, or better still to paint nature itself, was to perform a sacrament. ”

“ Finally, the aesthetic principles of Zen culture's third face also reflect the practical concerns of its second face, tranquility. Zen art exudes an unmistakable calm and repose of the spirit. Contemplating a stone garden or viewing the measured movements of the tea ceremony, one realizes that Zen art is certain of itself, and it imparts this certainty, this gentle voice of inner calm, to one's spirit. The things that matter are settled, and those that do not are winnowed out like chaff in the wind. ”

“ Like the slash of the Zen swordsman, the absolute accuracy of the Zen artist's brushstroke can come only from one whose mind and body are one. The purpose of Zen painting is to penetrate beyond the perceptions of the rational mind and its supporting senses, to show not nature's surface but its very essence. ”

“ As the government disintegrated, he made his own contribution as a connoisseur and patron of the fine arts, bringing to culmination the movement in Zen art that left Japan a legacy far more lasting than any that mere diplomacy could have left. Like his European counterparts, the Medici, Yoshimasa balanced his failings in politics with faultless aesthetic judgment, endowing the Zen arts with new standards in architecture, painting, gardening, the No theater, the tea ceremony, and ceremonial flower arranging. ”

“ A cultivated Japanese can tell you not only what species of raw fish he is tasting, but the number of hours it has been away from the sea. A conscientious Japanese chef would no more think of serving a vegetable not scrupulously fresh than he would drown it in a heavy sauce. Furthermore, he would most prefer to serve it entirely raw, thereby preserving intact all its subtle natural flavor and texture.
Japanese cuisine, which is a water-based art as compared to the oil-based cooking of China or the butter-based dishes of France, is now known and appreciated worldwide. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it is true that classic 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 Japanese 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The only natural rocks in evidence are the stepping stones themselves, but along the path are a carved stone in the shape of a water basin and a bamboo dipper, so that one can rinse one's mouth before taking tea, and a stone lantern to provide illumination for evening gatherings. The unpretentious stones of the walkway, set deep in natural mossy beds, divide the garden into two parts, winding through it like a curving, natural path. ”

“ The No is perhaps the most difficult Zen art for Westerners to enjoy. The restrained action transmits virtually nothing of what is occurring onstage, and the poetry does not translate well. (As Robert Frost once observed, in translations of poetry, it is the poetry that is lost.) The music is harsh to the Western ear; the chorus interrupts at intervals that seem puzzling; the strange cries and dances befog the mind. Most important of all, the concept of yugen is not a natural part of Western aesthetics. ”

“ Indian art is a celebration of life and vigor, whereas Zen, with its philosophy that categories and distinctions do not exist, is naturally unsympathetic to decorative multiplicity. The happy result of this rather sober outlook is that Zen art seems surprisingly modern; it is never cluttered, busy, gaudy, overdone. The forms—whether in the classic Japanese house, the stone garden, or a simple ceramic pot—are invariably clean and elegant. ”