Wabi Sabi. Andrew Juniper
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Wabi Sabi - Andrew Juniper страница 6
Although Dogen saw no difference between the various schools of Zen, there were others who classified them according to the methods of training. The Rinzai sect accepted the importance of zazen but also encouraged acolytes to exhaust their cognitive activities by concentrating on a koan— a seemingly irresolvable riddle with no logical answers. The idea was for the koan to help in exhausting the intellectual process so that a clearer view of reality would reveal itself.
SO WHAT IS ZEN?
Ch’an, or Zen, as it is more commonly known in the West, is the peculiarly Chinese way of achieving the Buddhist goal of breaking down all learned ideas of the world so as to see the world as it is—that is, with a mind free from attachments or judgments. This state is reached through rigorous mental effort, and the path is paved by the achievement of mushin (literally “no heart”), where one is freed from mundane attachments or desires. When an acolyte has succeeded in calming his thoughts and emotions, he is then ready to perceive the world without any preconceived notions. This is the prerequisite for the state of enlightenment known as satori—the goal to which all Buddhists aspire. Indeed, it is a state of mind that mystics, sages, and sorcerers have channeled great efforts to achieve. Zen differs from other schools of Buddhism in that it believes that this awareness does not come gradually, but as a flash of insight, so it puts no store in theorizing or trying to explain the unexplainable. It focuses all its energies on bringing about this monumental shift in awareness, the shift that will free the acolyte from the bonds of a world that is too real.
Because of this Zen monks have been renowned for their eccentric behavior and cryptic answers to questions. They believe that our reason is the greatest source of misunderstanding because it actually hinders a student’s deeper comprehension of the world that exists beyond words. Humans are slaves to words and the reason they produce.
Breaking the bonds of dualism has been an ever-present theme in many religions and philosophies. From the moment of birth, we are constantly given a dualistic view of the world from our parents, and this is reinforced by all those we come into contact with until it becomes so internalized that we forget that it was even learned. We are taught that we are separate from the outside world, and objects that are not part of our body are separate from us. Zen masters say that this is pure illusion and that we are in fact everything we perceive. In modern psychological terms, a child is said to become ego-centric when he has learned to distinguish himself from the world he perceives. It is just this learned idea that we are separate from our environment that Zen says we need to unlearn. By loosening the concept of self, or in Freudian terms the ego, the world takes on a new dimension where true art and creativity can begin.
A professor of philosophy may start his first lecture by talking about the realness of a chair and all the assumptions that have been made to arrive at the idea that the chair is a solid item, out there and real. This is something that most in the West would think a little crazy to even contemplate. Of course the chair is a solid Newtonian object that exists in its own right. To deny this would mean that our deterministic view of the world was wrong and that the ontological precepts that are so ingrained in our thoughts would have to be reassessed. Through education and devotion to science we have left behind the ideas that the world may hold a little more magic than we suspect. The following poem by Edgar Alan Poe encapsulates the slavish demands of a scientific worldview.
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities
Zen would say that in adopting, too completely, the scientific view of reality we have closed the door on a more holistic view of life and are limiting ourselves to a rather mundane view of something altogether extraordinary. There is a little irony that the science that brought us the Newtonian view of the world has now found, through the study of atomic and astral physics, that in fact the world is far from Newtonian. A solid particle has yet to be found, and instead scientists are coming to the realization that matter as we know it may not actually exist but is rather a movement of energy. Time, space, and mass are all relative concepts, and the view that the world in real, solid, and out there has become untenable to the scientific community, too. Despite these discoveries there still seems a dogged determination to hold on to the old views of reality, which tend to provide a rather comfortable haven for the frail intellect that feels the need to hold on to its view of the world.
Zen maintains that our dualistic view of life means that whatever we perceive goes through our mental filtering systems before being cognitively understood. We use mental boxes for all aspects of our daily lives so we can make sense of our world and interact with others. With the development of language, though, this cognitive grasp of reality means that everything we perceive is subject to these mental processes, and so from early childhood we lose the ability to directly perceive the world. This is the point where dualism starts.
Nevertheless, in our more intuitive side, maybe we can still sense the lost world we had as infants, and it may well be this more intuitive feel that wabi sabi art helps to engender. It can put us back in touch with our nondualistic perception, where the need for words becomes obsolete and art can touch our innermost feelings. Starting from the Buddhist premise that newborn babies are in an enlightened state, it follows that their perceptions of the world would be radically different from those of an adult who has learned a completely new way of understanding reality. The emotions of childhood and the memories that are stored in the deepest recesses of the mind can be touched by truths we may be consciously unaware of, and it may be this unconscious affinity with things wabi sabi that trigger the emotional responses we feel toward them. The Zen monks, with their insights into reality, saw this link between art and the state of an enlightened infant, and have used art as a vehicle to rekindle these connections.
Returning then to the question of “What is Zen?” The answers given by Zen masters illustrate the illogical and nonintellectual nature of the question. Some of the more famous answers are:
“Zen”
“The clouds in the sky and the water in the jug”
“I do not understand”
“The silk fan gives me enough of a cooling breeze”
Zen was often studied in a semimonastic environment where austerity and intense meditation, combined with hard physical work, were fundamental tenets for the improvement of one’s spirit. Despite the sparse nature of the temples, they were great fountains for artistic endeavors, and much of the art was done by Zen monks. These endeavors were not limited to brush painting, but encompassed calligraphy, the martial arts, gardening, architecture, and even the drinking of tea.
The dedicated monks, in a spirit of quiet and resolute determination, sought to find artistic expression in all they did, and this art was then the fruit from their very focused minds. The renowned monk Hakuin had a favorite expression that meditation in the midst of activity was far better than meditation in stillness. For the Zen monks, everything they undertook became a spiritual task in which they had to immerse themselves totally, and in doing so