Zen
Chef's Table: Jeong Kwan
Mountains are mountains
Just a whinny again
Zero Mass
Translation is always a treason
Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade—all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of color or design. But, after all, what great doctrine is there which is easy to expound? The ancient sages never put their teachings in systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended by making their hearers wise. Lau Tzu himself, with his quaint humor, says, "If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they laugh immensely. It would not be the Tao unless they laughed at it."
The mundane and the spiritual
A special contribution of Zen to Eastern thought was its recognition of the mundane as of equal importance with the spiritual. It held that in the great relation of things there was no distinction of small and great, an atom possessing equal possibilities with the universe. The seeker for perfection must discover in his own life the refection of the inner light. The organization of the Zen monastery was very significant of this point of view. To every member, except the abbot, was assigned some special work in the caretaking of the monastery, and curiously enough, to the novices was committed the lighter duties, while to the most respected and advanced monks were given the more irksome and menial tasks. Such services formed a part of the Zen discipline and every least action must be done absolutely perfectly. Thus many a weighty discussion ensued while weeding the garden, paring a turnip, or serving tea. The whole ideal of Teaism is a result of this Zen conception of greatness in the smallest incidents of life. Taoism furnished the basis for aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them practical.
In a state of reverberation
Irwin's terms of sudden, physical realization – bam! – call to mind the suddenly enlightening Zen slap or rap on the forehead. It also calls to mind [Philip Guston]'s own remark..."Look at any inspired painting...it's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation." Reverberation is another way of suggesting a kind of sudden, energetic, physical experience.
The most incidental detail
Black rakuware tea bowl (late sixteenth century), Kyoto, Japan. Freer Sackler Museum of Asian Art.
For Irwin, the lesson of [the raku tea cups] was twofold: first, their presentation was important, insofar as the ceremony involved a gradual preparation of the audience's aesthetic attention. Then, when the time came to handle the cups, the intimacy of the experience fused visual and tactile sensations into a single continuum. As he also noted:
he would set on the table this box with a beautiful little tie on it – very Japanese – and you untied it, you opened up the box, he let you do that. And then inside of it was a cloth sack. You took the sack out, and it had a drawstring, and you opened up the drawstring and you reached inside and took out the bowl. By that time, the bowl had you at a level where the most incidental detail – maybe even just a thumb mark – registered as a powerful statement.
Until we leave the gate behind
And yet the timeless way is not complete, and will not fully generate the quality without a name, until we leave the gate behind.
Indeed this ageless character has nothing, in the end, to do with languages. The language, and the processes which stem from it, merely release the fundamental order which is native to us. They do not teach us, they only remind us of what we know already, and of what we shall discover time and time again, when we give up our ideas and opinions, and do exactly what emerges from ourselves.
At this final stage, the patterns are no longer important: the patterns have taught you to be receptive to what is real. It is the gate which leads you to the state of mind, in which you live so close to your own heart that you no longer need a language.
This is the final lesson of the timeless way.
It will revenge itself in judgment
To the average man, life presents itself, not as material malleable to his hand, but as a series of problems of extreme difficulty, which he has to solve with the means at his disposal. And he is distressed to find that the more means he can dispose of—such as machine-power, rapid transport, and general civilised amenities, the more his problems grow in hardness and complexity. This is particularly disconcerting to him, because he has been frequently told that the increase of scientific knowledge would give him “the mastery over nature”—which ought, surely, to imply mastery over life.
Perhaps the first thing that he can learn from the artist is that the only way of “mastering” one’s material is to abandon the whole conception of mastery and to co-operate with it in love: whosoever will be a lord of life, let him be its servant. If he tries to wrest life out of its true nature, it will revenge itself in judgment, as the work revenges itself upon the domineering artist.
Shortlist of interesting spaces
The journey begins by letting go
The journey begins by letting go of control, and becoming flexible.
Only when it has ceased to be a pattern
Here I would like to append three lines in praise of muji:
A pattern that is not a pattern is a true pattern.
Create patterns until they are no longer patterns.
The true pattern is a patternless pattern.When creating a pattern, one’s heart must also be muji. A pattern must be followed through until it is no longer a pattern. It is a true pattern only when it has ceased to be a pattern.
Not as a star
But I’m warning you,
this is my last existence.
Not as a swallow, not as a maple,
not as a cat-tail and not as a star.The utter nothingness of being
Everything written symbols can say has already passed by. They are like tracks left by animals. That is why the masters of meditation refuse to accept that writings are final. The aim is to reach true being by means of those tracks, those letters, those signs - but reality itself is not a sign, and it leaves no tracks. It doesn’t come to us by way of letters or words. We can go toward it, by following those words and letters back to what they came from. But so long as we are preoccupied with symbols, theories and opinions, we will fail to reach the principle.
"But when we give up symbols and opinions, aren’t we left in the utter nothingness of being?"
Yes.
It doesn't look like anything to me
It is related that the bodhisattva Manjusri was once standing at the gate, and seeing him, Shakyamuni Buddha called to him, "Manju, Manju, why don't you come inside the gate?"
Manjusri replied, "I don't see anything outside the gate."
The Void
Objects or elements which have the greatest depth, which actively draw the senses in, have at their heart an area of deep calm and stillness – a void bounded by and contrasted with an area of intense centers around it.
When an element becomes all detail, its own constant buzz tends to dilute its overall strength. Like a musical wall of sound, it pushes against our perception to produce a flat field-like state. Conversely, it is the pause which allows us to interlock with a piece of music and feel its depth. The presence of void, at many scales, provides a contrasting calm to alleviate the buzz and strengthen the center.
Flexible imagination
By giving up preference for harmony,
we accept dissonance to be as desirable as consonance.Besides a balance through color harmony, which is comparable
to symmetry, there is equilibrium possible between
color tensions, related to a more dynamic asymmetry.Again: knowledge and its application is not our aim;
instead, it is flexible imagination, discovery, invention – taste.One candle can light another
Lighting one candle
with another candle—
spring evening.Buson is saying that we accept the light contained in the work of others without darkening their efforts. One candle can light another, and the light may spread without its source being diminished.
A thousand different roads
They great Way has no gate;
There are a thousand different roads.
If you pass through this barrier once,
you will walk independently in the universe.No door at which to knock
Penetrating the Blue Cliff, you will open
the eye within eyes
and realizing life through the Blue Cliff,
you yourself will become a torch,
the light beyond light.Being so, you will find no door at which to knock, nor any door to be opened.
In one there are many; in two, one
The ultimate path is without difficulty;
Speech is to the point, words are to the point.
In one there are many kinds;
In two there is no duality.Mind of no mind
To you, mind of no mind, in whom the timeless way was born.
Autumn breezes blow
One day you are born
you die the next –
today,
at twilight,
autumn breezes blow.Aggressively Zen
"He was dealing with Zen in the most aggressive way Zen has ever been dealt with." — Irving Blum
Don't mistake my finger for the moon
Many people mistook the string itself for the work of art ("When I point my finger at the moon, don't mistake my finger for the moon" is a Zen aphorism that Irwin is fond of citing). By mid-1976 Irwin himself was prepared to Jettison—along with figure, line, focus, permanence, and signature—the very requirement of any overt activity of making as a necessary prerequisite for artistic viability.
The Timeless Way of Building
A Book by Christopher Alexander- Mind of no mind
- The quality without a name
- An objective matter
- Bitterness
- The most precious thing we ever have
Japanese Death Poems
A Book by Yoel HoffmanIn Praise of Shadows
A Book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper- Things that shine and glitter
- A naked bulb
- The Japanese toilet
- Empty dreams
- Most important of all are the pauses
Silence
A Book by John CageThe Blue Cliff Record
A Book by Yuanwu Keqin, Thomas Cleary & J.C. ClearyKokoro
A Novel by Natsume Sōseki155-217-155
A Website by Nick TrombleyList of games that Buddha would not play
A List- …
- Guessing at letters traced with the finger in the air or on a friend's back. (letters in the Brahmi script)
- Guessing a friend's thoughts.
- …
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
A Book by Shunryū SuzukiDon't Rush to Simplicity
An Article by Shawn WangYou've probably heard this story before:
A businessman finds a fisherman, who is living an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea.
He laughs and tells the fisherman how to get rich instead.
The fisherman asks him what he will do after he gets rich.
He replies that he would retire to an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea.There's supposed to be a deep life lesson in there, but it's always felt insincere to me.
To me it is better to have reached the heights of a career, or suffered an epic defeat, even if I do end up in the same place as everyone else in the end.
To me simplicity is made more beautiful when understood through a long personal struggle with complexity. When I can dance with it, having turned a mighty nemesis into an old friend, and teach others to do the same.
Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
A Book by Robert M. PirsigIs perfection boring?
An Article by Ralph AmmerWe love to see the process, not just the result. The imperfections in your work can be beautiful if they show your struggle for perfection, not a lack of care.
Thermal Delight in Architecture
Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This book explores the potential for using thermal qualities as an expressive element in building design.
Until quite recently, building technology and design has favored high-energy-consuming mechanical methods of neutralizing the thermal environment. It has not responded to the various ways that people use, remember, and care about the thermal environment and how they associate their thermal sense with their other senses. Not only is thermal symbolism now obsolete but the modern emphasis on central heating systems and air conditioning and hermetically sealed buildings has actually damaged our thermal coping and sensing mechanisms.
The Cinderella of architecture
An analogy might be drawn with the use of light quality as a design element, truly a venerable old architectural tradition. The light quality—direct, indirect, natural, artificial, diffuse, dappled, focused—can be subtly manipulated in the design of a space in order to achieve the desired effect.
Thermal qualities might also be included in the architect's initial conception and could influence all phases of design. Instead, thermal conditions are commonly standardized with the use of modern mechanical systems that can be specified, installed, and left to function independently of the overall design concept.
Indeed, environmental control systems tend to be treated rather like the Cinderella of architecture; given only the plainest clothes to wear, they are relegated to a back room to do the drudgery that maintains the elegant life-style of the other sisters: light, form, structure, and so forth.
Two thermal archetypes
The hearth, a refuge of dry warmth from a cold world, and the oasis, a preserve of coolness and moisture in a desert wilderness.
Sonorisms III
One way not to be there (without dying).
"Yes, we have felt happy and alive together."
The Finnish word loyly, meaning "the steam which rises from the stones" originally signified spirit, or even life.
The tradition of the great shade tree.
Anasazi dwellings
The Anasazi Indians of the southwestern United States were remarkably clever in choosing the sites for their cliff dwellings. They invariably chose locations shaded in the summer by an overhanging ledge of the cliff, but exposed to full sun all winter long. With their backs to the cliff, the dwellings were protected from the winter winds and also took advantage of the thermal mass of the earth to moderate the temperature flux.
Migration within buildings
Many peoples of North Africa migrate within their buildings in both daily and seasonal patterns to take advantage of the various microclimates the buildings create.
Fascination with control
Fascination with this potential for control of our environment has prompted the invention of mechanical systems that have made natural thermal strategies seem obsolete by comparison.
The notion of a thermal optimum persists
There is an underlying assumption that the best thermal environment never needs to be noticed, and that once an objectively "comfortable" thermal environment has been provided, all of our thermal needs will have been met. The use of all of our extremely sophisticated environmental control systems is directed to this one end—to produce standard comfort zone conditions.
A simple pleasure that comes from just using it
People have a sense of warmth and coolness, a thermal sense like sight or smell, although it is not normally counted in the traditional list of our five senses.
As with all our other senses, there seems to be a simple pleasure that comes from just using it, letting it provide us with bits of information about the world around, using it to explore and learn, or just to notice.
There is a basic difference, however, between our thermal sense and all of our other senses. When our thermal sensors tell us an object is cold, that object is already making us colder. If, on the other hand, I look at a red object it won't make me grow redder, nor will touching a bump object make me bumpy.
Their opposites close at hand
We should note that all of these places of thermal extremes (Finnish saunas, Japanese hot baths, American beaches and mountains) have their opposites close at hand. There are possibly two reasons for having the extremes right next to each other.
The first is physiological: the availability of extremes ensures that we can move from one to the other to maintain a thermal balance.
The second might be termed aesthetic: the experience of each extreme is made more acute by contrast to the other.
Substitutes for the thermal experience
Such clues from other senses can become so strongly associated with a sense of coolness or warmth that they can occasionally substitute for the thermal experience itself. For example, the taste of mint seems refreshing and cool regardless of what temperature it is. Similarly, the pressure of heavy blankets conveys a feeling of warmth quite independent of their actual thermal qualities.
The totality of its sensory stimulation
Perhaps the human fascination with fire stems from the totality of its sensory stimulation. The fire gives a flickering and glowing light, ever moving, ever changing. It crackles and hisses and fills the room with the smells of smoke and wood and perhaps even food. It penetrates us with its warmth. Every sense is stimulated and all of their associated modes of perception, such as memory and an awareness of time, are also brought into play, focused on the one experience of the fire. Together they create such an intense feeling of reality, of the "here and nowness" of the moment, that the fire becomes completely captivating.
We need an object for our affections
We need an object for our affections, something identifiable on which to focus attention. But in a typical office building, to what can we attribute the all-pervasive comfort of 70ºF, 50% relative humidity? Most likely, we would simply take it all for granted. When thermal comfort is a constant condition, constant in both space and time, it becomes so abstract that it loses its potential to focus attention.
The Skylid
The louvers automatically open to let solar radiation in when the sun shines and close in the evening to prevent radiant heat loss, controlled and driven by the shifting weight of freon.
We look into the greenhouse and watch the Skylids closing automatically, one by one and in no particular order, and we are aware of the hot air rising, cold air settling. They remind us that the earth is turning and the day is ending.
Retained as a quality
Thermal information is not differentiated in our memory; rather it is retained as a quality, or underlying tone, associated with the whole experience of the place. It contributes to our sense of the particular personality, or spirit, that we identify with that place. In remembering the spirit of a place, we can anticipate that if we return, we will have the same sense of comfort or relaxation as before.
Thermal aediculae
The inglenook, the gazebo, and the porch swing also have strong definitions of their spaces. They are each a bit like a little house set off for a special thermal purpose. They might be termed "thermal aediculae". Although the term aedicula is most often used in conjunction with a sacred or ceremonial little house, it can also be used to describe any diminutive structure used to mark a place as special.
Summerson contends that there is a basic human "fascination of the minitature shelter." Perhaps this is because the aedicula intensifies ones experience of the place by working someone like a caricature. By reducing some things in scale, it exaggerates the importance of other things, most especially the size of a person in relation to the space.
At a uniformly comfortable termperature
In America our tendency has been to get away from thermal conditions as a determinant of behavior. Instead, we have used our technology to keep entire living and working complexes at a uniformly comfortable temperature. As a result, our spatial habits have become diffused, and activities that were once localized by thermal conditions have spread out over a whole house or building. We forget, unless a system breaks down, that such wide-ranging use of space is extremely dependent upon the available heating and cooling equipment.
For their own concealed passion
Sharing the experience of a pleasant thermal setting may add an extra bonus to courtship. The gentle and cooling breeze of the southern porch swing provided a happy excuse for a couple to sit quietly together. A more technological version might be seen in the type of car that the teenagers of the 1950s considered ideal for a hot date—the convertible. Slightly more erotic, perhaps, were the atrium and green houses that were favorite settings for romance in Victorian England. The lovers could get lost among the leaves of the exotic tropical plants and possibly mistake the hot, humid atmosphere for their own concealed passion.
The kairo
The Japanese have notoriously unheatable houses. They have traditionally preferred to design their houses to be cool and airy in summer and then to get by in the winter with localized ways to heat the body. Smallest of all means is the kairo, a little case carried around in pockets or between layers of clothes that contains a warm charcoal ember.
The ritualized use of a place
The association of comfort with people and place are reinforced by the ritualized use of a place. Using a place at a set time and in a specific manner creates a constancy as dependable as the place itself. It establishes, in time and behavior, a definition of place as strong as any architectural spatial definition, such as an aedicula, might be. Ritualized use can do more than reinforce the affection for a place. Through ritual, a place becomes an essential element in the customs of a people.
Functionalism can be a kind of religion
We are not now inclined to regard modern heating and cooling systems as representative of a spiritual realm. The physical principles involved in their operation are thoroughly understood; there is no mystery about them. They are simply functional, designed according to straightforward engineering practice to serve their intended function as efficiently and conveniently as possible.
And yet functionalism itself can be a kind of religion.
...From the fifties and sixties we have inherited numerous heating and cooling systems created within an ethos of universal convenience. Machines to maintain our thermal comfort were conceived of as mechanical servants, providing for our every need while, like an English butler, remaining as unobtrusive as possible.
Protected, yet tuned in
Karen Terry's house in Sante Fe, designed by architect David Wright, is perhaps one of the most compelling passive designs.
Stepping down its hillside site in four tiers, it nestles low into the ground. Thick adobe sidewalls create a strong sense of shelter and its banks of windows look resolutely to the sun. The image is very much of a house attuned to sun and earth.
Rather than providing the convenience of a constant indoor temperature regulated by a thermostat, a passively solar-heated house may go through an air temperature flux as great as 20ºF per day. People learn to live with this flux.
Living in a solar house is a whole new awareness, another dimension. I have the comfort of a house with the serenity of being outdoors—protected, yet tuned in.
Blessed by the four elements
The Indian stone temple also included, in its architectural form, the means for being blessed by the four elements—earth, wind, water, fire.
- Before entering the temple gates, one removed one's shoes to touch and be blessed by the earth.
- Then upon passing through the temple gateway, one is blessed by the air with a gust of wind.
- A blessing by water is obtained by bathing in the temple tank, or at least descending its steps to touch the water.
- Finally, on entering the cool interior of the sanctuary, the worshipper is given a mark on the forehead with ashes taken from a sacred flame by an attendant priest. Even this blessing by fire has a slight cooling sensation to it.
Perhaps it is only coincidental that each of these four blessings is associated with a cooling sensation; and yet, the use of forms and materials that inevitably create coolness is quite remarkable.
Each ruler commissioned his own garden
The Mughuls of India developed a tradition where each ruler commissioned his own garden. Then, "At the owner's death the pavilion, generally placed in the center of the site, became the mausoleum, and the whole complex passed into the care of holy men."
The ancient fire spirit who lived in the hearth
The garden is as central to the concept of an Islamic home as the hearth is to the European home. It is interesting, then, that the hearth-fire in old traditions has a similar association with the life of the inhabitants of the house.
Commonly, the fire of the hearth was not allowed to go out. It was carefully covered with ashes each night at curfew so that a few selected embers would survive until morning. (In fact, the word "curfew" originated from the French word for cover-the-fire—couvre-feu.) Raglan comments that "the alarm and horror felt if the hearth-fire went out are out of all proportion to the inconvenience caused" by the need to relight it.
The housewarming ceremony
The connection between the life of the fire and the life of the inhabitant is also reflected in the custom of the housewarming ceremony. In contemporary America a housewarming party is given when a family moved into a new house. Perhaps all of the friends and their good wishes are thought to warm the house metaphorically. In traditional cultures, however, the warming is quite literal, for it involves the bringing in, or the first kindling, of the hearth fire, which then creates the proper spirit and sanctity to transform the house into a home.
Fire, the animating spirit
We can easily imagine from our own experience why fire might be used as a symbol of the life of a house and the family that lives there. The fire was certainly the most lifelike element of the house: it consumed food and left behind waste; it could grow and move seemingly by its own will; and it could exhaust itself and die. And most important it was warm, one of the most fundamental qualities that we associate with our own lives. When the fire dies, its remains become cold, just as the body becomes cold when a person dies. Drawing a parallel to the concept of the soul that animates the physical body of the person, the fire, then, is the animating spirit for the body of the house.