The Arts Of Zen
With the spread of Zen Buddhism in the thirteenth century, the arts of Japan took on a new focus. Here was a religion which cultivated self-discipline and austerity as the path to enlightenment. Not surprisingly, it was taken up with enthusiasm by the samurai class. Meditation is at the centre of Zen practice and many Zen art forms can be seen as vehicles for inward reflection or as visualizations of the sudden and spontaneous nature of enlightenment. Monochromatic ink painting , known as suiboku-ga or sumi-e , portrayed meditative landscapes and other subjects in a variety of formats including screens, hanging scrolls and hand-scrolls, with a free and expressive style of brushwork that was both speedily and skilfully rendered. Haboku , or "flung-ink" landscapes, took this technique to its logical extreme by building up (barely) recognizable imagery from the arbitrary patterns formed by wet ink splashed onto highly absorbent paper. Sesshu (1420-1506), a Zen priest, was Japan's foremost practitioner of this technique. Zen calligraphy similarly moved beyond the descriptive to emphasize spontaneity of expression in a style of writing that captured the essence of its subject matter, frequently based on poems and Zen sayings. Calligraphy of this type can be so expressively rendered as to be almost unreadable except to the practised eye. One of the most striking examples, by the monk Ryokan Daigu (1757-1831), is a hanging scroll with the intertwined symbols for heaven and earth. Ryokan's bold brushwork dramatically links the symbols of these two aspects of the cosmos to portray them as one sweeping and continuous force. Both the symbolism of this literal union and the unconventionality of the style in which the characters are rendered encapsulate the spirit of Zen. A love of nature also lies at the very core of Zen. The qualities of abstraction and suggestion which characterized suiboku-ga were fittingly applied to the design of Zen gardens . Japanese gardens employ artifice to create an environment that appears more natural than nature itself. Trees and bushes are carefully pruned, colour is restricted and water channelled to convey, in one setting, the essence of the natural landscape. The word for landscape in Japanese is sansui , meaning "mountain and water". In Zen-inspired kare-sansui or "dry landscape" gardens, such as that of Ryoan-ji in Kyoto, these two elements are symbolically combined. Kare-sansui gardens consist only of carefully selected and positioned rocks in a bed of sand or gravel which is raked into water-like patterns. As vehicles for contemplation, such gardens convey the vastness of nature through the power of suggestion. Cha-no-yu , or "the way of tea", also evolved out of Zen meditation techniques, and draws on the love of nature in its architectural setting and utensils. The spirit of wabi , sometimes described as "rustic simplicity", pervades the Japanese tea ceremony . The traditional teahouse is positioned in a suitably understated garden, and naturalness is emphasized in all aspects of its architecture; in the unpainted wooden surfaces, the thatched roof, tatami -covered floors and the sliding-screen doors ( fusuma ) which open directly out onto a rustic scene. As with the garden itself, colour and ostentation are avoided. Instead, the corner alcove, or tokonoma , becomes the focal point for a single object of adornment, a simple flower arrangement or a seasonal hanging scroll. Tea ceremony utensils contribute to the mood of this refined ritual. Raku, Shino and many other varieties of roughcast tea bowls are admired for the accidental effects produced by the firing of the pottery. Water containers, tea caddies and bamboo ladles and whisks complement the tea wares and are themselves much prized for their natural qualities. The guiding light behind all this mannered simplicity was the great tea-master Sen no Rikyu (1521-91), whose "worship of the imperfect" had a long-lasting influence on Japanese artistic tastes.
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