Zen Culture Part 2

The writing materials used by Heian courtiers and the calligraphy they set down became important tools for the Zen arts. Writers made use of what the Chinese called the "Four Treasures": a brush of animal hair or bristle, a block of solid ink made of lampblack and glue, a concave inkstone for grinding and wetting the dried ink, and a paper or silk writing surface. These materials are all thought to have been introduced into j.a.pan by a Korean Buddhist priest sometime near the beginning of the seventh century, but they already had a long history in China--possibly as much as a thousand years.

With these materials the Heian calligrapher--and later the Zen monochrome artist--created a subtle world of light and shade. The preparation for writing (and later, painting) is itself a ritual of almost religious significance. The ink, called sumi, must be prepared fresh each time it is used: a small amount of water is introduced into the concave portion of the inkstone, and the slightly moistened ink block is slowly rubbed against the stone until the proper shade is realized. The brush is soaked thoroughly in water, dried by stroking it on a sc.r.a.p of paper, dipped into the new ink, and applied directly to the writing surface. The writer or artist holds the brush perpendicular to the paper and spreads the ink in quick strokes, which allow for no mistakes or retouching.

Where the male scholars of the Heian period labored with complex Chinese ideograms, the female artists and calligraphers were able to work in a new, simplified syllabary of approximately fifty symbols, which had been invented by a Buddhist priest in the early Heian era.

Since this new script was less angular and geometrically formal than Chinese writing, it lent itself to a sensuous, free style of calligraphy whose rules later spilled over into Zen aesthetics. The new "women's script" called for brushstrokes that were a pirouette of movement and dynamic grace, requiring the disciplined spontaneity that would become the essence of Zen painting. Indeed, all the important technical aspects of later Zen monochrome art were present in early Heian calligraphy: the use of varying shades of ink, the concentration on precise yet spontaneous brushwork, the use of lines flexible in width and coordinated with the overall composition, and the sense of the work as an individual aesthetic vision. The lines record the impulse of the brush as it works an invisible sculpture above the page; the trail of the brush--now dry, now flushed with ink--is a linear record of nuances in black across the white s.p.a.ce beneath. The total mastery of brushwork and the ink line gave the monochrome artists a foundation of absolute technical achievement, and the Zen calligrapher-poets a tradition of spontaneity in keeping with Zen ideals.

Another legacy to Zen artists was the creation of spontaneous verse, which also sharpened the faculties and required a sure mastery of technique. Since virtually all communication was in the form of poems, to move in polite circles a man or woman had to be able to compose a verse on any subject at a moment's notice. A famous female novelist and diarist recalled a typical episode:

_The Lord Prime Minister . . . breaks off a stalk of a flower-maiden which is in full bloom by the south end of the bridge. He peeps over my screen [and] says, "Your poem on this! If you delay so much the fun is gone" and I seized the chance to run away to the writing box, hiding my face--

Flower-maiden in bloom--

Even more beautiful for the bright dew,

Which is partial, and never favors me.

"So prompt!" said he, smiling, and ordered a writing box to be brought [for himself]. His answer-

The silver dew is never partial.

From her heart

The flower-maiden's beauty.4

_

The quality of such impromptu verse is necessarily strained, but the spirit of impulsive art revealed in this episode survived to become an important quality of Zen creations.

The Heian era bequeathed many artistic forms and techniques to later Zen artists, but even more important was the att.i.tude toward beauty developed by the Heian courtiers. Their explicit contributions were a sense of the value of beauty in life and a language of aesthetics by which this value could be transmitted. One of the more lasting att.i.tudes developed was the belief that transience enhanced loveliness.

(The idea of transience seems to be one of the few Buddhist concepts that entered Heian aesthetics.) Beauty was all the more arresting for the certainty that it must perish. The perfect symbol for this, naturally enough, was the blossom of the cherry tree, as may be seen from a poem taken at random from a Heian-period compilation.

_O cherry tree, how you resemble

this transitory world of ours,

for yesterday you were abloom

and gone today your flowers.5

_Many of the later verities of Zen art can be traced to this first philosophical melancholy over life's transience which developed in the Heian era. The vehicle for this heritage was a special vocabulary of aesthetic terms (providing distinctions few Westerners can fully perceive) which could describe subtle outer qualities of things--and the corresponding inner response by a cultivated observer--by the use of fine-grained aesthetic distinctions.6 The word that described the delicate discernment of the Heian courtiers was _miyabi_, which was used to indicate aspects of beauty that only a highly refined taste could appreciate: the pale shades of dye in a garment, the fragile geometry of a dew-laden spider web, the delicate petal of a purple lotus, the texture of the paper of a lover's letter, pale yellow clouds trailing over a crimson sunset. If the beauty were more direct and less muted, it was described as _en_, or charming, a term marking the type of beauty as sprightly or more obvious. The most popular aesthetic term was _aware_, which refers to a pleasant emotion evoked unexpectedly.

_Aware _is what one _feels _when one sees a cherry blossom or an autumn maple. (This internalization of aesthetic qualities was later to have great import for the Zen arts, whose reliance on suggestiveness shifted a heavy responsibility to the perceiver.) As the notion of beauty's transience became stronger, the term also came to include the feeling of poignancy as well as pleasure and the awareness that delight must perish.

These terms of refined aristocratic discernment became thoroughly ingrained in j.a.panese life and were pa.s.sed 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_. Thus the Zen artists carried the Heian aesthetic response into the inner man and turned a superficial emotion into a universal insight.

The most important aspect of the j.a.panese character to surface during the Heian era, at least from the standpoint of later Zen culture and ideals, was faith in the emotions over the intellect. It was during this period that the j.a.panese rejected for all time a rigorously intellectual approach to life. As Earl Miner wrote in his description of pre-Zen Heian society, "The respect accorded to correct or original ideas in the West has always been given in j.a.pan to propriety or sincerity of feeling. And just as someone without an idea in his head is archetypally out of our civilization, so the person without a true feeling in his heart is archetypally out of the j.a.panese."7 From such an att.i.tude it is not far to the Zen intuitive approach to understanding.

The early years of j.a.panese isolation saw a people with a rich nature religion whose arts revealed deep appreciation for

material and form. The coming of Chinese culture brought with it Buddhism, which became a national religion and provided a vehicle for the dissemination of Zen. Finally, the aristocratic civilization of the Heian era developed j.a.panese sensitivity to remarkable levels, providing later generations with a valuable framework of taste and standards. The court civilization of Heian was ultimately dethroned by medieval warriors, who themselves soon came under the sway of Zen.

Although the Zen artist-monks of the medieval era brought into being a new culture with its own rules of taste and behavior, they were always in the debt of the earlier ages.

CHAPTER THREE

The Rise of j.a.panese Buddhism

_The new doctrine of the Buddha is exceeding excellent, although difficult to explain and comprehend. _(Message accompanying the first image of the Buddha to enter j.a.pan, ca. A.D. 552)

_PRE-BUDDHIST SHINTO SHRINE

_

DURING THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C., in the rich and reflective civilization flourishing in what is today northeast India and Nepal, a child was born to the high-caste family of Gautama. He was later known by various names, including Siddhartha (the one who has reached the goal), Sakyamuni (sage of the Sakyas), or simply Buddha (the enlightened). His childhood was idyllic, and at the age of sixteen he took a wife, who bore him a son. As a youth he was completely sheltered from the sorrows of the flesh through the offices of his father, who commanded the servants never to let him leave the palace compound. Yet finally, the legends relate, he managed to escape this benign prison long enough to encounter old age, sickness, and death. Understandably distressed, he began pondering the questions of human mortality and suffering, a search which led him to a holy man, whose devoutness seemed to hold the answers.

True to his convictions, he renounced wealth, family, and position and embarked upon the life of an ascetic. A spiritual novice at the age of twenty-nine, he traveled for the next six years from sage to sage, searching for the teachings that might release him from the prison of flesh. Finally, with disciples of his own, he left all his teachers and devoted himself to meditation for another six years, at the end of which he was close to death from fasting and privation. But he was no nearer his goal, and abandoning the practices of traditional religion, he set out to beg for rice. Although his disciples immediately deserted him as unworthy to be a teacher, he was undeterred and enjoyed his first full meal since leaving his father's palace. He then had a deep sleep and learned in a dream that realization would soon be his. He proceeded to a wood and began his final meditation under the now legendary Bodhi tree--where he at last found enlightenment. Gautama had become the Buddha.

For the next forty-nine years he traveled the length of India preaching a heretical doctrine. To appreciate what he taught, one must grasp what he preached against. At the time, the predominant religious system was Brahmanism, which was based upon the Upanishads, a collection of early Vedic writings. According to this system, the universe was presided over by the Brahman, an impersonal G.o.d-form which was at once a pantheistic universal soul and an expression of the order, or _dharma_, of the cosmos. This universal G.o.d-form was also thought to reside in man, in the form of the _atman_, roughly translatable as the soul; and the individual was believed to be able to rise above his physical existence and experience the uniting of this _atman _with the larger G.o.d-form through practice of a rigorous physical and mental discipline, which became known as yoga. Not surprisingly, all formal communications with the universal

G.o.d-form had to be channeled through a special priest cla.s.s, who called themselves Brahmans.

The Buddha disputed these beliefs. He taught that there was no universal G.o.d and hence no internal soul, that there is, in fact, no existence in the world. All perception to the contrary is illusory.

Enlightenment therefore consists not of merging one's atman with the greater G.o.d-head, but rather in recognizing that there actually is nothing with which to merge. Consequently the aim is to transcend the more troublesome aspects of perception, such as pain, by turning one's back on the world--which is nonexistent in any case--and concentrating on inner peace. The Buddha stressed what he called the "Four n.o.ble Truths"

and the "Eightfold Path." The Four n.o.ble Truths recognized that to live is to desire and hence to suffer, and the Eightfold Path (right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration) provided a prescription for the resolution of this suffering. Followers of the Eightfold Path understand that the external world is illusory and that its desires and suffering can be overcome by a n.o.ble life, guided by mental fixation on the concept of nonexistence.

The original teachings of the Buddha are more a philosophy than a religion, for they admit no supreme G.o.d, nor do they propose any salvation other than that attainable through human diligence. The aim is temporal happiness, to be realized through asceticism--which was taught as a practical means of turning one's back on the world and its inc.u.mbent pain. There were no scriptures, no sacred incantations, no soul, no cycle of rebirth, nothing beyond one's existential life.

Since the Buddha left no writings or instructions regarding the establishment of a religion in his name, his followers called a council some ten years after his death to amend this oversight. This first council produced the earliest canon of Buddhist teachings, a group of _sutras _or texts purporting to reproduce various dialogues between the Buddha and his disciples. A second council was held exactly one hundred years later, supposedly to clarify points raised in the first meeting.

But instead of settling the disagreement which had arisen, the meeting polarized the two points of view and shattered monolithic Buddhism once and for all.