The Space Sessions: Prof John White "Be" (Pt 2)

Prof. White giving a talk at Three Wheels Zen Garden     photo: Dr. L. Chocron

"When asked to give a talk about Zen Gardens, or indeed about any garden, the first thing to remember is that a work of art can never be translated into words. It is by its very nature, visual and non verbal. It is a thing that has to be experienced; it lies beyond the reach of words and no amount of talk can capture it."   John White

RAS - Speaking on the visual nature of the Zen garden, in your recent talk you introduced the particularly picturesque Adachi Museum of Art gardens. A place created for the sole purpose of enjoying the 'garden as painting'. This reminded me of something the journalist and early Japanologist Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) wrote, regarding dry landscape gardens. He described them as  “A painting without pictures; the ideal being a garden that is both ‘a picture and a poem”, creating not merely an impression of beauty , but a mood in the soul”.

JW - Yes, in my talk, the Adachi Gardens were deliberately meant to be paintings.  It's an art museum. And it was turning the gardens into paintings and framing them in the architecture. There, they were deliberately trying to connect paintings and gardens. But that is not something that I ever wanted to do.

Adachi Art Museum Gardens 

RAS - In Hearn’s case, I think it wasn’t so much about describing a decorative place. He was using phrases like ‘painting without pictures, or a Buddhist sutra without words’, trying to find poetic and intuitive ways to describe what most people would merely see as a blank space with rocks in it.   

Anyway when most people write or speak about Zen gardens, they generally tend to romanticise them or make them into mysterious spaces and such…...

JW – Yes, well  I’ve been thinking about space for over forty years or more, before I ever saw a zen garden you know, so I knew a great deal about perspective and so on. I had a great accumulation to start with…..so I just, well, I just sat (in the zen gardens of Japan) and looked for hours on end. But the talk comes afterwards.   

(When we built Three Wheels Zen Garden), I didn’t explain to the (visiting expert Japanese) gardeners what we were doing. I said ‘put that there’ and then we twiddled it and moved it further around and then we fixed it. And initially they thought it was dreadful, as it broke all the traditional rules. But this wasn’t based on any theory. It was just how it felt it should be……

Three Wheels Zen Garden         courtesy of Three Wheels Temple

 RAS– But then in the end they realised that it was not dreadful….

JW. Yes, luckily they stayed a few days and they got used to the fact that it was different and not intended to be a copy of a Japanese garden, although the first two rocks are related to Ryoan-ji. So there are plenty of reflections, but it’s not a copy of anything. Its an extension of the idea. 

For example, I wanted every rock to have its own personality and its own living space. That’s quite different from the Chinese and standard Japanese Zen garden, where rocks touch each other or lie on each other and so on. 

RAS- Yes I see what you mean. It reminds me of one of your talks where you showed a photo of the most perfect Zen garden, made up of simply one rock and a handful of carefully raked gravel in a very small space. Yet it said everything. One rock spoke volumes. I see what you mean about needing to have some grasp or knowledge about space before creating such a garden.

Zen Garden Walkabout (Colour)                         photo R. Allen-Sherwood 2014

JW – Well, it’s a feeling. its intuition, its not logic. (With the Three Wheels garden) I didn’t work out anything logically for myself .. I just looked. And just as with art.....you can’t put a work of art into words. You can remove misconceptions and things like that, but it has to be experienced. That’s not a logical process. You have to feel it and it has to become part of your whole experience, not just your conscious bit of “logic” at the top.  Many of the people who make zen gardens have never experienced one. You need to experience it – not think about it, And look at it again and again, for five, six hours at a time.

It’s the same mistake with art. With any great art – Titian, for example, you have to look at it for hours to begin to understand what is going on. In a gallery, if you are lucky,  apparently somebody might spend a minute in front of a Titian…

RAS- I heard that it’s 30 seconds. That’s what our teacher told us when I was an art student. 30 seconds. Laughs

JW – Well, that’s it exactly. None of these people have actually ever seen a Titian!

Zen Garden Walkabout #1  (Colour)                         photo R. Allen-Sherwood 2014

RAS – Going back to the garden, there was something Reverend Sato said a few years ago, when I first interviewed him about the garden for my university dissertation on Form & Emptiness. He spoke about the invisible part of the garden, the unseen part which most people don’t think about, as they generally assume the rocks were just plopped onto the surface without realising that each one has its own 'mirror reflection' more or less beneath the gravel, hidden from view. Reverend Sato said the invisible is just as valuable or important as that which is visible. His words have stuck with me ever since...

JW- Yes, there’s an analogy in drawing. You may start and make some very important marks which then subsequently disappear. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t important in the growth of the piece. Some will remain and some will not. In most traditional paintings you can’t see the starting point any longer, but if the starting point wasn’t there, it would be one big mess!

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On that note, laughter rings out all around and our interview, sadly, cames to an end. I would like to thank Professor White for giving so generously of his precious time and patience for this interview. And thank you, the reader for your visits and continuing support.

In closing, here is a reflection on the meaning of the Three Wheels Zen Garden by John White:
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Zen Garden Walkabout   (Colour)                   photo R. Allen-Sherwood 2014

"If you were to ask me now if I am pleased with the garden or proud of it, it would be a question that has no answer.

From the beginning, non attachment to the outcome; doing for the doing, as far as such a thing is ever possible, appeared to be the only way to work, and non attachment is not a garment that is easily put on and taken off.

All history, all our memories of the past, are constructs, are illusions. To become attached to things done in the past - worse still to one's own actions and their seeming consequences - is no way to live in a world in which it seems that even self is an illusion.

Yet, in some sense, the garden is, I am, and you are. That is all.

As for the purpose of the garden, it is what is brought to it and taken from it that gives it meaning. If you, or anyone, see in it some particular purpose, that then is its purpose. If, on the other hand, you see no purpose in it, then there is none.

Certainly in Zen, and in Buddhism as a whole and in the Sutras in particular, words, like all the words that have flowed over you this evening, have very little meaning. So it is with a Zen garden.

However, if there must be words, an attempt at a verbal introduction in Japanese and English, which some of you may know, hangs on the walls of the viewing shelter.

Its opening lines go like this:

Here in the garden

do not ask who made it,

or why, or when.

The garden is and you are.

Be "