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November 05, 2005
Guenter Nitschke on Moss in Zen
Here is an edited, shortend and translated version of an interview conducted by Guenter Nitschke and me on Friday, October 14th in a small café in Kyoto. Guenter Nitschke is director of the Institute for East Asian Architecture and Urbanism. He is teaching at Seika University Kyoto.
Guenter Nitschke and Kenninji Temple Moss
This talk was important to shape my whole project concerning Contemporary Moss. Our conversation opened a lot of interesting questions which had great influence on my further thinking. The following short text might give you an impression of this development.
Guenter Nitschke:
To me it seemed quite sensitive to choose something like moss for your project. However, how you´re going to implement this idea now is another story. You mentioned that the softness and the territorial character - that there might...
Well, of course, a space defined by steel barbs like, let´s say, in Star Wars drives you nervous. That´s a tremendously aggressive energy you don´t want to have. In fact the moss is precisely opposite to that.
Stefan Riekeles:
That´s exactly what this project is about. About the confrontation with the barbed wires and concrete blocks of our citys. I would like to make use of moss as an object for contemplation and reflection of the increasingly fragmented world in which we live.
GN:
Well, moss is not in the focus of our world anymore. Apart from Japan nobody is interested in it anymore. There is a moss temple here, called Saihoji. Because it is a zen temple one associates notions of meditation with it. Not with slowness, that´s a different thing, but with meditation actually. Meaning that you´re getting to a point where you´re literally transcending your normal perception. In other words: where you´re experiencing all the interfering transmitters in your brain switched off, even for just some seconds.
However, this thing about meditation seems to lack all support, may it come from historical documents or facts. Historical documents don´t even exist about that. We know that Saihoji didn´t have any moss originally. Plains of sand have been layed out there upon which the moss spread out. The priests simply accepted that. Suddenly everything was overgrown after several hundrets of years.
We know some scripts of the founding priest and the only overtone concerning a link between garden and meditation he is bearing witness to, is not on gazing at the garden. It´s not that you´re visiting Ryoanji, the rockgarden, thinking that the empty white plain is associated to Buddhistic philosophy of emptiness, that the garden might actually be a product of philosophy or a medium, a technique to bring enlightenment to anybody. That´s all bosh.
There is not one sole voice throughout history within Japanese Zen priests saying that such temples had actually been used for meditation or had been regarded to be a product of meditation. Such has all been written in the fifties by western Zen writers, but not Zen masters, on Zen in Japanese culture. That´s all fictitious.
Back to moss now. On this note the designer of Saihoji said that the actual work in the garden, the design and also the process of maintaining it, but maintaining it in full awareness of the process, should be the purpose of such a garden. But never contemplation of the final result. This is basically the same like a tea ceremonie.
SR:
So it is all about practical experience?
GN:
In Zen the world can only be understood by practical experience, not through philosophy. This misunderstanding has to become clear to you. Reading a book on meditation is completely different from doing it in order to experience something totally unique.
From this point of view it will be a very difficult argument to combine the softness, or let´s say cushy green, coherently with meditation. Meditation is more likely to emerge if you´re surrounded by a crowd of rebels in Iraq and you start to scream two seconds before death. Then there is something happening. But if you sit on a nice green bed there will not happen anything. Unless you have a master manipulating you.
Furthermore your project seems to be very solitary. In Japan anything that matters is build, enjoyed and judged on the basis of a group of people. Everything is from the group, for the group, in the group or with the group. Communication is very important. However, the moss does not reply to you.
投稿者 stefan : November 5, 2005 09:04 PM