ENLIGHTENMENT

A child with a pink ball is running and laughing out loud. A few steps behind, her parents are locked in a muted but bitter dispute. All three are heading down the steep, narrow path leading to the Japanese stone garden. Upon reaching it, the child bounces her ball across the meticulously raked sand.

Her father shouts and runs to catch up with her. He grabs her roughly from behind and spins her around to face him. Then, he slaps her hard with his open hand. The child staggers and falls.

She is stunned and silent now, whimpering softly to herself at the edge of the garden; while her mother retrieves the ball, leaving the imprint of her footsteps in the sand.
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Kyoto, Japan (1976)
There is one garden in particular which struck my eye and imagination. It is the 500 year old rock garden at the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto. It was constructed by a landscape artist in accordance with the principles of Zen Buddhism.

The scene, briefly, is this: a rectangular sea of small white pebbles in which 15 rocks of varying sizes are arranged in groups. One is supposed to sit quietly and meditate. The mind struggles for comparisons. Depending on the vividness of one's imagination, anything is possible. Given that one sits there long enough, the mind will at some point cease its struggle and see the garden simply for what it is: a semi-random arrangement of stone.

This final stage is difficult to achieve, even under the best of circumstances. And here at Ryoanji, conditions are far from perfect. Loudspeakers drone on intermittently. Hordes of tourists are continually either arriving or leaving. Their faces are infinitely more arresting than this simple study in serenity. And the eye and heart are so easily nudged away from the disciplines required to...
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In the mid to late ‘70’s, I discovered an exact replica of the garden referenced above at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City. The following is an excerpt from my notes:

I sit down at a point just to the left of center near the front edge of the platform. The two young people behind me glance up from their pamphlets. The boy returns to his reading presently, but the girl's eyes continue to linger over the somber shades of the garden.

I am startled when I realize that it is precisely from this same perspective that I had viewed the original garden in Japan. As then, my eye glides naturally to the open area of crushed rock directly in front of me. (None of the major configurations of stone interest me for the moment.)

The bright bed of finely fractured stone blinds me to detail at first. But soon, the parallel patterns - drag marks left by the points of a rake - begin to emerge throughout my field of focused vision. The patterns appear to be shifting under my steady gaze, almost as if something were about to materialize in this vast illuminated field.

If light is energy, and energy is indeed merely a manifestation of mass, then there might almost be enough of the stuff here to create something from light alone. Perhaps this explains the five islands of rock and moss which are only now beginning to intrude into my consciousness. Perhaps someone long ago - or was it I, myself, even - had stared long and hard at the brightness and had organized it into stone; from there creating the rest: moss and ants and men with rakes...

The people behind me are stirring. They get up and head for the exit. The girl looks back at me before rounding the corner. A pale smile flickers across her painted lips.

Finally, just two and a half minutes before closing, I do manage to attain some sense of unity when a slight movement distracts me. The static perfection of the garden becomes momentarily unhinged and I recognize my opportunity. My senses respond to a single sound: that of a dry leaf scratching across the white surface of raked stone, propelled by a hesitant breeze. Its brittle points leave no mark on the stone (the way the rake did). Soon it will have reached the wall where, in time, it will disintegrate to become the stuff from which new living shapes are spawned.

The guard has entered the garden. He walks silently across the platform. His size twelve shoes leave odd-shaped patterns of moisture and mud on the wooden surface. I remain unaware of his approach. The guard puts his gnarled hand heavily on my shoulder. I start, and turn to look up into the old man's tired eyes.

"I must lock up now, son," he says. "Do come back tomorrow."