Page 155 Chapter 5 Buddhist Illusion and the Landscape Arts Truths are illusions that we have forgotten are illusions. —Friedrich Nietzsche Practice illusion by means of illusion. —The Perfect Enlightenment Sutra While the Kitayama Zen views of landscape paintings we have surveyed were grounded in the venerable Chinese Mahayana and Zen Buddhist traditions, they also developed their own distinctive vision of the landscape arts. Chinese Zen monks and nuns had modified classical Indian and Chinese Buddhist ontology to emphasize the two premises of the illusory, ultimately empty character of reality and the nondualistic interplay of the realms of samsaric suffering and the enlightened bliss of nirvana. 1 The Kitayama Five Mountains monks applied these premises to artistic creation and interpretation through such canonical Buddhist terms describing meditative states as "the samadhi of [seeing that all is] like an illusion" (C. ju­huan san­mei; J. nyogen zammai), and "the samadhi of playfulness" (C. yu­ge san mei; J. yuge zammai). In this and the final chapter we explore the central role played by these two Buddhist themes in the Kitayama religio­aesthetic vision of the landscape arts: Mahayana ontological and heuristic theories of illusion; and a mode of Zen enlightened activity characterized by unimpeded playfulness. It was through syncretic integration of these Buddhist theories of reality and of artistic interpretation with both Chinese painting theory and Taoist and other conceptions of landscape that the Japanese Zen monks developed their reading of landscape art. The two themes of illusion and playfulness have a similar heuristic function in Buddhist thought. This can be seen in that they, to borrow from Robert Gimello's characterization of another Chinese Mahayana Buddhist school, "are so defined as to actually 'disarm' themselves, as they are being used, of the snares of craving and delusion with which conventional concepts are equipped."2 Both illusion and playfulness entail an intrinsic sense of movement and transformation that erodes or breaks by means of disjunction and juxtaposition the rigid, clinging grasp of attachment and the rigid bifurcations of deluded, discriminatory thinking. In a similar Copyright © 1999. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/10/2013 12:04 PM via COLBY COLLEGE AN: 8652 ; Parker, Joseph D..; Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336-1573) Account: s8993501 Page 156 maneuver both themes also destroy metaphorically the possibility of any settling into a fixed conception of what they themselves mean, since they "offer no sedative dwelling place for the mind," and instead propel the mind onward toward liberation. 3 As we shall see shortly, the notion of "not abiding" is a fundamental one in the Kitayama Zen conception of illusion, one that they borrowed from the important Yüan Zen monk Chung­feng Ming­pen and adapted to landscape painting interpretation. In these ways the Kitayama Japanese monks used two notions that in much of Chinese intellectual history were marginalized and negative, and gave them positive valorization through their theories of cultural interpretation at the center of Kitayama society and politics. Gido* Shushin* elaborates the significance of the illusory aspect of landscape gardens and paintings in an exchange with three fellow Five Mountains monks sometime around the year 1382∙ We can see from the nature of their interaction how important some form or another of landscape art is to Gido's* life. Because of the importance of this passage for our discussion, titled simply "Preface to Land­scape Poems and Painting," for the coming discussion, I quote it at length: I retired to live in the cottage of Great Compassion.4 In the winter of that year [1382 or 1383], the eleventh month, hoeing by hand the abandoned fields, in a newly built humble dwelling, so to attempt a quiet retirement. I then spent my days enjoying these things. One day I had as a guest the venerable Kodo*. In a samadhi of playfulness (yuge zammai) he skillfully built an artificial mountain for me in a tiny space under the eastern eaves, conjuring up the appearance of a thousand precipices and ten thousand canyons. At that time I noticed two monks coming through the new gate. When I greeted them on the pathway, they were two monks, friends of the Way from the western mountains, Gichu* Sho* [d.u.] and Kaichu* Mo [d.u.]. I led them in to relax in the Pavilion of the Southern [Plum] Branches. After taking our seats, Kaichu* brought out a scroll from his sleeve. When he spread it out before me, it was a recent painting of a small scene of mountains and valleys. Above the painting were three inscriptions, and after it were songs (ke) by a few more people. All of them were "outstanding people"5 of the Zen forest known among their contemporaries for their high character and superior writing. ...Kaichu* had specially set aside a space to the right of the painting, and bid me to write a preface, so I wrote the following: "In general when something is plentiful, then people hold it lightly; when something is scarce, then people treasure it. This is how human sentiment always is. Now I have secluded myself in a comer of the capital and forested canyons are scarce; here I have a temporary dwelling which I value highly: Is this not the same thing? With Kaichu*, this is not so. His home Copyright © 1999. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/10/2013 12:04 PM via COLBY COLLEGE AN: 8652 ; Parker, Joseph D..; Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336-1573) Account: s8993501 Page 157 is in the mountains, and forested springs are plentiful. Now, his eyes are filled by evening vapors freshening the greenery and his ears are satiated by the voices of mountain streams. Furthermore, hundreds of valleys and thousands of caves, and the smokey clouds and grasses and trees appear vague and misty, tempering his vision and hearing: All this is [too plentiful] to describe, yet for Kaichu it is insufficient. Pettily, he had this short scroll painted and these inscriptions written out, taking this as highly valuable. But why?" At this Kaichu * laughed and said, "Have you not read that Master K'ung of Tung­shan [Hsueh­feng Hui­k'ung]6 said, "Truly looking at these valleys and mountains resembles a dream, so on the contrary you should take ink and water and sketch the streams and mountains." I then wrote this preface to thank the two Chus for their good will.7 In this passage Gido* characterizes as illusory both the acts of making what seems to have been a small garden and a landscape painting. In the first instance, the small garden is described as having been "conjured up," literally "produced in an illusory manner" (C. huan­ch'u; J. genshutsu), by his friend Kodo* while in the important Buddhist mental sate of the ''samadhi* of playfulness."8 We shall see below that this term was applied in the Five Mountains monasteries not only to landscape paintings but also to other subjects, most typically the chinzo* portrait. Moreover, Gido* also utilizes a key Mahayana Buddhist term to give the mountains in the garden a status I have here translated as "artificial." The term samvrti* in Sanskrit is taken from Buddhist ontological theory and often translated as "provisional," "worldly," or "conventional.'' In a philosophical context it indicates the transitory, causally produced, and ultimately unreal character of the mundane world as conventionally understood, and is generally contrasted with the terms "emptiness" or "ultimate," which designate reality as viewed from the standpoint of the ultimate.9 Different schools disagree on the relative importance and the ultimate relationship between these two epistemological perspectives, but Gido* and, as we shall soon see, Chuho* seem to adopt a position close to that of the well­known Tendai (C. T'ien­t'ai) triad of emptiness, provisional existence, and the middle way, in which all three Visions of reality have equal value and interpenetrate each other. The propagation by Japanese Five Mountains Zen monks of this strand in Mahayana Buddhist ontology is typical of the mainstream continental Zen schools of the T'ang and later as well as of other Japanese Zen traditions. We find similar ideas in the earliest texts associated with Zen, as well as in the school of Ma­tsu Tao­i, which would come to dominate T'ang and later Chinese Zen.10 When applied to the landscape arts, as it was in the circle of Gido's* Five Mountains Zen contemporaries, "artificial" had become a conventional term for hills in an artificial garden, as in the twentieth­century Zen rock garden. Gido's* Copyright © 1999. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/10/2013 12:04 PM via COLBY COLLEGE AN: 8652 ; Parker, Joseph D..; Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336-1573) Account: s8993501 Page 158 close friend Tesshu * Tokusai, for example, had entitled a poem "Artificial Landscape" describing a miniature rock garden comparable in size perhaps to the twentieth­ century bonsai. What intrigues Tesshu*, as it does Gido*, is the viewer's surprise at finding an expansive scene in such a tiny space: "Who would believe that inside this jar there would be heaven?"11 The Buddhist significance of this question of scale is found by Gido* and Tesshu* in the changeability of even that which might seem the most solid and reliable: the massive, rocky expanse of the natural landscape.