BY JAN HAAG
RYOANJI
02-02-97
O Devayani, you didn't spend much time in
Japan.
It was hard to get around with only English.
The Japanese were
more formal than the Chinese
from whose land you had come,
where
they laughed if you wanted to climb
their stone camels, and gave you
mallets
to strike their great gongs.
But a few things, O Devayani,
you had heard of.
A few things you needed to see. A moss
garden --
someone took you to a moss garden. You had never
dreamed of such
green, such shades, such softness --
velvet elegance in the dappled
light
of afternoon, the mysteries of the muffled
heart. Peace.
Stillness. The shadows
of music in the light, the paths,
the paths of
silence through the dark.
But you, O Devayani, you had heard of
Ryoanji
-- most famous garden in the world,
for peace, for
silence.
You took a bus, noisy, crowded. It was hard to
understand
where you were going. No one seemed to care,
no one
spoke your language. On a fairly
ordinary street -- if there is such a
thing as an
ordinary street in the exotica of foreign countries --
someone said to get down from the bus,
pointed or nodded, you have
forgotten, O Devayani,
what the manners are there. The entrance was
pleasant,
on a crowded street,
well proprotioned, a wall, a doorway,
and,
perhaps,
nine hundred school children,
all dressed in blue
jumpers and white blouses,
blue knickers and white shirts,
well behaved, for the most part,
as Japanese children are, but nine
hundred
children whispering, talking, smiling, giggling --
you had
come to meditate. Ryoanji is a rock garden:
gravel, rocks, a little moss, a wall,
trees -- cedar, pine and cherry -- beyond.
Hopelessness entered your heart.
You would have to come again
for the silence, for the
meditation.
You took
off your shoes, you put on the slippers,
you filed with all the hundreds
of children
out onto the veranda, the polished corridors of cypress,
the
steps -- on which one walked or sat -- gleamingly clean.
You were
disturbed by the restlessness of God's newer
creatures, so you didn't
walk far. You sat on the top step
near a porch
pillar, glanced at
the rocks, the raked gravel,
the bits of moss on the rocks, the rocks so
carefully placed,
the gravel so reverently raked, the one group of
rocks
and the other. The wall. And there was stillness.
Silence.
O
Devayani, your heart went heavy with the deep
breath of meditation.
Silence descended on you like a mantle of moss,
weighty, your breath deep, your heart thudding slow,
slower. The
rocks so carefully placed
--
the lion and her cubs -- the white gravel, the white
wall,
embellished only with age.
How long had Ryoanji been there?
You must have asked --
but there is no remembrance, just the
rocks
and the gravel and the wall
and the very great
silence,
the
rootedness of deep meditation,
the weight of the rocks and the trees of
this earth,
as if their roots grew right down through your
heart
stapling you to the earth, as if when you rose --
if you could,
O Devayani, with the weight of the rocks, rise
-- dirt
would slip from
your folded arms,
the richness of the compost from which we
grew
would cling to the tentacles of the strong young roots, intricate as
lace,
soft as moss, dangling.
Copyright © 2000 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
Gifts
India
Lung-gom-pas
Nothing
BY JAN HAAG