D.T. Suzuki

Wabi-Sabi
( an excert from 297)

In this respect the anicent Japanese poem by Fujiwara Sadaiye, which is often quoted by the teamen as their motto, is significant:

As I look around,
No flowers, no maple leaves,
This fishing village,
This autumnal eve!

The desolation, however, is not just a stretch of sand wilderness; one is not standing against an expanse of illimitable sea. For something of spring is already seen awakened behind the deserted boats andunder the torn dragnets aired along the seabeach:

To those who are forever longing for flowers,
How I wish to point out green patches in the snow,
Fully expressive of the early spring

To an observing and discerning eye, the desolate wilderness of the late autumn already promises something of the coming spring, and every fallen leaf piling up on the ground, every withering blade of grass whihc had sheltered all forms of the singing insects, is already seen preparing or renewing life. As Rikyu says, the water that fills the kettle is drawn from the well of mind whose bottom knows no depths, and the Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the resevoir (alaya) of infinite possibilities.

An excert from pg. 275-276

When Dogen (1200-1253) came back from China after some years of study of Zen there, he was asked what he had learned. He said, "Not much except soft-heartedness (nyunan-shin)." Softheartedness" is "tender-mindedness" and in this case means "gentleness of spirit." Generally we are too individualistic, unable to accept things as they are or as they come to us. Resistance means friction, friction is the source of all trouble. When there is no self, the heart is soft and offers no resistance to the outside influences.

Zen and Tea
(excert pg. 279)

Zen may burn all the holy statues in the temple to warm itself on a cold wintry night; Zen may destroy all the literature containing truth shorn of all its external trappings, however glamorous they appear to outsiders; but it never forgets to worship a stormbroken and mud-soiled humble blade of grass; it never neglects to offer all the wild flowers of the field, just as they are, to all the Buddhas in the three thousand chiliacosms. Zen knows how to revere because it knows how to slight.

Rikyu's Poems of Farewell

Rikyu was then over seventy. When he received the order, he retired to his room, made his last tea, quietly enjoyed it, and wrote his farewell words in both Chinese and Japanese. The Chinese verse, roughly translated, is:

Seventy years of life-
Ha ha! and what a fuss!
With this sacred sword of mine,
Both Buddhas and Patriarchs I kill!

The Japanese runs:

I raise the sword,
This sword of mine,
Long in my possession-
The time is come at last-
Skyward I throw it up!

This tragic death, closing a brilliant life devoted to the tea and the idealization of wabi, took place on the twenty-eighth day of the second month in the nineteenth year of Tensho (1591).

Story One

When Hideyoshi learned of the beautifully blooming morning-glories at Rikyu's, he intimated his wish to see them. When the next morning Hideyoshi entered Rikyu's garden, there was not a morning-glory- not a shadow of one. He thought this was strange but did not say anything about it. When he stepped into the tea-room, lo and behold, there was one solitary flowering morning-glory.

Story Two

One day Hideyoshi, wishing to outwit Rikyu, brought out a gold basin filled with fresh water and a spray of plum blosssoms, and requested Rikyu to arrange it. Rikyu without a moment's hesitation took up the spray in his hands and, scraping the blossoms, let them fall pell-mell into the basin. Buds and full-blown flowres scattered against the gold presented a most beautiful sight.

**The following are stories from pages 319-320**