Rock gardens, Part 1

There is a shop in Cambridge, Mass., that specializes in clever ironic gifts for clever ironic people. You know what I mean: an Etch-a-Sketch key chain, a silver pin in the shape of Edward Gorey's Uninvited Guest, some interesting object that on second examination turns out to be a clock, a realistic imitation of a tipped-over wine-glass with a realistic imitation of a puddle of red wine attached, a wind-up toy for the connoisseur, campy stuff like a Diamond Jubilee Edition waving Solar Queen (and Corgi), a ceramic tile that proclaims "I am Woman. I am strong. I am so tired." (I shouldn't be so snide about it; I've shopped there myself, happily.)

You used to be able to go into this place and buy a miniature Japanese rock garden in a box. Maybe you still can.

I don't know about you, but when I see the words "rock garden" the first thing I think of is a place where decorative plants grow among rock outcroppings. There was a sunny little rock-studded embankment like that near my parents' house, covered (except for the rocks) with mosses and flowering this and that.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I mean the kind of rock garden with no plants at all, such as you might find at a Zen monastery in Japan. It consists of a bed of sand in a rectangular border or frame, in which rocks of various shapes and sizes have been arranged just so. The sand is raked regularly, to smooth it out and to remove any leaves and other debris that have come along. I imagine that from time to time the gardener or the abbot or some other very wise person might even rearrange the rocks, after careful deliberation.

The box in the gift shop contained everything you would need to set up a scale model of such a thing: a rectangular frame, enough sand, a handful of little dark rocks, and a teeny-tiny rake. The only thing that was missing was a wise person to arrange the rocks. The scale of the thing was maybe 1:50, so--I don't know--maybe you would only need some fraction of the full wisdom of a Zen rock-garden master. Would it be 1/50? 1/2500?

Well, I never had one of these, but I was aware of them, and I believe that for the most part I took their existence in the ironic or campy spirit in which it was meant. I also wondered whether there were any people who took these things seriously, people who actually thought that they could get some of the esthetic or philosophical or spiritual benefit of a Zen rock garden by acquiring the home version. Silly people: without the heft of the rocks, without the landscape, without the history, without the years of spiritual discipline, all you have is a box of toys from a toy store.

At least I'm pretty sure I wondered about that. And although this was a long ago I'm pretty sure that those speculations extended to questions/thoughts/confusions such as:

What in fact are the benefits of a Zen rock garden?

Is "benefit" even the right word, or am I falsely imposing some American utilitarianism here? What is a garden for?

Should I be less cynical about miniature Zen rock gardens? Who am I to say that someone with a toy rake and a box of sand and a few little rocks can't find a good Zen moment in their own way? What do I know about it?

Or, turning it around, should I be more cynical about full-size Zen rock gardens? Those carefully chosen but natural-looking arrangements of the stones: do I really believe that an observer with the right training, the right sort of highly refined sensibility, sees something that I don't see there? Is this like The Emperor's New Clothes? Zen can have a joking quality; is the joke on me for even trying to comprehend this practice of arranging rocks on a bed of sand?

In August of 1990 the big quadrennial event known as the International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Kyoto, and I had the honor of being one of the many invited speakers. At any math conference there is likely to be half a day set aside to take a break from lectures. At a small meeting there might be an organized outing for those who want it, but basically you are on your own. At the ICM the free afternoon was meticulously planned. In a packet that came to me before I left home there were descriptions of a dozen or more excursions, and a form for reserving a place in one of them. I don't think I was ever in doubt: as second and third choices I may have put down the boat trip on a river and the boat trip on a lake, but my first choice had to be the tour of the Zen monastery with its world-famous rock garden.