Extracted from Whisper of the Land (2014)

sitting in the lotus position 　　　 蓮華座組み
the Zen carpenter　　　　　　　禅の大工が
hammers nails　　　　　　　　 釘を打つ
along the long hall of his life 　　長い人生の廊下に沿って

renge-za kumi, Zen no daiku ga, kugi o utsu, nagai jinsei no rōka ni sotte

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My garden is not a Zen garden but it does have some symbolism, with little islands, dry rivers, and rocks that look like miniature mountains. Like life, where and how you look at it determines what you see. I try to balance local nature spirits with the global breath of the cosmos.

As a photographer, gardener, and lover of the old and sacred, I often visit Kyoto for inspiration. After Tokyo it is always a breath of fresh air, a small city but it has a cosmopolitan feeling. Because my first homestay was near there, it feels like my Japanese hometown, my furusato.

One fall I spent some time exploring the northeast of the old capital city. A beautiful woman in a seasonal chrysanthemum-patterned kimono walked ahead of me along the wooded Philosopher’s Path. With a little help from my will, we had naturally fallen in step together; it seemed unfair that she walk unescorted. As I walked and talked with the stranger, nature’s colorful maples and gingko trees grinned at the thought of us. Being separated from the other strollers, it must have looked like a scene out of a doomed Japanese love story.

We made quite a pair, I in a dirty down coat with a clunky camera backpack, attempting to walk philosophically in my green Reebok sneakers while she shuffled along gracefully in her clean, white tabi socks and zōri sandals.

We exchanged a few pleasantries; I was ready to stop and have tea with her, but she bowed her apologies and slipped off into the twilight, wanting to get to Ginkaku-ji Temple at the end of the path before it got dark. Or so she said. I guess our outfits and budgets didn’t match. I settled for a bowl of udon noodles alone at a greasy spoon shokudō (restaurant) watching near-naked sumo wrestlers on TV with a pack of smoking taxi drivers waiting for their passengers, who were eating at the expensive restaurant across the street.

Walking around Daikaku-ji Temple and vicinity the next day with my cameras, I was having trouble seeing what I was experiencing. As I reached the far side of an island in Osawa Pond which borders the temple, I was ready to give up shooting and move on to the next site. Suddenly, I found myself standing under a wonderful old tree. The tops of its big roots were bursting out of the clean swept soil, its thick limbs perfectly balanced in nearly every direction. A small torii and shrine confirmed the sacredness and majesty of the tree. From the right perspective, the tree is the center point of the Daikaku-ji area; it holds a position of power. Earlier in the day at another very crowded temple, red maple leaves attracted hordes of tourists. Here, I was alone with a magnificent tree that loved me for taking time to love it.

“You only pass this way once” (Ichigo ichi he) is one of my favorite Japanese expressions, but in Kyoto I often visit the same sacred places over and over again, trying to get to know them better. Sometimes I find something fresh. Over time, be it fifteen minutes or fifteen years, I savor the essence of the place. When I leave it’s as if I’ve been on retreat. I am on a high, and sometimes it’s hard to go back out into the city streets. Then I will encounter temple and shrine people doing real things, and it reminds me of the middle way, of balancing the spiritual and material worlds.

Every day a Japanese man dressed in white judo-like work clothes sweeps the stairway to Yoshida Shrine, putting the few leaves into small neat piles. In Shinto as well as Zen, the broom metaphorically sweeps the heart clean. He is only a shrine worker, not a monk or priest, but he seems content and focused on the work at hand. I wouldn’t mind his job or that of the elderly couple of cleaners who were polishing the railings and floors of Shōren-in Temple on a rainy summer day. Good daily exercises in polishing the heart. Even the parking lot attendant had a Laughing Buddha smile on his face as he bowed and collected my money.

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http://www.edophoto.com (Edward Levinson’s photography website)
http://www.whisperoftheland.com ( Whisper of the Land  book website)