Zen on the rocks - III

mu

I've been intuitively drawn to Zen culture for the last few years. I felt very attracted to a filmmaker here, to a specific kind of meditation there, or to an aesthetic style over there. It took me a while to realize there was a unifying pattern behind them. When I did, Zen became one of the main reasons for making this trip to Japan and explore it first-hand.

My initial exploration was very clumsy. I would ask things like "Do you meditate?", receiving weird looks from both the interrogated person and my wife, and obviously not getting anything out of my desperate attempts to bring up the topic.

One day, I'm having dinner with the interesting

Vicky Zhao

in a deliciously low-lit skewers restaurant and quickly realize she's extremely well-versed in Japanese culture. Excited and still in my clumsy phase, I ask her if she's into Zen and how she integrates it into her life.

She mentions a bit on the topic, but then gracefully adds how certain cultural aspects resound with foreigners, and the locals just take it for granted, since it's so ingrained in everyday life and it's difficult to articulate them, or even notice them.

It makes so much sense. It's like asking a Mexican about Day of the Dead and our relationship with death. It's not something we explicitly talk about, we live it¹. There's no use in asking a direct question about it, it's more an act of observing with intention.

Someone I’ve observed intently is Yasujiro Ozu, deemed by some to be "the most Japanese film director". His tatami shots² are legendary, as is his influential minimalism, both on execution and on telling the same story many times. He's deeply tied with Zen, but through Vicky’s comment I realize that never is the concept of "Zen" explicitly talked about in his more than 50 movies.

I make a day trip to where he's buried: Engaku-ji, one of the 10 major Zen temples in Japan. I've learned "going to a temple" here is not visiting one building as I'm used to, but more walking around an entire complex containing the temple itself and many other buildings and spaces.

The temple is in Kamakura, less than an hour from Tokyo and once the capital of Japan, tucked between steep forests and the sea. It's 8am as I start walking around Engaku-ji. It's pretty deserted and I'm immediately struck by the extremely peaceful scenery.

Almost a 1,000 years old, and even though parts of it have been burned down and rebuilt, the place exhales patina.

It was also state-sponsored, which makes me wonder what does a government influenced by Zen teachings do to its people? I now have a few hints.

The place implicitly begs for you to walk slowly. I start noticing every step I take, the contact of the soles of my shoes with the flat rocks that act as the floor. I deeply breathe the pristine air, embrace the greenery.

Almost at the end of the walk, I get to the tucked away cemetery. There's no hurry in finding Ozu's grave. I wander around the tombs covered in moss wondering what each one says, or who else is buried there. I'm not looking for answers, the act of imagining is delightful enough. After a while, I spot a grave I immediately know is Ozu's.

He clearly liked sake and whisky

The inscription on the grave is the character for mu (無), or "nothingness". A buddhist concept deeply tied with Zen, with whole books written about its many meanings and interpretations.

One of them is to "unask a question". Answering with "mu" hints at the question being incorrect from the beginning, rejecting that it can have a logical, binary answer.
I find it beautifully fitting with my exploration on the broader topic.

Back in Tokyo, I start seeing Zen in the city itself. Through a wabi-sabi book, I learn about another concept: ku (空) or “emptiness”. Applied to art and architecture, it says the object or space must fit gracefully into its surroundings, it should not stand apart as if it had its own identity: “the opposite would be a sculpture whose sole purpose is to attract people’s attention, or to be spectacular, as though the artist’s ego had taken over the work.”³

Walking around Tokyo I start noticing this subtle quality of everything blending in. There’s no clear division between neighborhoods. The sidewalks quietly appear and disappear along the curvy and irregular streets and alleys. I don’t see a specific thing clearly saying “look at me!”. There’s no crowning Vittorio Emmanuele monuments at the end of main avenues (no offense Rome! you’re still my favorite city).

I then start thinking maybe the circular Yamanote train line is based on the ubiquitous ensō.

There I stop, realizing I took it too far.

---

I'm finishing a month in Tokyo that will take me years to unpack. Off to explore the east and south of Japan now.

Besides Zen, I became a fan of recording the different sounds in the train stations, while wondering: who makes them? How and where? How do they decide which one to use in each station? Who even came up with all of this? Why?

I know there’s an answer to all of this, but I refuse to google it and for now will just enjoy making up stories in my head.

Here’s a compilation!

Approaching a station, these birds are unleashed to signal you can cross a street:

Sometimes they release other kind of birds:

This is the most common one when the train arrives:

With this one I feel in an old Chaplin movie:

One with a mysterious twist towards the end:

And here they go kind of crazy and is a good finale:

1. Until they make a James Bond movie about it and a random parade is created

2. Placing the camera on the ground, instead of chest/head level as usual

3. Wabi Sabi, by Nobuo Suzuki