Tenryu-ji. Norris Brock Johnson
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Tenryū-ji
LIFE AND SPIRIT OF A KYŌTO GARDEN
Norris Brock Johnson
Stone Bridge Press • Berkeley, California
Published by
Stone Bridge Press
P.O. Box 8208
Berkeley, CA 94707
TEL 510-524-8732 • [email protected] • www.stonebridge.com
Cover and text design by Linda Ronan.
Photographs by the author unless otherwise indicated. Copyright notices accompany their respective images. Image credits and permissions appear after the Index.
© 2012 Norris Brock Johnson.
First edition 2012.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America.
2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Johnson, Norris Brock.
Tenryuji: life and spirit of a Kyoto garden / Norris Brock Johnson.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61172-004-4.
I. Tenryuji (Kyoto, Japan) 2. Zen temples—Japan—Kyoto. 3. Gardens, Japanese—Japan—Kyoto. 4. Gardens, Japanese—Zen influences. 5. Church gardens—Japan—Kyoto. I. Title. II. Title: Life and spirit of a Kyoto garden.
SB458.J64 2012
712.0952’1864—dc23
2011044825
For my ancestors
Beatrice Brock, 1892–1957
Richard Lawrence Johnson, 1948–86
Alfreda Belle Johnson, 1910–95
Rufus Norris Johnson, 1902–99
CONTENTS
The Pond in the Garden
Part I: Land, Landscape, and the Spirit of Place
1 Mountains, Water, and Fragrant Trees
2 Death, Dream, and the Genesis of a Temple
3 Clouds of Flowers Preserve the Way
Part II: A Garden in Green Shade
4 A Pond of Shadow and Shimmering Stones
5 Footprints in the Sky
6 Settling Flowers of Ice
7 Bridge to Buddha-Nature
8 Sitting in the Garden
9 Anchors Along the Journey
10 The Dragon Gate
Part III: Garden as Life and Spirit
“Just as Before”
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
Image Credits
FIGURE 1. The principal islands of Japan.
FIGURE 2. Tenryū-ji and Saga, to the west of central Kyōto.
THE POND IN THE GARDEN
Myriad stones appear to float on water softened by a shimmering late afternoon haze, caressing the pond. The garden is a mosaic of water and stones, foliage and sky, experienced as … tranquillity.
The pond in the garden before us appears sheltered by the deep roof eaves of the temple building within which we will envision ourselves sitting. We sit on tatami covering the expansive floor of the Quarters of the Abbot of the Temple, until recently the traditional residence of successive abbots of the temple. Shōji have been pulled back along tracks in the floor, opening the rear wall of this large room to the garden. Sitting quietly, we look across the veranda of the Abbot’s Quarters to contemplate the pond in the garden of the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon (天龍寺, Tenryū-ji; figs. 3, 4).
This book is a contemplative study of the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon, Tenryū-ji, a Buddhist temple nestled within the mountains of western Kyōto, Japan.1 Tenryū-ji is the main temple of the Tenryū school of Rinzai Zen Buddhism, and the temple participated in significant historical events in Japan. The temple reminds us that landscape and building architecture were a vital presence in events significant to the history of Japan. We will witness the temple emerge across generations through its designed interrelationship of buildings, nature, human-created landscapes, and the participation of people as well as belief in the participatory presence of deities and venerated ancestors. The temple across generations will stimulate the thoughts and ideas, values, and behaviors of people. Sustained attention to Tenryū-ji reveals the manner in which a distinctive human-created space and place, the temple complex, conditioned in people distinct ways of conceptualizing as well as being in the world.
FIGURE 3. When experienced from within the rear room of the Abbot’s Quarters, the pond in the garden appears as a three-dimensional picture framed by roof eaves, projecting rafters, and the expansive veranda.
FIGURE 4. The west/northwest area of the pond, viewed from within the central rear room of the Abbot’s Quarters.
The heart of this book is the pond garden aspect of the temple, as “the design of the garden came to have both pictorial and historical importance, attracting people to Tenryū-ji and impressing them.”2The venerated pond garden participated in the genesis of several defining moments in pre-modern Japan. Quite apart from conventional conceptions of garden as epiphenomenal to other aspects of human life deemed vital such as, say, political economy, sustained study of the pond garden aspect of Tenryū-ji reveals the manner in which gardens have had an abiding effect on our imaginations as well as a determinative effect on human history.
Shimmering Garments of Silence
By way of introduction, let us walk through the complex to the pond in the garden. Passing under a front entrance gate to the temple, noise is muted quite suddenly. The sensation is that we have passed through a gossamer shroud, imperceptibly closing behind us to drape the temple from the world outside the gates. Sounds outside the entrance gate further are silenced the deeper we move into the temple (figs. 5–10).
Intricately knit footpaths of stone lead us deeper into the complex. In the distance, we see the upper portions and roof of the building presently serving as the public entrance to the pond garden. In the thirteenth century, an early version of this building (Kuri) housed kitchen and storage areas; presently, the building primarily houses administrative offices and serves as a public reception area for the temple. The facade of the present-day reception building is a contrast of white stucco walls laced crisply by dark timber framing, embraced by the deep green of surrounding trees of maple and pine.
The