Seeing and being seen: moss

We made the subway trip to the Saihoji Temple and its renowned moss garden on the outskirts of Kyoto yesterday.

The visit started with listening to the resident monks chanting and writing wishes with calligraphy brushes in the Buddha hall. Then we slipped our shoes back on and walked to the garden: as you walk through a gate of trees the ground goes from dirt and gravel to moss and the light immediately changes - it no longer falls on the ground but emanates from it. We were walking into fairyland.

A no-walled open sky’d temple. Trees and their roots, paths and brooks, a pond and its islands, all covered/held/blanketed with living, breathing moss.

It took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes when I first saw it. Bryology- the study of moss - perhaps a terminal degree for me?

Moss - unique amongst plants in its humble strength. Low but so clearly capable with its patient interweaving, living network of growth - as you walk you can feel it breathing and communicating with itself and with every thing it covers and lays under. Like silence under noise.

Being there I felt that we living creatures did not emerge from the sea eons ago but from moss - a groundmother from which grew trees and forests, squirrel and fox, ape and human.

We did two circuits through and saw two men were working there - sweeping the moss of pine needles. No place for hard soled Wellingtons or hard edged shovels. Bamboo whisk brooms, two-toed minimally soled boots, and grass weeded with finger tips.

A garden says a lot about our relationship to nature. This is a model we should emulate I think: careful and mindful, enhancing and celebrating, less extracting and less denigrating. I felt that the monks who’d made this space for growth to thrive really saw the moss and that the moss really saw us: relationship and dialogue, idea and practice, ground and being.

I think I’m falling in love with Japan.

- david