The Aesthetics of Zen

 

According to Shinichi Hisamatsu, philosopher and tea ceremony master, there are seven principles that govern Zen art: asymmetry, simplicity, austere sublimity, naturalness, profound subtlety, freedom from attachment and tranquility. A piece of Zen art should have all of them, producing the characteristic serene aesthetical impression that we associate with it. Hisamatsu gives a few examples of particular works of art which have them all: a Raku ware teabowl named Masu, Muchi’s Chinese painting of persimmons, the stone garden of Ryojan-ji… Compared to the strident grandiloquence of contemporary art the perspective of such an experience is both soothing and appealing, though the proposed way is not free from contradictions.

  Zen aesthetics cannot be separated from its ethics, whose goal is satori through self-awareness, and these seven principles are tools for such awareness through aesthetical action. The action has to be asymmetrical, for in asymmetry there is incompleteness and therefore movement and change, giving a living reference for an experience that is basically looking for a general sense of imperturbability inside motion. Asymmetry is complexity and is to be balanced by a principle of simplicity both in actions and means. Both principles can be synthesized without much effort in the quick movements of calligraphy, or in the calm representations of the artificially combed landscape of a stone garden, as long as we maintain the third principle as the aesthetical attractor or engine for our art: austere sublimity. “Sublime” should be understood as being bony and not sensuous, as Hisamatsu proposes, or in other words, sublime is the non-human dimension of the experience, the overwhelming universality of individual life sailing its streams of time. Japanese haikai represent this sense of universality in their first verse. “Austere” modifies “sublime” redirecting its possible stormy connotations into the realm of sparse objects and relations, certainly what characterizes better Zen aesthetics in relation to other artistic proposals. On the other hand, the principle of naturalness focuses the artistic action outside the social milieu and the use of art for other purposes than the mystical experience. Here there is an obvious contradiction, for the Zen artist tries deliberately to be natural and not artificial, furthermore, assumes the seven principles, which are far from being natural guidelines to action. The contradiction is somewhat minimized through the principle of profound subtlety and the call for an egoless art, after all, Zen Buddhism is the Japanese development of the Mahayana Chang Buddhism, a non-dual metaphysical proposal, but ego is precisely a very natural phenomenon of animal life, and any reduction of the ego is a reduction of vitality. In this sense, Zen crushes violently with the Nietzschean aesthetics of vitalism which pervaded the avant-garde and still drives today the art markets responsible for our ideas of what art should be. The principle of freedom from attachment widens the gap with our present vitalism-capitalism even more, making of Zen art a marginal discourse fit only for the selected temples of the critics and other chosen priests. Finally, the principle of tranquility becomes too often in our society a mere death wish, or the desire of a massage after a long day at the office, and not a seasoned ataraxia (imperturbability) that assigns its pondered value to the fleeting phantoms of our social life. If we do not stress our minds our encephalograms become flat and our heart shrinks into empty desperation.

  An alternative to Zen aesthetics was developed by the New York abstract expressionism in music and painting. Though some of the roots of such aesthetics is Zen itself (as is the case of John Cage) or a general interest in Japanese culture (not exempt of remorse) after WW2, there is another root for stillness, like the one we observe in Feldman and Rothko, that is more related to desert landscapes of the mind provided by life in modern cities, places where anxiety and compulsion look for a cure in any stillness dance. It found its room in the corporate hallways of Manhattan, where the religion of genius still gives an alibi for art merchandizing, translating the austere sublimity of simple still-life composing into the sublime emptiness of money. Back in 1984, precisely while I was studying with Feldman, I was trying to find my way between a meditative need for meaning in the peak of the cold war, a mathematical drive for clarity, and the wild hormones of a young vitalism which had me running from one thing to another. I found myself in the hands of the crippled symmetry of modern art, building ultra-civilized sound landscapes which opened my mind to blue distances of nostalgia but shut the door for the development of any aesthetics of life. Nonetheless, after more than 30 years thinking about the subject and practicing it in my music and painting, I still think that there is an element of  Zen aesthetics (and any aesthetics of the universal law in general) that makes sense for any vitalist art: the uncompromised drive for clarity and simplicity that life needs in its symbolical complexification processes.