Home Ground 6
The gardens around my goldfish pond contain different arrangements of space and light. Walkways and brick patios link one garden room to another, and each to the cedar-and-stone buildings that compose the architectures of our home. A shaded area enclosed by a bamboo grove, shale walls, and cedar fence made from trees felled by a snowstorm holds a stone pathway lined in shaggy mondo grass, Oriental pine trees pruned to a cloud shape, rocks, ferns and moss, prayer tablets from Tibet, and small, unobtrusive statuary I obtained in Bali, Nepal, and Thailand. I purchased a large figurine — a fat-bellied, smiling Chinese Buddha — at a nearby roadside stand called “Concrete Critters.” The statue sits in a corner of the shade garden beneath the overhanging branches of a maple tree. I call this garden my Oriental Garden because the primary influences on it come from what I’ve seen and learned in the classical gardens of China, Japan, and Bali. Some visitors refer to it as a meditation space, but I think a person can do anything they want in there — I don’t subscribe to the theory that a garden has an exclusive purpose.
Many people see gardens as sanctuaries. The word suggests a place of refuge. Spiritual traditions around the world embrace sanctuaries — altars where the presence of the divine is felt, sepulchers that contain the relics of saints, or natural areas set aside for worship, reflection, or prayer. This is not to imply that gardening is a kind of religion, although for some people it is. A sanctuary in the Christian tradition is marked by symbolic architectures such as altar rails, naves, and iconostases which distinguish it from secular spaces. Gardens, meanwhile, have fences that might serve a similar purpose. In Tibetan monasteries, the sanctuary is an inner sanctum where statuary and the relics of bodhisattvas are safely kept. These interior chapels, covered in tantric paintings, open onto special entryways that may be accessible only to high-ranking lamas. Most gardens have gates of one kind or another. The inner sanctum of a Tibetan monastery, marked by the intonations of chanting monks, gongs, and ringing bells, is also impregnated with the redolence of aromatic incense and sour-smelling butter lamps. Gardens, on the other hand, are filled with songbirds and the fragrance of flowers.
(excerpt from Morning Coffee at the Goldfish Pond)
