The Great Tao in a Garden

The idea that we are living within a world swirling with unseen energies is not a new one... 

The Chinese idea of Tao comes closest to what mystics, tribal peoples and modern day physicists explain as the basis of all life.

(white plumeria, Kauai )

 The Tao, as Alan Watts writes, is not God “in the sense of ruler, monarch, commander, architect and maker of the universe,” but an “intelligent rhythm” (Watts, “Tao: the Watercourse Way” P 40):

(from The Living Centre)

“The great Tao flows [also “floats” and “drifts”] everywhere

to the left and to the right,

All things depend upon it to exist,

And it does not abandon them.

To its accomplishments it lays no claim.

It loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them.

(Jim's Golden Laceleaf Elderberry)

         A flourishing garden spotlights this intelligent rhythm.

It is our everyday “repository of life …….with no claim to its accomplishments”. 

(NY Botanical Garden Cascade)

Alan Watts uses a stream as his principal metaphor for the Tao.   A stream, he says, cannot be held in a bucket and such is the nature of the Tao, or energy that lies within and around all natural life.  How lovely it is that  flowing water of any kind in your garden can symbolize the invisible field of the Tao that flows all around us!

So how do we access the unknowable energy that pulsates around and through us? As Watts describes, "we know intuitively that there is a dimension of ourselves and of nature which eludes us because it is too close, too general and too all embracing to be singled out as a particular object.”(p.55)

He counsels us to “watch the processes and patterns of nature...... so as to have vivid awareness of ‘what is’ without verbal comment”.

A garden is a perfect setting

for developing our ‘vivid awareness”.

(garden by Jan Johnsen)

Loren Eiseley, Star Thrower

"Man would not be man if his dreams did not exceed his grasp...

 If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there..."

 

- Loren Eiseley, The Invisible Pyramid

When Loren Eiseley, the famous naturalist, was alive no one looked at him as a mystic but he was indeed mystical.

 He was born in 1907 in Nebraska. In 1910 a very young Loren watched the passage of Halley’s Comet with his father. That spectacle contributed to Eiseley's profound sense of time and space that is so inspiring.

Eiseley became one of the most widely read and highly regarded nature writers of the twentieth century. "There has never been another writer like him," wrote a reviewer for the Library of Science, "and there never will be".  His admirers and correspondents included the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, the poet W.H. Auden, and the cultural critic Lewis Mumford.

Loren Corey Eiseley  - an evolutionary biologist, anthropologist, bone hunter, poet, teacher, historian, naturalist, philosopher, "the heir apparent to Henry David Thoreau" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) earned a B.S. at age 26 at the University of Nebraska after nearly a decade as a Depression era WPA worker and drifter.  

His friend Umland wrote,

"From the time he was a teenager his mother had been constantly after him to find part-time work but he would hole up in the City Library and read books instead of making an earnest search.

He read science fiction, the poets, the nature writers, ghost stories.

 Librarian Lula Horn said he had to be chased out of the stacks at closing time.  "

He was awarded a Ph.D. in anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, in 1937 when he was 30.

He became head of the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, in 1947. Elected president of the American Institute of Human Paleontology in 1949.  The Immense Journey, his first book, was published by Random House in 1957.

He was awarded the John Burroughs Medal and the LeComte du Nouy Award in 1961 for The Firmament of Time.

Eiseley pondered the ethical issues of our age --how man might be a part of nature's world, and not an enemy of it. This gave his wirtings a certain urgency.  He explored inner and outer space and brought poetic insight to scientific discipline, connecting multiple universes, humankind, and nature.

His famous short story 'The Star Thrower' can be read here - The Metta Refuge. Highly recommended to all fellow travelers!

The Amazing Dandelion - Harvesting and Cooking Nutritious Greens in Spring

The dreaded Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), for which we spend tremendous amounts of weed killer money to eradicate, has been prized over the years for its medicinal and nutritious properties. In fact, dandelion roots, flowers and "dandelion greens" (leaves) are all edible!

• Dandelion roots can be roasted as a coffee-substitute, or boiled and stir-fried as a cooked vegetable.

• Dandelion flowers can be made into a wine.

• Dandelion greens can be boiled, as you would spinach, and served as a vegetable or can be inserted in sandwiches or used as a salad green (it has a little "bite.")

 Dandelion greens are high in vitamins A and C, and iron!  The French even  have a well-known soup called creme de pissenlits (cream of dandelion soup), which is easy to make.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/eating-dandelions.html 

 from Embracing My Health blog

Harvesting the greens (the leaves)  is the most popular way to eat Dandelions. The best time to harvest the greens is in early spring, before the flowers appear, when they are the tenderest and least bitter. Boiling them or stir frying them will further reduce their bitterness.

from the Herbwife's Kitchen website

So why pay pay extra to purchase foods with similar (or even inferior) nutritional value, when you have a free source of leafy greens in your neighborhood? 
 
 Dandelions are a rich source of vitamins A, B complex, C, and D, as well as minerals such as iron, potassium, and zinc. And in traditional medicine, dandelion roots and leaves were used to treat liver problems. Native Americans used dandelion decoctions (liquid made by boiling down the herb in water) to treat kidney disease, swelling, skin problems, heartburn, and stomach upset.
 
 

 

My musings:  It makes sense that, at the end of winter, when our ancestors were probably hungry and vitamin deficient, that Nature would see to it that they had a great source of vitamins proliferating all around them! No one had to seed them or turn over the soil...the Dandelions appeared just for the picking! and today we spend so much money just to make them go away....something is wrong here....

Just make sure to avoid harvesting near roads, since road salt and/or toxins may be present. Likewise, you obviously shouldn't harvest from a lawn where herbicides have been used.

Here is a great medical reference book for all health practitioners:



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

'Lost' by David Wagoner...( a poem about forests and more)

 Lost  by David Wagoner

photo by Jan Johnsen (NYBG - pinus bungeana)

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.

 

photo by Jan Johnsen (one of my gardens)

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.

photo by Blondieb

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

from Collected Poems 1956-1976 © Indiana University Press

Why We Garden - Oneness with Nature

    Holy Mother Earth,

 the trees and all nature, are witnesses of your thoughts and deeds.

~  Winnebago saying

A garden is nature, bounded  -  protected and shaped by human hands.  It can be a simple balcony filled with planters, a sweeping vista dotted with trees or a small courtyard bordered by plant beds.  

Our urge to co-create with Mother Nature has been with us since time immemorial.   This impulse lies in the need to be connected to something greater than ourselves.  

Gardening enhances a heightened sense of empathy and expands our awareness of non-human life.  When we garden, we see how the lowly earthworm is as important as the forest. 

This, in turn, leads to an oceanic feeling that we are one with Nature.  Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher, called  this expanded sense of self,   ‘the ecological self’:

^"We are not outside the rest of nature and therefore cannot do with it as we please without changing ourselves … we are a part of the ecosphere just as intimately as we are a part of our own society.." 

photo by Jan Johnsen / in garden by Johnsen

The ecological self has always been with us.  It is this self (not the  human centered self of our Western World) that created the nature based rituals and ceremonies of Native American and Australian Aborigines;  that used monumental trees or great stones as their religious totems;  that developed the pleasure grounds of the Persians and the sacred groves of the Greeks. 

 The ecological self sees Nature as a conduit to the cosmos.  As the 19^th century traveler and nature lover, W. H. Hudson, wrote in his evocative, turn of the century book, ‘The Purple Land’:

photo by Jan Johnsen / Mt Kisco, NY

“Face to face with Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?”

Tree Spirits, Einstein and 'Frozen Light'

Why do certain tree species evoke the same response from all people? 

The Oak, for example, was considered  by the Celtic Druids to be the 'King of the Greenwood' . To them, oaks represented mighty and enduring power.  The ancient Greeks also revered oaks - groves of them were deemed sacred territory.  

 

And Native Americans viewed the oak tree as a symbol of strength with supernatural powers. In fact, the tradition of “knocking on wood” is said to be of Native American origin  - they would knock on an oak tree in order to avert the failing of a hopeful prediction.

This similarity is true for many other trees from Ash trees to apple trees to maples.... So why do disparate cultures see tree 'personas' similarly?   Is it Coincidence or Co-incidents?

I think Albert Einstein figured it out.  In  1905, Einstein, a young patent inspector in Switzerland,  came up with a simple equation that challenged the way we in Western society saw the  physical world: 

Few people, at the time, realized what this mix of numbers and letters meant but it was revolutionary to those who did. 

Einstein originally wrote the converse of this elegant equation  (M =  E/C2)  but it all means the same thing - 

mass (or matter) is a function of light and energy;

matter is energized light.

As Niels Bohr, another famous scientist, explained it, mass is basically ‘frozen light’. This applies to all physical creation, including trees and humans.

In essence, Einstein realized that human beings (and trees) are ‘energized light beings’. 

 This revolutionary equation brought modern physics to the border line of science and spirit. 

Einstein alluded to this interface when he described the awe that inquiring scientists feel when confronted with the  inner workings of nature:

“…[it is] a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority, that compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.  This feeling is … closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.”
  (Albert Einstein, the World as I See It”, p.29)

         
   If we, and the physical world around us, are ‘energized light’ then the idea that electromagnetic auras surround our bodies is not as improbable as once thought.    Ironically, Science, in its own way, has validated the Renaissance paintings of the saints by confirming the existence of halos!

            Plants and trees are also energized light and they, too, have an energetic aura.

Our forefathers' views that trees have spirits is the acknowledgment of this energetic 'footprint'.  

Once you see the world in this way, thanks to E = MC ² , a garden is more than a verdant retreat - it is also a conglomeration of chlorophyll filled, light catching balls of energy!

As Rumi, the 13th century Persian Poet and mystic, wrote:

"Once we were particles of Light, now we are beings of

Light, radiating Love"

Personal Space and Privacy - Japanese Vs. American

In my graduate Landscape Design Studio at Columbia University, I ask students to select an excerpt from the assigned book, 'The Hidden Dimension' and correlate a personal experience to describe it.
Yuji Yamazaki wrote this very enlightening piece...I had to share. (He said it was ok.)

“We learn from the study of culture that the patterning of perceptual world is a function not only of culture but of relationship, activity, and emotion. 

Therefore, people from different cultures, when interpreting each other’s behavior, often misinterpret the relationship, the activity, or the emotion. 

This leads to alienation in encounters or distorted communications.”

~ Edward T. Hall, Hidden Dimension

I have been living with my girlfriend for over 5 years now. My girlfriend, born and raised in the Long Island, NY,  sees certain things in a way that I don’t quite understand, especially things that relate to space and privacy.

Edward Hall mentions that there is no word to describe “privacy” in Japanese language.

 But I think that there is “sense” of privacy that you can develop in Japan.  A way to establish this sense of privacy is to block out other’s presence.  In densely populated cities, Japanese nuclear families are accustomed to share the most intimate space.  That is probably why we don’t have “privacy” in our vocabulary.

Growing up in Japan, I could go months without talking to my brother even though we shared a small 10’ x 10’ room, and it was not considered as being rude, it was rather respecting by mentally blocking out each other.  But my girlfriend would perceive this type of silence as a queue to ask me “Is
everything okay?

We  live in a small one-bedroom apartment, very similar size to the one with my brother. In Japanese setting, I can establish a sense of privacy by simply holding newspaper in front of my face and be silent—Japanese privacy is established.  In my girlfriend's culture, when you are in a room together, you are assumed to participate each other’s presence.  “What are you reading?”, “Wanna a cup of coffee?”, or “I’m bored” are the usual intrusion toward the silence.  You need to go to the other room and shut the door to have privacy.

Her privacy takes four walls and a shut door, which is about 100 square feet, my privacy takes 30” by 30” newspaper, which takes about 6 square feet. Growing up in a Long Island house with her own room, my girlfriend has yet to learn about my portable Japanese privacy, and I have yet to learn when and where to have that privacy.

GREAT INSIGHT!  My female advice, Yuji, politely answer her questions ......we never stop asking questions...

New York's Bryant Park - What Makes a Great Urban Park

N.Y. City's Bryant Park in Summer

This is a revised and enlarged version of a previous post I wrote.....Jan

Bryant Park is one of the most successful outdoor spaces in New York. But why?

Well, it is open on all four sides to the public.  You can enter it easily although there is a distinct separation from the street and a more formal entrance off 6th Avenue.

It is also a mix of overhead trees and open level green space. (I guess each comprises 50 percent of the whole). This is an important and salient design point.

from the website : www.soulofthegarden.com/dailymuse0703.html

It offers many different active and passive recreational pursuits. Chess tables and sculptures share the park with ice skaters, a carousel and bird watchers.

Chess players in Bryant Park

Ice Skating in Bryant Park

One of the most obvious features of Bryant Park is the perimeter planting of tall Plane Trees. These stately trees were planted years ago and have been pruned to a high canopy which offers filtered shade and a needed buffer from the surrounding skyscrapers.

photo by Jan Johnsen

I took this photo of Bryant Park in the summer. The furniture is lightweight and highly moveable. People can place their seats anywhere they like.  Bravo!

Urbanist William H. Whyte suggested the use of this kind of seating for the park. He wrote in his book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces:

"Chairs enlarge choice: to move into the sun, out of it, to make room for groups, move away from them. The possibility of choice is as important as the exercise of it. If you know you can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put."

 It also shows people sitting in niches set off from the main walk - another great design idea! Set the seating out of the flow of people. It also shows the trees bordering both sides of the paved walkway.

Where did this idea come from?  Well, look at Villa Medici in Italy for this niche idea.

Villa Medici - photo by Hermes, Gardens of a Golden Afternoon

And what about the large central rectangle of lawn that Bryant Park features? It harks back to as Village Green.  This is what 'House and Garden', said of a plan for a 'village green' concept in June, 1926:

"A new prototype of an urban park for American cities features a raised, multipurpose grass terrace surrounded by a double rows of trees. Separation from traffic and street noise is provided by low plantings and balustrades."  from the website, 'Exploring Concepts of Landscape Architecture ' ... Bryant Park is a Village Green.

Bryant Park plan from the book, 'Great City Parks' by Alan Tate

Now contrast that scene with this one:

I took this photo years ago of a vest pocket park in New Orleans. It, too, has trees on both sides of the paved area. It also has seats in niches. So why is this so unappealing while the other park is so inviting?

Gary O Robinette termed it, 'Reduction'.

In Bryant Park, the width of the paved walk is small compared to the height of the trees bordering it....You feel enclosed, embraced and sheltered.

from the book, 'Plants/People/ and Environmental Quality' by Gary O. Robinette

The ratio of the trees to the paved area in the New Orleans park is very different. The trees are too small, too far apart and the paved zone is too wide....They should have placed the trees closer to each other tather than hugging the walls.  The  widecentral paved area has no reason for being...A narrower walk with wide planting beds would have created a softer, sheltered space.

There is no buffer from the street. No activities are offered or planned for. It is a dead end space - no flow.

As Gertrude Stein said (a sculpture of her is in Bryant Park) "there is no there, there"..she was describing Los Angeles but it could apply to this New Orleans park.

Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park - given to the park by Maury Leibovitz (he was a client of mine and had this statue at his house before donating to the park)