http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09/26/zen.garden.reut/index.html
It always amazes me when people take something and distort
it, trap it, define it, compress it, and/or digest it. What we have here is an example of that
happening.
I’ve never been to this rock garden in Kyoto. I have seen rock gardens here in the US, all
of which have been very small. I am
also familiar with Buddhism, Taoism, & Shinto. So it wouldn’t be completely accurate to say that I come from a
completely ignorant viewpoint.
According to the news report this group of science needle
brains think that the rock garden represents the outline of a tree. What the fuck? How about we compare this tiny Kyoto rock garden with a much
larger one: the beach.
That’s right, the beach.
Thousands of miles of winding sands, slapping surf, and rocks. Now, not once have I ever stood on the warm
California sand looking out at the golden light as the sun melts into the water
and said, “Holy shit! This looks just like a tree!” No instead I see the beauty of what is right in front of me. I see the rock outcroppings. I see the blood red sky bleeding down into
the black water. I see the foam
clinging to the sand. I see the
bubbles, the tiny lines of seaweeds in the waves. I see what is right in front of me.
What those idiots in Japan have done is to ignore the
obvious. They have taken this garden
and turned it into something it’s not.
It’s not a tree. It’s not
anything other than what it is. The
thing that is funny about this story is that in Buddhism one has to learn to
overcome his duality of nature and self.
So to an exceptional student the garden of rocks and sand, is just that,
a garden of rocks and sand. It’s not
something to explore and dissect. It
just is. In fact that is the real idea
behind the garden. It is a microcosm of
the macro-universe. It is a tool that
students can use to see themselves on a small scale and hopefully, understand
the big picture.
I tell you, I’m really starting to hate the way people
destroy the natural balance of things by trying to figure everything out. Where do these people come from? Don’t they have anything useful to do? You’d think with all that schooling neatly
tucked under their chins they would have found something better to do with their
time. But no, what we get instead is
crap like this. It seems only a matter
of time before some idiot steps up from the dark and has an explanation of how
hotdogs are actually enjoyed because of their shape (Phallic in nature) and not
based on taste.
When I was fourteen I was going to write my Doctoral thesis
on that effect you get when a car drives by and you hear the radio change
frequency. It was six months later that
I found out that someone named Doppler* had already discovered this. What this did for me was to make me realize
that the old saying, “Nothing new under the sun” had more than one
meaning. I changed my ideas about
college and higher education, and decided a bohemian lifestyle better suited my
personality.
My point is: all the easy things have been discovered. All the simple ideals have been
published. Therefore, the so called
scholars of our new social order, whom fifty years ago would have been
geniuses, are now not all that interesting, not all that new, not all that
worthwhile. We know pretty much what
water is made out of, how it effects plant growth, how clouds use it. We know how rocks are formed. We know what happens when we rake dirt. All the effortless conceptions are
done.
Therefore, in order for the future science crowd to make
themselves feel like those thousands of dollars spent on their education weren’t
wasted, they come up with lame brained theories and ideas. And believing in a theory about something that
contradicts its whole creation is a terrible signpost for the future.
*Christian J. Doppler back in the 19th Century (the bastard).