American Buddhism as a Way of Life

11 “A Dharma of Place”

11 “A Dharma of Place” Evolving Aesthetics and Cultivating Community in an American Zen Garden Jeff Wilson Enthusiasts of Japanese Zen gardens are used to juggling terms like wabi-sabi and yugen.1 But how often do they find themselves talking about the use of red bricks to evoke a flowing stream, or contemplating an abstract Buddha figure made out of cement fondue? Such unusual approaches must be taken in investigating the Rochester Zen Center’s Japanese-influenced garden, where Asian and North American traditions meet to produce an emerging American Zen aesthetic. This aesthetic, emerging from the fluid contact of two cultural, religious , and artistic spheres, can be seen in numerous Zen communities throughout the United States; examining the garden at the Rochester temple, one of the country’s first and most influential convert Zen centers , provides a particularly clear window into this phenomenon.2 In America, where immigration has played a key role in shaping the religious landscape, scholars have often studied how Old World religions are transmitted and adapted to the New World situation by immigrant communities.3 However, immigration plays a much smaller role in American Zen’s history than in most American religions. Zen has mainly been transmitted by individual Japanese teachers to a Euro-American audience, presented as a therapy or spiritual practice rather than an ethnic, family-based traditional religion. Perhaps 195 196 Jeff Wilson because of this peculiar American Zen emphasis on individuals rather than on communities, those few who have looked at Buddhism’s transplantation have mainly explored abstract theological concepts such as enlightenment, or individualistic ritual practices such as meditation. Much rarer is the detailed study of material culture. Yet Buddhist America is undeniably full of stuff, from homemade zafu cushions to plastic power beads to ancient imported statues . Careful attention to architecture and artifacts can provide useful information about American Buddhist groups and counteracts the tendency to look at convert American Zen as an atomized conglomeration of solitary sitters pursuing personal enlightenment. Religious spaces are expressions of a total community’s self-identity: They offer members the chance to express themselves while at the same time subtly or overtly shaping the minds and bodies of the groups that inhabit them. In designing, constructing, maintaining, altering, and interacting with their communal space and the objects within it, religious practitioners are naturally moved beyond a personal perspective toward consciousness of being part of a group. And the spaces that result from these processes therefore reflect values and aesthetics that the community cherishes, providing clues as to how such groups are formed and maintained. Three important points can be employed to analyze American Buddhist material culture. Tradition, encompassing forms used historically in Asia, is the starting point for all Buddhist lineages in the New World. Adaptation occurs when the new situation demands modifications to tradition, such as materials more suited to the new environment or the use of unusual objects because the traditional ones are unavailable. Innovation is a more radical response to the new surroundings —it involves actively seeking new expressions or methods of manufacture for the sake of expanding the range of possible forms.4 Motivation is the most important distinguishing factor between the latter two categories: Adaptation is undertaken due to necessity and is practical in orientation (though often quite imaginative in execution), while innovation is pursued for its own sake, to creatively play with the untapped potential of Buddhist material culture. All three can be expected to appear in any given Buddhist space in America, regardless of the group’s sectarian affiliation or ethnic composition. However , the degree of each phenomenon varies from group to group, and may provide information about how a particular American Buddhist community identifies itself: as staunchly traditional, progressively modern, or radically original, for instance. 197 “A Dharma of Place” History of the Rochester Zen Center Garden It takes a certain kind of determination to live in Rochester, New York, where the average temperature is below freezing five months of the year, and winter typically dumps more than seven feet of snow on the city. At the same latitude as Sapporo, Rochester presents a very different environment from much of Japan, and it might seem like a strange place to find a garden designed along Japanese models. But in fact, for thirty years the students at Rochester Zen Center have been working on their large and...