Dave Lowry: To Blossom and Scatter...
The budo dojo that "decorates" its front with a potted
plant--or even more regrettably with plastic or artificial
flowers--has, from the perspective of mono no aware, of
ichi-go; ichi-e, of the whole notion of the value of the
temporal, badly missed a chance to further define and
refine budo philosophy. It may appear superficially that
a simple arrangement of flowers will have little to do with
what goes on in a budo training hall. In Kaze no Kokoro,
Nishitani explains it otherwise: "The space of an entire
room about them is drawn taut by the presence of flowers,
as if it were charged with electricity. The air there is
dynamic. While emanating a faint coolness from within and
fathomless composure--like a person who has eradicated
all attachments to life and abandoned all the expectations
fundamental to our mundane existence--through a complete
silence they communicate that which is eternal."
That which is eternal--some of it, anyway--are the
changeless truths and a) we're not going to be around
forever, b) we've got to begin each day and to end it
with the paradox that the sincerity of our efforts will
rarely if ever match the ephemerality of the results of
those efforts, and c) the only way to seize any moment,
from a response to a front punch to the birth of our
children, is to honor its passing. To come to the dojo
is to vitiate these eternal truths. To arrange flowers
in the spirit of kado and to display them at the tokonoma
is not only a tradition of the dojo, it is a powerful
exercise in confronting the timelessness of form, the
fleeting transience of all that Life which fills it.
In an interview I read in a budo magazine a while back,
a sensei was commenting on the attitudes of his best
students. One of them, he noted faithfully brought fresh
flowers to the dojo each day. It was gratifying to hear
of a budoka who takes this approach to her training, more
so to hear of a teacher who recognized and appreciated it.
I hope others in the budo will follow this example.
Try it. Come to the dojo early enough to have it to
yourself, with flowers and a container. Unless you have
had ikebana training, you arrangement will not be ikebana.
No matter at this point. Just a single blossom and a
simple ceramic container will do. And if there is no
tokonoma alcove available for the display, there must be
some place appropriate. See how your arrangement makes
you feel during the practice that follows. See how it
makes the dojo feel to you. Perhaps it will be nothing.
But you may gain insight into a lesson written many
centuries ago, in the Kokin Shu:
This much I have learned; the blossom
that fades away, its color unseen,
is the flower of the heart
Of one who lives in this world.
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