When the smiling Japanese hippy hands me the package and says, “You have good sense,” I’m not sure if he means I have good energy or good taste. If it’s the latter, the rational part of my brain is tempted to argue.
Because I have just bought a piece of art from him for 4000 yen. When I first showed interest, he told me it was 5000, but then I had wandered away, to take in all the other wonders at the antique flea market that’s supposedly the oldest in Tokyo. Something pulled me back to the piece, though, and when I returned, he said, “I make you morning deal.”
So, 4000 yen it was, which is about $28. That doesn’t sound like much, until you look closely at the piece.
It’s little more than a hunk of old and water-stained wood housed in a cheap frame (until I get home and free it). Something has been painted on it, but when I buy it, I don’t know if it is mountain, pond, ginkgo, or geisha.
That’s right. When I buy this piece of art, I don’t have a clue what it is.
Why in the world would I buy a painting that I can barely see—and that will probably continue to disappear bit by bit, year by year?
Because while I’ve been living in Tokyo, I have been arrested again and again by art that isn’t art.
Like the painting I now hold under my arm as I ride the monorail, train, and subway back home.
Or this wall I saw in a park by some lava fields:
As far as I can tell, this is not meant to be art, and yet, in my mind, it could easily be featured in a museum. It has depth, movement, drama, and energy. More than that, it makes me feel like there is some deep Mystery being spoken here.
I just don’t know the language yet, and maybe I never will.
What I see here (and all over Japan) is unmistakable, natural, aging beauty. This wall started out new, ordinary. Now, it has been infused with elemental things like gravity, time, sun, wind, and rain. It has survived and changed and turned—from it to Is, becoming at once tenacious and soft, hard and flowing.
I see this everywhere I look. Old things here refuse to exist superficially. They radiate the strange and idiosyncratic, and in so doing become arresting, real.
More and more, I find myself pulled toward experiences like this. Back home in Minnesota, one of my favorite pieces in the Minneapolis Institute of Art is an image of a Native American spirit. Except you can’t see this spirit, because it’s too holy, so the image has been hidden behind an opaque sheet of paper. When you stare straight at it, you can’t see anything. But if you look away, the spirit . . . is almost there . . . in the liminal space.
A similar thing happens almost nightly here, when I stand before a shrine that is little more than a rusting gate covering a tiny cave on the side of a hill. Darkness hides behind the gate, and I don’t know what else. The Mystery of mysteries?
I am drawn to experiences and expressions like this, because they seem Real and True—because they remind us: we don’t know. We can’t know.
“Don’t know” mind is one of the hallmarks of Buddhism.
It invites, pushes, cajoles, demands we commit to living not in our comfort zones (where we know what to expect and how to navigate), but rather at our edges, our very edges where we can play and get curious, feel stretched and therefore grow, reach and hold ever more space and light.
At the same time, when I was last here in Japan, I was reading G.K. Chesterton who argues that God broke the world into a million little pieces, and God’s presence is in each and every piece. This invites us to seek God’s presence everywhere we look, everywhere we go. Greeting whatever and whoever we meet as if they are holy—because they are.
That’s great in theory—but it can be harder to do in practice. For instance, when I meet people on sidewalks or in stores here, I often blurt out what I have said for the last 52 years of my life: “Hi!” instead of “Konichiwa!” This embarrasses me for many reasons, not the least of which is if I want to treat the other as holy, I should do them the honor of speaking their language. And yet, I circle back to how this paragraph began—it is a practice. Here, I have opportunity after opportunity to put my self at a learning edge and try . . . and begin again . . . and try . . . and begin again.
I get to practice something else here that I recently read about—the most generous interpretation. This means that instead of assuming the worst about the self and/or the other, we give the most generous interpretation. This moves us away from judgment and toward kindness. What might this look like? In my case, whenever I slip up and say, “Hi,” I might imagine that the people I meet are hearing “Hai!” the Japanese word for yes. That’s not all bad. In fact, it’s kind of awesome—to greet the strange(r) with a smile—and say yes, yes, yes.
p.s. I think I’ve figured out that my painting has horses in it. I spy legs and hooves.
p.p.s. If you want to practice yoga and playing along your edges with me, check out willowyogaminnesota.com for all kinds of videos with different lengths, levels, and options.