Landscape, Garden and Feng Shui
You walk along a deer path, climbing and descending through the woods, your thoughts on some-where-else-some-place-else. Tired, you walk somewhat erratically. You approach a trunk of a large beech tree fallen across the path. You stop, bend down and carefully crawl under the trunk. Clearing it you straighten your body and continue on the path. You begin to notice your gait. It is somewhat more deliberate. Your strength seems to have been restored. And you hear a voice reciting the chanting of the Cambodian monk you met over twenty years ago, the music now fuelling your stride, “slowly, slowly, every step is a prayer.”
You arrive at a clearing and ask yourself what has changed? Why does this place seem different? Gazing around you see you are nestled in the embrace of the surrounding hills. Behind you to the north the mountain peak pierces the clouds. Below you to the south the river meanders through the valley. Moss-covered sandstone rock outcrops jut out along the edge of the clearing. A number of granite erratics, stones deposited here by glaciers ten thousand years ago, form a mesmerizing composition in the middle of the clearing. Some are standing; most are in repose. The ground is almost level, and the soil is rich with nutrients, covered with grasses and woodland perennials.
Contained within the clearing is a circle of oak trees, blackened from years of lightning strikes, still fully crowned with leaves. A divine hand must have had influence in this remarkably coherent grouping. This stand of oak trees is clearly distinct from the surrounding woods of birch, pine trees and striped maples down the hill. This is a place of power.
You look for a rock on which to sit and be still. Your inner sense of well being is projected onto your surroundings; while the magic of the outer world becomes like nectar for this inner reservoir. You ask yourself if there is a distinct skin between inside and out. Your intuition, nurtured by your discoveries about how nature works, and memories of visits to other sacred landscapes informs you of your presence, in accord with the Chinese practice called feng-shui, in the midst of an auspicious place. The I Ching says:
By looking up, in order to
Contemplate the Heavenly bodies---
And by looking down, to examine
The natural influence of the earth,
One can acquire knowledge into the causes
Of darkness and light.
You made your acquaintance with feng-shui during a seminar at Cornell University years ago in the early 1980’s, before it became popular in the west. The course called “Oracles and Divination” provided you with an opportunity to investigate the background and theory of feng-shui. Your research showed that principles of feng-shui were as relevant as they were centuries ago, having application to present-day western techniques used for environmental analysis and land use planning. It was equally beneficial to learn of their use in the design of the garden and other landscapes. More personally, they helped you to cultivate a deeper regard for the lands and waters upon which you live, and come to better integrate your life with the realms of nature and the cosmos.
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It is written in the text called Encyclopaedia Sinica, cited by Joseph Needham, that feng-shui is “the art of adapting residence of the living and the dead so as to cooperate and harmonize with the local currents of the cosmic breath.” Steven Feuchtwang called it “the power of the natural environment.” Michael Loewe considered feng-shui a form of oracle, where questions were put to patterns already in nature, and were read by those gifted with the ability to read them without the use of previous intervention or manipulation. As a technique used by shamans, feng-shui also was considered a form of geomancy, the divinatory study of the earth, where the artificial fashioning of signs were used to reveal the quality of the relationship with the natural and social environment.
Many references offer this particular translation of feng-shui - wind for feng; water for shui. The combination of these words yields the literal translation of “wind-water.” What does this convey? The nineteenth century Dutch missionary Jan DeGroot thought it referred to the atmospheric influence of the rains and winds over the land and the livelihood of its people. Han-Ch’ing Wang wrote that feng-shui referred to “the study or art of determining the relationship between the physical layout of the environment and the man-made environment and its consequences upon human beings.”
These definitions makes sense to you, and suggest that feng-shui refers to the shapes and textures into which the landscape is sculpted and moulded, carved and forged, boiled and baked by the winds of Heavens and the waters of Earth, and the waters of Heavens and winds of Earth. Feng-shui, then, is the evolution of the landscape through nature. The evolution through the intricate weaving of the solidity, wetness, heat, cold, atmosphere and space of landscape over time.
It is important to develop techniques to understand this evolution. Learn to read the structure of the lands and waters, the processes that shape them, and the period of time taken for these processes to produce them. Your reading will be in terms of their physical, mental and spiritual presence, because nature is an expression of physical, mental and spiritual forces. You search to discover the depth of what this means to begin to understand feng-shui.
It is said that feng-shui is almost as old as China itself, the principles of feng-shui having been developed by Huang Ti, the legendary “Yellow Emperor” of the 27th century BCE. It was Huang Ti who discovered the Elixir of Immortality at the mountain known today as Huang Shan in Anhui Province, China. Major shifts in the relationship of human beings with the cosmos must have taken place at that time, because the Great Pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge I also were constructed during that period.
Elixir imbibed, Huang Ti probably continues to teach. It may have been series of incarnations of Huang Ti who compiled these principles into what Jan DeGroot thought to be the oldest written text of feng-shui, The Canon of Dwellings, compiled in the third century CE. According to DeGroot, the Canon became an early text on the practical techniques used in the Taoist traditions. For you, Taoism puts importance on the natural order as an expression of the finest state of being, providing a healthier relationship between the landscape and human habitation. The I Ching says:
In it are included the forms and the scope of everything in the heavens and on earth, so that nothing escapes it. In it all things everywhere are completed, so that nothing is missing. Therefore by means of it we can penetrate the Tao of day and night, and so understand it.
Feng-shui is no less a science as it is an art; no less an art as it is a conversation. In its interaction with people, feng-shui becomes a transaction between the landscape and the inhabitants wishing to settle there. It is a contractual arrangement with three degrees of compliance. First, the landscape asks that you maintain sound management of the environment coupled with sensitive design. Second, the landscape encourages you to mitigate discordant effects of less than ideal locations. Third, the landscape obliges you to avoid places where natural features and conditions are not suitable for settlement. If you the inhabitant promises to establish a favourable relationship with surrounding landforms, environmental conditions and celestial events, the landscape in return will allow you to benefit from cosmic attributes and natural harmony. They will bestow gifts from the earth, waters and skies, the sun, moon and stars.
The interaction of shapes and patterns of the lands and waters is an expression of the dynamic equilibrium of nature and the balance and harmony of the universe. Feng-shui provides you with the opportunity to integrate your life with the natural and cosmic process. You will discover that complying with feng-shui is equivalent to being in the right place doing the right thing facing the right direction at the right time.
A feng-shui master will identify places in which to settle down, ascertaining the subtle ways in which characteristics and features of the lands and waters can be made suitable for particular activities. Ask the living and their dead ancestors how the feng-shui master found their surroundings for them. You will be astounded by their results. They will also reveal locations in which to seek spiritual awakening, physical places to better cultivate the mind and heal the heart. You must discover why this is so. Steven Feuchtwang cites dialogue written by a Chinese scholar:
Having first chosen an auspicious day, the professor of geomancy goes in a sedan chair to the hill. Having carefully inspected the position on each of the four sides, and noted the shape of the hill in its depressions and elevations, he descends and makes a circuit of the hill three or four miles off, carefully looking to see if there are any breaks or landslides, observing the direction of the watercourses with each bend and turn, and finally, after these preliminaries, adjusts his geomancer’s compass to discover the position of the stars in relation to the spot. This is the general mode of proceeding.
The grounding for feng-shui is the unfolding of the universe. You will find different versions of cosmology in Chinese history. See the I Ching by Wilhelm and Baynes, Studies of the Tao Te Ching by Arthur Waley, and explanations by Steven Feuchtwang. Your inclination is to search for a beginning, something like a Big Bang. However, if there were an origin, it could not be without cause. Cosmic events and nature cannot arise spontaneously without previous matter or energy serving as a cause. A previous condition is necessary. You are intrigued by these origins of things.
Cosmologies use a primordial reference. Some refer to Wu Chi, an undifferentiated non-dualistic state having no thing to which you can point, define, refer or know. It is represented by a circle and is the basis for T’ai Chi, otherwise called the Supreme Pool, Primordial Vapour, or the Great Primal Beginning. Its essence is Pure Potential. If this were a Divine Principle, the deities would know it. It there were time, it would be a presence, with no distinguishing it from past nor future. A Primal Soup, this pool, this presence, this vapour, T’ai Chi, sets in motion the fundamental Universal Law, Change. The I Ching says:
As the power that completes things, the power that lends them their individuality and gives them a centre around which they organize, Tao is called the essence, that with which things are endowed at their origin.
The potential within T’ai Chi produces movement. Movement produces Yang. Yang is the manifestation of the male principle. When movement reaches its limit, T’ai chi produces rest. Rest produces Yin. Yin is the manifestation of the female principle. When rest reaches its limit, there is a return to motion. The support for motion is rest; the support for rest is motion. Motion and rest alternate. One requires the other; neither is incapable of existing without the other.
The alternation of motion and rest, Yang and Yin, are expressions of chi, the “vital energy” or “life-force.” Yang is the vital energy of Heaven and Yin is the vital energy of Earth. So it is said that the Tao of the Heavens perfects Yang, and the Tao of the Earth perfects Yin. It is also said that the energy belches and becomes wind, ascends and becomes cloud, wrestles and becomes thunder, descends and becomes rain, flows through the ground and becomes chi, the life force giving birth and support to all things.
Yang means “sunny side.” The heavens, the sun, mountains and height, summer and heat, the south, aridity, motion, growth and life are expressions of Yang. Yin means “dark side.” The earth, the moon, valleys, rivers and ravines, winter and cold, the north, moisture, stillness, decay and death are expressions of Yin.
As Yang is transformed by Yin, and Yin is transformed by Yang, their conversation produces the Five Operations, or five constituent parts of nature: the energies of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. These Five Operations are the natural agents of the breath of Yang and Yin and effect all physical changes. Wood is the essence of vegetation, Fire the essence of heat, Earth the essence of inanimate substances, Metal the essence of solidity produced within the earth, and Water the essence of fluidity. They interact through Orders of Production and Destruction: giving birth, arising and promoting growth, decomposing and cessation, and repetition of the cycle. Generally called the Five Elements, they are not substances that can be touched. Arthur Waley makes a convincing argument for calling them operations instead of elements.
The Five Operations are distributed as chi in harmonious order, producing the Four Seasons. Their interaction brings the myriad things into being. There is no end to their evolution, for this is nature unfolding and folding. As it folds, the combination of the Five Operations produces Yang and Yin. The combination of Yang and Yin produces motion and rest. The combination of motion and rest produces T’ai Chi, the Supreme Pool. The I Ching says:
The primal powers never come to a standstill; the cycle of becoming continues without interruption. There arises again and again a state of tension, a potential that keeps the powers in motion and causes them to unite, whereby they are constantly regenerated. Tao brings this about without ever becoming manifest, and is designated as good.
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