Sacred Spaces: A profile of Dennis Winters
The following interview was conducted by Kristine Martin for the Spring 2005 edition of Complete Health Magazine. Contact them at www.completehealthmag.com
I am the only customer this afternoon at the Perk, a neighbourhood café at the intersection of Logan and Withrow Avenues in Toronto's Riverdale, where Dennis Winters will soon arrive and talk about his passion for gardens as Sacred Space. Today, gardens, front yards, even trees are covered with mounds of snow glistening in the February sunshine, showing no promise of spring and growth. Dennis walks in with a broad smile and open handshake.
Even before his double espresso arrives we are deep in conversation about the purpose of life. To be happy and to help others be happy is Dennis' purpose, and he tells me that His Holiness the Dalai Lama introduced him to this view.
How does this translate into his work? He creates spaces that allow for personal recharge, regeneration, harmony and a sense of peace. In our dense urban environment we are in constant contact with coworkers, neighbours, shoppers, drivers and fellow citizens. Our attention in pulled into many different directions and we easily lose touch with our inner core, our own sense of self. Personal space is a necessity.
Dennis tells me anecdotes about how he became inspired to study and then design Sacred Space in the landscape. He was greatly influenced by his time in Finland as a young architect, his work as an environmentalist and his meeting with the Dalai Lama.
On a 1970-71 trip to Finland to study the work of Finnish architects Alvar Aalto and Reima Pietila (then a young architect gaining world wide attention for treating the inside and outside as integral spaces without boundaries), Dennis became aware of the possibility for harmony between buildings and their natural surroundings. He discovered that in Finland, architects developed buildings with great consideration for the landscape, so that the interior and exterior spaces took on equal importance as design criteria. This awakened Dennis to new possibilities of relationship between landscape and buildings.
In Ithaca, New York on assignments to conduct environmental assessments, a significant question arose for Dennis: What makes certain places special? While visiting and tracking through forests, wetlands, and rivers in order to prepare reports, he became aware that some sites were special. The experience of being in certain locations felt different, somehow.
The question of what makes a certain place feel special sent him travelling to the East - to Nepal, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bali and Tibet - where he explored and studied historically significant sacred sites. While on this quest he met his first Buddhist teacher, a North American monk.
Upon his return to the U.S. he studied Landscape Architecture at Cornell University, and for his Master's degree thesis had the opportunity to design the Milarepa Buddhist Meditation Centre in Vermont, sitting on two hundred seventy acres of land. Following his thesis defence, he had the opportunity, with the members of Milarepa Center, to present his designs for the complex to the Dalai Lama at a private audience.
Dennis felt well prepared for the presentation of the design, having covered all the rules and standard techniques of landscape design, as he learned them. However the question that His Holiness asked: “What is the basis of this design?” took him by surprise. It sent him on a path to examine what the basis for any design is, searching for the clues from the site and from the landscape, and how existing elements can be shaped so that energy will flow and gather in harmony with the use of the space.
Today, Dennis is a landscape architect practising in Toronto. The healing places he creates for public and private clients incorporate what he has observed and learned over the years. He has identified six qualities intrinsic to the design of a place for meditation in a garden and calls them:
The Six Auspicious Signs of the Sacred Landscape in which All Will Find Comfort
It has favourable context: sited to take advantage of positive attributes and mitigate negative effects, receiving auspicious life forces given by the earth, sun and moon
It is contained: a distinct form in space, a distinct space surrounded by form
It is coherent: clearly defined and ordered to help things make sense
It is composed: enabling one to pay attention
It has clarity: made simple in format to help develop concentration and insight
It is an artistic expression of contemplation: quiet and light inside, enabling one to listen to the heart sing.
I was curious to know how Dennis combines his knowledge of, and love for, Sacred Space with today's garden designs, and asked him a few questions --
KM: You refer to pilgrimage as a way to study Sacred Space and a way to get to know oneself. How does this translate into our lives today?
DW: We live in cities with large numbers of people, and many egos at work. To protect ourselves we generally set up barriers and close our hearts as a way to ensure survival. Our sense of security, of well-being, is maintained by our efforts to protect ourselves. Both the ego and its protection require a lot of energy to maintain, requiring constant restoring and replenishing.
We need places that offer a sense of stability, balance and grounding. That's why I seek the woods, the Oak Ridges Moraine, the Bruce Trail, Lake Ontario, and my own garden - places where I have only my ego to contend with.
Setting up a garden provides the kind of environment where a sense of security, well-being and goodness becomes yours - a place to rest, with no other egos to contend with. This kind of sanctuary is different from the traditional places of pilgrimage, where well known teachers have given their energy to places of pilgrimage, which then is reinforced by the presence of many other pilgrims. Teachers to choose particular places for contemplation. I seek to put these components into a garden design, through positive action and thought.
KM: What do you consider Sacred Space in today's fast-paced urban world?
DW: The home that we set as our own sanctuary becomes Sacred Space. It is a place where we can gather ourselves together; it is a place we create; it is an expression of our own sense of aesthetics. To create a garden is an opportunity to express our inner qualities in the outside world, in the physical world. Our garden becomes a reflection of our inner mind.
KM: How do you create this for yourself, and how does it inform your work?
DW: My practise of Buddhism- the practice of doing good, avoiding doing non-virtuous things and cultivating the awakening mind through meditation - this feeds my creating of gardens. Meditation is my foundation; it is the start to my day.
Through meditation I attempt to clear my mind enough to set aside inner turmoil, so that I can hear my clients clearly and completely, understand their design vocabulary, and then design an expression of what they need.
KM: Who should call you? Whom do you want to work with?
DW: I most enjoy working with people who question how they live and the environments they set up for themselves. They may question the need to change and seek to improve the way they live. They have a need to better understand themselves and others through the physical expression of their surroundings.
KM: For those who want to start on their own, without your professional services, what is your advice?
DW: Question yourself. Take positive steps to regain a sense of footing and stability, learn to be quiet inside and be fully where you are, with a sense that “this is the only place I want to be at this moment.” Questions and answers to questions are more likely to become apparent when we come from a place of calm and observation.
KM: What is your favourite place in Toronto?
DW: Out on the lake, away from the business of the city. I am a member of the Canadian Senior National Dragon Boat Team and I cycle along the Martin Goodman Trail to Mississauga to practice. I ride and then paddle on the water. Last year our team did very well at the World Dragon Boat Championship in Shanghai; we were on the podium six out of seven races. I'm also fed by nature and recharge with every visit to Georgian Bay, kayaking in the National and Provincial Parks and hiking through trails around Toronto.
KM: What do you consider your most remarkable work?
DW: During the 1990 visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Toronto I was responsible for organizing the Interfaith Service, which I called Prayers and Chants for World Peace, in honour of the recent bestowal of the Nobel Peace Prize to His Holiness. Representatives of twelve religious traditions were invited to participate. Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto was completely filled, and the one hour and fifteen minutes program became the most remarkable garden I was ever instrumental in bringing together.
As Dennis and I talk about distant monasteries, gardens, seeking and experiencing the Sacred in spaces and the process to recreate them, we look around at the café, and find ourselves surrounded by mothers and babies. Some babies are in their strollers, others in their mother's arms; all are chatting and looking at each other, some are crying, others smiling. We laugh and enjoy the energy of these new beings so well taken care of and in each other's good company. In a matter of minutes these mothers have created a wonderful Sacred Space in this little café.
Dennis offers as we part, “These are the people I want to work with -the ones who show respect for young life and know how to enjoy the moment.”
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