recognize in their work at least two artistic techniques that the West did not discover until this century. The first is the Surrealist principle, derived from the earlier Dadaist idea, of _objets trouves_, that is, the use of aesthetically interesting natural or accidental materials as part of an artistic composition. The stones of Ryoan-ji and other Ashikaga gardens were left in the condition in which they were discovered and used in the gardens as stones, yet they were also symbols for something larger than themselves. The second "modern" artistic principle found in Zen gardens is the reliance on abstract expressionism. Flat gardens like Ryoan-ji are not meant to depict a natural scene; they are exercises in the symbolic arrangement of mass and space. The Zen gardeners actually created a new mode of artistic expression, anticipating the West by several centuries. Perhaps Ryoan-ji went unnoticed for so long because it was not explicitly intended as a work of art, but rather as a statement in physical terms of the essence of mystical truth. One's reaction upon first coming into the presence of Ryoan-ji is like the famous Western mystic Meister Eckhart's description of the realization of Oneness, called _satori_ in Zen: "Then at once, God comes into your being and faculties, for you are like a desert, despoiled of all that was particularly your own. . . ." Ryoan-ji presents this desert in physical terms, a place of no attachments and no antagonistic polarities. This is Zen art at its most noble; beauty and aesthetics are present, but they are secondary to a realm of the spiritual. CHAPTER NINE Zen and the Ink Landscape _Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone. _ John Keats _Sesshu (1420-1506) _ Shin _style _ ASHIKAGA MONOCHROME ink painting is one of the finest moments of Japanese art. Monochrome painting, which began in China as a logical extension of brush calligraphy, came to be the ultimate medium for the transmission of Japanese Zen. A Zen painter has been described as a man who studies technique for twenty years and then throws himself on the mercy of inspiration. The works of Zen artists often seem to have been tossed off without effort, but this is the deliberate deception of the consummate master. Like the slash of the Zen swordsman, the absolute accuracy of the Zen artist's brushstroke can come only from one whose mind and body are one. The purpose of Zen painting is to penetrate beyond the perceptions of the rational mind and its supporting senses, to show not nature's surface but its very essence. The artist paints the enlightenment of a moment, and there is therefore no time to labor over each stroke; the technique must flow thoughtlessly, from deep within, capturing the fleeting images of the inner sense, beyond mind and beyond thought.