The Dream Temple and the Cave of Lascaux.

TAKAYO IIDA       Mariko Mori, your work Dream Temple was inspired by the Horyuji 1. Yumedono ("Dream Temple") in Nara...

MARIKO MORI      The Yumedono, which dates from around 739, is an octagonal structure built according to the ideas of Prince Shotoku 2.. A well known legend has it that the prince used it as a place for meditation and for studying Buddhist sutras. I got quite interested in the story, convinced that the building must have been one of the earliest meditation spaces in Japan. I also discovered some other legends about Prince Shotoku and his Dream Temple: the image of of Guze Kannon 3. came to the prince in a dream and was the basis for the sculpture; a boddhisattva appeared in another dream and taught him difficult sutras, and so on. These stories have reinforced my fascination with the Dream Temple. To me, this was the place where Buddhism first established a spiritual base in Japan.
I felt a strong link between the Dream Temple and what I wanted to do artistically, and I went to see it for myself. I was struck by the incredible beauty of the temple and by the statue of Guze Kannon inside it, which has a spiritual strength that goes beyond its physical form. After this experience, I decided to, or rather was driven to create my Dream Temple project.

SHIN'ICHI NAKAZAWA      Before edifices like the Dream Temple were constructed, people used to meditate in caves. Onmyodo 4. and Taoism 5. were introduced into Japan as types of occultism before the appearence of Buddhism. In Yoshino 6. and elsewhere there were many people who practised the art of meditation in caves. This practice may be very ancient in origin. Think of Lascaux or Altamira. It is said that collective meditations were performed in these caves. If you enter a cave, you will find yourself in complete darkness, and your body will start to radiate light from within. The prototype of Prince Shotoku´s Dream Temple is probably a cave. This is all the more notable when one considers the fact that the beginnings of Western art go back to caves. The proto-Europeans were artists of great genius. The talent of the people who painted the Cave of Lascaux was extraordinary. Then, what can we say constitutes the roots of Japanese spirituality? Buddhism, as initiated by Prince Shotoku. Buddhism also functioned as a basis for Japanese expression in various forms, which marks a major departure from European culture. It is significant that there are no important wall paintings in the Dream Temple. Japanese artistic talent seems to contain two currents, one of which is related to virtual space, to an attempt to find a passage from virtual space to "real" space. Consider, for example, the statues of Buddha. They are quite different from paintings. What is important in them is the state of "becoming". This state cannot be completely expressed in a form. The attempt to grasp this state when it appears, like bubbles, from the void, is at the core of Japanese art as well as Japanese thought. The first artistic achievement in Europe was the Cave of Lascaux while the Dream Temple occupies this place in Japanese culture. It seems to me that Lascaux and the Dream Temple engendered art and thought that would come to develop in totally different directions.

The Oriental Vision of Life and Death and the Mathematics of Chaos

TI      Perspective in European paintings is not only a form of expression but is also closely connected to a way of thinking.

MM       Japanese art historically has had no tradition with which it expressed linear perspective. This may reflect the difference in religious traditions. I wonder what is the precise difference between the vanishing point in European perspective and the Oriental concept of the void or emptiness, although the unpainted space in Japanese traditional art is not meant as a void, but sometimes represents the infinite symbolic or mental sphere. The difference in an approach to death too, in a vision of life and death, has resulted in extremely distinct expressions.

SN       This difference is rather subtle and it is not entirely accurate to say that one view belongs to the Occident, the other to the Orient. Leonardo da Vinci made a profound study of perspective. He valued perspective, but at the same time he felt it necessary to destroy it. He tried both to develop perspective and to deny it. He studied how to erase outlines and developed the technique of preventing two gazes, that of the viewer and that of the figure in the painting, from meeting at one point. The Mona Lisa is the most admirable example. Her eyes each focus on slightly different points causing back-and-forth movements together with the viewer's eyes. This can be proved scientifically. The Mona Lisa's scientific corresepondences can in fact be found in the mathematics of chaos, which produces points that are nowhere. Leonardo's act of erasing outlines means that we are in a world that can be expressed in its totality through perspective but in reality has no foundation at all, and is continuously moving and oscillating. In the Oriental approach, this is expressed as the void. It seems to me that Leonardo was intuitively conscious of this.

TI       Contemporary art is rather isolated from historical vision. There are scholars who discuss the seventeeth century ­ Vermeer, for example ­ the eighteenth century or the nineteenth century, but very few artists are knowledgeable about historical precedentsŠ

SN      Knowledge is not enough. There are techniques that can be learned only by apprenticeship. I learned meditation from Tibetans in accordance with their principles of apprenticeship. The apprentice describes to the teacher what is happening inside his mind and the teacher reshapes it, using not a hammer but words. The apprentice then attempts to formulate his own thoughts. Subtle instructions in words, like the skilled handling of a hammer by an expert, are possible only in a person-to-person relationship like that of apprenticeship. There are books explaining how to meditate, which are intended for the masses. There are things that can be spread by mass communication but there are others that cannot be conveyed in this way. Culture has been moving toward mass communication, in an attempt to become available to everyone. Now we can see the limitations of what this type of culture is able to achieve. It is the same with mathematics or physics. Since the end of nineteenth century these disciplines too have been developed according to methods that are generally understood. But in fact inventions and discoveries happen in a different way. It is a great mystery how Einstein discovered his theory of relativity. No one could ever capture that precise moment of discovery. We should make room for these kinds of mysterious occurrences even though they cannot be comprehended by everyone. To me this is the raison d'ętre of art. It cannot be understood by everyone but we need it to stimulate dynamic breakthroughs. This is true for all creative fields ­ science and philosophy as well as art.

Esotericism and Virtual Reality

TI      Ms. Mori, your Dream Temple project creates a kind of cocoon, something like a cave.

MM       In relation to this work, I would like to point out that the tea pavilion invented by Rikyu 7. is a kind of conceptual art. The concept of the tea pavilion plays an important role in the work I am currently engaged in as an artist. Its space brings me to the world of mysticism ­ I can often feel the hidden energy from this world when I am sitting inside the pavilion.

SN       Indeed, the tea pavilion is a cave, a cocoon.

MM       It is, but a cocoon functions as protection against the outside world. Entering an enclosed space like a cave means a refusal of the outside; you are inside because you can't go out. A sense of compulsion is implied. It is also implied in the psychological process of meditation. My Dream Temple project consists of a variety of elements. There is a construction; you enter it, see images, listen to the sound, and moreover, you experience a three-dimensional virtual reality. Why all this complexity? Because I would like to make full use of all the human senses. Human sensibility and intellectual ability can easily unite this complicated intersection. In traditional Japanese culture, all the human senses are intergrated. We can find them, for instance, in linguistic expressions: "to see (instead of touch)) the bathwater temperature," "to hear a scent." Japanese art views the five senses as a unit.
Therefore I try to integrate these senses in the Dream Temple with architectural elements, virtual reality, and a sound system to create a total environment that transcends space-time. Only the most recent technology can fuse these things and realize my concept. This was the biggest challenge for me.

SN      Esotericism has a similar origin. Kukai, the founder of Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism in Japan, 8. is said to have been a great artist. He was also a calligrapher and a philosopher. His ideas are extremely synthetic. Esotericism was originally a synthetic school of thought and makes full use of all senses. It does not deny them, yet at the same time is not bound by them, is not chained to their limits. It goes beyond these limits and enters a place where all the senses are united, and then catches movements of the amalgam containing everything that has overcome the limits of the senses. Kukai tried to grasp this place, which may be defined as a void or an emptiness full of energy. Esotericism is an expression of Japanese culture, of Japanese religious culture.

Yuishiki 9. and Topological Space

MM       Yuishiki is an important school of thought in relation to Dream Temple. After reading many books on the doctrine, I still find it extremely difficult. I tried to arrive at my own understanding of Yuishiki in order to make a work of art on this subject. Death is already present at the time of birth and even if one does not think about it, one is always more or less conscious of one's own death in the future. I feel strongly that, both in the Orient and the Occident, the origin and the terminus of expression is death. What is very interesting to me is the idea that everything has its own consciousness. I have my consciousness and can recognize it, and I can also recognize the consciousness of others. If all the creatures in the exiting world have consciousness, then the Earth should have it, and the solar sytem and all its the planets, galaxies, the whole universe, and every single atom should have it. All of these things that seem to lack order are in fact ordered; and all things are united in some way.

SN      Yuishiki is probably based on what you have just said. Its complicated theory did not derive from intensiv study but partly comes from the experience of meditation. One's active consciousness creates various layers and the the interrealtionship between the different layers finally reaches a state of coordination within the universe. If one assumes from the beginning that there is only one single consciousness, one will not be able to see the whole system. And since consciousness is not a continuum but a set of layers, catastrophes are also necessary. A move from one layer to another requires a catastrophe.

MM      Isn't it that topological space is planted in the human senses? I think that ordinary real space exists in human consciousness while topological space does not. Also, in nature one inevitably finds chaos and disorder, but at the same time nature contains a beautiful balance and harmony. I find it very interesting that things in disorder and chaos create an order. This kind of dualism greatly stimulates my approach to art-making.

SN       "Disorder" may not be the right word. "Primitive" is probably more accurate. We normally perceive space in relatively specialized ways. Eyes, noses, mouths, and all the other organs of the senses have developed over hundreds of millions of years and they are now at the extreme of evolution. When did the Homo sapiens attain its present body structure? As archaeology has advanced, the date has been determined to be earlier and earlier and now is thougt to have perhaps occurred more than one million years ago. Even before that date, a human "proto-life" form had been making tremendous efforts to adapt itself to the surroundings, to specialize its structure in accordance with the environment. These efforts continued even after it got the human body. The development of modern technology has specialized certain areas of our senses. In the structural network of the cerebrum there used to be a very, very thin part that did not control three-dimensional information but could transport consciousness. This part, I think, has not been completely erased in the human brain. My Tibetan teachers preserve it, but we modern people have almost totally lost the ability to use it. In terms of art, that space of universal consciousness is not the specialized space of perspective. Abstract art was born from the space of universal consciousness; artists, especially Russian abstract artists, were clearly aware of it. Topological mathematics has explored this primitive consciousness, experimenting with a perception of space that is without any three-dimensional limitations, without distances. So, what Mariko Mori raised earlier in the discussion seems to be related to issues like that of transporting consciousness. During the prehistoric Jomon period in Japan, 10. people attempted to transport consciousness, as did, I think, Prince Shotoku.

MM       Space and time capsules attempt to achieve three- or four dimensional voyages in space. My approach is to perceive or sense various passages or potential spaces that connect our consciousness to another world.

SN       Our consciousness perceives virtual or potential space when it is forced to appear in our specialized space. It appears as a skein of threads that we call "time". In our consciousness it appears chaotic like entangled threads, taking the shape of a multi-dimensional complex. But in fact there is complete order.

The Impulse to Create and the Tibetan Book of the Dead 11.

MM       My original impetus for making artwork was an experience I had in my early twenties during which I felt that I was dying. It was not caused by an accident or any physical damage. It was as if my consciousness had begun the program leading to death. I really beleived I was dying. This experience lasted for many hours. First, I lost my sight and my hearing, I had a strange sensation of streams, and the I began to recall, in a short time, my entire life backward until the moment of my birth, or even before birth. Then, suddenly I found myself in complete darkness. This is a very brief summary of what I experienced. It seems to me that five or six hours passed in this state of unconsciousness, this being in the dark. I don't know what happened after that. Since I didn't die, I may have fallen asleep. It took a long time for me to regain consciousness. What was most striking was that just as I was beginning to recover, I cried out, "Oh please, I want to live!" Then I passed through this stage and experienced the whole process of coming back. This process starts from a state of nothingness, a state without memory. The first thing I remembered was that I was a living thing, a life. A long time passed before I finally remembered I was a human being. Then I remembered I was on Earth, I recalled a mother and a child; and in the same way that I had returned to my origin, I came back to the present and remembered what had happened to me. In my consciousness I felt as if I were reincarnated, as if I had become a different being. Ever since, I have wondered and asked myself what that experience was, and now I look at death from the other side.

SN       Your experience has certainly influenced your art. At the beginning of this discussion I spoke about caves, which are related to death, to the hypothetical situation of one's own death, but they also offer rather an after-death experience. Meditation in caves is always framed in terms of light occurring in darkness. This seems quite natural, as in the end everything becomes light.

MM       Exactly.

SN       Prince Shotoku was in the dark Temple but his body and consciousness stood in a blaze of light. In old religious texts we find references to the cave being filled with light. That light is even stronger than the light we actually see. In the experience you described you must have had the feeling of creation, a feeling of the present world when you lost that strong light. This feeling of creation is quite different from that of light. It is difficult to describe this feeling in words ­ something like a kind of strange sensation of congealment. And you understand that from now on you will see the world, the light, together with this feeling. This would be similar to what we feel at the time of birth.

MM       Do you mean the light within ourselves?

SN       Yes. In European art, this light can be discerned in painting until the seventeenth century, until Vermeer's art of light. In Japan, we find this light in paintings by the Kano school, 12. for example, which flourished from the end of the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Then in the nineteenth century this light quickly diminishes and disappears.

TI       Today, even artists make a clear distinction between inside and outside and do not deal with, as Mr. Nakazawa mentioned, the issue of light.

SN       Ms. Mori, it seems to me that your present power resides in the fact that you cannot be decoded. As long as it is impossible to decode you, your power will last. So, you should hold onto your spiritual tension and remain in that state.

TI       Mr. Nakazawa, you mentioned in your essay on Mariko Mori published recently in Parkett 13.) an intermediate state between subconsciousness and consciousness, using the term Kizen 14. and Tongo. 15. How can this state be explained in terms of the Western notion of subconsciousness or interpreted via Freudian or Jungian ideas?

SN       There is no concept of subconsciousness in Buddhism. Everything is consciousness, consciousness of the universe, of the galaxy. Even the very subconsciouysness that is the cause of our disturbing dreams is consciousness according to Buddhism. The Tibetan Book of the Dead only deals with consciousness, consciousness in various forms and states.

MM       In your book Thirty Thousand Years of Teachings on Death, 16. Mr Nakazawa, I find the writings on light the most interesting. For example, there is the light that comes from within. First you think it is light that emanates from somewhere else. Then you become conscious that the light comes from yourself. But even though you are conscious of it, you cannot integrate yourself with it. That's exactly what I also think. On the other hand, I feel a strong desire to become one with the light.

SN      You can become one with it when the desire to do so leaves you. There are various ways this can happen. You may suddenly reach that stage in which you can freely leave your consciousness. As long as you think you should do this or that, you will never reach that point. If you have a specific desire, you will only be able to achieve something that is incomplete. It would be much better to surrender yourself. The strongest obstacle for you is art itself. The desire to create prevents you from reaching that stage. Most artists I know are bothered by this fact. Yves Klein was one of the rare artists who could overcome this obstacle. Even Picasso, I think, could not do so.

MM       I have an obsession, which is, for me, related to death. As much as I confront death, conceive it, my obsession persists. The fact of disappearing is a driving force in the act of creating.
 
 
from: Mariko Mori: Dream Temple, Fondazione Prada - Milan, 1999
 

 

 

2. Prince Shotoku (574-622) was the second son of Emperor Yomei. In 592 he became regent for Empress Suiko, his aunt, and worked to establish sound foundations for the Japanese state and to further Japanese culture. He issued a seventeen-article constitution in 604. He was also a prominent diplomat and sent the first of a series of missions to China. In 606, Prince Shotoku lectured to Empress Suiko on the Shomangyo (Srimala sutra) and on the Hokekyo (Saddharmapundarika sutra). His interpretations of these scriptures constitute the first commentaries on Buddhist texts in Japan. Much of the history of his life remains obscure, but as a symbolic and mystical figure Prince Shotoku has excercised tremendous influence over Japanese religiouis culture and thought.

3. Guze Kannon is a gilt-wood statue dating from the Asuka-Hakuho period (552-710) as the principal object of worship. It is said to be the same height as Prince Shotoku (approximately 1.8 m) and symbolizes his body and soul. The image was kept in strict secrecy from the Kamakura period (1192-1333) until the end of nineteenth century. The word Guze comes from the Saddharmapundarika sutra and means "saving people from suffering." 4. Onmyodo is the collective Japanese name for various methods of divination, originally based on the Chinese theories of yin and yang (the complementary forces seen in all fenomena), the five elements (fire, wood, earth, metal, and water), their cylical interactions, and influence on the natural and human spheres. The related texts and practices were introduced into Japan as early as sixth century.

5. Taoism, a body of Chinese philosophical and religious thought, can be traced back to Lao Tsu (sixth century B.C.). It became the state religion of China during the fifth and sixth centuries, and under the T'ang dynasty. It was introduced into Buddhism as it developed in China, notably Zen Buddhism.

6. The area of Yoshino, occupying he southern part of of Nara Prefecture, contains relics of ancient times and the name Yoshino appears in the earliest written histories of Japan. Together with Kumano, its adjactent region, the area has been recognized as an important religious site throughout Japanese history.

7. Rikyu (Sen no Rikyu), a tea master who lived from 1522 to 1591, perfected the tea rituals ofv the Japanese tea ceremony. His aesthetic ideals and refinement are regarded as the epitome of the tradition of the tea ceremony and have pervaded many aspects of Japanese culture. He stressed the ceremony's spiritual aspects, emphasizing its fundamental links with Zen Buddhism.

8. Kukai (774-835) was a Buddhist priest and founder of the Shingon school of Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism in Japan. He went to China as a government-sponsored student monk where he received the dharma of esoteric Buddhism. In 806 Kukai returned to Japan with an impressive collection of Indian and Chinese scriptures, commentaries, ritual objects, and ornaments. Throughout his life Kukai pursued a varity of activities. In his view Esoteric Buddhism was the culmination and fulfillment of all other Buddhist schools and traditions. He attempted to homolgize religion and art, philosophy and literature, Buddhism, and other religious traditions, and the spiritual and cultural life of Japan.

9. Yuishiki (vijnaptimatra) is one of the doctrines of the Yogacara school formulated by Asanga and Vasubandhu, Indian thinkers who lived in the fourth or fifth century. It was introduced to China as early as the fifth century and generated the Fa-hsiang sect in the seventh century. The doctrines of the Fa-hsiang sect were introduced into Japan during the Nara period (eighth century) by monks who had studied in China.The Yogacara maintain that phenomena exist only as "representations" (vjiņapti), or images, of objects appearing in our consciousness (vjiņana), and that the image of an object is produced by one's consciousness itself; there is no external object independent of one's consciousness. According to the Fa-hsiang tradition, there are eight types of consciousness, the first six (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and discriminative) being identical with those mentioned in early Buddhism. The other two are mo-na-sih and alaya. The latter receives the effects of all good and evil acts, whether physical, verbal, or mental, and stores them as "seeds."
When appropriate conditions are in place, these seeds produce their own effects, which are manifested as the unique psychological and physical makeup of each being. Mo-na-sih resembles alaya-vjiņana in that unenlightened beings are unaware of its existence. It is that part of the mind that is turned inward, mistaking alaya for a real self (atman), to which image it tenaciously clings. Mo-na-sih by its very nature fails to comprehend that essentially alaya has no existence apart from the seeds (the effects of acts) that it holds. From this misapprehension derives the erroneous belief that each being has a unique self of its own, a view that, in Buddhist terms, is the ultimate cause of suffering. Deliverance, according to the Fa-hsiang system, is realized only when one grasps the true nature of alaya-vjiņana and its relationship to the other types of consciousness.

10. The Jomon period of japanese prehistory extends over ten millenia from c.10,000 to c. 300 B.C.

11. The Tibetan Book of the Dead encompasses a set of instructions for the dying and dead as well as a description of the forty-nine-day period between death and rebirth, detailing the soul's experience with karmic apparitions in the form of peaceful and wrathful deities. The great insight that results from the bardo, or intermediate state experience, is that not only are the apparitions the products of one's own mind but they also assume, for the pupose of instruction, a concrete and objective reality.

12. The Kano school was a gropu of secular professional painters in Japan active from the end of the fifteenth until the nineteenth century.

13. Shin'ichi Nakazawa, "No Angels Here, Yet She Lives," Parkett, Zürich, no. 54, 1998/1999, pp. 92-97.

14. Kizen is a term in Noh theater referring to the moment immediately prior to the appearence on stage.

15. Tongo is a term in Zen Buddhism meaning "sudden enlightenment

16. Shin'ichi Nakazawa, Thirty Thousand Years of Teaching on Death, Kadokawa Shoten, 1993.