Another
picturesque garden ornament is the stone water basin, tsukubai, with its bamboo
dipper, hishaku, for washing hands and drinking in a purification ritual before
tea ceremony. Large cut stone basins are found outside temples for the same
purpose.
In the classic garden, the basins are either hollowed out by an artisan or are
naturally formed by a waterfall. Originally, taller versions where for
nobility, but the tea ceremony abolished this distinction and both aristocrat
and commoner must bend in equality.
Often a small bamboo pipe supplies a steady stream of water to the basin. When
the pipe is rigged to seesaw piece of bamboo that fills with water, tilts,
empties itself, and then tilts again with a clap on a rock. The device is
called shishi-odoshi. The hollow sound, occurring about every two minutes, is
very pleasing to Japanese garden enthusiasts, but the device was created
centuries ago to scare wild boars away from the vegetation near mountain
streams. Eventually, it was used in gardens to discourage deer and birds.
One of the most famous tsukubai (wash
basin) is the zenibachi sitting near the rear of the monks quarters behind the
famous Ryoanji Temple (The Temple of the Peaceful Dragon) in Kyoto which is one
of the UNESCO world
cultural heritage sites in Kyoto. The Tsukubai is a small basin into which
water continuously flows. At Buddhist temples in Japan Tsukubai allow visitors
to purify themselves by the ritual washing of mouth and hands. The lower
elevation of the basin requires the visitor to bend a little bit to reach the
water. This suggests supplication and reverence. Looking like an old-fashioned
Chinese coin (Zenigata Tsukubai 銭型蹲踞), the shape of the stone basins is a
circle representing heaven (yang) which is pierced by a square hole
representing earth (yin).
It is said that the original Tsukubai has been contributed to the temple by a
member of the powerful
Tokugawa family, Mitsukuni
Tokugawa (1628-1700), a feudal lord and well known for being the compiler of
the 'great History of Japan', also known as "Dai-nihon-shi" containing 397
volumes that he started in 1657.
The Ryoanji
Tsukubai (蹲踞),
which translates literally as 'crouch' has written kanji on the surface of the
stone. These kanji are without significance when read alone. Read clockwise
from the left side, the characters mean: arrow, five, short-tailed bird. The
fourth and last character, at the bottom, has no meaning on its own, and that
is the clue helping to solve the mystery.
If each character is read in combination with 口 (kuchi), (the form of
the central bowl), then the combined characters become 吾, 唯, 足, 知 which reads
clockwise as 'ware tada taru (wo) shiru'.
This is a Zen saying that translates literally as 'I only know plenty' (吾 =
ware = I, 唯 = tada = only, 足 = taru = plenty, 知 = shiru = know). To interpret
the meaning of the carvings a little imagination is required as this can be
roughly translated as follows:
- what one has is all one needs
- I am content with what I have
- I alone know I am content with things
- if you learn to be content, you are rich in spirit
- I learn only to be contented
- he who learns only to be contented is spiritually rich
- all I know in life is to be contented, to be grateful
- I know only satisfaction
