Scholar’s garden: Images of the eternal beauty of nature

A short story by sci-fi maestro Isaac Asimov is set in a futuristic age where robot-humans are controlled by Univac, the inter-galactic computer. Slowly their physical forms vanish, leaving only spirits floating in space. Then those nebulous forms too “evaporate” into nothingness. The story ends in dark silence, broken by Univac’s sudden command, “Let there be light!”

Philosophers and poets are never tired of asserting that the human spirit is inextinguishable. India’s Aham Brahmasmi, Sufi saint Mansoor’s Analahak, Rumi’s timeless visions, Tukaram’s death-defying abhangs, Wordsworth’s ode on Intimations of Immortality — what are they but mantras to keep us going through our daily infernos and purgatories? They also promise a life beyond — in swarg, zannat, Valhalla, paradise, or in some undefined macro space.

If you still want to cling to the earth, your best crutch is the theory of reincarnation, propounded by many ancient races. Nigerian Yoruba and Zambian Illa believe in a continuous stream of consciousness connecting matter and spirit through successive “re-embodiments” or reincarnations — yiya omo (turning to be child) or a-tun-wa (another coming). Native Indian tribes of North America believe that it is the ongoing rebirth cycle of life and death which makes memory survive from generation to generation. Clan elders remembered the past, not as hearsay chronicles, but as having actually “lived” through it. This accumulated memory was their storehouse of wisdom. Sadly, this wisdom did not ensure their survival.

The narrative I turn to again and again, to rediscover new insights, is the Mahabharata. The great Indian epic doesn’t flinch from ideas we usually shun — the world as a slaughter house where the only certainty is death. Even little snippets can illuminate. A voice from the sky asks Prince Yudhishthira, “What is the greatest wonder of the world?” He answers, “Though we see people dying all around us, all the time, we continue to believe that we are immortal.”

Two weeks ago, I went through some matches on YouTube where a Nordic God battered his opponents on Wimbledon Centre Court from 1976 to 1980. These flashbacks led me to clips of more recent times, only to find his golden locks had silvered above a wrinkled face — a face that now seems only too human.

I don’t know what impulse made me run to the mirror and take a long hard look. What gazed back was certainly not the decades-ago face that watched the tennis star’s topspin forehand and two-handed backhand. The reflection triggered a personal Buddha moment. I realised — not as a philosophical sermon in Sarnath, but in my own flesh and blood — how ageing, sickness, and death are irreversible stages in the human journey.

What the mirror showed I could not put into words, But what are poets for? Arvind Krishna Mehrotra reflects my experience in his shadowy vignette: “Sometimes,/ In unwiped bathroom mirrors/ He sees all three faces 
looking at him:/ His own/ The grey-haired man’s/ Whose life policy has matured,/ And the mocking youth’s/ Who paid the first premium.”

Of course, this kind of irony has the distance and double vision to achieve stoic detachment. But the people of China had another method of coming to terms with passing time. They did not wrestle with their own autumn, they embraced it with a sense of beauty. Officials retiring from active service left hectic towns for far off places, to create their “scholar’s garden”. Here, as time passed, they watched the landscape changing through the year, read books, wrote poetry, painted scrolls, heard music, and sipped tea... Quietly.

Imagine my amazement when I found such a garden bang in the middle of downtown Portland, Oregon! Armed with 500 tonnes of stone, and 300 plant species, 65 artisans had come to this western metropolis from Suzhou, China, to create Lan Su, “Garden of Awakening Orchids”. Inscriptions in this eastern oasis invite you to “Read the Painting”, “Listen to the Fragrance”, and “Drink in the Green”. You stand in the “Moon Locking Pavilion” or “Painted Boat in Misty Rain”, to look at rocks underwater, willow brushing against stone, and sky reflected in a pool.

I guess it doesn’t matter whether your scholar’s garden is real or imagined. If you manage to find it and make your home there, the mirror brings no shock, greying no sorrow, wrinkling no dismay, winter no discontent. You become part of the shifting seasons your garden registers under sun, moon and stars, soughing winds, floating clouds and flowing streams. Though your garden reflects the fragility of life and inexorable time, it also images the eternal beauty of nature and the perfection of art. Yin and yang are not opponents here, they are partners. Rebirth? No need! Because you don’t die, you just flow along with qi, the cosmic life force.

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist