The Emperor's garden

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There is a  Zen story where the master was teaching the king of Japan gardening. The master taught the king for three years and had asked him to create his own garden simultaneously. The king worked on the palace garden itelf and employed one thousand gardeners to implement everything to the minutest details. He got the most exotic and colourful plants, made beautiful pathways, ponds, meditation areas, rock sculptures. Everything was swept and cleaned regularly including dead leaves from the ground and even from the branches. 

At the end of three years, the time for the test had come. The king visited the garden a day before the master was to come and inspect. He was satisfied and was sure the master would be very happy. Everything looked perfect and idyllic, like a picture from a fairy land.

The next day the master arrived at the garden accompanied by the king and his gardeners. They waited with bated breath for signs of approval. But the master, normally a man of laughter, had a serious face. His silence was heavy. The king became sad and started to tremble inside. Will the master fail him in his test? He had worked hard and done everything perfectly. Everything was just right. He asked the master what was the matter.

The master said, “Everything is right but where are the golden leaves? I don’t see any dead leaves, yellow leaves fluttering in the wind. Without that the garden looks very artificial. While removing the dead leaves the king had never thought that death is also part of life, that it is not its opposite but its complementary, that without it there would be no life. And certainly the master was right: Yes, the garden was beautiful, but it looked as if it were a painting, not real.

The king learnt his lesson that beauty is not something you make and that natural beauty is better than beauty put on for some purpose.  It happens spontaneously, naturally, by itself. You cannot sweep it away! He thought that it was indeed absurd to disrupt that beauty for the sake of making something beautiful. In fact only when we disrupt nature, does it become ugly. 

The king and his gardeners were humbled. The realized that Nature by itself is more perfect than anything man can create and we should not try to create something that is not meant to be.

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