Jim Lewis wrote:

A while ago we had a brief discussion of this book. Peter A. was
interested in its allegations of ties between Zen and bonsai
which he, after extensive study has failed to discover, and I
after a cursory look, tend to agree.

snip

Anyway, in this book, the Zen references are more in the line of
"armchair Zen" than anything particularly philosophical (at least
in MY opinion)

snip

FWIW, _I_ believe that the roots of bonsai (or, rather,
decorative trees grown in pots) are much more likely to rest in
Taoism than in Buddhism. However, there are so many close ties
between Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism and they're all so
long ago and so tied up in myth, who can know? Taoism, of
course, pre-dates either of the others.

Peter, if you ever see the book I would really like to hear your
impression.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL snip

Just to throw my $.02 in. I haven't read the book, although I'm considering buying
it. In terms of theorigins of bonsai, I'm interested in this too, in particular
the philosophical or religious factors in the art's origin. Having said that, I'm
open to the possibility that the first people to take naturally dwarfed trees and
put them in pots may have simply done so because they like them, and nothing more
than that.

It is one thing to state that a particular philosophy or intellectual framework was
definitely a root of of bonsai. Since I haven't seen Tan's book I can't say, but
I'm perfectly comfortable with anyone applying their own particular mindset to
bonsai. It is a way of making it their own, much as I find a lot of connections
between bonsai and my own liberal Christian perspective, although bonsai obviously
has no historical connections to Christianity.

Something that has occurred to me too in terms of bonsai is that it seems that the
art in it's more refined state actually came after the re-connection of Japan with
the rest of the world, in fact in the last century. So, although we may think of
bonsai as originating in the misty past, could we not say that the art as presently
practiced both in the West and Japan is really an amalgam of Eastern and Western
elements?

Craig Cowing
NY
Zone 5b/6a Sunset 37

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