Haiku from space
Google’s Project Suncatcher - their research experiment for AI inference in space - ran their first prompt through the system this week and the response processed by Google TPUs deployed to space was:
Blue marble below
Data streams in silent grace
Starlight feeds my core. ✨
Zooming into that blue marble, into the Japanese archipelago where we have been spending time this week, past bustling modern Tokyo, past Odawara of the Sengoku Jidai, we were lucky to spend a few brilliant days in Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital that feels deeply connected to the past.
There is a lot to see and do in Kyoto. The trek to the top at Fushimi Inari Taisha was a refreshing revelation early one morning. At Tofukuji the more modern Zen gardens were deeply meditative and was komorebi in all its glory.
Part of the Zen garden at Tofukuji Temple, Kyoto
The Nijo Castle with its nightingale floors1, that speak to an early version of zero-trust and defense in depth, that only ninjas could traverse undetected, was thought provoking. But amongst the many ancient temples, gardens and palaces, the Sogenchi Teien at the Tenryu-ji Temple evoked a deep sense of timelessness.
Tenryū-ji - formally known as Tenryū Shiseizen-ji (The Temple of the Heavenly Dragon of Sacred Meditation), stands as the head temple of the Tenryū-ji branch of Rinzai Zen Buddhism and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Ranked as the first of Kyoto’s prestigious Gozan (Five Great Zen Temples), it was established in 1339 by Japan’s most influential Zen garden designer, Musō Soseki. While every wooden structure at Tenryū-ji has burned down and been rebuilt over the centuries, the Sōgenchi Garden remains almost entirely in its original 14th-century form, making it the oldest intact Zen landscape design in Japan. It has outlasted fires, wars, and regime shifts because it anchored itself to the slowest layers of the landscape.
The pond at the Sōgenchi Garden with Mt. Arashiyama in the background - Kenryu-ji Temple, Kyoto.
With its Borrowed Scenery2 (Shakkei) incorporating the physical landscape behind the garden into its design, the garden feels part of the landscape and has a permanence and timelessness to it. At the rear of the pond sits an arrangement of jagged vertical stones representing a dry waterfall, Ryūmon-baku (Dragon Gate Falls). In the center rests the Rigyo-seki (Carp Stone). This embodies the Chinese Taoist/Zen parable of a carp that swims upstream against a raging torrent; if it leaps the high waterfall, it transforms into a flying dragon. In Zen practice, it serves as a visual metaphor for the monk who, through relentless determination and discipline, overcomes worldly illusion to achieve enlightenment. Heavenly Dragon of Sacred Meditation, indeed.
With gardens such as these to to put you into a contemplative mood, the Japanese aphorism “born Shinto, married Christian, die Budhist”, which captures some of my thinking, is easily understood.
1 The floors make a chirping sound as you walk on them. There is some debate whether this is a deliberate design choice, or the unexpected artifact of the nails and clamps of that era. The fact is that you cannot sneak up on anybody walking those halls. You advertise your arrival, except the ninjas (or so they say).
2 The design of the garden “borrows” from the landscape behind it in the placement of rocks and the way the landscape is shaped. This evokes in you a feeling of continuity and a sense that it is all tied together.
