Ikebana and Auroville

Auroville Today: About one month ago you held a very successful ikebana exhibition in Centre d’Art. You said that putting on this exhibition was very important to you. Why?

I’m not getting younger and my energy is getting less and less, and since we are facing several problems in Auroville at present I wondered what I could do to help. What could my contribution be? I am not good in meetings, I never speak there, and I don’t involve myself in politics. So my idea in putting on this exhibition was to bring some harmony, some beauty to people through nature, which is suffering in Auroville at the moment. Something that could unite people beyond all the problems we are facing now. That’s why beauty, harmony, serenity are important.

The language of flowers is a universal language: everybody recognizes their beauty. It’s also something more. To accompany my exhibition, I put a quote by Eckhart Tolle which exactly expresses what I feel. He said, “Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves.”

I’m very happy because the response to the exhibition was unbelievable. Some tough Auroville men actually cried, others said that this is the best heartfelt response that could be given in the light of our present problems. Also, schools came. Many students were surprised to see that I was also using pieces of bark and twigs and wood gnawed by termites in the displays; that bark or dead wood could contribute to the beauty of a piece. They had never thought about this before. This is why I told them, “Look for the hidden beauty in things.”

Putting on an exhibition like this must have been a huge logistical challenge.

It was. I’ve had three exhibitions in the past, and somebody asked me to do this every year, but I’m not going to do any more exhibitions because it is so challenging. If you are a painter or sculptor, you can prepare your pieces even years ahead, but ikebana arrangements have to be done on the spot, and the wilted flowers have to be changed along with the water etc. Of course, I can do certain preparations in advance by choosing the vases, but sometimes it happened that I ordered ten yellow sunflowers from Pondy and I received ten roses, so I would have to adjust. It was a big challenge for me, but in the end I presented 22 ikebana. In this I had huge help from my husband, Kenji, who contributed some of his woodwork. We deliberately didn’t put anything on sale. It was actually our gift to Mother’s dream.

You have been teaching ikebana in Auroville for many years. How did an Italian like you, a qualified psychologist, become interested in this very specialised Japanese art form?

Many years ago I graduated in psychology in Italy and started doing an internship in a psychiatric hospital. It was very difficult because the conditions for the patients were terrible. I left after one year and decided to take a break.

I met an Italian who wanted to come to India so I spontaneously decided to accompany him. He bought a sailing yacht and we wanted to sail to India but that didn’t work out. But in the Red Sea we met my future husband, who was also sailing; he was sailing round the world. After 2 ½ years of sailing in many parts of the world, we met him again in Panama, and from that time Kenji, my Japanese husband, and I have been together.

Finally, we arrived in Japan, by which time I had been living eight years on a boat. After a few years in Japan, by chance I saw an ikebana exhibition, and I immediately fell in love with this art form. I couldn’t understand how something as simple as a single flower in a vase could be so beautiful. So immediately I wanted to learn.

At first, I had no idea there were so many schools of ikebana.

I entered the Sogetsu school. Afterwards I found out that was not really my preferred school, but I loved my teacher very much so I stayed with that school. The approach is very structured, almost mathematical – for many years you have to study angles, measurements etc. – but I was very lucky because in Japan the traditional way of teaching is called minarai, ‘look and learn’. And I could only look and learn because for more than one year I didn’t understand a single word my teacher was saying as she was speaking an extremely refined form of Japanese. It was perfect because it didn’t go through my brain.

So learning ikebana is very structured to begin with. It’s like when you want to write a poem you need to know grammar, but once you’ve learned that, there is a moment when you become totally free.

Now I am quite free in my ikebana arrangements, as you can see from my recent exhibition, but when I teach students I have four or five textbooks which I follow to a certain extent.

The views of two of her long-term students:

“Practicing Ikebana means grounding myself in the present moment and opening to the unique lines of a branch, the texture of a leaf, the precious hue and shape of a flower. It has given me fresh eyes to look upon the details of the natural world with a sense of wonder.”

“Practicing Ikebana is a way of refining the being.”

Was it easy for you, as a Westerner, to be accepted as an ikebana student in Japan?

My teacher welcomed me one hundred percent. Just recently I phoned her to tell her about the exhibition and as soon as she heard my voice she recognized me. She said she had dreamed of me the previous night and wanted to get in touch with me.

Culturally, though, as a Westerner certain things in Japan were difficult. Even though my father-in-law, who is very traditional, immediately accepted me lovingly in spite of me being a foreigner, I found it difficult to share anything deeply with my Japanese friends. I could easily talk about myself – I never suppressed my Italian part – but they didn’t want or couldn’t talk about their feelings. However, I respected that.

When I first arrived in Japan, I had been living barefoot on a boat for many years. I felt very free, so the rigidity and lack of flexibility in that culture was extremely challenging for me. However, we lived in Okinawa, which is an island in the southern part of Japan and more easy-going than the mainland, and Japanese society, with its emphasis upon honour, was like the Sicily where I grew up, so I could resonate with certain aspects of it. And then, of course, I discovered ikebana.

How did you come to teach ikebana in Auroville?

When my husband and I came to Auroville for the first time 33 years ago, I had been learning ikebana for only three months in Japan. That is nothing, but I already liked it very much. Of course, in Auroville there were few flowers, no flower shops, no vases. I didn’t know anything about Mother; we arrived here just by chance. We were on cycles in a little grove of trees and then something very strange happened. I heard an inner voice that told me to come here and teach ikebana.

I turned to Kenji and said ‘Why don’t we come and live here?’ He said, ‘What a nice idea’. However, when we returned to Japan and I told my teacher I would go to India and teach ikebana, she thought I was completely crazy. She didn’t think the countryside in India was a place where you could teach ikebana, but I loved India very much and this thought stayed inside me.

We didn’t return to Auroville immediately. I studied ikebana in Japan for 9½ years – I took diplomas because I wanted to teach – and we only came back to Auroville when our daughter was old enough. A few days after we arrived, I got a phone call from the potter, Michel, who had heard I was an ikebana teacher. He had just received an order for twelve ikebana vases and he asked me what they should look like. That was the beginning. After that, he gave me some vases, and that’s how I started my ikebana school in Auroville.

I have always had many Aurovilian students, and some of them have been with me for twenty years or more. This is because ikebana is a never-ending learning process.

But there are challenges to teaching ikebana in Auroville. Compared to Japan, here there is a very poor variety of flowers, and roses, for example, don’t last even one day in the heat. In fact, when I arrived back in Auroville, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to do ikebana here because the flowers were simply not here. But Mother, of course, said a lot about flowers, so there was a kind of foundation of knowledge here already.

What is the heart of ikebana?

The zen monk used to go out in the very early morning to the temple garden with a small cutter and a small bamboo container, and he would take a single flower and a twig, put it in this container and hang it on a wooden pillar in the tokonoma (a recessed “holy” space in a Japanese reception room, in which items for artistic appreciation are displayed). This is called ikebana for the tea ceremony, and it all

started like that.

The real traditional ikebana, which is the way it was performed by these monks, should bring you into the Here and Now, into a peaceful meditative state, not thinking of the past or the future. This is why some samurai warriors practiced ikebana or the tea ceremony before battle, to purify their hearts and minds so they could fight without fear and be ready to die at any moment.

But it’s a discipline which can benefit everybody.

Yes. My teacher (who is now 90 years old) learned the real way, which is why her lessons were very concentrated and conducted in silence. In my lessons, it is the same. We don’t chat: we are really concentrated, for this is a moment to be with yourself. There is no competition. It is a prayer, it is something between you and the flower and the leaves…

I was in Japan recently and saw very little ikebana, apart from a large exhibition in Kyoto. Is it dying out?

Yes, that’s the reality. The exhibition you went to was at Ikenobo in the grounds of the Rokkakudo Temple, which has been the home of ikebana since the 15th century, and it happens twice a year. The people you saw there were coming from all over the world. But in Japan itself ikebana is dying out. I met two young Japanese in Auroville who had never seen or even heard of ikebana in Japan, and my teacher’s school, where she had taught for more than 50 years, has closed now because there were so few students. To learn real ikebana takes very long and nowadays people in Japan are too busy with work to devote themselves to this. The many schools of Western flower arrangement are popular because they promise quick results.

Before the war, in order to get a good husband a Japanese lady had to learn how to wear a kimono (which can take years!), how to perform the tea ceremony, cooking and ikebana. But the modern Japanese woman is financially independent and often doesn’t want to get married or have children so feels no need to learn these things.

That’s why teaching ikebana in a traditional way is very important for me; it is keeping something alive. I’ve been teaching my daughter since she was two years old.

And your husband? Does he also practice ikebana? His woodwork also requires a huge amount of discipline, so isn’t this similar to ikebana?

(Laughs) My husband likes ikebana very much, but when he took a lesson he kept saying it is so difficult because he had to take care, in a very short time, of so many things, so many different perspectives. It looks easy but it’s very difficult. It’s completely different from his work, which is also challenging.

Do you ever miss Japan?

Yes, it is difficult living here sometimes and in Japan there is this refinement, harmony: everything is more or less perfect, especially in a temple or a garden. If I had a lot of money, I would like to spend two to three months a year in Japan, but if I had to choose between India and Japan, I would always choose India because I love this country. Even when I go to Pondicherry, which seems the extreme opposite of Japan, I like it.

It is because there is something else here that I cannot find in Japan or in Italy: this sparkling of life, this vivacity, this joy of living. It’s in the eyes of Indian people, even the homeless. Japan does not have so much expression of joy, there are too many rules. That’s why, while I love Japan, I want to live in India, and in Auroville more than anywhere else in India.