Wa-Shin-An

Wa-Shin-An, which translates literally as “Peace-Mind-House,” is a traditional Japanese meditation garden and teahouse, built through the generosity of alumnae and friends of Mount Holyoke College. Designed to present the universe in miniature — but a universe tranquilized and cleansed — it offers a refuge from the distraction of our lives, a place to cultivate the silence of the heart.

Teruo Hara, a noted ceramicist as well as a master architect and builder, used only traditional Japanese hand tools to build the house and the garden’s enclosure. He worked in the sukiya zukuri style of teahouse, which was perfected by the great Sen no Rikyu in the sixteenth century. Rikyu is also honored as the master who perfected chanoyu, the art of tea.

Osamu Shimizu designed and planted the garden in the kare sansui style, which symbolically gathers the world into a small, balanced space. White pebbles may be viewed as the sea; rocks, as mountains and the cliffs which bound the sea. Mosses may define lowland plains. Other plantings may represent inland forests and fields.

The Zen principle “All in One, One in All” governs great Japanese art. Seen from many perspectives, the garden offers us much variety: from the sukashi-mado, the first look through the window; as one enters the gate; from each of the stepping-stones; and finally from within the house itself. In each view, though, the garden is a unified whole.

Hara has created unity in diversity — and also a splendid illusion of space — in the small teahouse by varying the textures, angles, colors, and lines of the many types of wood. Like the garden, the house is simple and natural. In both, we feel the quieting effect of empty space, a special emptiness made vibrant by subtle variations and the healing whole.

“All in One, One in All” can also govern what we learn in Wa-Shin-An. What is peace of mind? If you keep a bull in a confined pen, it will grow desperate and wild. But even a mad bull will soon become calm in a wide pasture. Peace of mind is like a wide pasture, where the world’s troubles can come and go without doing harm. The spacious mind, composed and clear, begins to know the sure heart’s release.

Meditation gardens and teahouses were traditionally intended to bring us beyond even peace. To enter the ceremony of tea and to forget your separateness while drinking it — that is the art of tea. In such moments the innermost goodness of our being asserts itself, and we are whole again, beyond confusion.

Dedicated October 7, 1984