Kado means "the way of the flowers."
Before going into further detail, I must first give thanks and credit to Marcia Wang Shibata, who first introduced me to kado and who shared with me the insights on kado that I share with you below.
Kado, as I aspire to practice it, is just like meditation. Instead of sitting on the cushion, flower arranging (done in a certain intentional way) helps reveal to us that what is true for the flower world is also true for the animal (human) world.
By working with and paying attention to flowers and their true nature, we contemplate our own nature. We can observe the cycle of life and death, as it applies to flowers, and recognize that this cycle applies to us humans too. Thus, it isn't about the result, but rather about the process. If "performed properly," the resulting arrangement will be aesthetically pleasing, even though that wasn't the practitioner's goal.
In Kado and Ikebana, the arrangement always contains three elements, which reflect Nature's hierarchy. These elements, in order, are Heaven, Humanity (or Man), and Earth. A higher position in this hierarchy doesn't mean that the element is "better" than the others. Think about it, it is impossible for one to be better if all three must work together in a synergistic relationship. Instead, the higher position means that this element bears more responsibility for everything else around it. Thus, since Heaven bears the greatest deal of responsibility for everything around it, Heaven is the first element the we place in the kenzan (pin holder) within the container.
I will describe the process of creating an arrangement in more detail in a later post.
Lawyers aren't normally known as terribly creative people (other than when it comes to "creative" contract phrasing or statutory interpretation). However, I've found that the truth is that many lawyers are actually aspiring artists, writers, dancers, and singers who, rather than pursue their dreams, decided to do the "smart" thing and take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to do something they didn't really find all that interesting in the first place. Personally, I always wanted to be a writer.
To back up a bit, my name is Nina, and, if you haven't guessed, I'm a lawyer. During law school, I took up meditation as a way to manage the stress and anxiety that accrues from three years of doing 100s of pages of reading on less than 6 hours of sleep a night. I started meditating with the Tibetan Buddhist chaplain at school and then began to attend meditation classes based in the Shambhala lineage upon moving to NYC.
Meditation has helped me find an enormous amount of peace in my life, and I highly recommend it, if you haven't tried it. Meditation isn't necessarily sitting around and chanting "Om" for hours (although it can be that -- I can touch on the value of chanting in a later post). Instead, meditation can be as simple as just sitting quietly, taking a few deep breaths, and trying not to let your stream of thoughts drag you away from the present moment, like high tide. It is kind of like when you were put in "time out" as a kid, except this time you are putting yourself there.
My meditation practice has led me to want to get back in touch with my creative energy. This summer, I did a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) share that included a bouquet of farm fresh flowers each week. I got really into photographing the flowers and appreciating their transient beauty. So, when a local meditation center announced that they were holding a flower-arranging class, I jumped at the opportunity. One three day retreat later, I've decided to start a regular practice of arranging flowers to supplement my meditation practice.
In Kado (or Ikebana, as it is known in Japanese), flowers aren't just arranged willy-nilly. Rather, the arrangement is supposed to contain and reflect the ordering of the universe. I'll discuss a bit of the theory behind the practice in a later post.
In the meantime, enjoy this photo of my first-ever kado arrangement!
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