Bonsai Mr Ong Background Bonsai are miniature plants

Bonsai Mr. Ong

Background • Bonsai are miniature plants, but miniature is a relative term. • It can be a few inches tall to about 20 ft. tall. • It is controlled by the size, surface area and depth of pot, soil, water, sunlight, fertilizers, etc. • The shape (form) is managed by wires, and regular pruning. • It reflects the inner landscape of the bonsai artist. • It is the foundation for the discussion of form and substance.

Traditional Bonsai • Pine • Bamboo • Non-flowering • Non-fruit

Modern Bonsai • Flowering • Fruit • Traditional / decorative • Other plants • Traditionalists do not necessarily like modern bonsai because the flowers, decorations, and colors are too easily assessible to viewers. They distract from the real quest of shaping a bonsai. Modern bonsai are too appealing, too quickly attractive, unlike traditional bonsai which require painstaking effort to shape and form, like inner lives.

Forms

Forms

Substance • To understand substance, we have to look at how bonsai are crafted • A bonsai artist has some tools to work with • Wires, cutter, shape of plant, height, thickness, thinness, rocks, lush, stem growth, etc. • It shows the extension of one’s imagination. • It shows the reflection of one’s inner life. • It shows one’s emotional, spiritual life that is based on self-cultivation.

The narrative • Notice the shade, the white, dead part of the plant: symbolic of parts of us that are dead • Notice the growth of other areas, behind, hidden from full view, much like how we must live a rich inner life away from public interruption. • Note the height of the growth related to the time of our life, the past the distant youth, new interests. • Note thickness of the stem; how heavy death weighs in on us all, but we manage to find new life, unexpectedly. • The depth with which you recognize the details [substance] of the artist’s craft is a reflection of the depth of the details you have cultivated of your own inner landscape.

Form and Substance • Form is often thought of as Wabi • Substance, Sabi. • We can’t change wabi too much, nor too quickly. • We have more access to substance, the way to live our lives, the decisions we make of each of the stems we cut, each of the stems we encourage to grow in the form [although this form is also given to us in the genetic code of the plant but it is minimally controlled by us based on sunlight and soil and water etc. ] we have cultivated. • It is a dynamic relationship between two philosophical quests.