20 and Under

One of the sweetest feelings one can experience is coming across something surprisingly beautiful that was completely unexpected. Maybe walking through the woods and coming upon a wild red fox walking unsuspectingly across your path or looking through a nursery for bonsai material and finding something that stops you in your path as exhibiting potential for a beautiful creation.
About 6 or 7 years ago, Kunio Kobayashi was giving a talk at a California bonsai convention and spoke of a Japanese concept called ‘Kai Kou’. It refers to an ‘unexpected encounter’ or ‘crossing paths’. I have adopted this term as my bonsai philosophy (and use it on my bonsai card kai kou bonsai). At its best, bonsai opens my eyes to the beauty of nature and is an avenue to ‘cross paths’ with beautiful trees and wonderful people in bonsai. If you’ve studied philosophy at all, you know of Martin Buber’s ‘I and Thou’ philosophy in which he describes the nature of our relationship with the world as ‘subject to subject’ and not ‘subject to object’. Basically we are not separate from others or the natural world but are connected to each other. To extend this thinking further, we need to respect and be open to those around us (and the natural world) – to learn new things, experience beauty and wonder, etc. When our eyes are open to the many ‘surprises’ around us (eg. as exhibited in a bonsai), we will have many wonderful unexpected encounters of beauty and hopefully create many beautiful bonsai for others to enjoy.