FredL

I sure enjoyed the responses to this topic. I was quite intrigued by several of them, bot found the comment on Henry David Thoreau particularly interesting. I always had a great love for the New England Transcendentalists and, yes, now that it has been mentioned, I think that the the state that reading Ralph Waldo Emerson brings me to has similarities to the effect upon me of contemplating a really well done bonsai.

Three or four decades ago, there was a movement in the US and Western Europe called the Voluntary Simplicity Movement. I was never involved in it directly but was kind of a closet admirer. It seemed to me that it somehow caught some of this same attitude towards life. Veneration of the natural (whatever that is), a direction counter to Western Consumerism. I don't know where it stands today, but I can certinly imagine Bonsai Cutivation being incorporated into the lifestyle it held dear.

I think Eastern Religions, Shinto, Buddhism, Daoism and so forth are largely about the cultivation of attitudes and states of mind and are much more conguent with bonsai cultivation being an appropriate, even noble, use of one's time and fortune than are Western religions and philosophies. A man who I have nothing but the greatest repect for (Walter Pall) once used the words "Oriental Hocus Pocus" in referring to Eastern religious practices and I think this is a common Western reaction to the focus on internal mental and emotional states that exists in Eastern religions. My own view of Bonsai is that this is really what it is all about: a technolgy for changing our internal spiritual state.

Once again, thanks for the comments.

Fred