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The Ancient Spirit of Bamboo
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Symbolism. As an evergreen, bamboo is one of the "three friends of winter." Bamboo represents a strong but resilient character.1
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Bamboo is quick-growing, high, straight, very strong, and evergreen. Therefore, the Chinese have compared "fair, straightforward, sincere people of high spiritual qualities" to bamboo since the ancient times.2
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Garden. Bamboo is used in every traditional Chinese garden for its beauty, the rustling sound of its leaves in the breeze, and the feathery shadows it casts on walls of the garden.3 Traditional Oriental belief holds that a bamboo grove restores calmness and stimulates creativity. Bamboo groves were a favorite dwelling place of the Buddha.
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"Three friends of winter". Plum, pine and bamboo symbolize in East Asia the virtues of the ideal scholar, purity of spirit, longevity, and flexibility. The plum tree perseveres through winter, blossoming white afresh through the snow. The pine tree endures evergreen throughout the seasons, and bamboo, always green and flexible, bends in difficulty, but does not break.4
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All Pervasiveness. The western world, including Australia, is not yet taking the spectacularly useful bamboo plant seriously, in spite of millions being spent on research in Asia. There, bamboos feed the people, house them, grace and shade their environment, provide musical instruments, cooking and eating utensils, furniture, hunting weapons, ceremonial artifacts, carrying and storage baskets, lampshades, ropes and strings, roof tiles, hats and hundreds of other practical and spiritual uses. Accordingly, the people show great reverence for this wonderful plant, which is the fastest growing renewable resource known.5
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Chinese Character for Bamboo: The Appeal of Nothingness. Bamboo is the natural symbol of the wealth of nothingness because it grows into space, which for the masters of Zen represents the subtle centre of spiritual development. More generally it is a symbol of fertility, altruism and a happy family in the image of a mother plant feeding her family around her.
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The invention of the 8 trigrams in the YI KING (a sacred work in Asia) has been attributed to the legendary Fou-Hsi in 2900 B.C. The full strokes (YANG) and the separated strokes (YIN) suggest the stem of bamboo and its nodes. The cadences reflect the essential rhythms of life in TAO philosophy.6
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Footnotes:
1. http://www.mobot.org/hort/tours/cgplants.shtml
2. http://www.restoran.ru/?t=6&id=595&r=595&pid=&page=1&w=t&lng=2
3. http://www.mobot.org/hort/tours/cgplants.shtml
4. http://www.ackland.org/art/exhibitions/japanart/
5. http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/good_wood/bamboo.htm
6. http://www.bambouseraie.fr/anglais/bambou/symbole.htm
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