 |
|
| Home || The Dream || The Prayer || The Work || Contribute |
 Overview
Press Coverage 1984 to 1989Bucks County CourierCathedralCatholic StandardChico Enterprise-RecordHudson Valley Green TimesMontgomery County RecordNew Hope Gazette-1984New Hope Gazette-1985New Hope Gazette-1986New Hope Gazette-1987Nouveau MagazineNew York Times-1986New York Times-1987Pacific CitizenPhiladelphia InquirerPopular WoodworkingThe Princeton PacketSan Francisco ChronicleSan Jose Mercury NewsTrentonian1990 to 19951996 to Present |
Nakashima finds the 'perfect tree' for a shrine to peace
February 9, 1984 By Charles Shaw This article contaians 1,634 words. George Nakashima has completed the third stage leading to the realization of a dream.  The dream of the New Hope woodworking artist is of a shrine to peace, located someplace in the world which people from "all over the world" might visit for prayer, meditation and contemplation. He has dreamed of a shrine which would be part of nature.
First, there was the dream itself. As Carl Sandburg once wrote, "Nothing happens unless first the dream."
Second, there was the search and almost miraculous discovery of the proper material, which to Nakashima, of course, would be a noble monarch of the forest, a magnificent dream.
George Nakashima can't pinpoint the exact year or day when he first had his dream. Maybe it was 13 years ago when a logger named Frank Koziowski spotted a 125-foot tall walnut tree, between 200 and 300 years old, on a Long Island, N.Y., estate. As George Nakashima dreamed on about finding that "perfect tree", Koziowski contacted the owner of the tree and asked if he could buy it. The tree was still alive but "past its prime", ready for a new use. Frank finally negotiated the purchase, and George heard about it almost immediately. He was able to buy the trunk of the tree, about 12 feet in length and ranging in width from five to seven feet.
Stage two of the dream was completed, and the usual calm and serene George Nakashima was so excited that he sent letters, describing his dreams and reporting on the possibility of achievement, to a few friends, one of which this reporter was honored to be.
 In his letter, written last summer in long-hand, Nakashima said: "There has appeared an extraordinary natural phenomenon, something that occurs only once in lifetime or perhaps only once in the history of a nation or in all time. It is a great walnut tree. It is a tree that should be a symbiosis of nature and man in the deepest spiritual sense. It is now on hand.
"The ultimate creative concept of this presence becomes a prime decision. Too often great trees are chopped up into knife handles or pistol grips. The only full destiny of a noble tree, favored to grow as none of its peers were able to do, is to use it in its full length and width.
"The possibilities are many but ultimately narrows down to a unique concept. It should be used with the fullest width possible and about four inches thick, two slabs at the widest to be matched to make a rough heart shaped triangle about fourteen feet wide and twelve feet long. The possibilities are to make the most expressive piece of furniture ever made.
"To surmise: possibly the finest grain character and figuring within its extraordinary profile.
"To surmise again: An altar to Peace! Each step would be an adventure, as such a piece has never been made with this type of wood and proportions. There will be many chances of failure, possibly complete, but it should succeed.
"Assume that the table can be made. That is an assumption that is easy. It can be done. But what to do with it? That is hard.
"A pilgrim shrine, a temple, a great half sphere rising out the water, perhaps a hundred meters wide and fifty meters high, sheathed with fish scale like ceramic tiles in white and pale yellow to glow as a symbol in a stretch of water, to make a complete sphere. It might be on land; or the East River, or the San Francisco Bay, or the Tokyo Bay, or on the Ganges, somewhere where the sadhus could pay homage to an ideal, an ideal to which they have dedicated their whole lives.
"A 'Matrimandir' on the East River of the pure spirit to Peace for which all people yearn and the world politicians spurn. A shrine for all peoples and owned by none.
"From the caves in the Himalayas the sadhus can come with nothing but their begging bowls, from the Zen mountain monasteries and their waterfalls come. The monks chanting their sutras, from Mount Athos and Saint Catherine on the Sinai are monks saying their offices, all can come, the poor in spirit who believe in the ultimate truth.
"They can come without shoes to place their offering, a lotus or a rose, (dried is satisfactory) on the altar. The room ringing with songs of praise each in his own tongue.
"My sadhu friends Yogananda and Purnananda can come, both having spent much of their lives in the Himalayas, at one time saved by a voice calling 'Yogananda Yogananda' to slip into a cave and escape death from a rockslide. Monks and sadhus from around the world...Logistics are easy as a grass mat serves asťa bed.
"There should be some place in the world, a shrine, owned by no one but dedicated to the Divine and Peace. A shrine just for people, mostly poor as the world is so constituted, people of high status or position are not invited.
"Structurally the buildings should be the simplest possible, an eggshell of reinforced concrete in a continuous pour, well insulated with a final sheathing of ceramic tile, fish scale like. The interior too of ceramic tile. If on land, the building can have a standard foundation. If over water the building could conceivably be floating to reach its own level.
Perhaps this is all a dream, but peace is a dream, a dream dreamt by an overwhelming mass of millions upon millions of people. It cannot be had within the halls of power as ego begets ego until we have our final Armageddon.
"The betes noires in this quest for peace are the super powers, so called. Both with their colossal egos and their insecurity have failed miserably to produce a viable society. Perhaps they would be interested in each taking a plot a hundred miles square, a thousand miles apart, assemble their most sophisticated engines of destruction, a million men each and prove once and for all which system is the strongest. This could be in the northern most part of Siberia. Some sort of decision might be realized and the rest of the world left alone.
"The timber is terribly real lying with its great mass on the ground asking what is to become of it.
"Peace should be born as a genuine expression of nature and an act of beauty. There can be at least one small spot on earth to be dedicated to Peace in a tangible form instead of an abstract idea and an absence of war. It can be a positive creative force of its own carrying its own momentum."
Those of us who received Nakashima's report responded enthusiastically, but we treated the matter confidentially until we knew what the wood would be like. Sawing of the trunk into 16 slabs was completed last week. Nakashima 's verdict:
"This is the best log I've come across, both in size and coloring."
Complicated preparations had to be made for the sawing. Where to do the cutting? Nakashima had the log trucked to a North Carolina sawmill. But there was no saw on the East Coast that could handle the job.
Nakashima went out to California to talk with Scott Wineland of Chico, Ca, a sawyer who specializes in walnut. Scot didn't have a saw large enough either; but he decided to have one made, lt was a $3,OOO Swedish Partner chain saw with dual engines and an eight-foot-wide cut. It was made for the Nakashima log, but Wineland can use it for other cuttings.
Nakashima decided to have the log moved to the Thompson Mahogany Company yard at 7400 Edmund Street in Northeast Philadelphia. Then came the problem of transporting the saw from Chico to Philadelphia. "Airlines won't accept motors as freight," Nakashima said; "so we had to ship them by motor freight. Then we had the rest sent by air as luggage accompanying Scot."
Officials of the National Geographic Society had learned of the "Nakashima dream". They asked, and received, permission to film the sawing for a documentary television show, probably to be originated within the next two years, by WQED, the Public Broadcasting System station in Pittsburgh.
The sawing began Jan. 16. Nakashima's son, Kevin, helped Wineland with the saw. Nakashima's daughter, Mira Amagasu, took pictures for The Gazette.
The log was put in place for a vertical cut - length-wise, not cross-wise. The motors were turned on. The sawing began. All went smoothly for a few minutes... then a screech. The saw was stopped, and Wineland said, "It sounds like metal. But how could metal get into that tree? It was far away from the house."
Nobody could answer. The saw was turned on again and moved ahead slowly. It cut through the metal a piece of pipe imbedded in the trunk for no one knows how many years.
Nakashima gazed at the wood and its grain.
"It is more beautiful than I ever imagined." The last cuts were made Monday of last week and stacked neatly by the Thompson Mahogany Company.
So, when does George Nakashima plan to begin using the wood for his shrine?
Not for quite a while. First of all, the wood will have to remain in Philadelphia for two or three years until it is thoroughly dried- There is the site to be chosen, the financing (all of which Nakashima has done so far) to be arranged, the construction to be done.
But George Nakashima, as he told this reporter a few months ago, is a Hindu monk, a combination Hindu-Catholic, He is a spiritual man who counts time not in terms of years but of eons. He is of Japanese ancestry and has the natural patience of the Oriental.
He has a dream, and "nothing happens unless first the dream."
www.nakashimafoundation.org a 501C3 non-profit organization 1847 Aquetong Road New Hope, PA 18938 E-Mail The Nakashima Foundation Contact the webmaster |
