As I mentioned last time, three of the Ten Virtues of Ikebana are concerned with the goals of Ikebana training. Basically, through Ikebana you are able to maintain a peaceful mind, to be elegant and to get in touch with your spiritual side.
It is interesting that these are all spiritual goals in essence. Compared with many popular self-development books or commercial spiritual movements, Ikebana is aiming at something far more spiritual. Ikebana is just like a form of pure meditation.
Some may consider knowing Ikebana to be something very special, but it simply means they know a bit about meditation. There is nothing to be so special about it.
Ikebana has nothing to do with secular values such as money or power. However, I don’t deny that I do Ikebana as a business. I see business opportunities as opportunities to practice Ikebana, my spiritual training.
I’ll talk more about different aspects of Ikebana from the next issue. Hope you will enjoy it.
I made this work for the entrance in our house using left over materials. To fix the bird nest fern leaf, I attached a short branch to the base of it.
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