What's the different between penjing and bonsai?
Answers: Penjing is the Chinese bearing of growing trees in small containers, usually done by pruning merely, whereas bonsai is a Japanese artform of growing trees in containers using various different horticultural practises.
There's not really any Buddhist philosophy involved in it, apart from the discipline side. It's history is that the literati, ie poets and artists within ancient China were considered outcasts from society and lived contained by the mountains as hermits. They be expected to bring gifts to the Emperor at regular intervals, whether poetry or art, and on seeing trees of great age growing in the mountains they contracted to give them as gifts to the Emperor, as age is still revered within China. These trees, with fresh soil to grow surrounded by usually grew quickly contained by their new environs, or keeled over for their scarcity of roots, were agreed with pleasure by the Emperor and next his staff were expected to preserve them alive. Because of their experiments we have today penjing and bonsai.
"Penjing" is Chinese and "bonsai" is Japanese. They both be determined the same article........plant or tree in a container. I've done bonsai for 20 years, but don't claim any of the philosophies that you mention. I took Jesus as my Savior several years ago and try to live as close to His teachings as I possibly can.
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