Japanese asymmetries

Nature creates asymmetry only when necessity forces it. But unlike nature, the Japanese are doing something more: In many famous cases, they created asymmetry deliberately, with full intention, in order to create tension, balance, life, where the thing would otherwise be dead.

The rocks are placed in the raked sand with intentional, and deliberate, departure from asymmetry.

So what is the right explanation, and the right way of thinking about the symmetries? If you can use the same argument to prove anything at all, whether the thing comes out symmetrical or asymmetrical, then what is there but words here?
Can we identify any general, operational rule which we can follow, which would tell us whether to make a particular robe symmetrical or asymmetrical, or a particular design symmetrical or asymmetrical?
We must admit this is the crux of the problem — but, also, that for the present there is no obvious answer.

In theory, then, the most general representation of a tree would show the archetypal tree, which is not perfectly symmetrical. It would be hard to recognize if we made it perfectly symmetrical, which is a more unusual case; so the asymmetrical case shows us the more typical, more fundamental tree.
Once again, this is true. And if we are making a picture of a tree we are right. But the tree itself does not become asymmetrical because it is supposed to illustrate a general case. The tree is asymmetrical because there is some particular force making it so.
So nature hasn’t helped us all that much. What happens in the natural case is not the same as what happens in the Japanese case. And yet, we must admit that the Japanese are trying, and succeed, in imitating nature. That is why they do it.
But the Catholic priest, who places the cross on his vestment, is he imitating nature or not? And is the profound symmetry which he creates more valid, or less valid, than the case of the asymmetrical kimono?

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/17 Simplicity#