Japanese rock garden

A Karesansui 枯山水, Japanese rock garden, or Zen garden is an enclosed shallow sandbox containing sand, gravel, rocks, and occasionally grass or other natural elements. The main elements of karesansui are rocks and sand, with the sea symbolized not by water but by sand raked in patterns that suggest rippling water. Plants are much less important (and sometimes nonexistent) in many karesansui gardens. Karesansui gardens are often, but not always, meant to be viewed from a single, seated perspective, and the rocks are often associated with and named after various Chinese mountains.

The Karesansui garden in Ryōan-ji Temple

A famous Japanese rock garden is at Ryōan-ji temple in northwest Kyoto, Japan. Ryoanji is a temple belonging to the Myoshinji school of the Rinzai branch of the Zen sect, famous for its Zen garden.

The garden is constructed in Karesansui style. It is 30 meters long from east to west and 10 meters from north to south. There are no trees, just 15 irregularly shaped rocks of varying sizes, some surrounded by moss, arranged in a bed of white gravel/sand that is raked every day.

The rocks of various sizes are arranged on small white pebbles in five groups, each comprising five, two, three, two, and three rocks. The garden contains 15 rocks arranged on the surface of white pebbles in such a manner that visitors can see only 14 of them at once, from whichever angle the garden is viewed. According to legend, only when someone attains spiritual enlightment as a result of deep Zen meditation can he see the last invisible stone with his mind's eye.

The garden is not attributed to any single designer, although it is commonly believed that a leading monochrome artist named Soami (1480?-1525), in association with Daisen-in, designed and laid out the garden. However the temple records are contradictory and indicate some other makers, and the back of one of the 15 stones is inscribed with the names of Kotaro and Hikojiro, who might have been two of the workers that did the actual construction.

Layout

There have been many attempts to explain the Zen garden's layout. Some of these are:

The gravel represents ocean and the rocks represent the islands of Japan
The rocks represent a mother tiger with her cubs, swimming to a dragon
The rocks form part of the kanji for heart or mind

See Ryōan-ji for a mathematical analysis of a rock garden.

A recent suggestion by Gert van Tonder of Kyoto University and Michael J. Lyons, a researcher based in Kyoto, is that the rocks form the subliminal image of a tree. This image cannot be consciously perceived when looking at them; the researchers claim the subconscious mind is able to see a subtle association between the rocks. They believe this is responsible for the calming effect of the garden.

Zen garden

The Japanese rock garden have become known in the West as Zen gardens. The term was probably first used in 1935, by the American writer Loraine Kuck in her book 100 Gardens of Kyoto, and has since also found its way to Japanese language (zen niwa). The term zen gardens have later been adapted also to more naturalistic planted Japanese style landscapes containing rocks. This can be seen in the image (right), a small zen garden that is a part of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Not seen in this view are several large boulders to the left at the shore of the rock bed enclosed by the bordering shrubs.

External links

Neuroscience unlocks secrets of Zen garden (Requires subscription)
Neuroscience unlocks secrets of Zen garden (Mirror)
Buddhist Garden and Sacred Space
Zen garden images and meaning
Photo Gallery of Japanese Zen Gardens
Criticisms of the term "Zen Garden" in Japanese Garden Journal
Stanford University article on the history and meaning of some Japanese gardens

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The Karesansui garden in Ryōan-ji Temple

Layout

Zen garden

External links