![]() ![]() Today, the Japanese “Zen garden” might be more familiar as a run-of-the-mill desk toy, but thanks to new technology, you can purchase a mini Japanese garden with specific types of moss and authentic volcanic rock (no, really!) from Mt. ![]() From all this, plus some extremely meticulous raking, a scene comes alive for those willing to sit and look on patiently. This deep regard for the conceptual has no greater expression than it does in the karesansui, or dry garden, sometimes translated as “Japanese rock garden” or “Japanese Zen garden.” By any name, this is the garden through which mountains, oceans, and even plants are expressed through gravel, deliberately placed rocks, and-thanks to rain and spores on the wind-the occasional patch of moss. Unlike its Western counterparts, the Japanese garden is a child of philosophy as well as aesthetics. Though it is technically “dry,” the Japanese rock garden is no different. As with other types of Japanese gardens, it contains water, rock, and plants. The Japanese tea garden is meant to be viewed from one position, framed so perfectly by the sliding doors of a tea room, that it is almost a painting. Sometimes, it is represented by iconic, slow-raked ripples of sand. Sometimes, the water in the Japanese garden is water. Ice-clear, it trickles through awakening flora, spills down narrow cuts in the slope, splits and rejoins around a giant stone, eventually rushing into a river and into the sea. The planet leans in toward the sun, and in a Japanese rock garden, mountain runoff makes its way down the path of least resistance. Wind and water shape steep slopes and forests. For millions of years, the crash continues, and eventually the rubble rises past the surface and into the open air. Where once was flat seafloor, there is a mountain. At the collision site, one plate crumbles, and the other is driven beneath. ![]() In this geological game of chicken, neither relents. Over the centuries, however, visitors have discerned images as diverse as a tigress escorting her cubs across water and the Chinese character for "heart" or "mind." Since the anonymous designer left no explanation, the garden's exact meaning remains a mystery, which no doubt contributes to its enduring allure.Fathoms deep, great plates of the earth’s crust slowly advance toward one another. Relying on computer models, they found that the garden's rocks-when viewed from the proper angle-subconsciously evoke the tranquil outline of a branching tree. In 2002, a research team at Kyoto University claimed to have cracked the Zen code. From a distance, the rocks resemble islands, the sand a tranquil sea. Measuring 98 by 32 feet, the Ryoan-ji garden is about the size of a tennis court and is composed solely of 15 large and small rocks, some encircled by moss, grouped in five clusters on a bed of carefully raked white sand. "While there are other similar gardens of great beauty," says James Ulak, curator of Japanese art at Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler galleries, "Ryoan-ji remains the ur-site of the type-powerful, abstract, Zen Buddhist landscapes designed to invoke deep meditation." The most famous of these can be found in Kyoto at the 15th-century Ryoan-ji, the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon. Zen rock gardens, or karesansui (translated as "dry-mountain-water"), originated in medieval Japan and are renowned for their simplicity and serenity. ![]()
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