Designing with Style

Cultivating Enlightenment: The Manifold Meaning of Japanese Zen Gardens

While Zen gardens have been a fixture of Japanese aesthetics since the Muromachi Period (1336–1573), the purposes and meanings of these austere landscapes have been far less fixed, and indeed have changed somewhat since their first appearance as places for meditation in the Zen temples of medieval Japan.

For those of us who have been fortunate enough to visit such magnificent sites as Ryōanji or Tenryūji, the primary function of Zen gardens today seems to be to remind the busloads of tourists who visit these gardens how remote their hectic modern lives are from the tranquility that is promised— but not quite delivered—by the Zen temple environs. Unless one has some pull with the monks and can visit the temple off-hours, to appreciate these gardens in the state of serene reflection that they are supposed to enhance is more or less impossible. It is the glossy photograph, perhaps—and not necessarily a color photograph—that best evokes the contemplative quality of the Zen garden.

Kennin-ji Temple garden in Kyoto, Japan.
Source: Stock photo. © coward_lion/123RF.

The image of the Zen garden, however it is consumed, “speaks” for itself, and provides us with a representation of spiritual quality that is best experienced rather than discursively argued. This is only appropriate since the transmission of Zen wisdom is supposed to be nonverbal. Since the moment the monk Mahākāsyapa received the first dharma transmission from the Buddha himself, marked by a silent smile in response to the beholding of a white flower, this progenitor of Zen and his successors have privileged the wordless experience of satori (enlightenment) over the dialectical understanding of its logic. Yet burdened as we are with the heavy baggage of language and history, we have to try to understand the elusive elements of Zen enlightenment with the expedient means of words in the pedestrian contexts of mundane reality. This essay will examine the Zen garden in several selected meanings: as an artifact of landscaping, as an aid to Buddhist contemplation, and, finally, as a kind of historical “text” to be read by the beholder. It goes without saying, perhaps, that every act of beholding—whether inspired by contemplation or sightseeing—adds new dimensions to the meaning of these gardens.

he Zen Garden as Landscape

When we think of Zen gardens, the first image that generally comes to mind is the iconic (in every sense of the word) karesansui garden of the Japanese Zen temple grounds. Karesansui, which is translated as “dry landscape” (literally “dry mountains and water”), refers to a constrained, highly stylized method of landscape gardening that conjures from simple materials like rock and gravel a multiform, small-scale natural environment. The most famous of these, perhaps, is the garden at Ryōanji, which calls to mind a vast ocean dotted by small islands, or Daisen-in, which features a stone waterfall “pouring” into a vigorously flowing mountain river. The use of rocks as the dominant feature of the garden has both historical and aesthetic origins.

Art historians tell us that rocks were highly valued in ancient China and were, in the view of Daoist sages, the very bones of the earth. In this understanding, there is something fundamental to rock that no artifact or even plant can reproduce in terms of revealing the essence of nature and reality. The only thing comparable would be water; rock, like water, is completely nonartificial, nonfabricated, and essentially pure. Yet rock, symbolized by the towering, immovable mountain, exists in contrast to water, which is ever in motion and ever seeking the lowest place available. These two elemental features thus stand in for the basic polarities of yin and yang that are so cherished in the Daoist worldview. When a Zen garden uses rock to represent water, it reminds us that Zen, unlike Daoism, seeks to transcend the dualities of nature in a deeper stratum of consciousness. Rock, hyperstable in its essential form, can better suggest the perfect and undivided stillness of the contemplative mind. It is also worth noting that if the Chinese Daoist of old venerated the elements of nature, he or she did so with an abiding respect for the uncultivated wildness of nature. The Zen garden does not celebrate the wild or the untamed, but reconfigures nature to use as a means of passing beyond nature. Not all Zen gardens are karesansui. Many of the most famous Zen temple gardens incorporate other natural elements, for example, quiet streams and ponds at Tenryūji, a vibrant moss lawn at Saihōji, thick forests at Nanzenji, and stunning groves of Japanese maple at Tōfukuji. Almost all these temple gardens include essential architectural features such as bridges, which suggest a physical crossing into another world, or open porches, which bring the human element into direct contact with the constructed natural environment. Although Zen gardens as landscape vary in size, components, and design, they all share a primary spiritual function. This function, as has been suggested earlier, is to invite the beholder of the garden to enter into a state of meditative stillness, and, ideally, participate in the perfection of wisdom that the Buddha experienced when he attained the breakthrough of enlightenment.

Reference: https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/cultivating-enlightenment-the-manifold-meaning-of-japanese-zen-gardens/