Patches of paradise: Kyoto’s Zen temple gardens

The gardens of Japan have graced both landscape and life for over a thousand years. Regarded as works of art, they lend insight into the nation’s history and culture. In Japanese Garden Design, landscape architect and author Marc Peter Keane tells us that, “over the course of a 1,500-year history, various gardens were created by people inspired by different turns of events — a new religion, philosophy or a shift in social structure.” In its varied forms, the Japanese garden speaks of the people’s close affinity to nature, and the need to live in harmony with it.    

During a visit to Kyoto, we explored some of the city’s Zen temple gardens. These gardens reflect the spiritual tenets of Zen, and are used as aids to meditation. In everyday life the task of maintaining the order and the beauty of a garden is considered a focal point of meditation.

Before the introduction of Zen Buddhism in Japan, gardens were designed for the pleasure and recreation of the aristocracy. The mansions of the Heian period (794-1185) featured gardens embellished with lakes, ponds, footbridges, flowers and trees chosen for their symbolic meaning. These gardens played host to poetry readings, archery, kickball and cockfights, among other events. By the late Heian period, the Japanese had put together a comprehensive manual on garden design known as Sakuteiki. Some of the principles laid out in its pages still apply to the design of Japanese gardens today.

The refinement and peace of the Heian period degenerated into a time of turbulence and difficulty during the Kamakura period (1185-1333). Power shifted from the aristocracy to the warrior classes, bringing an end to the pleasure gardens of the nobility. In the 15th century, the internal struggle for power led to the Onin War (1467-1477) that left half of Kyoto in ruins. The warrior classes who then held power favored the martial arts and a simpler way of life. Gardens were transformed into smaller and confined spaces. They were designed to bring calm and serenity to the mind and the spirit. As the Kyoto-based writer Judith Clancy points out, “the goal, then — whether in battle or sweeping a path — was a focused mind.” The new garden was composed mainly of rocks and gravel, elements that were combined to create an abstract and distilled version of the natural landscape. The dry garden landscape was inspired by the ink-and-wash landscape paintings of the Sung Dynasty, brought from China to Japan by Zen monks. The empty spaces are represented by white gravel, and the mountains depicted by rocks with forms that resembled the painter’s brushstrokes.  Like paintings, Zen gardens are viewed from a fixed position.  In the documentary, Dream Window: Reflections on the Japanese Garden, Sobin Yamada, abbot of Kyoto’s Shinju-an Temple, sheds light on the meaning of the Zen garden. “In Zen, we don’t look for God or the Buddha outside — we look within. Paradise is where we live, that’s why we tend our gardens so carefully and treat them with such artistry. When we meditate, we can’t separate ourselves from nature. The entire universe is concentrated in a garden. The garden allows us to contemplate nature, to become one part of nature.”

When you first come upon a dry landscape garden or Karesansui, it may strike you as mystifying. The stark composition of carefully raked gravel, and rocks of various shapes seem completely in tune with contemporary aesthetics, although it was conceived centuries ago.

Our first stop was the gardens of the Tofuku-ji Temple founded in the Kamakura period (1185-1333), the beginning of the Middle Ages in Japan when Zen Buddhism began to flourish. Crossing a covered bridge that spans a valley of lush maples, we made our way to the Founder’s Hall garden.  From the viewing platform, we looked out to a garden bedecked with a pond, shrubs, topiaries, miniature trees and rocks in the foreground. Tall trees stood in the background, framing the landscape.

At the other end of the compound, we came to a dry landscape garden designed in 1939 by Mirei Shigemori.  Mirei is known as one of the most prominent landscape designers in postwar Japan. In 1938, he was asked to recreate the Abbot’s Hall garden. Known as the Garden of Eight Phases, it refers to the eight phases of the Buddha’s life. Mirei designed a dry landscape on the south side of the Abbot’s Hall in the Zen tradition. The white gravel is said to represent the sea. The stone arrangement on the eastern corner of the garden symbolizes the Chinese mythological islands of the immortals — a classic feature of Japanese gardens. On the western side, the moss-covered mounds depict the five most important temples of the Rinzai Zen tradition. In the north garden, he reused paving stones to create a checkerboard pattern of stones and moss. Although this was based on a traditional Japanese design known as ichimatsu, it exudes a modern sensibility and has been likened to the abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian. In the eastern garden, known as the Garden of the Big Dipper, Mirei reused seven cylindrical stone columns taken from an old temple outhouse. It is the first garden in Japan to represent the constellations. In the different parts of this garden, Mirei employs age-old tradition and old objects, but imbues it with a modern perspective.  

  At Ryoan-ji Temple, you come to the most famous dry landscape garden in Japan. The Zen garden was created in the late 1500s though its designer remains a mystery. It is composed of rocks and white gravel set in a small rectangular space. At the beginning of spring, a cherry blossom tree leans over the earthen wall, and nothing else adorns the space. The garden is said to inspire philosophical meditation. When we arrived at the site, locals and visitors sat on the steps of the viewing platform gazing at the dry landscape garden. A brochure handed to us at the entrance suggests that it is up to each visitor to discover the meaning of the garden. Ryoan-ji’s garden is made up of 15 rocks arranged so that only 14 can be seen from any angle. It is said that the 15th rock is visible to those who attain spiritual enlightenment. The wall that encloses the garden was made of clay that was boiled in oil. Over time, the oil seeped out and created a grayish cast on the surface of the wall — a unique feature of the site that speaks of wabi-sabi, the beauty found in age and imperfection. 

We first saw the images of Saiho-ji in the final scenes of the movie, Memoirs of a Geisha. We would later learn that it is the oldest Zen temple garden in Kyoto and one that is designated “a special place of scenic beauty” in Japan. The temple is best known for its moss garden where over a hundred types of moss cover the grounds thus creating a dream-like setting. The garden is the work of Muso Soseki, the 14th-century Zen priest, poet, calligrapher, teacher and gardener. Soseki took over the temple in 1334, when the garden had been neglected for a long period. He is said to have restored the pond and the islands in the lower part of the garden. He built pavilions and shrines nestled among the trees, and on the hillside above the garden. To preserve the tranquility of the site, visitors are limited. Reservations are required by application seven days before your visit. Upon arrival, each visitor is required to copy a sutra (sacred text) by hand using ink and a soft brush. You are also asked to write down a wish, your name and address. Then you can freely roam around the garden. It took us over an hour to explore the grounds, crossing stone-lined paths and footbridges leading up to a hill from where we saw sweeping views of the garden. Sometime in 1340, Soseki built a dry waterfall. It is now the oldest surviving example of a dry cascade, an arrangement of rocks that conjures the flow of a large mass of water. Towering cedar trees interspersed with maples stand above the grounds, teahouses and pavilions enhance the natural setting, yet the most striking aspect of the site is the pond that lies at the heart of the moss garden. Afternoon light falls on the water, reflecting the trees and the verdant landscape. In the mid-19th century, the site was abandoned, and moss began to creep in, eventually blanketing the grounds. The passage of time, and the forces of nature, transformed the garden and they way we see it today.

Intimate in scale, and with far less visitors than the larger temple gardens, a serene atmosphere prevails at Honen-in. It was founded in 1680 in honor of Honen (1133-1212), the Buddhist patriarch and reformer who once led 24-hour-long chants in homage to the Amida Buddha on this site. The temple is situated in the hills of eastern Kyoto, minutes away from the center of the city, yet a world unto itself. You approach the temple through a stone walkway where camphor, pine, maple, nettle and bamboo trees line the path. This leads to an entrance gate raised a few steps above the ground. From there you’ll see two rectangular mounds of white sand.  The mounds are intended to purify the body and soul. The patterns designed above the mounds depict the images of water in the form of waves and ripples. It is said that every few weeks, a monk is tasked to change the pattern according to themes drawn from nature. You continue walking over a bridge above a pond, and onto a garden path leading to the main hall housing the statue of the temple’s main deity, Amida Nyorai. At Honen-in, you may be in the grounds of an urban temple, yet it feels as though you are in the midst of a forest — enveloped by greenery, in a site devoted to spiritual practices from centuries back.

Kyoto’s temple gardens are expressions of Japanese life — its artistic, cultural and spiritual values. They are places of beauty and quiet refuge. As you gaze upon these sites, you are transported from your world into spaces where nature and man-made beauty come together. In those moments, time stands still, and you are one with the garden. You could say that this is a kind of meditation.