Gardens of Stone, Moss, Sand: 4 Moments of Zen in Kyoto

       The city’s dry gardens seem timeless, but as these relatively new versions show, their design is still evolving. They offer spots for quiet contemplation in an increasingly overtouristed city.

       Kyoto’s dry gardens forgo plants and flowers and instead use elements like gravel, rocks and moss to create contemplative environments.Credit...Andrew Faulk for The New York Times

       Gardens of Stone, Moss, Sand: 4 Moments of Zen in Kyoto

       The city’s dry gardens seem timeless, but as these relatively new versions show, their design is still evolving. They offer spots for quiet contemplation in an increasingly overtouristed city.

       Kyoto’s dry gardens forgo plants and flowers and instead use elements like gravel, rocks and moss to create contemplative environments.Credit...Andrew Faulk for The New York Times

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       By Paula Deitz

       March 26, 2024

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       Once, when the Buddha was asked to preach about a flower he was presented, he instead “gazed at it in silence,” according to the British garden designer Sophie Walker in her book “The Japanese Garden.” In this spiritual moment Zen Buddhism was born, inspiring the serene and eternal dry or rock gardens called karesansui.

       Unlike a garden designed for strolling, which directs visitors along a defined path to take in scenic views and teahouses, a dry garden is viewed while seated on a veranda above, offering the heightened experience of traveling through it in the imagination, revealing its essence in meditation.

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       At Tofuku-ji, the first veranda overlooks the southern garden with clusters of mostly jagged vertical rocks with ripples of raked gravel radiating out.Credit...Andrew Faulk for The New York Times

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       A detail of the Tofuku-ji garden, with its ripples of raked gravel resembling water.Credit...Andrew Faulk for The New York Times

       With rocks artfully placed along expanses of fine gravel raked by monks into ripples representing water, they are sources for contemplation, whether they refer to a specific landscape or are serenely abstract. Ryoan-ji, which dates to about 1500, is the supreme example of the latter among Kyoto temples, with its 15 low rocks in five clusters set in pools of moss within an enclosed rectangle of raked gravel. The puzzle is that only 14 are visible at any one time, no matter where you sit to view it.

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       Unlike a garden designed for strolling, a dry garden is viewed while seated on a veranda above, offering the heightened experience of traveling through it in the imagination.Credit...Andrew Faulk for The New York Times

       Change in Kyoto, Japan’s major city of temple gardens, is a quiet evolution. But a tour of several dry gardens designed within the last century — and even within the last few years — demonstrates that the Zen tradition is timeless when it comes to landscape design, and that moments of contemplation are still possible, even as the crowds grow bigger.

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