Thursday, November 6, 2014

Clam and peaceful Japanese rock garden, the heart of zen

Gardens of raked sand (or gravel) and stone are referred to as karesansui (literally, “dry landscape”) gardens. This style was developed in Japan in the later Kamakura period (1185–1333). Many Chinese landscape paintings of the Southern Sung dynasty were imported to Japan in the 14th and 15th centuries by Zen Buddhist priests, and they were emulated by Japanese artists like Sesshu (1420-1506). An important Japanese aesthetic principle underlying both landscape paintings and dry landscape gardens is yohaku-no-bi, literally “the beauty of blank space.”

Dry landscape" garden, often called a zen garden, creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water.


Once you visit such gardens, you might feel clam and peace. In the market, you can get mini zen garden kits. You can try to those kits to fulfil your zen spirit. 







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