Zen Gardens (1)

   

I thought I would begin this blog with a few pictures and ramblings about zen gardens - so many to choose from. I often love the totally non-utilitarian structure of many of the gardens. It makes me think of the little zen koan "a clearly enlightened person falls into the well - how is this so?" but why that should be so I have no idea.

The Japanese seem to love their cherry blossoms.

"Seen with the eye of faith
the cherry blossoms
are always about to fall"

(Echu)

          

 Another zen garden below.......... 

A feature of many zen gardens is a meandering path, one that in fact leads nowhere.  Which is much like my own Pure Land path, a way that is no way at all, a way of no calculation, a way more of trust and grace. The Catholic monk Thomas Merton once received a picture of a house from the young daughter of an older correspondent. Merton wrote back saying that though he thought the house was lovely he was sorry to see that there was no path to the door. In the next letter there was another picture of the house but this time with a path leading up to the door. Merton then wrote of "the road to joy that is mysteriously revealed to us without our exactly realising it."

St John of the Cross once wrote that if we wished to be sure of the road we tread on "we should close our eyes and walk in the dark ".     
         

 

Another familiar feature of zen gardens are stepping stones. Below is an example and here I a reminded of the episode in a James Bond movie when James, in a sticky situation, leaps across from a tiny island upon the heads of a group of crocodiles, thus escaping from becoming their meal.

Moving on, a respectable zen garden will also feature circles........

The gravestone of the poet and artist David Jones was a circle, which is significant. David Jones once said that everything constituted a sort of circle in some way. "I need to think that everything is complete somewhere".

(The Japanese zen master Dogen spoke of "continuous practice"........."On the great road of Buddha ancestors, there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moments gap; continuous practice is the circle of the way")

There is the suggestion that though we live ("common sensically") in a linear time frame, Reality itself is not simply linear.

Just to finish for now, with a laid back meditating Gnome who would perhaps feel at home in any self-respecting zen garden, and also another little guy who reminds me that though a garden can bring reflection and relaxation, it can also demand not a little sweat and elbow grease.....