Sunday 6 October 2013

In a monastery garden

South Oxfordshire's rock gardens (枯山水 karesansui), often called 'zen gardens', create miniature stylized landscapes 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. They imitate the intimate essence of nature, not its actual appearance, and to serve as an aid to meditation about the true meaning of life.