Ryōan-ji Rock Garden

March 9, 2008, Kyoto, Japan. While we did manage to find a bunch of very peaceful and very beautiful gardens in Kyoto, it's worth mentioning that some of the most famous gardens are, for better or worse, heavily trafficked tourist destinations and they're almost impossible to experience as originally intended. (Whether or not I'd be capable of the correct experience, regardless of crowd size, is a whole other question.) Anyway, one of the world's most famous rock gardens is at Ryōan-ji temple in northwest Kyoto. My simplified understanding: the garden has a total of 15 rocks (fifteen is a number associated with "completeness" in Buddhism), but from the intended viewing area, a person can only see up to 14 rocks at any one time, no matter where he is standing. Certainly a potent symbolic concept to ponder, but given the crowds at Ryōan-ji, you may be better off taking a quick mental snapshot and heading over to one of the Kyoto's less-traveled gardens and pondering/meditating/what-having-you there instead.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• japan
• japanese
• garden
• ryoan-ji
• ryoanji
• temple
• rock
• rocks