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The deeper you look, the more mysterious the garden becomes |
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The rock garden at Ryoan-ji Temple that has made the temple famous worldwide is constructed in the simplified karesansui gardening style, featuring white sand and 15 stones distributed around the garden. However, the history of the garden is a mystery, and no one knows when it was created, who designed it, or even why it was created.
When they first see the garden, most people wonder if you can see all of the 15 stones at the same time. From most positions the number of visible stones is one or two short of the full complement of 15, so it is often taken to represent imperfection. However, another explanation is that it was designed following the Golden ratio (the Golden Mean/Rectangle) design theory seen in the pyramids in Egypt and the Parthenon in Greece. The Golden ratio specifies the construction of structures at a ratio of 1:1618, which brings about a unique sense of stability, and which most people find very beautiful.
In addition, while the rock garden at Ryoan-ji Temple is actually quite narrow and confined, being 25 meters along its east-west axis and only 10 meters along the north-south axis, it employs the laws of perspective, so it looks much bigger than it is. The height of the earthen walls constructed around the garden vary, with the southern part of the west wall lower than the rest, which creates the illusion of greater size.
Whether or not this was all done by design or whether it was a simple chain of coincidences remains a mystery. Nevertheless, the mystique of the garden draws many people to Ryoan-ji Temple even today. |
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| A view of the whole rock garden |
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| A stone on the far side to the east |
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