Ryoanji -
Stones in the Sand

"Let us sit down quietly and contemplate this garden of sand and stones," starts the pamphlet handed out by Ryoanji. Unfortunately, nothing could be more difficult. This small temple with its exquisite stone garden, is daily overrun by hordes of tourists. Whole schools, cohorts of kids in sailor's uniforms, march over the poor wooden floors. The building shakes and squeaks, to the stomping of the feet are added shouts, laughter, the empty boisterousness of bored kids and tourists alike.

The narrow verandah of the Hojo or Abbot's Quarters, from which the famous garden has to be viewed, is so crowded, that the visitors are almost pushed into the carefully raked sand. Out of a mistaken educational impulse, the temple unkindly adds to the cacophony by piping an endless taped explanation through a loudspeaker system. What a pity that Ryoanji does not have the sense for a more restricted visiting policy, one that would keep large groups away, and limit the number of people allowed inside at any given time to at most twenty persons.

Until then, we will have to look elsewhere for Zen and had better enjoy Ryoanji's garden from pictures. This leaves us, however, with one important question: is the garden worth all the hype? What does it mean?

Ryoanji's temple building

An Anonymous Garden
Considering the attention Ryoanji now attracts, it is surprising that until the middle of the twentieth century, it was virtually forgotten. Ryoanji was built in 1450 by Hosokawa Katsumoto (1430 - 1473), one of the powerful warlords of the time, in the grounds of an older estate he had obtained. He invited a Myoshinji abbot, Gensho, to take up residence.

The temple was destroyed in the Onin Wars (1467 - 1477) - a vicious civil war during which also the temple's founder met his death -, but rebuilt in 1499; it flourished, thanks to the patronage of the Hosokawa family, as well as Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. In 1797 a disastrous fire destroyed most of the temple's buildings after which structures from another temple were used for the rebuilding - so that today Ryoanji is much smaller than in its heyday.

The above does not say anything about the famous garden. There is no record whatsoever when it was laid out and scholarly opinion is seriously divided. The same holds true for its creator: the question who designed Japan's most famous garden is a deep riddle. There are some attenuating circumstances: it was not 'done' for a gentleman to lay out gardens, as this was considered inferior work - gardeners themselves came from the lowest strata of society.

Ryoanji's garden has been tentatively ascribed to the famous landscape painter Soami (1455 - 1525), but there are numerous conflicting opinions and all proof is lacking. It seems, however, probable that the garden was not laid out when the temple was originally built, but either at the time of its reconstruction after the Onin Wars or even a few decades later.

Islands in the Waves

Stones in the Sand
What does this anonymous garden look like? Today we see an oblong space of raked white gravel, in which fifteen stones have been placed. The garden is enclosed on the far side and on the right by an old, discolored mud wall behind which a row of trees closes off the view, on the left by the wall of a corridor and the verandah of the Hojo (or Abbot's Quarters, the main building of Ryoanji).

The stones are arranged in five groups, but these five are better considered as three sets: to the left is a group of five stones arranged around the largest (and thus main) stone of the whole garden; to the right are three groups of three, two and three stones, lying so close together that they form the second set - one of these groups contains the second largest stone of the garden, thereby providing a balance with the left side; and in the middle of the garden is a group of two low, flat stones, lying close to the mudwall. The mud wall, by the way, has been artistically discolored by oil that has seeped through, but this 'abstract painting' was not part of the original design.

A Whiff of Zen
Interpretations run all the gamut from an old Confucian one ('a mother tiger with her cubs crossing a river'), to Zen ('it is impossible to see all 15 stones at the same time, just as we can not perceive all of reality') and the very modern, that treats the garden as an abstract painting into which all visitors are free to read their own interpretation. Of course, visitors are free to find their own solution to the garden's riddle.

But I am interested in what the garden originally meant: what was the intention of its creator? Then the above three 'explanations' can all be discarded: abstractionism is a phenomenon of the 20th century, people in previous ages did not know the Rorschach test; to them everything had a precise meaning. The tiger interpretation dates from the Edo period (long after the garden's creation), mistakenly reading the Confucian morality of its own age into the garden's design.

As regards the Zen interpretation (which appeals most to me), if one views the garden from the verandah, it is indeed impossible to see all fifteen stones. But the point is that the garden was not meant to be viewed from the verandah; that is only how we are forced to see it today. The garden was meant to be seen from the inside of the Hojo, sitting comfortably on the tatami - and in that case, all stones are visible.

Water basin with the Zen text
'I just know satisfaction'

The Case of Borrowed Scenery
The important matter is, that not only our viewing position has changed (from Hojo to verandah), but that the garden itself has also changed considerably. Now a completely enclosed space, so that all attention is automatically focused on the stones, the garden originally was meant as a garden with a 'borrowed view' or shakkei. In other words, it was open to the outside. The trees behind the back-wall did not exist, and neither did the corridor wall on the left (remember that the present buildings are not the original ones).

The view was open to Higashiyama on the left, Arashiyama, and closer-by, the pagoda of Ninnaji on the right, and in front, in the far distance, Otokoyama with its famous Hachiman Shrine (to the south of Kyoto). There may have been some trees, in order to frame these views in typical shakkei-style (such as in the case of Entsuji), but in principle the garden served as a base for viewing the wider scene, and was not enclosed. The viewer would sit in the middle of the Hojo, opposite the two stones in the middle of the garden. The stone arrangement would then be in a fan-shaped arrangement before him, supporting the view beyond the garden's low wall.

So what do the stones mean originally? Free from deep Zen meanings, they were an esthetic arrangement (fan-shaped, the big stone on the left balanced by the larger grouping of stones on the right, the two stones in the middle on purpose very low in order to enhance the perspective and make the garden seem broader than it is; they also serve to pull the groups to the left and right together), meant to support a view of distant hills. This does not diminish the originality of the garden: it was revolutionary to have a garden with no plants or other living elements (the moss around the stones is also a recent addition), a garden with only stones and sand.

Stones in the Sand

Towards a New Meaning
The original meaning being restored, we are back in the present, and knowing the origins, we gladly rise above them. We are now grateful that the trees enclose the garden, so that we can see only the stones and nothing outside. After all, the 'borrowed scenery' has been destroyed by the modern city, the original garden has lost its meaning.

In concentrating on the stones alone, and on the sand between them, a whole universe of new meanings is born.