Zen Garden Design. Shunmyo Masuno
stone-clad façade of one of the towers and the exterior space of the garden.
After completing his university degree in agriculture in 1975 and his formal Zen Buddhist training in 1979, Masuno opened his design firm, Japan Landscape Consultants, in 1982. Since then Masuno has integrated his practice and teaching of Zen Buddhism with his process of designing and constructing gardens and landscapes. While his day starts in his waraji and samue, once he completes his morning shugyō, he changes into his priest robes with geta wooden sandals and moves fluidly back and forth between leading ceremonies at the temple and leading his design team in his adjacent office. If the day includes a visit to a construction site, Masuno changes back to samue and pulls on jika-tabi split-toed work shoes. The time spent placing rocks and plants at the construction site is exciting for Masuno as it draws on all his knowledge as a priest and a garden designer and is the culmination of his Zen training. Masuno’s goal is to understand and best express the essence, indeed the kokoro, of each garden element in order to create places where viewers can experience a similar mindful connection to their own consciousness that is part of Zen practice.
A polished stone shelf emerges from a textured boulder in the Sansui Seion Ari garden in Hong Kong, with its smooth surface and rectilinear form in quiet contrast to the rough, irregularly shaped rock.
With the aim of helping people achieve a balanced life in the twenty-first century, Masuno’s objective of creating space, both physical and mental, for meditation and contemplation within the chaos of daily life, now drives his work as a priest and a designer. He sees the toll that the stress and pressures of today’s busy urban lifestyles take, and he endeavors to provide access to calm and tranquility through his gardens and landscapes, as well as his writings. Having authored more than 100 books on the practice and teachings of Zen Buddhism, as well as on his own design process and completed gardens, Shunmyo Masuno is a well-respected authority on the topic of mindful living.
Zen Garden Design explores Shunmyo Masuno’s design ideas and processes through a conversation with Masuno and architect Terunobu Fujimori and an in-depth review of Masuno’s philosophy of garden design and design process. By focusing on fifteen unique gardens and contemplative landscapes in six different countries, designed by Shunmyo Masuno since 2012, Zen Garden Design provides an in-depth examination of Masuno’s gardens and landscapes as spaces for meditation and contemplation—places for the mindful consideration of one’s own life.
Shunmyo Masuno understands the contemporary world to leave little time or space for self-reflection, which causes people to suffer greatly. In his words, “The garden is a special spiritual place where the mind dwells”7—a place to leave behind the information-laden contemporary world and spend time with one’s thoughts, searching for truth and serenity. This is well summarized by Stephen Addiss and John Daido Loori in The Zen Art Book: The Art of Enlightenment (2009):
Most important, what is being offered in the powerful and profound teachings of the Zen arts is simply a process of discovery and transformation. If we can appreciate that process and are willing to engage it, we will find before us a way to return to our inherent imperfection, the intrinsic wisdom of our lives. And that is no small thing.8
In an unusual location on the roof of a train station, the dry karesansui-style Zagetsutei garden provides a serene space for meditation, separated from the buzz and activity of the Tsurumi area within the city of Yokohama.
A Note on Language
Japanese names in the text are written to follow the typical Japanese order of the family name followed by the given name (the opposite of English). Exceptions are made in the case of people who are well known outside of Japan by their given name followed by the family name, such as Shunmyo Masuno, Terunobu Fujimori, and Toyo Ito.
Japanese words used in the text are written in Roman script (romaji), based on phonetic pronunciation using a modified Hepburn system. Consonants are pronounced similarly to English, with a g always hard. A macron is used to denote a long vowel, except in words like Tokyo and Kyoto, which have become common in English. An exception is Kenkohji, the temple where Masuno presides as head priest, which uses an h following the o rather than a macron (ō). Vowels are pronounced as follows:
a is ă as in father (ā denotes a lengthened sound; also written as aa)
i is ē as in greet (ī denotes a lengthened sound; also written as ii)
u is ū as in boot (ū denotes a lengthened sound; also written as uu)
e is ĕ as in pet (also written as é)
o is ō as in mow (ō denotes a lengthened sound; also written as oo or ou)
The glossary includes Japanese characters for each word—kanji ideographs originating from China and the two kana syllabaries based on phonetics, hiragana (now used for Japanese words or parts of Japanese words) and katakana (now used primarily for loanwords from other languages).
Japanese nouns can be either singular or plural.
For clarity, I have included the word temple following the name of a temple, for example, “Ryōanji temple” and “Daisenin temple,” even though ji in Ryōanji and in in Daisenin mean “temple.” Similarly, the word garden may follow the name of a garden, as in “Chōkantei garden,” although tei means “garden.”
I utilize the definitions of rock and stone laid out by David A. Slawson in Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens: Design Principles and Aesthetic Values (1987, p. 200). He states: “Japanese ishi (seki) I translate as ‘rock(s)’ when they are used in the garden to suggest rock formations in nature, and ‘stone(s)’ when they are used (for their naturally or artificially flattened upper surfaces) as stepping-stones or paving stones, or when they have been sculpted (stone lanterns, water basins, pagodas) or split or sawed (stone slabs used for bridges, paving, curbing).”
Mira Locher
One of many varied views of the Sansui Seion Ari garden at a condominium complex in Hong Kong, a long rectangular window frames a rock arrangement designed to be seen at eye level when sitting in the adjacent common area.
PART ONE
GARDENS IN PRIVATE RESIDENCES
“Just what kind of concepts are implied in the laying out of Zen gardens? In Zen, the working of the human mind is called ishiki or awareness. The word ishiki is made up of two characters, one meaning ‘mind’ and the other meaning to ‘know’ or to ‘discriminate.’ In the Zen sense of the word, the first character refers to action which adheres to something and the second refers to the judgement. For example, the statement ‘That person concerns and interests me’ would be the action, and ‘I therefore like him’ would be the judgement. However, when this awareness permeates every nook and cranny of the mind, it in turn becomes an unconscious act because the limits of consciousness enter the realms of the unconscious. Consequently, creating Zen gardens is not like a rich man’s hobby which attracts people’s attention. You have to go straight to the heart of the matter and create something which will have a lasting impression on people. Zen gardens should be at one with the people who view them, and an unforgettable garden is one that becomes an essential part of a person’s life. This is also true of the lives of those looking at the garden and its creator,