Gardens of Awakening

"Imagine yourself in Kyåoto, Japan, gazing at a garden of emptiness. How would you understand what you are seeing? What is the history of this contemplative art form, which has flourished for centuries in Kyåoto, the famed center of Zen arts? What aesthetic principles inform it? Through photographs and commentary, Gardens of Awakening guides you through a series of Zen gardens created from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Some are teeming with plants and flowing water, while others have only rocks and sand. All are associated with particular temples and share a certain Zen aesthetic related to the cultivation of awakening. Zen practice and culture have had a powerful influence on various Japanese art forms, including Noh theater, tea ceremony, architecture, ceramic art, painting, calligraphy, and poetry. In this book we discuss gardens in terms of seven qualities that arise from Zen practice: direct, ordinary, vigorous, gleaning, pivotal, nondual, and inexhaustible. Photographer Mitsue Nagase's outstanding color photographs highlight these qualities and, narrated by beloved Zen calligrapher and translator Kaz Tanahashi, help readers to go deep into the heart of Zen and Zen art"--