J and I ran from a local park to the local botanical gardens to see what was left of the blooming cherry trees. We visited the area close to the tea room which also contains a Zen Garden. I have been to the garden numerous times between high school and present day. I have seen this garden a multitude of times, looking at it, over it, beyond it. Even when J and I travelled to Kyoto and saw the Ginkakuji temple, I viewed the “sea of silver sand” and wondered the meaning of these large areas of gravel with rocks arranged within it in a purposeful, random way.
All this time, the gardens meant little to me. I did not see how it lent itself to meditation or represented the struggle between “impermanence and stasis in human life.”[i] And I was okay with this ignorance. But my feelings changed on our run to the gardens a week ago.
I admired the garden and looked at the concentric circles around what I considered the “living objects” of moss, boulders and a bonsai-type cedar. The circles emanated from the living objects, stretching in more encompassing circumferences.
In an instant, I felt the Zen masters knew something about reality I did not. They intuited what Einstein would formalize. They “saw” how particles, waves, molecules, quarks existed beyond the large, splashy and utterly embodied objects which hold and distract sight.
I also thought of my grandmother’s death vision of Christ. When my mother first told the story, she said Granny’s words were “everywhere He goes is love and peace,” and in my mind, maybe even viscerally, I “felt” the force of the love and peace. They had weight, girth, and strength – the forces invisible, but experienced as enveloping. . .
Much like the gravel in the garden – the circles at once emanating out AND radiating in. The material world being both the originator of these forces while also being created and molded by them.
But also and ultimately all are connected and interconnected in the never-ending flow of permanence and impermanence. All material things creating waves, forces which bind us, repel us, link us together – the actions not purely physical, but metaphysical – existing in a plane we cannot see, but sometimes experience.
As Eric Cunningham posits, “One is very cautious about drawing any deep conclusion concerning what all this [Zen Gardening] ‘means,’ knowing that meanings will change.”[ii]
But this revelation strikes me as truth in a moment where so many seek to separate and divide us. We are connected in more ways than we can imagine and it seems wise to act like we are.
4/3/26
[i] https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/cultivating-enlightenment-the-manifold-meaning-of-japanese-zen-gardens/#:~:text=Although%20Zen%20gardens%20as%20landscape,faithful”%20into%20a%20metaphysical%20space.
[ii] Ibid.
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