A STUDY ON CONCEPTION OF THE ZEN SECT GARDENS IN JAPAN. Case study No.3 for Koho-An Garden in Daitoku-ji, Kyoto

Abstract

The ancient Chinese defines the spirit of Zen as the following; Zen is the name of heart. The heart is body of the Zen.
Therefore, the essence of Zen is “Mu” shown as “FURITSUMONJI KYOGAIBETSUDEN”. It means that the spirit of Zen is free or nothing like an echo in the deep valley, or a reflected image upon the water.
Thus, there are no appreciation rules for the Zen sect gardens, and yet no writtcn records on the conception for their gardens.
The author celieves that the Zen sect garden is a reflection of the heart of man, that is Zen priest, whose phyrosophy is symbolised in his garden design.
It is especially true for the famous Zen disciples, founders of new temples, who wish to express their conception of Zen creeds and teachings, or history of their spiritual awakenning for their temples.
Here, they played very important role upon the formation of garden compos it jon; they were the composers and ofen the landscape architects. The gardeners took part of only engineer.
Therefore, the Zen sect gardens are a part of symbole of phyrosophy of Zen. Change of garden forms symbolises history of spiritual awakennig of priest, and in the change of his phyrosophy, it is hidden the heart of Zen.
The author believes that the need of research upon these hypotheses are necessary in terms of spirit of Zen that is symbolised in the garden forms quite logically.
This study is divided into the following parts;
1. source of theme in relation to the Zen phyrosophy,
2. theme of garden,
3. conception for imaginative garden by the founder priest,
4. composition in relation to the imagination.
The Koho-An Garden was constructed as a KareSansui Styled of the Lin-Zai Zen sect Zen-Rin Garden by Enshu Kobori in 1612.
The priest, Kogetsu Sogan was invited by Enshu Kobori as the founder of the Koho-An which used to be constructed in the Ryuko-In (temple).
The relationship between the garden composition and the Zen spirit is identified as the following.
The source of theme for the garden is asked for in fhe texts of “Daitokokushi Goroku”, “Linzai roku”, and “Hekiganroku”.
The theme of garden is “musabetsubyoto”, everything is equal in this world.
The garden conception is spiritual awakenning, Satori in Japanese.
Image of the garden composition is sought in the landscape of “Syoso-Hakkei” in Chaina.(the further description on details is omitted in the English summary.)