Garden

Garden, gardens. The creation of order, beauty, and utility, out of what would otherwise be wildness and perhaps wilderness, has supplied both a metaphor and a practice to religions. This is particularly obvious in the landscape and the stone gardens of Zen Buddhism. Zen saw the garden as an extension of the same life which seeks to discern and realize the buddha-nature inherent in all things. Thus early Zen gardens (e.g. in Kyōto) create places for the extension of contemplation. This led into kare sansui, the dry landscape, where meditation, both in the making and in the observing, is paramount. Famous examples are at Daisen-in (c.1513) in Kyōto and Ryōan-ji (c.1490). In the West, gardens reflect the Garden of Eden (Gan Eden). In Islam, nostalgia was replaced by anticipation and foretaste, with Muslim gardens representing proleptically what the Qurʾān says of the gardens of heaven—hence the strong emphasis on water; they tend also to be symmetrically ordered. A memorable example can be found at Granada in the Generalife above Alhambra. See also PARADISE.