The Zen Garden

At Asia Gardens Hotel & Thai Spa, a 5 star resort in Spain, we are greatly into nature. Today we move from our well tended gardens to a very famous one for the Asian culture: the Zen Garden.

The Zen Garden or karensasui, is a type of Japenese garden which was created for contemplation. In contrast to European gardens, flowers nor plants are common in these ones. Its beauty is based on minimalism and symbology. It consists of a land of sand which contains gravel and rocks. Grass, moss and other natural elements are also found on certain occasions.

The Japanese rock garden is a physical expression of the ideas about the vacuum of the Zen Buddhist philosophy. They were introduced by Zen Monks as places for thinking about religious teaching during the Muromachi period (1336-1576), when the two main aesthetic ideals of this garden appeared: yugen, elegant simplicity, and yohaku no bi, the beauty of emptiness. The first Zen Garden was created by the monk and gardener Muso Soseki in the 14th century.

The most famous karensasui is located in Kyoto, in the Ryoan-ji Zen Temple, which is known as the Temple of the Dragon at Peace. Ryoan-ji is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The aim of Zen Gardens is to offer a space of perfect harmony with nature. They originally were inspired by the Chinese poetry and ink paintings of the 9th and 10th century. A good karensasui must be both of them, image and poem.

There are different ways to explain the arrangement of the garden. The sand symbolizes the sea, and it gets a greater visual impact when waves or circles are made on it. The rocks represent the Japenese islands.

According to a recent theory given by the researchers Gert van Tonder, from Kyoto University, and Michale J. Lyons, from ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communications Labs, Ryoan-ji´s rocks create a subliminal message of a tree. These two experts assure that people´s subconscious is able to identify it and they also consider this tree as the responsible for the relaxing effect of these type of gardens.

If you would like to feel the peace a Zen Garden spreads, you can either create your own one, or visit our luxury hotel Asia Gardens Hotel & Thai Spa and relax at our wonderful Zen pool, which is heated to 30º degrees all year.