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The garden of the Ryoanji temple in Kyoto, Japan. A fire in the temple grounds allowed the construction of this garden to begin in 1488 though, following Japanese practice, some parts have been rebuilt from time to time within the 30 by 10 metre frame. Like most of the medieval cathedrals of Europe, the actual designers are anonymous, though the names of two labourers of the sensui kawaramono ('river-bank workers acting as gardeners') class are found on the back of one of the rocks.
In the Muromachi era (1338-1573) simplicity, honesty and understatement were prized in most types of design, including architecture. This quality (wabi) was especially prevalent in Zen Buddhist establishments where meditation was aided by concentration on the blanks as much as on any objects. Hence this strong horizontal design dominated by raked sand. In the sand are fifteen 'islands' of rock, all of which except one seem to be flowing from left to right which is, of course, against the current of written Japanese, which is top to bottom, right to left. There are no trees. There is a legend that no matter how often visitors count the rocks they never find more than fourteen and that only enlightenment in the Zen sense (satori, which is sudden, complete and non-analytical) can produce the complete picture. As D. T. Suzuki puts it in his introduction to Zen:
Satori is the sudden flashing into consciousness of a new truth hitherto undreamed of. It is a sort of mental catastrophe taking place all at once, after much piling up of matters intellectual and demonstrative. The piling has reached a limit of stability and the whole edifice has come tumbling to the ground, when, behold, a new heaven is open to full survey.