Information on Rocks in a Zen Garden

Placing Rocks According to their Medial Axis

• A recent National Geographic article suggests that if the rocks in the famous Zen garden attached to the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, Japan were rearranged, their calming effect on tourists would disappear. Supposedly this is because the rocks are arranged in a pattern resembling a tree. But the key to making this image calming is invisible to the naked eye. The rocks in a Zen garden are arranged using a "medial axis" of shapes--forming a shape with the middle point between any two rocks. There the "invisible" eye takes over to create a highly calming effect.

Placing Stones to Symbolize Objects

• If rocks are placed vertically they symbolize the sky, and if they're placed horizontally, they symbolize the earth. If your Zen garden has a theme, for example, representing a real place, rocks can be used to symbolize anything including animals, buildings and people. The very first nearly 2,000-year-old Zen garden had a large rock in the very middle, representing Buddha, with little rocks all around him that were his disciples.

Making the Three Gods Formation

• This Zen rock formation has been famous for 1,500 years. The Three Gods have two possible origins: they were either three small islands off the main island Horai, or they represent father, mother and child. Basically, to make a Three Gods formation take three tall, vertical stones and place them upright beside each other. Placing this family or group in a Zen garden is an excellent way to reflect on feelings about how you perceive a family dynamic. For instance, if your mother stone happens to be the largest of the three or is placed out of sight behind the father, this could mean you feel you have a dominant or passive motherly figure in your life.

Choosing and Placing Stones According to Color

• Rock color in Zen gardens represent the five natural elements of Buddhism: water, metal, earth, wood and fire. Water stones are black, metal stones are any metallic or white rocks, earth stones are yellow, wood stones are blue-green and fire stones are red. Stones of conflicting elements should not be placed close together, as they do not represent a peaceful dynamic. Elements that conflict with one another are wood and earth, earth and water, water and fire, fire and metal, and metal and wood.

Landscape Creation with Rocks

• Spacing plays an important part in how Zen rocks can be placed to look like landscapes. Besides spacing stones according to medial axes, the space between stones will give your mind different visual cues. If stones are uniformly spread far apart, it could signify a desert landscape. If many diversely shaped rocks are put close together, the effect on the mind may be one of a waterfall, volcano or a mountaintop. A few round, smooth stones can remind one of rolling hills and flat stones can be plateaus.