The Zen Inhabitation-the Analysis Of Muso Soseki’s Zen Garden Designing Philosophy

The Basic structure of Japanese Gardens was developed under deep influence of garden styles in ancient China. The development of Japanese garden is a process along with gradual absorption of ancient philosophy such as Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism in China. Among these philosophical thoughts, Zen exerts more influence on the process of Japanese Garden design. However, these philosophical absorptions didn’t further propel Japanese Gardens into the similar design styles of those in China. Instead, th rough consistent self-innovation, Japanese garden designers began to develop their own aesthetics and finally created a new garden style----Dry Rock Gardens, best known as karesansui.The famous Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk, Muso Soseki, is a distinguished garden designer during the time of Kamakura Muromachi shogunate. It is widely acknowledged that he is the initial founder of Zen Garden in the middle age as he created the eihoji garden, erinji garden, saihouji garden and tenryuu garden in a chronological order. As a isidatesou, Muso Soseki integrated the principal thoughts of Zen Buddhism into garden design, which created a unique style in Japanese Gardens.Since few relevant studies were conducted before on the basis of the fact that Karesansui was originated from Zen Garden created by Muso Soseki during Kamakura Era, it’s essential to make a comprehensive understanding of the design theory of this great garden designer in the hope of learning the exact approaches of garden design.Subjects: to analyze the design theory of Muso Soseki in designing garden s styles, whose garden creating process could mainly be divided into four stages:(1) Practicing Buddhism or Taoism in nature(2) Mildly rebuilding of nature(3) The reconstruction of nature(4) The raising and distillation of nature. Examples were used along with the analysis of local environment of gardens during every stages of Muso Soseki’s design process to systematically study his main ideas such as experience of practice in Zen Buddhism, the choice of places as well as the garden building techniques.Conclusions: the design theory of Muso Soseki derives from his Zen Buddhism believes. The principal idea of Muso Soseki’s Garden design is to integrate Zen Buddhism into his garden masterpieces as a way to demonstrate his own philosophy of Zen Buddhism. Such integration brings innovative conceptions and brand-new forms of Garden styles, which makes him a great pioneer of practicing karesansui in the history of Japanese Garden.