Japanese Zen Gardens

Relaxing photo gallery of Japanese Rock Gardens in Kyoto:

Flowers, an inherent component of western gardens, are considered distracting elements and are almost absent in Buddhist gardens - all because of their fugacious beauty. Like Japanese ink painters, who gave up colors to achieve monochromatic simplification, rock garden designers renounced varicolored flowerbeds in favor of stone. The exception proving the rule, however, is the flower of Buddhism - lotus.

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Via Eso