Journeys to Designed Sacred Landscapes:
Research Activities

Dennis Winters has devoted a major part of his independent research activities to an investigation of designed sacred landscapes, particularly the evolution of meditation gardens in the Buddhist traditions, the transmission of its design techniques, and the features of the landscapes in which these artistic expressions developed. The following are descriptions of projects with which he has been engaged; they serve as the foundation for his special interests in designing landscapes for meditation and healing. Taken together, they have evolved into a spiritual journey to natural and designed sacred landscapes.

Developing Presence in the Garden

To be in the sacred landscapes. To be there and no where else.
To not think about all the other gardens I needed to see at that very moment,
and obviously couldn't...because I could only be here.
To look at and feel the relationships of stones, textures, shapes, sizes,
orientation, winds and clouds.
To stay for hours sketching, photographing, walking, sitting, absorbing and sensing
how the gardens worked, and why they didn't work.
To work in the gardens sweeping leaves from the moss,
Sweeping leaves to sweep leaves.

-D.A.W.

 

Elements for Designing Gardens for Meditation

A major focus of my work as a landscape architect is designing gardens for meditation and healing, and I've drawn inspiration from the natural and designed sacred landscapes of the Buddhist traditions. These sacred sites express various ways that landscapes reinforce one's spiritual place on the earth. A number of refined artistic features and design techniques used in these landscapes have led me to develop a set of guidelines or elements that enable such a landscape to become conducive to cultivating the very subtle activities associated with meditation practices of body and mind. These elements were presented in the talks, Designing Gardens for Meditation and Lessons from the Japanese Garden.

For a garden designed for meditation is like a sacred place
where there is found a touch of magic and light---
How so magic?
Being of favorable context -- it is sited to mitigate negative effects
and take advantage of positive attributes,
receiving the auspicious life-forces given by the earth, sun and moon;
It is contained - a distinctive form in space, a distinct space surrounded by form;
It is coherent - clearly defined and ordered
to help things make sense;
It is composed - enabling one to pay attention;
It has clarity - made simple in format
to help develop concentration and insight.
It is an artistic expression of contemplation - quiet and light inside,
enabling one to listen to the heart sing.

 

Teachings from Sacred Landscapes for Designing Healing Gardens

Physical health is linked with emotional, mental and spiritual well-being. For landscape architects engaged in designing restorative landscapes for humanistic health-care facilities, the teachings from natural and designed sacred landscapes have profound relevance.

What are the characteristics and special qualities of these natural sacred landscapes? How are their physical expressions adapted to designed sacred landscapes? How are these lessons applied in developing objectives and guidelines for gardens in a therapeutic health-care environment, helping to strengthen physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health in a balanced and harmonious relationship with the natural and social environment? Sacred landscapes have addressed these questions; they have much to teach.

 

 

Garden Forms and Buddhist Orders:
Temple Gardens as Artistic Expressions of Spiritual Practice

Pilgrimage gardens of Shingon Buddhist gardens,
Mandala pond gardens of Pure Land Temples,
Taoist-inspired naturalist gardens of early Zen temples,
Garden abstractions of the natural process:
The Chop Wood, Carry Water Gardens of the
Well-Disciplined Rinzai Zen Gardens
and the More-Forgiving Soto Zen gardens.

Refined features and design techniques of the classical temple gardens were used by schools of Buddhism and could be interpreted as artistic expressions of their respective spiritual practices. It is possible to ascribe particular garden types to the various Japanese Buddhist schools of thought, categorized similarly to the way in which landscapes have been associated with dynastic periods and socio-political events. This way of looking at the various garden forms is rooted in the appearances that arise from the most subtle component of the mind, regarded as the Buddha-nature in the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni, Kobo Daishi and Dogen. I present these garden-types in my talks, Designed Sacred Landscapes: Foundations in the Buddhist Traditions of Japan and Temple Gardens of Kyoto.

 

A Journey from Kyoto to Western Tibet: A Search for the Origins of the Designed Sacred Landscapes in the Buddhist Traditions and the Missing 8,631 Stones

This manuscript presents an account of my quest for a link, first encountered in Western Tibet, between the classical temple gardens of Kyoto and their origins in the gardens of Buddhist India. It is a story of pilgrimage and original research into elements of the siting and design of sacred landscapes in Tibetan Buddhist culture. The research project was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

A translation of the 15th century text, Illustrations for Designing Mountain, Water and Hillside Field Landscapes, written at the Shingon Buddhist temple Ninna-ji by the garden-maker Zoen states:

The art of setting stones upright in the landscape originated at the lake called
Manasarovar (Anavatapta) where rocks numbering 8,631 were set, with each of
the Eight Great Dragon Kings in charge of more than 1000 rocks. From that
origin, it took root in China, where...the number of rocks was reduced to 361....
After that the art was introduced into Japan...and it was reduced to the forty-eight
that have been selected as the named rocks.

How would a priest, writing at a temple of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, be aware of stones set in Tibet? How would he have discovered their existence? Could actual traces of the set of 8,631 stones be found, either in scripture or on the Tibetan Plateau, itself? Were stones set in the Japanese garden at an earlier or later time than when garden-makers would have been influenced by spiritual transmissions concerning the setting of stones carried by the Buddhist vehicles from India or Tibet through China into Japan? What is the significance of the number 8,631 to the Tibetan spiritual landscape and to the Shingon Buddhist mandalas of Mahavairocana?

A major segment of the manuscript focuses on Pretapuri, one of the twenty-four sacred sites of Tibetan cosmology, as the potential source of inspiration for the setting of stones in the Japanese garden. Located in the Mt. Kailas - Lake Manasarovar region of Western Tibet, Pretapuri is known as the gathering place of all the wisdom deities of the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon, whose presence is expressed within the stones invested with their symbolism and significance. Based on an original translation of Tibetan texts on pilgrimage, the manuscript presents the characteristics and features of the Pretapuri landscape through the external explanations, internal explanations and secret explanations.

I have presented parts of the manuscript in talks titled Journeys to Sacred Buddhist Landscapes of Tibet.

 

 

Gardens of the Enlightenment:
The Landscapes of Buddha Shakyamuni

Bodhgaya is the historically noted landscape where Siddhartha Gautama showed the way to overcome the final obscurations of samsara and attain the enlightened state of a Buddha. The grassy woodland on the banks of the Nairanjana River was no mere background for the scene of the enlightenment, nor were its descriptions in the ancient scriptural texts embellishments to the exacting details of the blessed events. The Buddha purposefully chose this landscape as an integral and necessary component of his teachings on the climactic moments of the path that lead to enlightenment.

This manuscript presents the origins of the Gardens of the Enlightenment, the sacred landscapes of Buddhist history - the holy places, buildings and gardens where Buddha Shakyamuni lived and first taught the Dharma to his disciples more than 2500 years ago, the first known monasteries constructed for the purpose of providing places for meditation and formal education of the religious order.

Blessed with the necessary qualities in which he could most effectively present the wide range of teachings, the Buddha used the fundamental placement and designs of these sacred landscapes as keys to explaining the essential components of the doctrines and practices - physical expressions of the teachings themselves. With his abilities to know the most suitable manner for dwelling in the natural and social environment, these sacred landscapes provide clues to the artistic expressions produced by the fully awakened mind of a Buddha.

The manuscript is written as a journey through the vehicles of Dharma practice, to study the sacred Buddhist landscapes and to investigate the qualities and characteristics of the fully-awakened mind of the Buddha, the source of inspiration for developing an understanding of the sacred Buddhist landscape.

My journey reveals what I believe to be the basis for the designs of the sacred Buddhist landscapes, providing practitioners with the most suitable places for living and meditating. The manuscript points to the manner in which buildings and garden designs were modified in subsequent years, responding to differing cultural and philosophical approaches when Buddhism was adapted in other places. This leads to the possibility for those living in the western world to see how the practice of a religion that transformed over a period of many centuries in the East can be translated into an indigenous western design vocabulary in gardens for meditation and healing.

I have presented parts of the manuscript in talks titled Journeys to Sacred Buddhist Landscapes of India.

 

 

Perspectives on Designing the Sacred Buddhist Landscape:
Grounds for our Relationship with Nature

From where do I draw inspiration? What is the foundation for ways of my looking at and being in the sacred landscape? What it the basis for designing the sacred landscape for meditation and healing? This paper is an exercise in giving depth to thoughts concerning the essence of the designed sacred landscape - an exercise of investigating the fundamental grounds for our relationship with nature, through a Buddhist perspective.

The paper begins with a summary of the essence of the designed sacred landscape, the fifth generation of an answer to a question asked to me by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. When I presented designs for Milarepa Buddhist Meditation Center, he asked me, "What is the basis for this design?" The summary leads to several Buddhist interpretations of our relationship with nature proposed by others. These interpretations give perspective to the third part of this exercise, the fundamental ground of the inquiry, enumerated by His Holiness as the ultimate nature of nature; and its dependent-arising through: a) the conception of the internal elements and the constituents that compose a human being, b) the characteristics and qualities of the external elements and the constituents that compose nature, and c) the fundamental relationship between the internal and external elements. This exercise leads to grounds for the ability to intimately know the qualities and characteristics of nature as the sacred landscape of the Buddha.