I just returned from a pilgrimage to Japanese temples and gardens, and I’ve been fascinated by their psychological dimensions. This is a topic that is not often discussed. These Zen temple gardens are not the stuff of your mother’s ornamental garden club. They are living relics that speak to us through darkness and despair—through centuries of war, famine, death, and destruction. They are timeless and yet profoundly address the needs of today. They offer a response that is at once ancient and enduring. One historian called them the “essence of Zen.”
One garden, Ryoan-ji, spoke to me in its silence and serenity, almost like a wise Zen master sharing their wisdom. Last night, returning home after a 20-hour journey, I couldn’t stop reading about the findings of Artemis 2, which had just splashed down. The findings of this moon journey resonated with the deep wisdom of these garden temples. Let me explain.
Before I left for Japan, I was concerned about a patient who fell into a sudden, major depressive episode that neither one of us had seen on the horizon. We think we see our lives and can avoid disaster and despair, but in fact, we cannot prevent our lives from falling apart. We cannot control the behavior of others. There are always things in our lives and family history that we don’t want to see, traumas that we think we can ignore, until we can’t. Despite our protestations, they turn into what my mentor called a perfect storm. As I sat in front of this garden, thinking about my patient, I realized that these gardens are designed to help us see and help us wake up. They are, in fact, “gardens of awakening.”
Ryoan-ji was constructed in 1450. It was destroyed three times by fire. We don’t know who designed it. It has been called an “anti-garden.” It is utterly simple and elemental: space, stones, water, and sky. It knows the secrets of survival, which may be why it is one of the most beloved of all the gardens.
To me, it seemed to embody the mystery of a Zen koan, allowing us to break out of our habitual ways of seeing. What is intriguing is that it is constructed out of 15 rocks, but you can’t see them all at once. There is not one vantage point from which you can see them all. What a perfect metaphor! And what a powerful resonance with Artemis 2, the moon mission which has made us rethink what we thought we knew about space. What we thought was the “dark side” of the moon turns out to be “unseen” or “unknown,” the way psychological trauma can be unseen. In fact, this side of the moon receives as much light as the side we commonly see.
The musician and artist John Cage visited this garden temple in 1962 and then spent three decades drawing and composing music related to it, even arranging stones in his drawings and imagination to see what would emerge.
Because of the mystery and the richness of this place, I needed to return one more time. Just a few days later, it was a different garden. The first visit was all sunshine, but the second visit was rain and clouds, the stones covered in cherry blossoms that had been blown off the flowering trees. Cherries are much beloved in Japan—their beauty is extraordinary, as well as a sign of the impermanence of life. It isn’t just that we can’t see everything, and that we can’t prevent our lives from falling apart. It is also that nothing lasts, and that it is all passing. Incredible beauty, and then one gust of wind blows it away.
Before you leave this garden, you pass by a square water fountain with an inscription that can be read sideways as well as downward. I had to laugh. It is an ancient and playful version of Sudoku. The words translate as, “Be content with what you have.”
As I try to make sense of the clinical implications before seeing my patient, hoping to offer him some new insight, I turn to the wisdom of Mark Epstein, an extraordinary psychiatrist who has been profoundly influenced by Buddhism. His recent book, The Zen of Therapy, has sustained me in my work. At the end of the book, he writes eloquently about surviving the worst, surviving ourselves, building up tolerance for ourselves, and making room for others.
As we try to offer ourselves compassion for what we haven’t seen or understood, we learn to survive great hardships and to integrate these into our lives. He concludes, “We cannot erase our histories no matter how hard we try, but in learning to face them with kindness…we enter the stream that flows gently…toward inner peace.”
To close, the Zen monks still have a lot to offer clinicians. I take their wisdom seriously:
A monk asked, “What are the words of the ancients?”
The Master said, “Listen carefully! Listen carefully!”