World outlook foundation in the art of dry stone garden in Japan

The key problem of the article seems to be actual and urgent for the reason that phenomena of Japanese dry garden (karesansui) would not be possible without world outlook foundation, without special spiritual climate, which exists for many centuries in Japan. Buddhism in Japan has certain shade of Shinto. For this reason, Shinto attitude has an evident effect on the character of stone gardens, vitality and timelessness of this art through the centuries, variety of the functions and missions of karesansui in the space of Buddhist temple. It is well known that the cult of stone has existed in China from ancient times. Magic force and energetic influence convert the medieval Chinese garden into the place of physical and spiritual recovery. The attitude of the Chinese people to the stones, full of respect and trepidation, was inherited to Japan with the secrets of the art of gardening. The reason that spiritual and aesthetic ideas of the Chinese culture penetrate the country might be the consonance of these ideas with the national psychology and peculiarity of the Japanese people. Their national religion Shinto endows all the natural phenomena, parts of which are the stones, with spirit and their own character. The particular attention in the article was paid to the oldest garden-making treatise in Japan known as «Sakuteiki», or «Records of Garden Making», written in XI century, since this book is considered to be a priceless source of information about importance and specific role of stones in medieval Japanese gardens. One of the main designing principles is «to follow the request of the stone», which could be interpreted as «to follow the character of the stone when making design decisions». This principle, which interpretation was given in the article, might serve as a key to understanding the art of gardening in Japan. It is evident that art plays a great role in the temple of any religion in different countries. However, the Japanese Buddhist temple obtains a unique «face», its own, shrill and obvious, peculiarity and dry, stone gardens. These gardens are of natural material, untouched by a human hand. Its stones, by comprising natural and energetic resources, allegedly influence people. The gardens thereby become not only a site for aesthetic contemplation but also for self-cultivation. Enigmatic power of Japanese stone gardens could be explained in terms of their power to enlighten and teach. It looks like that the traditional name of dry gardens Karesansui («dry mountains-waters», i.e. «dry landscape») does not absolutely fit, for their topics are much wider than just nature motifs. The gardens probably have equal status along with other kinds of religious art, such as architecture, painting, and sculpture, serving as a convincing means of religious and philosophical fundamental principles. The Japanese masters keep their attitude to the stone gardens as magic, healing places. At the same time, they enriched the meaning of them by adding pedagogic and philosophic aspects, of which their Chinese prototypes deprive. Dry temple gardens in Japan give opportunity to add a new dimension in the perception of stones: the minerals are used there as a distinctive language for transmission of the Truth. Japanese dry stone gardens thereby embrace the functions of the Teacher and the Preceptor, they became true Guide on a way to self-renovation and Enlightenment.