What does it mean to create a contemplative garden? Thinking of garden design in these terms means to go beyond considerations of style. A contemplative space can look like a Japanese Zen garden of raked sand and rock, or like an English country garden overflowing with flowers and greenery. These descriptions only tell you what flavor the garden has, or what culture has informed its design, not whether it has that extra dimension of spirit and magic. To understand the creation of a garden at this level, the designer must have another, higher paradigm in mind.

One name for this paradigm is a mandala.read more from Chapter 1 >>

Landscape as Spirit: Creating a Contemplative Garden >>

Excerpted from Chapter 1, "The Ground: Garden as Mandala," Landscape as Spirit: Creating a Contemplative Garden by Martin Hakubai Mosko and Alxe Noden. Copyright ©2003Weatherhill, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Weatherhill, Inc.

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Photo by Martin Mosko

Soul Garden by Deena Wade

Reprinted with permission from Natural Home & Garden, May/Jun 2005 issue. Deena Wade, author.

Water trickles in small pools and fountains just below my feet, where large
orange koi swim in swift, slippery ellipses. As I knock at the Boulder, Colorado, home of landscape architect Martin Mosko, I’m reminded of a line from his book, Landscape as Spirit: Creating a Contemplative Garden (Weatherhill, 2003): “If the water is mind, fish are like thoughts.”

Mosko, a Zen Buddhist monk who has created many award-winning contemplative
gardens, describes the garden as a sacred space that expresses the inner self
through a meditative collaboration with nature and spirit. “People want a way to reflect who they truly are, to heal themselves of stress and anxiety, to reconnect with joy,” he says. Landscape designer and author Julie Moir Messervy agrees that “the act of digging deeply into one’s interior life for clues to one’s ideal landscape” is an important part of creating a garden that speaks to your soul. more>

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Volume Pricing for Your Store, Nonprofit Organization, or Business
DharmaCrafts offers special pricing on our cushions and mats, wooden malas, and a selection of Japanese and Tibetan incense and bells and gongs, when your organization buys in volume. Newly added: our best-selling End-Chime for Meditation CD and Trust in Mind, The Hsin Shin Ming of Tseng Ts’an, Third Zen Patriarch, newly published by DharmaCrafts. Click here to learn more about volume pricing.

New Frequently Asked Questions “ FAQ” section at www.dharmacrafts.com
Our new FAQ section answers a range of questions from how to wash your cushion and why is some incense so expensive, to how to fold the veil on your thangka and what is kapok. visit our FAQ page >>

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