Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine,
or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo.
And in doing so you must leave you subjective preoccupation with yourself.
Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn.

Matsuo Basho

"The oldest tradition of all is that the garden represents nature, and that nature, since prehistoric times, has been regarded as sacred.......The earliest beliefs, which evolved into Shinto, were in the kami - sacred powers - who set foot at particular natural sites, often a stone called an iwakkura. So the point of contact for man was the sacred natural enclosure, and this was the beginning of the garden."

"Stones have a spiritual life as much as do plants and animals, and in the development of the Zen garden they became the most important element."

"A space that embodies nature can act as a kind of balm - a restorative for the mind. In its ideal form, the modern Japanese garden is just that spiritual space, designed according to a sophisticated aesthetic that evokes and celebrates nature. The means used differ....from Zen dry stone to the focus on a single tree, to freer, wilder forms of planting, but all draw on a thousand years of what we call tokikata Ð in this context, the reading of the cosmos through the garden."

from "The Modern Japanese Garden" by Shunmyo Masuno

"One of the most important lessons I learned in the course of my apprenticeship in the art of Japanese gardens
took place during year-end cleaning of the Yabunouchi tea garden in Kyoto.
I had been squatting for some time with both feet flat on the ground in Japanese fashion....
It was an awkward position-and I was tired. To relieve the tension (so I thought),
I shifted my weight forward onto the ball of my left foot,
leaving my right foot flat on the ground with little weight on it.

To my surprise, the crew chief immediately and sharply reprimanded me.
Then he told me what I had done wrong.....
Imagine, he said, that the master of this garden were a blind person.
Close to the garden every day, he would constantly breathe its air and become sensitive to its every mood.
The uneven distribution of my weight in cleaning the garden would produce a disturbance in the
atmosphere of the garden, an uneasiness that the blind master would sense.
Hence even in the simplest act of garden maintenance
I must conduct myself in the spirit of harmony the garden is intended to convey."

from "Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens" by David A. Slawson

"The use of white gravel in temple gardens has its origins in the ancient religious practice of setting aside hallowed areas of ground in a forest or field for the gods to visit. These areas were kept clean and white as a means of enticing the spirits and gods to visit these places, which had been specially prepared for them."

"Ancient trees and unusual rocks are often roped off and bedecked with prayer offerings in an act of veneration and worship. While this may appear to be animism, it really is a recognition of what the supreme being or God has been able to do in Nature. Shintoism is not so much the worship of trees and rocks, but the veneration of the spirit that created those objects."

"Plants in a Japanese garden express the soul and spirit of the garden itself. They are not there simply for adornment. It is true that they have an aesthetic contribution to make, but what cannot be measured is the ambiance and spirituality which the plants impart to the garden when sensitively planted and arranged in the classic Japanese style."

from "Creating A Japanese Garden" by Peter Chan