Muso Kokushi built another temple garden at Tenryū-ji, the "Temple of the Celestial Dragon". The moss which now surrounds the rocks and represents water, was not part of the original garden plan it grew several centuries later when the garden was left untended, but now is the most famous feature of the garden. The second, Zazen-seki, is a flat "meditation rock," which is believed to radiate calm and silence and the third is the kare-taki, a dry "waterfall" composed of a stairway of flat granite rocks. The first, called Kameshima, the island of the turtle, resembles a turtle swimming in a "lake" of moss. The upper garden is a dry rock garden which features three rock "islands". The lower garden of Saihō-ji is in the traditional Heian period style a pond with several rock compositions representing islands. The Buddhist monk and zen master Musō Kokushi transformed a Buddhist temple into a zen monastery in 1334, and built the gardens. The first garden to begin the transition to the new style is considered by many experts to be Saihō-ji, "The Temple of the Perfumes of the West", popularly known as Koke-dera, the Moss Temple, in the western part of Kyoto. "The compositions of stone, already common in China, became in Japan, veritable petrified landscapes, which seemed suspended in time, as in certain moments of Noh theater, which dates to the same period." "Nature, if you made it expressive by reducing it to its abstract forms, could transmit the most profound thoughts by its simple presence", Michel Baridon wrote. These zen gardens were designed to stimulate meditation. But in Kyoto in the 14th and 15th century, a new kind of garden appeared at the important zen temples. The gardens of the early zen temples in Japan resembled Chinese gardens of the time, with lakes and islands. Zen Buddhism was introduced into Japan at the end of the 12th century, and quickly achieved a wide following, particularly among the Samurai class and war lords, who admired its doctrine of self-discipline. It saw the beginning of Noh theater, the Japanese tea ceremony, the shoin style of Japanese architecture, and the zen garden. The Muromachi period in Japan, which took place at roughly the same time as the Renaissance in Europe, was characterized by political rivalries which frequently led to wars, but also by an extraordinary flourishing of Japanese culture. Zen Buddhism and the Muromachi period (1336–1573) In zen gardens, it represents water, or, like the white space in Japanese paintings, emptiness and distance. In the Shinto religion, it was used to symbolize purity, and was used around shrines, temples, and palaces. White sand and gravel had long been a feature of Japanese gardens. The ocean style featured rocks that appeared to have been eroded by waves, surrounded by a bank of white sand, like a beach. He described several other styles of rock garden, which usually included a stream or pond, including the great river style, the mountain river style, and the marsh style. This kind of garden featured either rocks placed upright like mountains, or laid out in a miniature landscape of hills and ravines, with few plants. "In a place where there is neither a lake or a stream, one can put in place what is called a kare-sansui, or dry landscape". The Sakuteiki described exactly how rocks should be placed. They adapted the Chinese garden philosophy of the Song dynasty (960–1279), where groups of rocks symbolized Mount Penglai, the legendary mountain-island home of the Eight Immortals in Chinese mythology, known in Japanese as Horai. These early gardens were described in the first manual of Japanese gardens, Sakuteiki ("Records of Garden Keeping"), written at the end of the 11th century by Tachibana no Toshitsuna (1028–1094). Stone gardens existed in Japan at least since the Heian period (794–1185). They were intended to imitate the essence of nature, not its actual appearance, and to serve as an aid for meditation. Classical zen gardens were created at temples of Zen Buddhism in Kyoto during the Muromachi period. Many, with gravel rather than grass, are only stepped into for maintenance. A zen garden is usually relatively small, surrounded by a wall or buildings, and is usually meant to be seen while seated from a single viewpoint outside the garden, such as the porch of the hojo, the residence of the chief monk of the temple or monastery. Zen gardens are commonly found at temples or monasteries. It creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water. The Japanese dry garden ( 枯山水, karesansui ) or Japanese rock garden, often called a zen garden, is a distinctive style of Japanese garden. A mountain, waterfall, and gravel "river" at Daisen-in (1509–1513)
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