虎の子渡し – Tiger family crossing a river
碧巌録に示された臥龍 – Sleeping dragon
星座カシオペヤ – The constellation Cassiopeia
心の字 – Heart character
京都盆地を囲む五山 – Five mountains surrounding Kyoto
光の反射板 – Reflecting of Light
満月を巡る – The moon phases around the full moon
Today I want to dig deeper into the manifold interpretations of Ryoan-jis zen garden.
Surely, you have already heard of the „tiger family crossing a river“ or the „7-5-3“ setting. But this time, we will dig deeper!
Even the tiger family has something to offer that you might not have heard of yet.
Are you curious? Then let’s start!
Tiger family crossing a river
The „tiger and cub“ is a version of a well-known problem-solving game with many different objects/animals/persons used.
In the tiger version, the questioning goes as follows:
A tiger mother with three cubs, one of them is a leopard, is reaching a river. She can only bring one cub at a time to the other side. But she can’t let any of her tiger cubs alone with the leopard.
How to solve this problem?
Solution: The tiger mother brings the leopard first. She returns and gets one of her tiger cubs. When arriving, she takes the leopard back, gets the last tiger, and leaves the leopard alone. Lastly, she will return to get the leopard too.
As you will remember, Ryoan-ji has five stone groups of 5, 2, 3, 2, and 3 rocks. 15 rocks in total.
How the image of four tigers (one is a leopard though), separated in 1, 2, 3, and 4 at a time fits into this is an unanswered question. That’s also why only a few people among garden researchers believe in this meaning.
The Sleeping Dragon
This is an interpretation by the Japanese garden researcher and gardener Sawada Tenzui (1928 – 2008).
It refers to kōan from the Blue Cliff Records (碧巌録 a collection of Chan Buddhist kōan. Dōgen brought the Caodong school of Chan to Japan as the Sōtō school of Zen), kōan from the Soeishū (祖英集a collection of kōan by Secchō Jūken), and kōan from Gokeshōshūsan (五家正宗賛a collection of kōan by Shōdon).
I couldn’t find any translations of these kōan the theory refers to (they are listed in Japanese in my source) and I am far from the level of Japanese and understanding Zen to try on a translation myself.
However, regarding Sawada, each kōan is connected to a part of the rock garden.
There are several referring to dragons, one to the white gravel, and one shall be a connection to the number of rocks: fifteen.
This is how Sawada sees the sleeping dragon in Ryoan-ji.
By the way, do you know the sleeping dragon of Rikugien?
The Cassiopeia constellation
Five groups of rocks build the constellation of Cassiopeia, the white sand resembles the Milky Way.
Mizuno Kinzaburo (水野 欣三郎) wrote about this theory in 1983 but it was made popular by Akashi Sanjin (明石 散人) in 1996.
Cassiopeia is also named as follows in Japanese: Yamagataboshi, Ikariboshi (碇星) Ikariboshi (錨星), or Yumiboshi (弓星) Ikari means “anchor”.
It is said that the stars together look like an anchor of a wabune (Japanese ship).
This is leading to the following association: Cassiopeia -> anchor star -> anchor -> ship.
The association with the ship can also be seen as a connection to Ryoan-ji.
The monks who brought Zen Buddhism from China to Japan, traveled by wabune.
The cultural exchange between China’s Ming dynasty and Japan was flourishing. It can be that Ryoan-ji was built and rebuilt with money earned through trade with China.
This is how Cassiopeia is painted over Ryoan-jis rocks in my source. 
But I would even go further and mirror Cassiopeia.
It’s looking similar, right?
The Chinese character for “heart” 心
When drawing a line through the first group of rocks, connecting the second and the fifth group, and drawing lines through the third and fourth group, the Kanji for the character “heart” – kokoro appears.
The kokoro is very important in Zen Buddhism. In Zen, the monks seek to gain “mushin”, a mental state of absence of discursive thoughts and judgments.
Also, the kokoro is an integral part of teaching from teacher to student, which is way more important than written texts.
Since there are also ponds in Japanese gardens called “shinji-ike” 心字池, this theory isn’t far-fetched.
The Five Mountains surrounding Kyoto
Kyoto is surrounded by mountains on three sides. It was designed after the Chinese capital of Chang’an of the Tang Dynasty by using geomancy.
Within this protection on three sides are five famous mountains.
Higashiyama, Otokoyama, Narabigaoka, Nishiyama, Kitayama.
In ancient China, the Five Mountains were worshiped under the influence of the Ying-Yang Five Elements theory.
Even today you find “Five Mountains” in Japan. These are five zen temples in, for example, Kyoto and Kamakura.
Each temple has a “common name” and a “mountain name” ending with “san” (山 – yama – mountain).
The Garden as Light Reflector
This theory goes that the white gravel of the rock garden was used to reflect the sunlight.
Depending on the surface outdoors and the material used indoors, the percentage of how much light is reflected varies.
White gravel reflects around 70 – 80% of the sunlight. Snow lies around 80 – 90%. Grass and dirt only reflect 25 – 40% and 10 – 20%.
When looking at the indoors, we see that we can find materials that can also reflect a lot of light.
White plaster walls reflect 75 – 85% of light. Paulownia panels reflect 65 – 75%, and white shōji only 40 – 50%. Tatami reflect 30 – 40% of the light.
When there was no electric light, the white gravel of the garden could be used to brighten the inside of the building next to it.
The Cycle of the Moon
This theory is divided into three parts.
All three are based on the old Chinese lunisolar calendar where the full moon was always on the 15th (sometimes 16th) day of the month.
One part of the theory is about the 15th night moon, one about the 14th night moon, and one about the 16th night moon.
The fifteen rocks are important for all the theories.
15th-night moon
Because the light of the full moon was always loved, the theory of the 15th-night moon was born first.
It is partly a theory of reflecting moonlight and partly of a full moon that was visible for a very long time in summer.
14th-night moon
The theory of the 14th-night moon came next. It symbolizes avoiding fate by constantly increasing and waning (like the moon).
16th-night moon
The 16th-night moon gives attention to shadow and light. The 16th moon has a light shadow on the right. It refers to the 15th rock of Ryoan-ji which also lies in the shadows.
However, in total it’s a theory of Yin and Yang.
What do you think? Are the different theories behind Ryoan-ji cool?
And what theory do you believe in?
This post was first published on Patreon with additional information.
This article is based on the book 龍安寺石庭 十五の石をめぐる五十五の推理 by Hosono Toru
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Alberto
I think the theory is missing that it is a tree seen by the unconscious according to a NASA study or something like that?
Alberto
“Recently, some scientists from the University of Kyoto seem to have found the solution to the enigma, leaving behind the traditional interpretation that the garden symbolized a tiger crossing a river. They used the power of Artificial Intelligence to find some kind of pattern hidden in plain sight and the result is that they found the pattern of a tree hidden inside the garden structure. Therefore, relaxation, because the subconscious is not seeing a handful of stones, but a tree.”
Anika
Thank you for this!
If this is recent research, I am sure that it hasn’t found its way into the book I took these interpretations from.
However, the book contains 55 theories and I have to admit that I haven’t read all in detail. So maybe I just missed this interesting one😅