Being in the Dry Zen Landscape

READING ZEN IN THE ROCKS - THE JAPANESE DRY LANDSCAPE GARDEN, by François Berthier, trans. with a philosophical essay by Graham Parkes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 166 pp., $20.00.


The austere simplicity of Zen rock gardens is also an allusive and elusive one, as the two enjoyable essays that comprise Reading Zen in the Rocks - The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden eloquently indicate. More so than the phenomena they describe, these essays appeal to a wide audience, and they read easily, invitingly, and informatively. In this textual performance, the French art-historian, François Berthier, stands side-by-side with the Scottish philosopher of comparative East-West studies, Graham Parkes, to provide a textual and visual presentation that intends, via an appropriate complementarity of content, to introduce the karesansui (dry landscape) style of Japanese garden to the general reader.


Robert Wicks
Department of Philosophy
The University of Auckland