What distinguishes the Eastern garden from the European one is above all the intimate link with animist and religious traditions and faith in natural forces.
The manifestations of nature are an expression of the Sacred.
The kami are spiritual presences that inhabit all things; they make nature and the garden that frames it, a sort of living realities capable of exerting a deep impact on human life.
Monks are dedicated to the art of ‘following the desire of the stone as it is placed’.
