Yesterday, I was watching The Bear. Richie was talking about a photo of a Zen garden (Ryōan-ji in Kyoto). One of his favorite director’s favorite places. Riche made me more on gut and vibrations too.
I went looking for the why. William Friedkin’s version came first. In one of his interview, he said that the stones are like people. We arrive alone, and we die alone. We are alone no matter surrounded by people.
Then the different interpretation started surfacing.
#Islands in a sea of raked gravel. The white lines are waves, the stones are land rising above them.
#Mountains in clouds. A bird’s-eye view of a distant world.
#A tiger carrying her cub across a stream. An old Japanese tale mapped in stone.
#Natural harmony. The placement shows balance without symmetry, the beauty of imperfection.
#Meditation itself. The emptiness is a deliberate removal of distraction. A place to just sit and be.
And then the one that wouldn’t let me go: incomplete truth.
No matter where you stand, you can never see all fifteen stones at once. One is always hidden. Not by accident but by design.
It’s a lesson that’s almost annoying in its simplicity. We will never see the whole picture. We will assume. We will fill in gaps. And those gaps will stay, no matter how far we shift your position. We tend to see things as we are, not as they are. Subjective always!
We’re all standing in our own corner of the world, convinced the view is complete and prefect while the missing stone waits, quietly, out of sight.
Cheers
PS: Bucket List
Check out the previous post: The art of asking questions
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