Eastern gardening is much different from the Western style garden.  Most would say that a japanese garden is much more soul soothing and inspires meditation.  Japanese gardening is a cultural sort of gardening that is designed to produce a scene that mimics nature as much as feasible.  Using trees, plants, rocks, sand, synthetic hills, pools, and trickling water the garden becomes an art form.  The Zen and Shinto traditions are both a giant part of Eastern gardening and, due to this ; the gardens have a reflective and reflective mental condition. 

The basic techniques of views in are a reduced scale, symbolization, and borrowed views.  The reduced scale is the art of taking a precise scene from nature, mountains, rivers, trees, and reproducing it on a smaller scale.  Symbolization involves generalization and abstraction.  An example of this would be using white sand to suggest the sea.  Borrowed perspectives refer to artists that would use something similar to an ocean or a forest as a background, but it would finish up becoming a very important part of the scene. 

There are two types of jap gardening.  The tsukiyami garden is a hill garden and typically composed from hills and ponds.  The hiraniwa, which is the exact opposite of the tsukiyami garden, is a flat without any hills or pools. 

The essential components used in Japanese gardening include rocks, gravel, water, moss, stones, fences, and hedges.  Rocks are used as centerpieces and bring a presence of spirituality to the garden.  According to the Shinto practice, rocks embody the spirits of nature.  Gravel defines surface and is used to imitate the flow of water when organized properly.  Stones create a boundary and are sculptured into the shape of lanterns.  Water ; whether it is in the form of a pond, stream, or waterfall, is an essential part of an Eastern garden.  It can be in the particular form of water or portrayed by gravel, but irrespective of what, it is essential to a jap gardens balance. 

there are several forms and kinds of plants that are signature of japanese gardening, the main one being Bonsai.  Bonsai is the art of coaching each day average plants,eg Pine, Cypress, Holly, Cedar, Cherry, Maple, and Beech, to look like huge, old trees just in tiny form.  These trees range between five centimeters to one meter and are kept little by pruning, re-potting, pinching of expansion, and wiring the branches. 

A garden is a wonderful place to relax and meditate.  Whether or not it is a japanese garden or Western world garden, designing, building, and planting is a great family event.

How would you like to see the top 100 wonders in the world? Visit famouswonders.com and browse through the top destinations in the world and be sure to check out Golden Pavilion.

As a person who has tried a few different meditation practices I do have an opinion about meditation. There are even scientific studies that show the benefits of meditation such as stress reduction.

Taking that into account, I would venture to say that there may be other aspects of the health benefits of meditation that have not been studied well yet. Let us put the science aside for a minute and move into the realm of subjective experience.

My personal experience tells me that not all meditation practices are equal. I will not discuss the names of different practices that I have tried in this article.

People try meditation for different reasons. Some have heard of the health benefits. Others are seeking a new spiritual dimension to their lives. Therefore they enter various practices of meditation from different angles and experiences.

Now, this of course means the ‘end goal’ of meditation is different too. This leads to the next natural question – what is the purpose of meditation? Is it simply stress relief or does it have something to do with enlightenment and greater wisdom? Who can answer this question?

As human beings we do not understand what enlightenment is except perhaps in some abstract sense. Without truly understanding what it is, how do we make a decision about whether we want it or not? A bit of a dilemma?

Therefore it makes sense to learn about meditation and what its real purpose is. Once you do that, you will be able to make a choice about what you want out of meditation and then decide which meditation practice is best for you.

Visit FalunDafa.org to learn more about meditation today.

On a completey seperate topic, let us discuss gum disease for a moment.  Many people have it, even though they do not realize that they do.  As a result many people might benefit from a tool like the HydroFloss.

Not everyone needs the same solution however. Some suffer strictly from bad breath without any periodontal problems. This person might benefit from the therabreath product line. 

But I digress.  To learn more about meditation: FalunDafa.org is the site to visit…..

Author:  David S.