How to Build Your Own Mini-Zen Garden

Have your own personal Zen garden

Zen gardens and the building and maintenance of the gardens are an art in their own right. They are simple, peaceful places with a bed of gravel or sand in an enclosed space. A few rocks are placed in the sand and the garden is raked in curved lines, forming an echo of the placement of the rocks and how water would appear surrounding them. Zen gardens are a place for contemplation and deep meditation. You can make you own if you don't have a Zen garden in your area, or you would like a Mini-Zen Garden to keep in your house, apartment, or office space.

Things You'll Need

• Take-out sushi container, or a ceramic dish with raised sides -about the size of a notebook page
• Fine gravel or sand
• A few small rocks
• Wooden mini-rake, or even a bamboo fork

Instructions

1. 

   The container that you use to put your Mini-Zen Garden in can really be any size, depending on where you're going to set it and how much time you want to invest in choosing a garden "bed". A take-out sushi tray is a good size, has raised sides to contain the sand, and usually sushi trays will be decorated nicely, or plain black. For a more permanent, larger or decorative tray- try a small ceramic, glass, or wooden tray that will contain the sand and won't leak.

2. 

   Use sand or small gravel that won't be too dusty- some decorative sand or fish-tank gravel/sand would be perfect, and you don't need much at all for a Mini-Zen Garden (about a cup of sand, depending on the size of the tray you've chosen to use). Place the sand in the tray, filling it about 2/3 of the way full so it covers the bottom of your try, yet doesn't spill over.

3. 

   Select your rocks- try just a few, and maybe not all the same exact size. Use your wooden rake- you can find a small wooden comb, like a pick, or a wooden fork, or bamboo rake- making designs around the rocks. Study the pictures of the full-scale Zen gardens for ideas, then you will develop your own favorite patterns and style. Now you are finished, and you have a very simple Mini-Zen Garden of your own to meditate upon!

Tips & Warnings

• Obviously if you are keeping your Mini-Zen Garden in your home, you need to be sure that toddlers can't get to it.

• The same goes for pets...

Resources

• Japanese Gardens
• Zen Gifts
• Buddhist Meditation Music - Zen Garden - Kokin Gumi