Tenryū-ji & Arashiyama

At the edge of Tenryū-ji's main hall the old boards are worn smooth, and a still pond opens onto a green mountain that isn't the temple's at all. Nearly seven hundred years ago a Zen monk composed this garden using shakkei (borrowed scenery), pulling the distant peaks of the Arashiyama hills into a view he could never own. Sit where the abbots sat, and look at a mountain that belongs to no one and to this garden at once.