Everything comes full circle - Ryoan-ji
Some things never change, even after 30 years.
[Loop. Kyoto] Vol. 1 Everything Comes Full Circle - Ryoan-ji
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30 Years Ago
A rainy day in Kyoto. I remember staring at the rock garden* at Ryoan-ji, not even caring that my clothes were soaked. My mind was consumed by a single thought: ‘Why am I here?’
A text from my dad.
Thirty years ago, he was sent to Japan by Samsung Electronics. No expat support. Newly married. Pushed into a foreign land, he sat in front of this exact rock garden and asked the exact same question. And three decades later, I was sitting in that very same spot.
September 2018. Kyoto.
PhD qualifying exams, dissertation submission, defense. All done. The relentless track I had been sprinting on finally ran out, leaving me with just one lingering question.
‘What now?’
I had only chased the standards society set for me. Ignoring my own inner voice. Then, the burnout hit. Dragging my exhausted body, I came to Kyoto. Alone.
Ryoan-ji
People sitting side-by-side on the wooden veranda, gazing out at the rock garden. I found a spot and sat down. Endless pebbles. Delicate grooves carved through them. Perfect spacing. Light gray tones. Nothing else. Just rocks, pebbles, and patterns.
At first, my thoughts were trivial, almost playful. ‘How often do they rake this?’, ‘Doesn’t it get ruined when it rains?’, ‘How can a human make it so perfect?’, ‘How do they step out without leaving footprints?’.
But one thought led to another. Taking it a step further.
‘How did someone come up with a garden made only of stones, with no plants at all?’
After snapping enough photos, as people slowly trickled away, Something profound began to leave an afterimage in my mind. Something striking.
Patterns
Patterns swirling over the light gray stones. Continuity. Repetition. Cycles. Life is shorter than we think, maybe it really isn’t much. We’re just dust. In the end, life comes full circle, right back to where it started. Graduating with top honors, getting a PhD, going through all that grind. And here I am, burnt out, sitting on this wooden porch. I couldn’t help but laugh.
The raked grooves on the gravel were endlessly looping in the exact same spot. Just like me.
‘Why am I living?’,
‘What was I put in this world to do?’,
‘What was I sprinting so breathlessly for?’
An endless loop of questions. Like the patterns in the rock garden, they just kept going in circles. Yet, oddly enough, these questions spilling from deep inside didn’t hurt. Maybe because these thoughts, which could never surface in my hyper-driven daily life, finally found a voice in front of this silent garden of stones.
Asking myself these questions... That in itself was liberation.
Echoes Across Generations
I sent a photo to my dad.
I went to Shoren-in in the rain. Just stared blankly at the pond. It was nice.
His reply came back:
A son sharing the exact feelings his dad had in his early 30s. Do emotions loop through time?
I got goosebumps. Coincidentally, we were around the same age. My dad was pushed into Japan by work; I was pushed out here by burnout. Different paths, same destination. In front of the rock garden. Asking the same question.
Is this the fate of the men in our family? Or does everyone go through this phase around this age? It was mysterious, yet somehow deeply comforting.
The Loop
Everything loops. The patterns on the gravel, the seasons, the generations. And the questions that surface in the middle of it all. Just escaping my burnt-out routine and sitting here was a release. The creaking of the wooden floorboards, the sound of rain dripping from the eaves, the moisture spreading over the moss. Amidst those slow, quiet things, all my locked-away questions poured out.
‘You don’t have to run so fast.’,
‘And what exactly did you get from it?’,
‘So, what do you actually like?’
Cynical, empty questions. But as the emptiness faded, a slightly different thought slipped in. ‘If nothing really matters anyway, why not just do what I enjoy?’
Still no answers.
Even after returning from Kyoto, I wandered for a long time. I couldn’t immediately leave the lab, lingering as a postdoc for a few more months. But that question, which started in front of the rock garden, never stopped.
(Continued in Part 2)
*Author’s Note: A traditional Japanese rock garden (karesansui).
Micro-Mission: Zoning Out
We spend every day trapped by the obsession that we need to do something.
In front of the Ryoan-ji rock garden, I gave myself permission to do nothing for the first time. No smartphone, no books, no music.
That purely blank time allows us to ask the important questions we’ve forgotten. Today, how about taking a moment to just zone out and lose yourself in thought?