Gardening is another important aesthetic consideration for Feng Shui. Chinese gardens developed from the art of Shan Shui, which literally means “mountain water.”  Shan is yang, hard, still, sublime, vertically developed, close to heaven. Shui is yin, soft, movable, horizontally developed, close to earth. Shui embraces Shan, Shan surrounds Shui.

Gardens, like all landscape, reveal an attitude that needs to be gently restrained and understated. This enables a more intimate experience and sense of fitting into the environment. Land is not considered a source of profit but rather that which encompasses humility and respect for the forces of nature and heaven.

Throughout Chinese history, geometric forms have rarely been placed on holy land, which is often seen in Western countries. Only in the Chinese Emperor’s gardens were such shapes acceptable because they symbolized respect for the natural forces of heaven and earth. Life and landscape are inextricably linked. Things on earth depend and rely on each other. A landscape is a living thing, a process of communication, a matrix of feeling. The philosophical conclusion in understanding the world is what the great thinker, Laozi called Naturally So.

Feng Shui inextricably links life and landscape as all things in life depend upon each other. To the oriental way of thinking, a landscape is a living, breathing thing. And so it would seem that there is much about heaven and earth and humanity that we in the western world can learn from those in the east.

As an Englishman named Shakespeare succinctly put it in Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth, my dear Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

What does Feng Shui mean to YOU?