It is easy to think that beauty resides in the realm of creativity. Yet beauty hardly “appears” from nowhere. Recently, I have come to believe that we “discover” it through the cleaning and polishing we do to preserve things as they are. This feeling grows especially strong when I look at Zen temple gardens.  The beauty of a temple garden rests not in the splendid features that were created by a talented designer; rather, its beauty is uncovered through the continual process of cleaning. Refined beauty cannot be produced by short-term effort — it can only be established through a long process of cleaning and polishing that enables a human being and his surroundings to coexist as one body.  I can find this condition in a Zen temple garden, which is designed to convey the impression of a seashore.

 

— Kenya Hara from his book White —