SIX SENSES KYOTO JAPAN

Greenery, space, and stillness define the Six Senses urban resort in Japan's old capital.

- Pico lyer

I stepped through a low, worn wooden door on a quiet lane in the western suburbs of Kyoto and found myself in another world. In front of me was a classic Zen karesansui, or dry garden, its swirls and ridges evoking streams and hills. A master of such gardens, Noriyuki Takao, who has been designing meditation spaces for one of Kyoto's great temples for 35 years, was awaiting me with a smile. "So long as you control your breath," he explained, "it will show, perfectly, in the straight line you make in the sand."

He gave a demonstration, stepping backwards with effortless grace as he raked parallel lines across the garden. "Now," he said, "You try it." I have been living around Japan's ancient capital for 36 years, but I never imagined I'd be given the chance to pursue this form of moving meditation and fashion a Zen enigma myself. The final miracle was that the garden that gentle and encouraging Takao-san has been tending all these decades turned out to be the one at Tōfuku-ji, the 15th-century temple where I met my Kyoto-born wife three weeks after I moved to Japan in 1987.

It seemed only fitting that I came upon this experience, thanks to the city's new Six Senses resort, whose very name points to the extra faculty that Takao-san kept stressing: intuition. The minute I stepped through the property's modest entrance on busy Higashioji Street-"It looks like a temple!" cried my wife-I felt I was in a sanctuary made for mindfulness. The air was scented with cedar, yuzu, and cardamom. Ambient music floated through the small lobby. Right in front of me was an explosion of greenery, no window or door separating me from a flowering garden.