Hakuin painted pictures of Daruma (Bodhidharma) throughout his life as a teacher.  His style developed over these years becoming more individual in expression and bolder in setting up the 28th Patriarch as a foil for our efforts at attaining enlightenment.  Daruma appears in Hakuin’s paintings as formal, stern, piercing, and simply a brushstroke.  Each in turn gives us a taste of our practice and challenges us to push the edge.  Along with using Daruma to give us a visual map of our quest, Hakuin never missed the opportunity to pull that visual aide out from under our feet.  He reminds us that even the contruction of constructing Daruma is material for practice.

I have painted several thousand Darumas, yet have never depicted his face.  This is only natural, for the moment I spread the paper to draw it, the original form disappears.

All of you, what is this Daruma that cannot be drawn? (pg. 97)

Thank you for practising,

Genju

Remember the Hakuin exhibition at the Japan Society in New York and other venues!

The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin (by Audrey Yoshiko Seo and Stephen Addiss; Shambhala Press) is the companion gallery book to the Hakuin exhibition currently showing at the Japan Society in New York City.  It begins with a biography of Hakuin and then launches into the Zen Master’s wide-reaching influence on the development of Rinzai Zen in Japan.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve been devouring as many books on Hakuin as I can find.  Wild Ivy, translated beautifully by Norman Waddell, The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin by Katsuhiro Yoshizawa, various sections of Stephen Addiss’ voluminous works on Zen masters and their art all come together in The Sound of One Hand.  This week, I’d like to share, with little interference in or elaboration of, the gems glittering through the layers of scholarship which show off not only the Dharma but Seo and Addiss at their best.

In keeping with the season of ghosts & goblins, Hakuin’s scroll Goblin offered an insight into the bizarre logic our fears can take on.  The scroll shows a one-eyed goblin meeting a blind man who calls out:

Who’s that gr-gr-growling over there?
What?  A one-eyed goblin?
I’m not afraid of you –
Since I have no eyes at all,
You should be scared of me!

Bet you didn’t think of that.

Of course, it’s also true that there are truly scary forms of blindness beyond the literal.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

Remember the Hakuin exhibition at the Japan Society in New York and other venues!