4RKANK

ELMUT BRINKER
 /IRKANK

ZEN IN THE
ART OF PAINTING

Professor Helmut Brinker studied History of Art, Sinology and

Japanology at the Universities of Heidelberg, Harvard and Princeton. He
was curator of the East Asian Department of the Rietberg Museum in
Zurich and is presently Professor of the History of East Asian Art at Zurich
University. He has published numerous books, essays and art catalogues and
is an internationally renowned authority on the art of Zen in the West.
 HELMUT BRINKER

ZEN IN THE
ART OF PAINTING

Translated by George Campbell

/1RKANK

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in German in 198S as Zen in der Kunst des Malens
by Otto Wilhelm Barth Verlag (a division of Scherz Verlag),
BernelMiinchen
This English translation first published in 1987 by ARKANA
ARKANA PAPERBACKS is an imprint of
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Published in the USA by ARKANA

(Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc.)
in association with Methuen Inc.
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Set in Sabon, 10 on 11 pt
by Columns of Reading
and printed in the British Isles
by The Guernsey Press Co Ltd
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This translation © Routledge & Kegan Paul 1987

No part of this book may be reproduced in

any form without permission from the publisher
except for the quotation of brief passages
in criticism

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Brinker, Helmut
Zen in the art of painting.
1. Painting, Chinese 2. Painting, Modern
—20th century—China 2. Zen Buddhism
and art 3. Painting, Japanese 4. Painting,
Modern—20th century—Japan
I. Title II. Zen in der Kunst des Malens.
English
759.951 ND1045
ISBN 1-85063-058-5

British Library CIP Data also available

ISBN 1-85063-058-5
 CONTENTS

Understanding Zen \
The Spiritual Sources of Zen 10
Zen Aesthetics and Theory of Art 20
The Nature of Zen Buddhist Painting 32
Zen Iconography: Themes and Genres 46
Painting in the Service of Zen: Duties and Functions 145
Formal Principles and Technical Means 148
Notes 156
 Understanding Zen

Characteristic of Zen — and, in a sense, characteristic indeed of

the oriental mind in general - is the attempt to understand and
experience the things of this world, whether animate or inani¬
mate, from within: to let oneself be seized and taken by them
instead of trying to comprehend them, as we in the West do,
from a point of view external to them. Thus, to a degree
unparalleled in any other form of art, Zen art requires of the
beholder tranquil and patient absorption, a pure and composed
hearkening to that inaudible utterance, which yet subsumes in
itself all things, and which points to the absolute Nothingness
lying beyond all form and colour (Chinese: wu, Japanese: mu).
And this is true whether the work of art in question be an
abstract garden of stones, a piece of calligraphy thrown off in
spontaneous mastery, an abbreviated ink painting, or a simple
and unaffected tea-bowl.
If we can apprehend and accept this Zen paradox of the
silent utterance (there can be no question of understanding it)
we may hope that the specific essence of Zen art, cryptic and
sublime, and concealed though it may often be in everyday and
inconspicuous guise, will make its wordless and inaudible
appeal to us. The problem' lies in finding the right receptive
wave-length. The philosopher Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955), a
profound authority on mysticism who reached in Japan an
unusually deep understanding of Zen, and whose book Zen in
the Art of Archery (1953)' has become a classic of Zen
literature, drew on his own personal experience to describe the
irradiating effect of Zen Buddhist painting as follows:

These quite simple pictures, showing so infinitely little,

are so full of Zen that the beholder feels overwhelmed by
them. Anyone who has seen, at a long-drawn-out tea
ceremony, how the whole atmosphere changes when the

1
2 UNDERSTANDING ZEN

hanging scrolls are put up, how the guests, sunk in

contemplation before the picture, experience an unveiling
of mysteries which none of them can put into words, and
depart from the tea room feeling unutterably enriched,
will know what power emanates from these paintings.2

But before we face up to the challenge presented by this art,

we must ask ourselves — what is Zen? Plenitude of emptiness,
the zero of Being? Is it meditative contemplation of the Self, or
a mystical vision of absolute truth? There is no ready-made
answer, as any definition will necessarily distort the nature of
Zen and diminish its irradiating clarity.
Once upon a time, three Buddhist monks of orthodox
persuasion were wandering about when they met a Zen disciple
who was just then returning home from a session with Lin-chi
I-hsiian (Linji Yixuan, Japanese: Rinzai Gigen, died 867), a Zen
master renowned for his drastic methods as a teacher. The
encounter took place on a bridge, and one of the monks
thought it therefore apt to put his question thus: ‘How deep is
the river of Zen?’ Whereupon the disciple of Lin-chi answered:
‘That is something you must find out for yourself’, and the
other two monks were just in time to stop him from throwing
their colleague into the river. As this anecdote shows, the
question posed can, in the long run, be answered by personal
experience alone. Nevertheless, whatever our misgivings, we
must try at least to clarify the matter.
Etymologically, zen is the Sino-Japanese pronunciation of
the Chinese character ch’an {chan), which entered the Chinese
lexicon as a somewhat abbreviated version of the Sanskrit word
dhyana. In what follows, we shall not attempt to make a rigid
distinction between ch’an and zen; and on occasion we shall
use the established Japanese term zen even in cases where we
are mainly concerned with Chinese connotations. ‘Zen’ is
usually translated as ‘meditation’ or ‘contemplation’, perhaps
most aptly as ‘inward communion’. Originally, the word
denoted the Buddhist practice of laying oneself perceptually
open to the essential being of things, intuitive immediacy of
perception, awareness of the elemental dynamics of vital
relationships generated in peace and silence. In China, the first
steps in this meditative practice were already being taken in the
 UNDERSTANDING ZEN 3

second century AD; and from the sixth century onwards, the
practice of ch’an became more and more widespread, probably
as a reaction to the over-rigid dogmatism, the metaphysical
abstraction and the speculative fancies of orthodox Buddhism.
In Japan, the main upsurge in Zen was from the end of the
twelfth century onwards.
It is true that, as a religious system, Zen has remained a
living force in Japan, whence it has spread abroad, especially to
America and Europe; but at the same time it must be said that
the word has unfortunately become a fashionable, much
misused cliche, and is even pressed into service in the most
tasteless forms of advertising. One of the most distressing
examples of this is to be found in the case of a celebrated
Japanese cosmetic firm which has actually called one of its
products ‘ZEN’: a perfume which is lauded as ‘totally feminine,
a great new classic fragrance’! There could be no more crass
misrepresentation of the nature of Zen than this; though it is
true to say that Zen has penetrated into hitherto unsuspected
realms, both in the rapidly changing context of Japan and in
the hectic world of the West, and has been — true to its nature
and in spite of occasional abuse — fruitful in giving an impetus
to new and promising initiatives. Popular abuse should not
blind us to the fact that Zen is neither an oriental occult
teaching offering redemption, nor an irrational way of mystic
communion; it is not a way of escaping from the bonds of
conventional social structure, nor is it an effective tool in the
hands of the psychoanalyst:
What differentiates Zen most characteristically from all
other teachings, religious, philosophical, or mystical, is
that while it never goes- out of our daily life, yet with all
its practicalness and concreteness Zen has something in it
which makes it stand aloof from the scene of worldly
sordidness and restlessness.3
Zen is one of the many doctrinal forms or schools - not sects
- forming part of Mahayana Buddhism, whose adherents put
intuitive grasp of religious truth before orthodoxy, dogmatic
scripture and traditional ritual, in their search for enlighten¬
ment - that insight into the nature of things, the nought which
is called satori in Japanese. Satori may come gradually to
4 UNDERSTANDING ZEN

fruition, but then again it may happen suddenly from the

ground of one’s own Self: often it is generated or precipitated
by apparently disjunctive or irrelevant happenings. It cannot be
brought about by theoretical method or by analytical ratiocin¬
ation, both of which depend on language and on encoding in
script. Satori takes place in everyday consciousness; it lays hold
on and imbues body and soul in their togetherness as
‘individuality’. The intellect, the source of logic and of
methodology, is here totally excluded; for the intellect directs
attention to the outer form, the surface, to what is ultimately
non-essential, instead of to that insight into the inner truth
concerning the things of this world, which can be achieved only
via personal experience.
Psychologically, therefore, Satori is what is beyond the
frontiers of the Ego. Logically, it is an insight into the
synthesis of the positive and the negative, of affirmation
and negation; and metaphysically it is the intuitive
comprehension that Being is Becoming and Becoming
Being.4
A striking verse, summing up the new teaching, is attributed
to the Indian founding father of ch’an in China — Bodhidharma
(died before 534) — but is considered by critics to be the work
of the T’ang master Nan-ch’uan P’u-yiian (Nanquan Puyuan,
Japanese: Nansen Fugan, 748-834). The four-line verse sets out
the basic traits of Zen about as well as one can hope:
A special transmission outside scriptures (kydge betsuden);
No dependence upon words and letters (furyu monji);
Directly pointing at the mind of man (jikisbi ninshin);
Seeing into his own nature, man attains Buddhahood
(kensbd jobutsu).

The first two lines are directed against scholastic pedantry,

systematic instruction, theological orthodoxy and blind faith in
scripture. They demand a radical turn away from religion as
encoded in sacred writings (an unheard-of revolution!) and its
replacement by personal ‘transmission’ of the basic teaching of
Buddhism from master to pupil: the ‘transmission from mind to
mind’ (Japanese: ishin denshin).
The formula, which sums up a central concept of Zen, comes
 UNDERSTANDING ZEN 5

from the Fa-pao-t’an cbing (Fabaotan jing), the ‘Platform-

siitra’, which tradition ascribes to the sixth cb’an patriarch,
Hui-neng (Huineng, Japanese: Eno, 638-713). The enlightened
spirit of the Zen master works as a sort of catalyst which
induces a comparable experience in the spirit of the pupil.
Nothing is ‘added’ to the transmission: the pupil must reach the
experience from his own inner resources, the master cannot
‘give’ it to him. It is for this reason that the Zen masters never
tire of reiterating that, in the last resort, Zen is neither
teachable nor transmittable; and in this light, concepts such as
‘teaching, transference, transplantation’ are to be seen as less
than satisfactory attempts at designating a process which
cannot really be grasped conceptually or intellectually. In the
invisible and inaudible ‘transference’ of the deepest religious
experience, Zen communication reduces ultimately to ‘thunder¬
ous silence’, if we may use the formula which Zen masters are
fond of quoting, from the ‘Vimalaklrti-sutra’. ‘In itself, the
word is less than the thought, the thought is less than the
experience. The word is a filtrate, a residue stripped of its best
components.’5
Personal contact between master and pupil, without any
disturbing or propagating middle factor, is here stressed. What
Zen aims at is individual experience of absolute transcendence:
and the disciple can attain this only by following the direct way
prescribed by an experienced spiritual teacher — a required,
often, indeed, provoked process of self-knowledge via the
teacher’s ‘direct pointing at the mind of man’. Clarification of
the inner being enables the pupil finally to experience identity
of his own being with the Absolute, to be aware of his own
primeval perfection, of Buddahood. The celebrated Chinese
cb’an master Huang-po Hsi-yiin (Huangbo Xiyun, Japanese:
Obaku Kiun, died c. 850) is supposed to have said once:
As the spirit is Buddha, the ideal way of perfection is the
unfolding of this Buddha-spirit. Avoid thinking only in
formal concepts which lead to cyclic ebb and flow, to
misery in the world of the senses, and to much else. Then
you will no longer stand in need of ways to enlighten¬
ment, and such like. Thus it is said:
What Buddha teaches has but one aim:
6 UNDERSTANDING ZEN

To transcend the bounds of thought.

Once the play of thoughts is stilled,
Of what further use is Buddha’s teaching?6

One of the ways in which we may try to reach this liberating

experience, this unintentional emptying-out of the Self, is the
art of ‘meditation’ which gave the school its name. What is
called in Japanese zazen is a way of ‘sitting in profound
contemplation’ with crossed legs while one breathes naturally;
a posture which allows spirit and body to settle in relaxed and
unintentional rest while the mind stays wide awake. Pupils
deficient in concentration are encouraged and spurred on by
means of heavy blows on the shoulders and back with the
kydsaku, the flattened admonition staff which Zen masters are
often shown holding in their hands in portraits. Between
periods of static zazen, ‘Zen in motion’, kinhin, is practised, as
a means of developing the capacity to ‘translate’ Zen practice
into everyday life. In the Lin-chi or Rinzai school it is
customary to shout out the untranslatable interjection ‘katsu
this, like the kydsaku, serves to spur pupils on, and — again like
the kydsaku — when used at the right moment can help the
pupil to achieve a satori experience.
A very important auxiliary means in Zen practice is provided
by the koan: paradoxical ‘cases’ which are not amenable to
logical discursive reasoning called kung-an (gongan) in Chinese.
Over the years, various collections of these, large and small,
were formed in Chinese ch’an circles. The best known of these
are the Pi-yen-lu (Biyanlu, Japanese: Hekiganroku), the ‘Green
Cliff Record’7, compiled by Yiian-wu K’o-ch’in (Yuanwu
Keqin, 1063-1135) and first printed in 1125, and the Wu-men-
kuan (Wumenguan), the ‘Pass without a Gate’ of Hui-k’ai
(Huikai, 1184-1260) published in 1228.8 The koan consist very
largely of anecdotes, legendary and biographical details,
conversations with, and sayings of the great patriarchs. They
were designed to serve the pupil as a tool in his own religious
practices, and lead him in the long run to the enlightenment
which is his aim. For example, a monk asked his master: ‘When
one asks a question, one always feels confused in one’s mind.
How does that come about?’ The master answered: ‘Kill, kill!’
This apparently brutal injunction is no doubt designed to kill
 UNDERSTANDING ZEN 7

desire, to switch off thought, to empty the spirit, thereby setting

the scene for the experience of enlightenment. Again, another
monk asked: ‘What is the deepest significance of the law of
Buddha?’ The master’s answer: ‘To fill all streams and all
valleys.’ It was almost inevitable that such provocative exercises
in meditation should appeal to the imagination of painters as
material demanding translation into visual art.
The legend has it that the ‘wordless transmission’ of Zen
began on the Vulture Peak at Benares, when the historical
Buddha, Sakyamuni, seated in the congregation, answered a
question concerning an important article of faith by silently
holding a flower in front of his breast and turning it between
his fingers. Alone among the disciples Kasyapa understood this
gesture as symbolical of the deepest truth, and he indicated this
by smiling. In China, ch’an began with the Indian Bodhidharma
(Chinese: P’u-t’i Ta-mo, Puti Damo; in Japanese: Bodai-
daruma, died before 534), the last in a series of twenty-eight
Indian patriarchs. He was followed by the Chinese founding
fathers: Hui-k’o (Huike, 487-593), Seng-ts’an (Sengcan, died
606), Tao-hsin (Daoxin, 580-651), Hung-jen (Hongren, 601-
674) and Hui-neng (Huineng, 638-713). At this point, after the
fifth patriarch, serious rivalries over the true succession broke
out which, coupled with irreconcilable differences in basic
points of theology, led to a split into two schools - the
northern and the southern. The northern school was led by
Shen-hsiu (Shenxiu, 606-706), the southern by Hui-neng; and,
if we may venture to express the difference between them in a
nutshell, Shen-hsiu and his school saw the way to enlighten¬
ment as a gradual process, whereas Hui-neng saw it as a
sudden revelation.
Hui-neng was officially appointed to the succession; and
over the centuries that followed, his disciples created the
canonical and historically important codification of Chinese
ch’an, which reached its apogee in the T’ang (Tang) dynasty
(618-906) and which was further disseminated, systematised
and, in part, doctrinally recast in the Sung (Song) dynasty (960-
1278). The Emperor Ning-tsung (Ningzong, reigned 1194-
1224) organised the amalgamation and the hierarchical order¬
ing of the five most important ch’an monasteries in Hangchow
(Hangzhou) and Mingchow (Mingzhou, in modern Chekiang/
8 UNDERSTANDING ZEN

Zhejiang province) as the ‘Five Mountains’ (wu-shan). This

provided a model for the establishment of the gozan of
Kamakura and Kyoto, and exercised immense influence far and
wide as a centre of Zen art and culture. It was at this stage that
meditative Buddhism found its way into Japan.
Japanese Buddhism’s first contacts with the, as yet, incipient
ch’an movement on the Chinese mainland go back to the
seventh century, when in 653 the Hosso monk Dosho (629-
700) journeyed to China and made contact there with a disciple
of the second patriarch Hui-k’o (Huike), named Hui-man
(Huiman). Furthermore, during his eight-year stay in China, he
let himself be initiated into the ideology and the practice of the
new school by the experienced and much-travelled Hsiian-tsang
(Xuanzang, 603-664). Sporadic contacts of this sort continued
in the centuries that followed; Zen writings reached Japan, and
the practice of meditation, already customary in the Tendai and
Shingon schools, grew in prestige and significance.
For its main inauguration and establishment in Japan, Zen
had to wait until the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries;
and it was left to three priests who had been trained in China,
to introduce three main currents of mainland ch’an to the
monastic communities of Japan. These were: the reformer
Myoan Eisai (1141-1215) who had been particularly drawn to
the ideas of the Huang-lung (Huanglong, Japanese Oryu)
branch of the Rinzai school; the learned Risshu master, Shunjo
(1166-1227) who had made an intensive study of the Yang-ch’i
(Yangqi, Japanese: Yogi) branch of the same school; and,
thirdly, the unconventional thinker Kigen Dogen (1200-1253)
whose goal it was to bring about a realisation of the ideal belief
and the ideal life-style envisaged by the Ts’ao-tung (Caodong,
Japanese: Soto) school. Their own disciples and subsequent
masters carried on the work thus begun, with the support of
renowned ch’an masters from mainland China: Wu-an P’u-ning
(Wuan Puning, 1179-1276), Lan-ch’i Tao-lung (Lanqi Daolong,
1213-1278), Wu-hsiieh Tsu-yiian (Wuxue Zuyuan, 1226-1286)
and I-shan I-ning (Yishan Yining, 1247-1317). It was they who
set the course for the rise of the ‘Five Mountains’, the gozan of
Kamakura and Kyoto. In Kamakura, from 1386 on, the
following belonged to these elite Zen monasteries: Kenchoji,
Engakuji, Jufukuji, Jochiji and Jomyoji. In Kyoto, there were —
 UNDERSTANDING ZEN 9

apart from the monastery of Nanzenji which was partly

allotted to the gozan by virtue of the Shogun’s decree —
Tenryuji, Shokokuji, Kenninji, Tofukuji and Manjuji.9
 The Spiritual Sources of Zen

Painting in Zen: Zen in painting. This apparently trivial

juxtaposition is not meant to be a capricious play on words,
nor yet an attempt at formulating a typical Zen ‘case’, a koan.
Rather, it is a way of suggesting the multi-dimensional nexus,
the many layers of meaning, the reciprocal stimuli, the various
religious, cultural and intellectual factors, whose fusion over
the centuries has cancelled out oppositions and dualisms, and
which have found visual expression in this form of painting.
Eugen Herrigel regards Zen painting as the end-product of
satori, ‘the way in which it expresses itself pictorially .... For
there is a distinct school of Zen painting: works in which the
illuminated vision of existence is the theme of the picture.’10
But, as one may well imagine, Zen painting was not
produced, necessarily and exclusively, by Zen monks for Zen
monasteries or for members of the Zen communities. In China,
it was above all the literati, scholars, poets and statesmen who
painted pictures in the Zen spirit - perhaps at the suggestion of
ch’an masters in their circle of acquaintances. Sometimes it was
even traditionally trained members of the court academy, who
were commissioned by a monastery, a prelate, or perhaps a lay
ruler, an Emperor or a Shogun, attracted by meditative
Buddhism, to take a Zen Buddhist theme as their subject-
matter. Through contact - often close contact — with court
officials who had been as a rule educated on Confucian
principles, Zen monks were able to widen their intellectual
horizon and see far beyond the limits of their monastic
ambience. Here, Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism met in
mutually fertilising and creative cultural exchange; and the
reciprocal stimuli in philosophy, art and literature are too
numerous to be listed.
Thus it came about that artists, who were by no means
members of the Buddhist clergy, painted typical Zen pictures;

10
 THE SPIRITUAL SOURCES OF ZEN 11

while, on the other hand, painter-monks appropriated for their

own use the artistic concepts, themes and styles of the literati
and produced typical literati pictures, elegant representations of
orchids, bamboos and rocks. Questions arise in our minds as
we contemplate these pictures. Is this Zen painting? Are these
works in the spirit of Zen? Is this a form of Buddhist art, or are
these pictures the spontaneous productions of artistically
committed clerics? In what follows, we may be able to find
answers to these questions.
At this point we must mention a further spiritual source of
Zen and its art: Taoism. The Buddhist ideology emanating
from India, and based, in the Zen reading, on the universal
presence of the essential Buddha, was, in fact, very close to the
concept of the Tao (Dao) in Chinese thought: the concept of a
transcendental principle informing all things and manifesting
itself in nature as a whole. The contemplative practices
whereby Zen Buddhists and Taoists sought to gain insight into
the elemental forces of the universe, the. very roots of being,
were closely similar; both Zen Buddhists and Taoists stressed
the original and natural act of insight into the nature of being,
expressed their distrust of any intellectualisation of their
teachings, and laid value on the transmission, from master to
disciple, of ‘the wordless teaching’ — a Taoist expression, which
was to become a key-word in the conceptual world of Zen
Buddhism.
Against the background of such a Weltanschauung, it was
almost inevitable that representation of nature, especially of
landscape, should prove an apt vehicle for Zen Buddhist
painters wishing to express their cosmosophic insight. These
artists, working as they were from the basis of religious
enlightenment, saw the world around them with changed eyes.
A metamorphosis had taken place within them, a change which
enabled them to see the earnest of salvation in the world of
empirical phenomena: the annulment of duality, and the
religious-metaphysical at-one-ment of man and mountain,
river, animal and plant:
A master said: ‘Before a man studies Zen, to him
mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after he
gets an insight into the truth of Zen through the
12 THE SPIRITUAL SOURCES OF ZEN

instruction of a good master, mountains to him are not

mountains and waters are not waters; but after this when
he really attains to the abode of rest, mountains are once
more mountains and waters are waters.’11
To throw further light on the Zen artist’s insight into the
nature of things, an insight which absorbs and cancels out all
opposites, let us again quote D.T. Suzuki, who writes:
To become a bamboo and to forget that you are one with
it while drawing it - this is the Zen of the bamboo, this is
the moving with the ‘rhythmic movement of the spirit’
which resides in the bamboo as well as in the artist
himself. What is now required of him is to have a firm
hold on the spirit and yet not to be conscious of the fact.
This is a very difficult task achieved only after long
spiritual training. The Eastern people have been taught
since the earliest times to subject themselves to this kind
of discipline if they want to achieve something in the
world of art and religion. Zen, in fact, has given
expression to it in the following phrase: ‘One in All and
All in One’. When this is thoroughly understood, there is
creative genius.12
What this fundamental saying offers us is not so much a
glimpse of Zen pantheism as further evidence of the strong
influence of Taoism, according to whose tenets the Tao (Dao),
the ‘way of nature’ is everywhere revealed in reality-as-given,
cancelling out in mutual interpenetration in the ‘fundament of
Being’ all superficial contradictions and oppositions, such as
those between fullness and emptiness, between multiplicity and
unity, between ‘One and All’.
The syncretic fusion of Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist
thought and forms of expression found its most succinct
expression in the theory of the ‘Three Creeds and the Single
Source’ (Chinese: san-chiao i-chih/sanjiao yizhi\ Japanese:
sankyo itcbi). Under Imperial patronage, symposia were often

Sakyamuni, Confucius and Lao-tzu (or: The Three Creeds) (detail);

attributed to Josetsu (early fifteenth century). Rydsoku-in, Kenninji,
Kyoto
!$
 THE SPIRITUAL SOURCES OF ZEN 15

held in China at which leading representatives discussed the

relationships between the doctrines they taught, their advan¬
tages and their drawbacks. In addition, painters like Sun
Wei and Shih K’o (Shi-Ke) in the ninth and tenth centuries
drew the three founders of these doctrines - the historical
Buddha, Sakyamuni, Confucius and Lao-tzu (Laozi) — together
into a group portrait, a theme which was enthusiastically
received in the tolerant atmosphere of Zen, especially in the
fifteenth century in Japan. Existent incompatibilities in doctrine
were not exploited, as they were simply seen as different
aspects of one and the same thing. ‘Zen Buddhists are
sometimes Confucianists, sometimes Taoists, or sometimes
even Shintoists’: this is D.T. Suzuki’s terse and somewhat
surprising verdict.13
The most prominent remaining version of the theme showing
Sakyamuni, Confucius and Lao-tzu (Laozi) as a triad, is a
rough rapidly brushed ink-painting in the Ryosoku-in of the
Kenninji in Kyoto. The hanging scroll was rediscovered in 1916
and is convincingly attributed, in one of the two inscriptions on
the picture, to the Zen monk and painter Josetsu. It seems
reasonably certain that Josetsu was active, early in the fifteenth
century, in the Shokokuji at Kyoto. He is said to have been
given his monk’s name of Josetsu - which literally translated
means ‘clumsy-like’ — by the learned Zen master and poet
Zekkai Chushin (1336-1405): a reference to a passage in the
45th chapter of the Taoist classic, the Tao-te-ching (Daodejing),
the ‘Holy Book of the Way and the Virtue’, where we read:
‘Great straightness seems bent; the greatest skill is like
clumsiness; great eloquence seems tongue-tied.’14 The inscrip¬
tion directly above the painting was written in 1493 by the
well-known Zen monk Seishu Ryuto (1434-1498), presumably
about a century after the original painting was done. It may be
translated in part:
Gautama, Confucius, and Lao. The three are like one.
One is like three. Together the three produce all virtues.
They may be compared to three boatmen in the same

The Three Vinegar-tasters (detail) by Reisai (mid-fifteenth century);

inscription by Yaun Eitsu. Umezawa Kinenkan, Tokyo
16 THE SPIRITUAL SOURCES OF ZEN

great vessel containing heaven and earth and laden with

the sacred and profane.
Earlier the concept of the unity of the Three Creeds was
succinctly expressed by the influential Chinese cb’an abbot Wu-
chun Shih-fan (Wuzhun Shifan, 1177-1249) in a prose-poem
for a lost painting of our theme:
The one is three.
The three are one.
The three are one.
The one is three.
Apart, they cannot be separated.
Together, they cannot form a group.
Now, as in the past,
They join together
In silence,
For the simple reason
That within the creeds
Are many vessels.15
As ecumenical ideals, the inner identity of Buddhism,
Confucianism and Taoism and the casting aside of narrow,
artificial constraints in the shape of doctrinal and confessional
prescriptions, were reinforced from the artistic point of view by
the adhesion of two further themes: first, the representation of
the ‘Three Vinegar-tasters’ (Chinese: san-suantsansuan; Japan¬
ese: sansan), and second, pictures of the ‘Three Laughers of the
Tiger Ravine’ (Chinese: Hu-ch’i san-hsiao/Huqi sanxiao; Jap¬
anese: Kokei sansbd). These two themes were favourites of the
Zen painters, and were handled by them with sensitive humour.
Whether the three vinegar-tasters are really Sakyamuni, Confu¬
cius and Lao-tzu (Laozi) or, as others maintain, the celebrated
Sung (Song) dynasty literati, Su Tung-p’o (Su Dongpo, 1036-
1101), Huang T’ing-chien (Huang Tingjian, 1045-1105) and
their priestly friend, the ch’an monk Fo-yin (Foyin) from the
Chin-shan (Jinshan) monastery, what is certain is that the
picture expresses in allegorical form the essential identity of the
three creeds, in that the three sages are sampling liquid from
one and the same vessel: each is aware subjectively of a
different taste - and yet it is the same liquid, wine that has
turned to vinegar.
 THE SPIRITUAL SOURCES OF ZEN 17

We have to thank an artist who is presumed to have been

active in the middle of the fifteenth century in the Tofukuji at
Kyoto, for the most delightful version known of the ‘Three
Vinegar-tasters’. This was the painter-monk Reisai who seems
to have taken part in an embassy to Korea in 1463. The picture
is painted in ink on paper: a powerful and original statement in
bold lines. The three old men are standing round a large jar.
Eyes closed and lips thrust forward, they are concentrating on
tasting their samples. The picture is signed by the artist in the
bottom right-hand corner, and provided with the motto-seal
Kyaku to jitcbi: that is to say, ‘To plant one’s feet on solid
ground’.
The scroll, owned today by the Umezawa Kinenkan in
Tokyo, has a prose inscription by a monk named Yaun Eitsu in
which we find the statement: ‘The Three Creeds become a
Single Doctrine .... The men endure the sour taste and knit
their brows, standing face to face in silence. A dominant
religion is an affliction to man.’ Several poems preserved in the
‘Collected Sayings’ of gozan monks bear witness to the
popularity of the ‘Three Vinegar-tasters’ in Muromachi poetry
and painting. The Tofukuji priest Genun Gesshu seems to have
provided a number of inscriptions for paintings that have been
lost; one reads:

Wearing Confucian shoes, a Taoist cap, and a Buddhist

robe,
Three men taste vinegar standing in the setting sun.
Later it will be changed into a cup of wine.
They are T’ao [Yuan-ming], Lu [Hsiu-ching], and [Hui-]
yuan;
T’ao will support the drunken one when they return
home.16

In the Moyoma period, the painter Kaiho Yusho (1533-1615)

who was raised in the Tofukuji and who was subsequently
well-known in Zen circles in Kyoto, treated the same theme in
a six-fold screen, which is now preserved in the Myoshinji in
Kyoto, along with a representation of the scurrilous Zen saints,
Kanzan and Jittoku. Later Zen artists, as for example Hakuin
in the eighteenth century, have also treated this ‘classical’
theme.
18 THE SPIRITUAL SOURCES OF ZEN

Chronologically, the ‘Three Laughers of the Tiger Ravine’

may well be the oldest of these three allegorical themes. It is in
the writings of the renowned, ch’an painter-monk and poet
Kuan-hsiu (Guanxiu, 832-912) that we first find the story of
the poet T’ao Yuan-ming (Tao Yuanming, 372-427), who came
from a Confucian milieu and who incorporates the ideal of the
individual and solitary anchorite; the Taoist magus and
philosophical formalist Lu Hsiu-ching (Lu Xiujing, c. 406-477);
and the important Buddhist patriarch Hui-yiian (Huiyuan, 334-
416). Round about the year 384, Hui-yiian had retreated to the
Tung-lin (Donglin) monastery on Mount Lu on the south bank
of the Yangtse; and here he swore never again to leave the holy
confines of the monastery or to set foot in the profane world of
desire and everyday human filth. But one day, T’ao Yuan-ming
and Lu Hsiu-ching came to visit him. When they were leaving,
he accompanied them a little way, engrossed in animated
conversation — and, unwittingly, crossed the bridge over Tiger
Gorge, which formed the boundary between the monastery
grounds and the outer world. Suddenly the three men heard a
tiger roar, and at once Hui-yiian realised that he had
inadvertently broken his oath. Laughing heartily the three men
shrugged off their little mistake, for they saw clearly that
constraints and prescriptions, however rigorous, are of no avail
against spiritual freedom and purity.
After Kuan-hsiu another eccentric painter took up the theme
of the ‘Three Laughers of the Tiger Ravine’ in the second half
of the tenth century. This was Shih K’o (Shi-Ke) who seems to
have adorned the walls of a house with this motif, a house
subsequently inhabited by no less a personality than Ou-yang
Hsiu (Ouyang Xiu, 1007-1072), the great statesman, poet,
historian and archaeologist. Tradition has it that Su Tung-p’o
(Su Dongpo), a younger contemporary of the Neo-Confucian
Ou-yang, wrote a poem on this wall painting. Alas, nothing
remains of what must have been a most charming work of the
tenth/eleventh century. However, we do have some good
Japanese ink paintings, dating from the fifteenth century, of this
allegory which is so popular in Zen circles: from the hand, for
example, of the Zen priest Chuan Shinko who lived in the
Seirai-an of the Kenchoji at Kamakura round about 1450 (now
in the Hosomi collection, Osaka); or from the hand of the
 THE SPIRITUAL SOURCES OF ZEN 19

roughly contemporary Zen painter-monk Bunsei, who was

evidently in close contact with the Daitokuji in Kyoto (now in
the Powers collection, New York). Finally, we meet the three
figures, squeezed and contorted into a most original caricature
version, in an ink drawing by the eccentric abbot of the
Shofukuji, Gibon Sengai (1750-1837) who adds a 31-syllable
poem:

Why do they laugh?

The clouds that make no pledges
Pass over the mountain bridge,
Morning or evening,
With the utmost freedom!17
In Japan, the form of religious figure-painting known as
dosbakuga, which draws heavily on Taoist and Confucian
sources, but most particularly on Zen Buddhist sources, is
sharply distinguished, both from traditional and orthodox
Buddhist painting (butsuga) and from the.ideal portraits of the
venerated Zen patriarchs of the past (soshi-zd/zu) and the
actual portraits of Zen priests (known in general as cbinzo).
The word dosbakuga can be literally translated as ‘pictures
which explain the way (to enlightenment)’. It can, however, be
analysed into three components: do = Taoist, sbaku =
Buddhist (in compound with a second character, sbaka =
Sakyamuni) and ga = painting. Zen works of this type had a
largely didactic character and were of high paradigmatic value;
and figures from Confucian history and legend and from the
rich Taoist pantheon, which had been integrated into Zen
painting, were called into service as stimulating exemplars.
 Zen Aesthetics and
Theory of Art

The cultural interpenetration which is so marked in this field

and the exorbitant claims made in recent years for Zen and its
art in a vast number of publications, have brought about a
situation in which the very existence of a specific Zen art is
being questioned, at least in China, while more weight is being
laid on the Neo-Confucian component in this cultural amal¬
gam. We may welcome this as a desirable expansion of what is
often the over-narrow viewpoint adopted by many authors, but
we must be on our guard not to empty the baby out along with
the bath-water. It is certain that there is no such thing as a
unified Zen style of painting: there are no generally valid
formal guidelines, nor is there an established iconographic
canon for artists to draw upon; and even the identification of
the spontaneous, suggestive and abbreviated ink painting prac¬
tised in China since the thirteenth century and in Japan since
the fourteenth with ‘Zen painting’ is too simple and one-sided,
not to say misleading. Zen painting has a much wider spectrum
of artistic manifestations, methods, techniques, themes, forms
and styles, and it is not easy to isolate the specific Zen features
in a given picture. Zen painting is not a closed-off, isolated and
clearly differentiated genre of East Asian art; on the contrary, it
must be seen in its proper setting in the general history of art in
China and Japan, on the one hand, and, on the other, in the
overall development of Buddhist art in the Orient.
In the process of selecting their artistic means, their style,
artists could draw upon an enormously rich reservoir dating
back hundreds of years. True to the freedom and multilateral
receptivity characteristic of Zen, they translated traditional
formal principles into a new context, and selected a new and
unconventional, even surprising mode of utterance; and the
result was that, for example, an established academic style
could be applied to an unmistakable Zen theme, an unorthodox

20
 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART 21

synthesis which could generate something new — a Zen work of

art. On the other hand, when they chose themes which had
reached Zen imagery from traditional Buddhist art, painters
who were working from personal experience and belief, and
who had discarded the constraints of conservative criteria,
preferred to use unorthodox methods and means developed by
eccentric outsiders for whom traditional Chinese critics had
nothing but scorn. It was precisely in this context that such
factors in the mind of the Zen adept as intentional incomplete¬
ness, the absence of the pretentious in favour of the sponta¬
neous, were able to generate and embody high aesthetic and
religious values. In Zen monasteries in Japan this form of art
was accepted and preserved as something very precious; and it
was promoted and fostered there by political personalities who
were keenly interested in art. In Japan, from the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries onwards, men of influence, interested in
Zen, were much more effective than were their counterparts in
China in setting the spiritual and cultural tone of the people as
a whole, and in making their aesthetic and artistic principles
valid for lay circles as well.
What are these aesthetic principles? The first thing one
notices about works of art imbued with the spirit of Zen, and
about artistic skills which have blossomed into ‘ways’ {do) —
especially the ‘tea-way’ (chadd) — is an elemental sense of
unadorned simplicity, artlessness, objectiveness and purity; a
feeling for unforced naturalness, forceful directness and a deep
respect for nature. In his book Zen to bijutsu the contemporary
philosopher and authority on Zen, Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, has
selected seven properties which are mutually valent or combin¬
atorial on a given plane, and which give a Zen work of art its
special quality. These are: asymmetry {fukinsei), simplicity
(,kanso), austere sublimity or lofty dryness (koko), naturalness
{shizen), subtle profundity or deep reserve (yugen), freedom
from attachment {datsuzoku), tranquillity {seijaku).18 This list
of properties gives us a good idea of what goes to make a Zen
work of art. Some of these transcend purely aesthetic values
and point to lofty moral and religious ideals, while at the same
time adumbrating the basic concepts of that attitude to art
which differentiates Zen in principle from the orthodox schools
of Mahayana Buddhism. In what follows, we shall try to sketch
22 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART

the main outlines of this specifically Zen Buddhist concept of

art.
Cult pictures in the traditional sense play just as small a part
in Zen as do classical Mahayana sutras. After all, what one is
seeking in Zen is ‘independence from words and letters’ and a
‘special transmission outside scriptures’. Thus it comes about
that Zen has developed its own extensive genealogical and
hagiographical literature. In addition, the ‘Collected Sayings’
(Chinese: yii-lu/yulu; Japanese: goroku) of a great Zen master,
usually assembled posthumously by his students, go to further
the pristine ‘transmission from mind to mind’. In these, the
enlightened spirit of a Zen master is most clearly and purely
revealed: as also in the portraits, often with dedications in the
handwriting of the person portrayed, and in other ‘ink-traces’
(Chinese: mo-cbi/moji-, Japanese: bokuseki) by the master’s
hand. A hand-written token can transmit the being and the
spirit of the teacher to the student more effectively than the
invariably inadequate compromise of a reproduction: the
deixis is ‘directly pointing at the mind of man’, and it
transcends time and space to retain awake in one’s conscious¬
ness the invisible presence of the spiritual exemplar.
We have mentioned the inscriptions on pictures (Chinese:
tsan/zan, Japanese: sari). In addition to these, the following
documents — some of them on a very high level of literary and
calligraphic merit - have, for the Zen disciple, the same
evocatory power over and above the primary sense of their
contents:

1 Fa-yii/fayu; Japanese: bogo. ‘Dharma-words’ in the form of

an essay or a poem, containing all sorts of personal hints for
the Zen student engaged in his search for spiritual maturity
or enlightenment.
2 Fu-fa-chuang/fufazbuang-, Japanese: fuho-jo. Instructions for
Zen students ear-marked for the succession in a didactic or
administrative capacity.
3 I-cbi/yiji; Japanese: yuige. Precepts written down on the
death-bed in verse form; the religious last will and testament
of a Zen master, as it were.
4 Yin-k’o-cbuang/yinkezbuang; Japanese: inka-jo. Document¬
ation certifying that a Zen student has satisfied all the
 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART 23

conditions requisite for recognition as a master.

5 Tzu-hao/zibao; Japanese: jigo. Confirmation names, consist¬
ing usually of two large characters, which were conferred
upon Zen students on the occasion of their graduation.
6 Ch’ib-tu/cbidu-, Japanese: sekitoku. Letters or epistles.

Nothing is further from the man of Zen than to seek his

religious aim via the contemplation and veneration of a cult
picture, or to let himself be guided by an esoteric ritual, a
strictly ordered liturgy, into which petrified symbols are
compressed to form a binding semiology. If one had to give a
concise definition of the Zen Buddhist attitude to art, with
particular regard to its understanding of unmistakably religious
themes in painting, one might do worse than quote the words
of the first cb’an patriarch, Bodhidharma, who was asked by
the Liang Emperor Wu (464-549) what was the ‘highest
meaning of the Sacred Truth’, to which Bodhidharma replied:
‘Open distance - nothing sacred.’ These striking words form
the take-off point for the Pi-yen-lu (Biyanlu), the ‘Green Cliff
Record’. This well-known work contains a hundred ‘cases’
(.koan) collected by Hsiieh-tou Chung-hsien (Xuedou Zhong-
xian, 980-1052) which were used by the cb’an master Yiian-wu
K’o-ch’in (Yuanwu Keqin, 1063-1135) when instructing his
pupils, never intending, no doubt, that his exposition would
one day be published along with the explanatory examples.
One of Yiian-wu’s pupils, Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Dahui Zonggao,
1089-1163), was probably convinced that he was acting in the
spirit of his master when he burned the Pi-yen-lu (Biyanlu) in
demonstrative protest against the proliferation of Zen writings.
However, Ta-hui’s copy was not the sole one extant; others
survived so that we are still in possession of the hints, examples
and panegyrics which go to make up the ‘Green Cliff
Record’.19 A few more examples may help to show the radical
nature of Zen rejection of traditional scripture and ceremonial
veneration of iconography.
We are assured in various traditional sources that the sixth
patriarch, Hui-neng, could not read or write. During the
quarrel as to who should succeed the fifth patriarch, Hui-neng
found that, in the hours of darkness, his rival had written a
poem on the cloister wall which was to be painted next day. He
The monk of Tan-hsia burns a wooden Buddha statue, by Fan-yin
T’o-lo (first half of the fourteenth century. Bridgestone Art Museum,
Tokyo
 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART 25

was moved to reply to it: but had to beg a monk with whom he
was on friendly terms to write his poem down for him. There is
a marvellous picture, traditionally attributed to the Sung
academy painter Liang K’ai (Liang Kai) active in the first half
of the thirteenth century, though some critics take it to be a
Japanese copy, which gives a most impressive demonstration of
Zen Buddhist rejection of scholastic dependence on texts. In it
we see an old unkempt monk - probably the sixth patriarch,
Hui-neng — tearing up a sutra scroll with obvious and sarcastic
pleasure. Another ck’an priest, Te-shan Hsiian-chien (Deshan
Xuanjian), who died in 865, seems to have followed Hui-neng’s
example, when he consigned all his sutra scrolls to the flames
after he had achieved enlightenment.
Zen scepticism regarding the allegation that religious
pictures and images were imbued with a holy substance which
manifests itself in them, is well demonstrated by the unruly
ch’an master T’ien-jan (Tianran, 738-824) from Tan-hsia
(Danxia), of whom many very extraordinary tales are related in
several collections of Zen writings. He shocked his fellows not
only by pretending to be deaf and dumb, but by actually
climbing up a Buddhist statue in sacrilegious disregard of all
monastic rules. On another occasion, when he felt cold, he
made no bones about lighting a fire with a wooden statue of
the Buddha! When the abbot took him to task for this, T’ien-
jan (Tianran) answered that he burned the image in order to get
the sarira, i.e. the ashes of the Buddha, which were venerated as
relics. The abbot burst out angrily: ‘How can you hope to gain
sarira from an ordinary piece of wood?’ to which T’ien-jan
(Tianran) replied: ‘If that is so, why do you take me to task?’
The picture by Yin T’o-lo (Yin Tuole), a ch’an monk and
painter, who probably hailed from India and who seems to
have been active during the first half of the fourteenth century
mainly in the eastern coastal regions of China (his full priest
name is Fan-yin T’o-lo/Fanyin Tuolo), very successfully cap¬
tures the humour of this anecdote, which is so symptomatic of
the true Zen attitude to things. The little ink painting in the
Bridgestone Art Museum (Ishibashi collection) in Tokyo
mounted today as a hanging scroll, is probably a section cut
out from a longer handscroll containing similar Zen anecdotes.
In burning a wooden statue of the Buddha in order to warm
26 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART

himself, the monk from Tan-hsia (Danxia) was not simply

indulging in an act of pure iconoclasm. Rather, he was helping
to demolish what was for orthodox Buddhists an irrefutable
belief in the hypostatization of the Absolute in a religious
image; and equally, he was performing a reductio ad absurdum
of the widespread practice of venerating relics. Zen is tolerant
of pictures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, but does not consider
them to be sacrosanct; so that, when T’ien-jan (Tianran)
climbed up the Buddha statue he was simply making an un¬
mistakable and provocative demonstration of his indifference
to, and inner independence vis-a-vis the solemnity and sanctity
ostensibly informing the statue: he was no longer abashed by it.
For him, pictures and images - even of the Buddha - are
transitory: forlorn attempts, doomed to failure from the outset,
to make Buddha-being (buddhata) visible and tangible, even
anthropomorphic. Zen preferred to create images of great Zen
masters, such as founders of temples, portrait statues of whom
are still to be seen today in many Japanese Zen monasteries.
Significantly, however, besides these portrait statues there is
virtually no Zen Buddhist sculpture worth mentioning. By and
large, we can say that mature Zen shows a tendency towards
aniconism; it can do without representational images, though it
would be going too far to say that it is hostile to represen¬
tational art in general.
In type and character, however, a Zen picture is fundamen¬
tally different from a work produced by the traditional schools
of Buddhist religious painting. To the ceremonial splendour,
the radiance of colour and gold and ornamentation of these
works, to their calculated and iconographically ordered pleni¬
tude of forms, Zen opposes an off-the-cuff spontaneity which
jettisons deep-rooted conventions in favour of an almost ascetic
and yet very effective economy of form, a down-to-earth
objectivity, achieved with the simplest of artistic means, and
eschewing virtuosity, saturation and prodigality. This matter-
of-factness is allied to modesty and simplicity in the choice of
motif and of material, and we must not fail to mention the
preference for empty backgrounds. Frequently, this empty
background is not simply a negative factor in the composition
of the picture, an unpainted part of it. In keeping with the
tenets of Zen, this empty space is of extreme significance as a
 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART 27

symbol of the absence of form, of colour and of attributes, the

sunyata which the Japanese know as ku. The empty ground of
the picture is identified as the empty ground of Being and as
satori — absolute truth and the highest stage of knowledge.
The tenfold Zen parable known as the ‘Ten Oxherding
Songs’ has been popular since the eleventh century in numerous
versions both in verse and in picture form. It serves the Zen
pupil as a spiritual and visual support and signpost on his way
in search of enlightenment: the gradual process whereby
maturity is achieved on the path of Zen is compared to ten
stages in the search for an ox which a simple herdsman believes
he has lost but ultimately finds. In the eighth stage, we find an
empty circle — a symbol for the point of unintentional and
unbidden forgetting of both ox and herdsman: or, to put it in
other words, for the ‘insight into one’s own nature’, which
ultimately leads to ‘Buddhahood’. We recall what Bodhidharma
said when asked what was the supreme meaning of Holy
Truth: ‘Open distance — nothing sacred.’
The circle (Chinese: yiian-hsiang/yuanxiang; Japanese: enso)
has long been a central component in the ideology of Zen
Buddhism. We find the third Chinese patriarch Chien-chih
Seng-ts’an (Jianzhi Sengcan, died in 606), speaking in his Hsin-
bsin-ming (Xinxinming, Japanese: Shinjinmei), the ‘Engraving
of Belief in Mind’, of the ‘Circle, which is equivalent to the
“Great Emptiness”; nothing is missing, nothing is superfluous!’
The circle as ‘perfect manifestation’, as a form without
beginning and without end, represents the annulment of all
contradictions to absolute unity and, accordingly, to ‘true
emptiness’ (Chinese: cben-k’ung/zhenkong; Japanese: sbinku).
It symbolises the formless and colourless Being-as-it-is of all
things in creation, the ‘original lineaments before birth’, of
which it is said in the Wu-men-kuan (Wumenguan; Japanese:
Mumonkan): ‘Even when we paint it, it is not painted.’
The most fitting symbol - perhaps we should say ‘non-
symbol’ — for the ‘insight into one’s own nature’ in Zen
painting is thus the empty ground. ‘The direct pointing at the
mind of man’ which precedes vision of ‘the original lineaments
before birth’ (in the language of the fundamental article of the
Zen credo, which we have already quoted more than once) is
bodied forth for us in a humorous ink painting (now in the
28 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART

MOA Museum of Art in Atami) by the Japanese Zen monk and

painter Mokuan Reien, who was active in China from 1325 till
his death in 1345. The painting, based perhaps on a Chinese
representation of the historically attested beggar-monk Pu-tai
(Budai, Japanese: Hotei, died in 916) shows the bald-pated old
man happily roaming over the countryside, and laughing as he
points with his raised hand into empty space. The other
version, incidentally sometimes likewise attributed to Mokuan,
helps us to understand this indicative gesture by placing at its
crucial point a small circle (nimbus) with a tiny Buddha figure
seated within it. This is the ‘original lineaments’ of Pu-tai or
Hotei, a reference to his state of enlightenment and also to
Maitreya, the future Buddha, as whose incarnation Pu-tai was
seen by posterity.
Closely related to these ink paintings done by Mokuan in
China are two Japanese representations of Hotei pointing
upwards. One of these, at present in the Tokyo National
Museum, bears the seal of a little-known artist named Koboku,
who seems to have been active in Kamakura during the first
half of the sixteenth century; the other, in the collection of Mrs
Milton S. Fox, is the work of Yamada Doan (died. c. 1573)
bearing a quatrain written by a certain Tokei Dojin. In
translation, the lines run as follows:
Big stomach, gaping garment,
Treasures gathered deep in the bag’s bottom,
Passing through the sky is another road,
Do not seek what his fingertip points out.20
This is probably meant to be taken as a warning not to seek
the way to enlightenment in over-conscious and desperate
fashion. But let us disobey the unidentified writer and try to
guess what the secret and invisible something might be at which
Hotei, in all such pictures, is pointing while he laughs in the
knowledge of ascertainment. We may come to the conclusion
that, over and above the other layers of meaning, the full moon
could well be the answer here: it is moving across the
firmament, it counts as a symbol of ‘true emptiness without
characteristics’ (Chinese: chen-k’ung wu-hsiang/zbenkong wu-
xiang; Japanese: sbinku-muso), and it inevitably eludes rep¬
resentation in any form. Hotei’s bulging sack in which
Circle (Japanese: enso), by Yamada Kensai (1911-1974), Chico
Tokenkai, Tokyo
30 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART

‘treasures’ are deposited, according to the quatrain, can be

taken as a tangible and visible counterpart to perfect emptiness
and to the invisible and featureless moon, as the receptacle for
the treasury-consciousness (alaya-vijnana); so that Koboku in
his version, and later Zenga artists, can underline the point by
showing Hotei standing on the beggar’s sack, that is to say, on
the solid basis of this ‘treasury-consciousness’. We may also
recall that the Zen monk and painter Reisai used the following
motto in his seal: ‘To plant one’s feet on solid ground.’
It is the great Indian patriarch Nagarjuna himself (second
or third century AD), no less, whom Mahayana Buddhism has
to thank for his teaching of the ‘Middle Way’ with its central
concept of sunyata (Chinese: k’ung/kong; Japanese: ku), the
‘absolute void’, who is said to have compared Buddhahood
with the full moon, ‘open expanse, empty and bright’. In a
poem attributed to him we read:

The body, appearing in the form of the round moon,

Makes all of Buddha’s Being manifest.
Mark then: teaching is not something external,
It is neither for the eye nor for the ear.21
From this starting point Zen seems to have developed, very
early on, a method of teaching and learning based on the multi¬
layered symbolism connected with the circle: a heuristic and
speculative approach, a sort of ludic conjecture. Nan-yiieh
Huai-jang (Nanyue Huairang, died in 775) was the first cb’an
master to draw circles in the air with his hand when he was
teaching, the better to bring home to his pupils symbolically the
nature of true enlightenment. This idea was further developed
in the Wei-yang school into a complex dialectic of ninety-seven
circular figures, comprehensible only to initiates. Medieval Zen
artists seem to have devoted no more than sporadic attention to
this sort of circle symbolism. It was not until the latter-day
renaissance of Zen in Japan, and especially the representatives
of the so-called Zenga, a movement in Zen Buddhist painting
which gained momentum from the seventeenth century on¬
wards, that the circle was once again taken up as a symbol of
the perfected spirit, the plenitude and the emptiness of the all-
embracing universe, and of the Buddha-being beyond time and
space, which transcends all multiplicity and all contradictions;
 ZEN AESTHETICS AND THEORY OF ART 31

though it must be said that much of the spiritual gravity and

the artistic density of older Zen art is notably missing in Zenga.
We find the Zen priest Isshi Monju of the Eigenji near Kyoto,
who was born in 1608 and who died an untimely death in
1646, explaining such a circle as follows:
Only see! The true Buddha-being
neither withdraws itself from you, nor closes itself to you.
Open your eyes, fool!22
 The Nature of
Zen Buddhist Painting

Neither Zen Buddhism nor its art ever modified their profound
antipathy to every form of stereotyped symbolism. Until the
rise of Zenga there were only timid attempts to make some
use of pure, abstract and inscrutable symbols.
We might say that Zen seeks to transcend all traditional
forms of symbolism, and reaches out to a new and higher
order of symbolism; significantly, however, these higher-
order symbols turn out to be most ordinary things, lifted
as fancy prompts from the realm of everyday experience.23
The Zen mind is receptive and open to these symbols of
transcendent order, to suggestive abbreviations and ciphers, to
unconventional metaphors and allegories, as mediated via its
basic view of nature and of things; and it is open to
representation of redemptive figures, venerable patriarchs and
masters, as long as such representation is on a person-to-person
level, as direct portraiture or even as anecdotal report. What
Zen painting seeks to accomplish is to facilitate direct
penetration to consummate insight, to open the eyes to the
essential nature of things, and to proclaim the great history, the
unbroken and living lineage of the Zen school.
In contrast to classical Mahayana art, therefore, it con¬
sciously and deliberately eschews numinous personification and
symbolic representation of the Absolute, and any attempt to
make enlightenment effective per artem, however majestic the
means. Instead, it has recourse to the ordinary things of the
everyday world, the things that go to make up our everyday
lives and experience: animals, flowers, fruits, stones and the all-
embracing landscape. Here, the picture has quite another
religious function, one that has a much more accessible
relationship with the real world. Zen painting relinquishes both
the authoritarian character of orthodox Buddhist religious art,

32
 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING 33

and its claim to provide objectivation of a numinous presence

and a magic-religious substance. The Zen painting is subjec-
tivised and becomes the evocative Other in a polarity with the
beholder. It is then a witness to spiritual origins, a document of
personal bonds and experiences, an encouraging pointer to the
aim which is enlightenment, a proof of mastery gained, or a
spur to private exercise and imitation. In comparison with
works of the esoteric Buddhist school, and indeed with those of
the more popular Amitabha type, Zen pictures make a
decidedly tellurian impression; they are demythologised, and
are often, in the light of what we have said, rather difficult to
recognise as works of art bearing any religious connotation at
all. They have ‘open distance - nothing sacred’.
During the Muromachi period (1336-1568) the practice of
combining a religious picture with two ostensibly secular
paintings to form a triptych became popular in artistically
minded Zen circles, among painters in the monasteries as well
as among the curators and owners of the shogunal Ashikaga
collection. Older Chinese works were also combined in this
newly fashionable way. For centre-piece choice usually fell on a
major redemptive figure in Zen Buddhism, the historical
Buddha Sakyamuni returning from the mountains (Japanese:
Shussan Shaka) or the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, robed in
white and seated in a beautiful landscape (Japanese: Byakue
Kannon); while the flanking scrolls showed landscapes or
representations of a pair of tigers or dragons, flowers, birds or
monkeys.
In the Gyomotsu on-e mokuroku, the inventory of Chinese
paintings in the Ashikaga collection in Kyoto, compiled by
Noami (1397-1471) the artistic adviser and curator of the
eighth Shogun Yoshimasa (1435-1490), a whole series of such
triptychs is detailed. The best-known examples still exant are:
three hanging scrolls by the Chinese painter-monk Mu-ch’i

Plum branches in blossom, inscription by Hakuun E'gyo (1223-1297).

Rikkyoku-an, Tofukuji, Kyoto. Side scrolls of a triptych facing a
Shussan Shaka representation in the centre
Sakyamuni Returning from the Mountains (Shussan Shaka) (detail);
inscription by Hakuun Egyo, Rikkyoku-an. Centre-piece of a triptych,
flanked by representations of plum branches in bloom
36 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING

(Muqi, died between 1269 and 1274), now in the Daitokuji in

Kyoto, showing the white-robed Bodhisattva Kuanyin, flanked
on the one hand by a female ape with her offspring on one arm,
and on the other by a stately cralie; the Shussan Shaka picture
by Liang K’ai (Liang Kai), flanked by two snow landscapes; a
Japanese version of Sakyamuni returning from the mountains
by an anonymous artist contemporary with the fourth abbot of
the Tofukuji, Hakuun Egyo (1223-1297), who wrote the
inscription on the painting, and also on the flanking pictures of
plum blossom; all three hanging scrolls belong to the Rikkyoku-
an; the triptych traditionally ascribed to the obscure Muro-
machi painter Isshi (active in the first quarter of the fifteenth
century) with a central picture of Byakue Kannon floating over
the waves in a lotus leaf, and two paintings of plum tree
branches, one of them heaped with snow.
In China, triptychs depicting figures of the Buddhist
pantheon had been a standard form of religious painting for
centuries; and although we cannot point with any certainty to
examples of the sort of thing we have been describing, it is not
difficult to imagine thematic combinations of this kind catching
on in the tolerant and mutually stimulating cultural atmosphere
of the literati and the ch’an monks of the Sung (Song) period.
But the secondary collocations which took place in Japan
enable us to form some inferences as to how Zen Buddhist
cognoscenti and believers understood such works in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They saw their revered
Buddhist redemptive figures closely connected and in inner
harmony with nature, with landscape, animals and plants. In
the Zen sense, all of these were manifestations of the Buddha-
nature. Thus it was that, in his lines for a Shussan Shaka
picture, now lost, the 53rd abbot of the Daitokuji, Toyo Eicho
(1428-1504) could write: ‘The plum blossom flowers before the
gates of the village, they too have completed their way.’
We find similar pictorial allusions in the Shobd-genzo, ‘The
Eye and Treasury of the True Law’, a fundamental Zen work in
95 volumes composed by Kigen Dogen (1200-1253) during the
last two decades of his life. Dogen was the founder of the Soto
school and one of the first authoritative masters in the whole
field of Japanese Zen. The 59th volume of his monumental
work is entitled Baige, ‘Plum blossoms’. Here, the author
 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING 37

begins by expounding a parable about an old plum tree, a

parable with which his much admired Chinese teacher Ch’ang-
weng Ju-ching (Changweng Rujing, 1163-1228) once addressed
his students. Dogen now embarks on a detailed explanation of
the significance of plum blossoms as a metaphor for the highest
state of enlightenment of Sakyamuni (mujo-shogaku):
Once, my late master said to the monks: ‘When
Sakyamuni lost his ordinary sight and attained enlight¬
ened vision, one branch of a plum tree blossomed in the
snow. But now small branches have appeared and the
beautiful blossoms laugh at the spring wind blowing
wildly.’

Later Dogen goes on to say:

A plum tree blooming in the snow is the manifestation of

the udumbara flower [which Sakyamuni held up before
Mahakasyapa]. We have the opportunity to see the Eye
and Treasury of the True Law of the Tathagata in our
everyday life. Yet most of the time we lose the chance to
smile and show our understanding. However, my late
master has transmitted the principle of a plum tree
blooming in the snow and that clearly reveals the
enlightenment of Buddha. The wisdom of enlightenment
is the supreme wisdom, and if we study the plum
blossoms more deeply we will undoubtedly realize this. A
plum blossom is the observation that ‘Above the heavens
and throughout the earth I am the only honored one’ —
each thing is the most honored thing in the world. . . .
Snow must cover the earth and the earth must be full of
snow. No snow, no earth. When snow covers the earth
it is the enlightened eye of venerable Sakyamuni. We
should know that flowers and the earth transcend life and
death. Since they transcend life and death the enlightened
eye transcends life and death. This is called supreme
Buddhist enlightenment. The right time to comprehend
this is when one branch of a plum tree blooms in the
snow. Flowers and the earth are the life beyond life.
‘Covered with snow’ means all over, back and front. The
entire world is our mind, the mind of a flower.
38 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING

Consequently, the entire world is a plum blossom, i.e., the

eye of Sakyamuni Buddha.24

Also full of allusions of this nature is the anthology Baika-

mujinzo, ‘Inexhaustible Stock of Plum Blossoms’, which
contains poems and colophons on pictures recorded by the Zen
priest Banri Shukyu (died in 1502).
Zen masters liked to employ parables and metaphors to
guide and instruct their students. One way of facilitating the
process of ‘seeing into one’s own nature to attain Buddhahood’
was by studying the popular ‘Ten Oxherding Songs’. This
usually illustrated parable explained, allegorically, the different
possible degrees of understanding of the true nature of reality.
The eighth stage in the gradual development of man’s ability to
grasp the essence of Zen truth is usually symbolised by an
empty circle, an adequate emblem of the Absolute. This perfect
form without beginning and end was used in Zen coteries of
both China and Japan from early times to express the nature of
enlightened consciousness. In the tenfold parable of the ox and
its herdsman, however, it does not represent the final phase; it
is followed in the ninth stage by a representation of plum
blossoms combined with bamboo and rock. The metaphorical
association with purity of spirit made the plum blossom a
fitting subject-matter for poetry as well as ink painting, for Zen
people and literati alike.
Symbolising as they did the purity of the refined and
enlightened spirit, plum blossom, bamboo and rock became
known as the ‘Three Pure Ones’ (Chinese: san-ch’ing/sanqing;
Japanese: sansei). Already during the Sung (Song) and Yuan
(Yuan) dynasties, we find plum blossom associated with
bamboo and pine tree as one of the ‘Three Friends of Winter’
(,sui-han san-yu/suihan sanyou). Writing in 1355 the Chinese
scholar Hu Han remarked in this connection: ‘The gentleman
respects the pine tree for its chastity, the bamboo for its
straightness, and the plum blossom for its purity.’ Thus the
image of a white sea of plum blossom came to be associated
with the purity of unblemished snow, of winter-time, and, in
the widest sense, of survival in the hardest season of the year.
Sakyamuni had endured six long years in the ice and snow of
the lonely mountains before he returned to the world to voice
 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING 39

his teaching. Thus the flanking pictures of plum blossom in the

Rikkyoku-an triptych, and both of the winter landscapes by
Liang K’ai fit in very well with the religious theme of the
Shussan Shaka, however ‘worldly’ the pictures might seem at
first glance. And let us not forget that in China such words as
‘ice’ and ‘cold’ were taken over as metaphors for ‘tranquillity’
for the Buddhist lexicon from late Taoist concepts. In his three
poems on the Rikkyoku-an triptych the Zen master Hakuun
Egyo reinforces the overt symbolic meaning that grew out of
the union of the ascetic figure of the historical Buddha
Sakyamuni and the blossoming plum branches: that spiritual
and metaphysical significance pervades the splendours and the
beauty of this world.
Aesthetic-artistic principles are happily wedded here to basic
religious insights. Worldly and sacral themes achieve a
symbiosis; indeed, in the last resort, the border line between the
two is cancelled in Zen understanding. From the mid¬
fourteenth century onwards, Japanese artists working within
the field of Zen Buddhism seem to have created a series of
triptychs which were specifically designed to visualise the non¬
difference between the ordinary, everyday ‘this-worldly’, and
the Absolute. One of the oldest works of this type still extant
was painted by the Zen monk Ue Gukei, active between 1361 and
1375 in Kyoto and Kamakura. Gukei’s Byakue Kannon picture is
replete with unspoilt spontaneity and devout simplicity; two
equally natural and spontaneous ink landscapes with fisherman
and woodcutter form the wings. Copies of works from the
Kano school go to show that the ‘Rainy Landscape’ in the
Tokyo National Museum by the same master along with
another landscape, now lost, formed the flanking pieces to a
Byakue Kannon picture, no longer extant. Avalokitesvara,
embodiment of compassion and mercy, was perhaps the most
frequently depicted Buddhist deity in Japanese Zen painting,
demonstrating as subject of the central scroll of such triptychs
one further important aspect of medieval Zen Buddhist art: the
fusion of religious and seemingly worldly values, the unity of
spiritual and natural themes.
About a hundred years later, around the middle of the
fifteenth century, the Zen monk Chuan Shinko living in the
Seirai-an of the Kenchoji in Kamakura, painted three remarkable
40 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING

hanging scrolls in ink on coarse silk, now belonging to the

Sanso collection. They were most likely created as a single
unit. The centre of the triptych is occupied by the most benign
of all Bodhisattvas, the white-robed Kannon, sitting facing the
viewer on a rock round which waves are breaking. The
background consists of a highly decorative and yet astound-
ingly mysterious infinite sea of waves which recedes till it is lost
in the far distance. It lends the figure of the Bodhisattva, sunk
in contemplation, with two circular transparent halos round his
head and body, a wonderful ‘open distance’ and other¬
worldliness, which is further intensified by the two compact
and densely ordered landscapes in the outer scrolls, which
block off the spectator’s view. On the left painting we see the
renowned T’ang poet Li Po (Li Bo, 701-762), sitting near a
waterfall; while the left scroll shows the no less celebrated poet
T’ao Yuan-ming (Tao Yuanming, 365-427) standing by a
mountain stream. Both poets are turning respectfully, though
not overcome by awe, towards the strangely unreal and yet
closely encountered apparition of the Bodhisattva; they seem to
be gazing at his face. Despite the differences in setting, the three
paintings share the same decisive, conceptually powerful mode
of composition and brushwork. Thus there is little doubt that
from its inception this work was intended to be a triptych.
But what was in the mind of this gifted Zen painter-monk
when he conceived the work? We can only guess at the
meaning. Looking at the triptych without any pre-conceived
ideas, we might well conclude that here Byakue Kannon is
appearing as a kind of vision to the two great Chinese poets.
During the T’ai-ho (Taihe) era (827-836), for example, the
Bodhisattva appeared in a vision to the T’ang Emperor Wen-
tsung (Wenzong) when the latter was eating a clam, and the
ch’an priest Wei-cheng (Weizheng) from the T’ai-i-shan (Taiyi-
shan) was summoned to explain the fantastic apparition. We
may be sure that this and other episodes were handed down in
the lettered and cultivated monastic communities of Japan,
especially in the great Zen monasteries of Kamakura and
Kyoto, and used there as subjects for pictures; and we must
remember that Li Po and T’ao Yuan-ming enjoyed the deepest
admiration and veneration in those same circles.
It looks as though in painting his triptych this medieval
 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING 41

monk and painter, Chuan Shinko, was concerned to effect a

historical rapprochement between the two cultural heroes of
the past and the benign Bodhisattva Kannon, now, thanks to
Zen, no longer ensconced in unapproachable aloofness. In the
most literal sense, he places the Bodhisattva ‘side by side’ with
historical personalities, probably to point up in tangible form
the homogeneity between the sacred and the profane, between
the here-and-how and the beyond, between Nirvana and
Samsara. Of course, this is all speculation, but, in the absence
of hints or suggestions from the master himself, we feel
compelled, where triptychs of this sort are concerned, to
interpret all three pictures as a unified work of art in the spirit
of Zen.
In the light of this experience of the unity of the phenomenal
and the absolute — an experience which is fundamental to Zen
— it is not difficult to see why the religious content of a Zen
picture can be encompassed and grasped via themes which in
themselves are unmistakably worldly. The eye of the Zen
Buddhist has been opened to the ‘True Dharma’, and it
recognises every creation and every thing, however ordinary
and ‘profane’, as identical with the Absolute, as a manifestation
of Buddha-being, at once unique and yet encapsulating the
whole universe. Since every thing is this final truth, there is no
need to seek special ‘symbolic’ forms to represent it, as is the
case in orthodox Buddhist art. A picture may show a
landscape, an inconspicuous plant or fruit, a spray of plum
blossom, a monkey or an ox and herdsman, a crane, a heron or
a sparrow; but over and above the direct statement and the
aesthetic content, such a picture reveals the ‘whole truth’ of
Zen: a truth which is reduced in the Hannya-shin-gyd, ‘The
Heart Sutra’, to the brief formula: ‘form is emptiness and the
very emptiness does not differ from form, nor does form differ
from emptiness.’
Like the Zen experience itself, the work of art which gives
expression to that experience is, in the final analysis, indescrib¬
able and inexplicable. A Zen work of art is: it does not mean. It
is true that alongside Zen pictures of such super-refinement,
others exist which do admit of some interpretation - even if it
is not all that easy to arrive at a convincing one. Sometimes,
then, we must turn to what the artist or some congenial friend
42 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING

of his has written about a Zen work of art, if we are to gain,

not complete clarification, but at least a partial key to its
iconographic content and the world-view expressed therein: a
world-view distilled in sovereign freedom from original and
personal experience.
A few examples may help to make this clear. When the
Chinese ch’an master Ch’u-shih Fan-ch’i (Chushi Fanqi, 1297-
1371) writes sui-cb’ing yii-cbien (suiqing yujian) — ‘If the water
clears, fish appear’ — on a picture of a heron painted by the
Japanese Zen monk Mokuan Reien, who was working on the
Chinese mainland early in the fourteenth century, this is not
just a bald statement of fact; it is likely that this phrase has a
specific Zen connotation. The bird sitting tense on a willow
tree, ready to strike as its glittering prey comes into view, is
presumably meant to represent the Zen disciple whose spirit,
purified of the dross of worldly thoughts and feelings, has his
gaze firmly fixed on his final goal — enlightenment. Muddy
water becoming clear is probably a metaphor for the disappear¬
ance of delusion. The heron will seize the fish in the clearing
waters with one instantaneous swoop, and the purified Zen
mind will swoop on final clarity with the same velocity. The
night heron (go-isagi in Japanese) was often chosen by Zen
monks, and by painters associated with them in the Muromachi
period, to play this paradigmatic role, and even if such
paintings as Ryozen’s or Tanan Chiden’s have no inscriptions
to rely on they might be understood as simile for the Zen
Buddhist’s experience of sudden enlightenment.
The Zen quest for spiritual enlightenment is adequately
expressed in a simple, unassuming composition of two stalky
bare trees and a wagtail perched alert on a weathered rock. The
concept of religious insight as revealed in all natural manifesta¬
tions appears to have dictated the artist’s immediacy in the
spare, expressive rendering of his subject with a few dry,
broadly rounded brushstrokes. The poem unobtrusively bal¬
anced in the upper right corner of the scroll was written by
Taikyo Genju, a Zen monk of Kamakura, documented between
1320 and 1374. It seems to be an expression of the writer’s
own spiritual yearnings:
The withered tree has no leaves on its branches;
 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING 43

The wagtail picks about in infertile moss.

The interior of the stone contains one foot of jade.
When will one be able to open it?
Taikyo-so.

Here, the comparison between the lively little bird searching for
nourishment in spare surroundings and the Zen adept on the
track of deep-hidden truth which is as precious as jade, is
unmistakable. Taikyo Genju, who pursued his search for truth
in Yuan China and probably absorbed there the current literati
ideas of poetry, calligraphy and painting as related facets of a
single personal artistic expression, as a fusion of words and
images and a mergence of brush and ink and paper or silk, may
also be responsible for the pictorial composition of the scroll in
the Mary and Jackson Burke collection, New York. Another
painting depicting a wagtail on a rock under sprays of bamboo
is now owned by the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.
In its simple, asymmetrical composition, its almost ascetic
reduction of modest pictorial elements, and its dry, rough,
immediate brushwork it is so closely related to the Burke scroll
that one is inclined to attribute both paintings to the same
hand.
Another seemingly playful representation of two wagtails,
one perched on a grassy river bank peering intently in the
water and another poised in the air with spread wings calling
out to his mate below, turns out to be the visualisation of the
same fundamental Zen idea, the quest for true enlightenment.
This, at least, is suggested by the inscription placed between the
two birds and balancing the tall marsh grass on the left. The
poem in Chinese was written by a certain Genhan, probably a
late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century Zen priest associ¬
ated with the Myoshinji in Kyoto; it may be translated:

What does the inquisitive wagtail see?

The other one is in flight,
And a light breeze stirs the sand.
In search of its original state,
It flew far south of the Ch’ing River.
There are not many that have travelled
Even as far as the Yellow River.25
44 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING

The writer obviously relates the wagtail’s ‘search of its original

state’ to a Zen adept’s search for the realisation of his own
innate nature. He employs the bird’s long journey to various
rivers in China as a poetic metaphor for the infinite yearning
for spiritual enlightenment.
The concept of religious insight as revealed in all natural
manifestations appears also in the inscription of a portrait
representing the 28th Tofukuji abbot, Daido Ichii (1292-1370).
The charming little hanging scroll in the Nara National
Museum has been convincingly attributed to Kichizan Mincho
(1352-1431). It shows the Zen master sitting peacefully under a
pine tree on a rocky plateau. Daido is depicted in a relaxed
posture and with a benign expression on his face.
Everything about his appearance is carefully calculated to
engender a sense of trust and intimacy and to make him
seem approachable .... The stone steps leading up to the
platform are flanked by two spirited creatures, a deer and
a goose, who face the aged priest and seem about to
ascend the steps. The Buddhist belief in the fundamental
importance and unity of all sentient life - a tenet
particularly revered in Zen — is expressed here with great
artistic insight.26
The inscription above the picture was written by Shokai Reiken
(1315-1396) in 1394, some twenty-four years after Daido’s
death. He followed the portrayed Zen master on the abbot’s
chair of the Tofukuji in the 43rd generation, and therefore
undoubtedly knew Daido Ichii. The first part of the colophon
has been translated as follows:

A platform of large and small rocks with a ‘Diamond

Throne’
Heaven and earth, composed alike of only one body
The realms of causality and emotion transcended
The enlightened deer and goose, unfaltering in their
trust.27

Here, the experienced, octogenarian Zen priest Shokai Reiken

points straight to the fundamental article of Buddhist faith: that
the Buddha-being informs all things in the world of experience
right down to the most humble and inconspicuous, the stones
 THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHIST PAINTING 45

t^(e animals; and that they are not separate from, do not
differ from the one and only Absolute — the void.
 Zen Iconography:
Themes and Genres

Apart from this religious-metaphysical view of Being in general

and the nature of things, in which reality as a datum is so
transparent that the ultimate emptiness can be discerned, the
creators of Zen Buddhist works of art often make use of
concrete personalities and processes and relate the objective
content of their painting to the Enlightened One himself, to his
disciples, to the Way leading to, or the experience itself of
Enlightenment. There were certain inevitable consequences of
Zen ideology and Zen theory of art: on the one hand, a large
number of orthodox Buddhist redeemer-figures were eliminated
from the traditional Mahayana pantheon, and, on the other,
figures borrowed earlier, such as the historical Buddha
Sakyamuni or the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, were reinter¬
preted in terms of a demythologised here-and-now and as
exemplars in direct personal contact with the seeker after truth.
On the artistic plane, this meant a transition from a remote and
abstract spiritualisation and supernatural sanctity, compounded
with a lavish display of cult symbols, to an empirical and
tellurian vitality, presented in terms of an endearing simplicity.
Along with the introduction of new motifs and new types of
pictures, this gave Zen painting a quite specific iconography,
sharply differentiated from that of traditional Buddhist paint¬
ing: a key factor therein being the thematic and formal
juxtaposition of apparent disparates - as we have already seen
when discussing the assembly of typical Zen triptychs.
In the wake of innovation and the accompanying shift in
accentuation, came a re-evaluation of themes. Classical Budd¬
hist religious painting had been virtually dominated by the
complex and stylised representation of figures; and while
figures continue to provide the main content of Zen pictures,
other themes now appear: above all, nature. In general, nature
plays a major role in Zen painting. Where figures are not

46
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 47

shown standing or sitting in deep composure, free of all

decorative adornment, before - or, better, in - empty space,
they appear in intimate harmony with nature: never its masters,
but knowingly and lovingly embedded in it.

Nature is no longer mere background, side-show or

symbolical adjunct, but an essential element of the
picture, equally or, on occasion, even more deeply
concerned in the exposition of the truth and of reality
than the redeemer figure himself.28

We have already said something about the nature, the

meaning and the content of some typical Zen pictures. In what
follows, we shall present some of the more important themes in
Zen painting, taking up, as we proceed, certain further
questions of Zen iconography. We shall adhere to the schema
normally followed by Zen masters when cataloguing inscriptions
and colophons composed by them for inclusion in their
‘Collected Sayings’ (Chinese: yii-lu/yulu; Japanese: goroku)-, the
reason being that here the sequence of themes is clearly ordered
by iconographic values. As a typical example, and as one of the
earliest known sources for such an ordering, let us take the list
of pictures for which the ch’an master Fo-yen Ch’ing-yiian
(Foyan Qingyuan, 1067-1120) wrote verses. It begins with
‘Sakyamuni Returning from the Mountains’; then come
Avalokitesvara (in some other yii-lu/yulu, the Arhats and Pu-
tai/Budai), the ‘Three Saints of Mount T’ien-t’ai (Tiantai)’,
Han-shan (Hanshan), Shih-te (Shide), and Feng-kan (Fenggan),
the ‘Great Master Bodhidharma’ and other historical ch’an
patriarchs. These verses are listed under the collective title Fo-
tsu-tsan (Fozizan): ‘Inscriptions for (Pictures of) Buddhist
Forefathers’, or Chen-tsan (Zhenzan): ‘True Inscriptions’; and
they are usually followed by the so-called Tzu-tsan (Zizan;
Japanese: jisan) - dedicatory inscriptions in the author’s own
hand on the portraits of Zen masters. In the final chapter of the
‘Collected Sayings’ we find, inter alia, Chi-sung (Jisong-,
Japanese: geju-, Sanskrit: gatha), ‘Eulogies and Didactic Poems’,
a heterogeneous category including pictures with inscriptions
and ostensibly secular themes: parable pictures such as the ‘Ten
Oxherding Series’, representations of bamboo, orchids, plum
blossom, pictures of monkeys and birds, and landscapes.
48 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

On the basis of Zen hagiographic literature, we can further

subdivide the Fo-tsu (Fozi) group as follows: Tsu-sbih-t’u
(.Zishitu; Japanese: soshi-zu) ‘Pictures of the (historical ch’an)
patriarchs; and, San-sheng-t’u (Sanshengtu; Japanese: sansei-
zu) ‘Pictures of free, or uncommitted saints’. It was precisely
this last category that achieved great popularity in Zen
painting. This popularity is probably not a result of the fact
that some of its most prominent representatives were regarded as
avatdras, vestigium pedis ‘traces left behind’ by cardinal Buddhas
and Bodhisattvas: Feng-kan (Fenggan; Japanese: Bukan) as an
incarnation of Amitabha, Pu-tai (Budai; Japanese: Hotei) of
Maitreya, Flan-shan (Hanshan; Japanese: Kanzan) of Manjusrl,
and Shih-te (Shide; Japanese: Jittoku) of Samantabhadra, to
mention only the most important. Rather, it is because these
semi-legendary ‘untrammelled saints’ who could not be very
easily fitted into the Zen system of teaching, by reason of their
exuberant spiritual freedom, their unconventional life-style and
behaviour and their eccentric utterances, were very readily
accepted as exemplars by disciples of Zen.

THE HISTORICAL BUDDHA SAKYAMUNI

The supreme exemplar for all Zen Buddhists, however, is and

remains the historical Buddha, Sakyamuni. In the so-called
Tsung-p’ai-t’u (Zongpaitu), the ‘Genealogies of the (Zen)
School’, he is shown as the Tathagata, surrounded by the
radiance of enlightenment. He sits facing the viewer on a lotus,
with a circular nimbus; in his right hand, he holds a flower, and
he bears the marks of his spiritual fulfilment, the urna on his
forehead and the usnisa on his head. And yet, in a Zen picture
such as this, he does not figure as a metaphysical and idealised
world-ruler, withdrawn from all realisation in time and space;
rather, he appears as the historical initiator, the primal figure in
a long lineage of Zen-Buddhist patriarchs. The flower held

Sakyamuni Holding a Flower in his Hand (detail), by Kichizan Mincho

(1352-1431), dated 1426. Rokuo-in, Tofukuji, Kyoto. Centre-piece of
a series of seven hanging scrolls with portraits of patriarchs (see
illustration p. 90)
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50 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

before his breast is an unmistakable reference to the original

experience of Zen. Thus, in spite of the hieratic aura of the en
face view, these representations of Sakyamuni have a narrative
and illustrative component which marks them off quite
specifically from the formal and stereotyped cult-picture.
A Chinese genealogy dating from the first half of the
thirteenth century has been preserved in the Tofukuji in Kyoto.
It is possible that Enni Ben’en (Shoichi Kokushi, 1202-1280),
the founder of this great Zen temple, was given the picture by
his revered teacher Wu-chun Shih-fan (Wuzhun Shifan, 1177-
1249) with whom he had studied for six years in China; for
Wu-chun Shih-fan and his Japanese master-pupil conclude the
succession of ch’an patriarchs, whose names are inter-connected
to provide a continuous lineage leading back over the shadowy
figures, known only by number, of the early Chinese and Indian
forefathers to Sakyamuni himself. He alone appears in effigie as
the source of the whole genealogical system and of Zen in
general. He has been thus portrayed by the Japanese painter-
monk Kichizan Mincho (1352-1431) in the centre-piece of his
series of portraits comprising seven hanging scrolls, painted in
the year 1426, and now in the Rokuo-in in Kyoto. For each of
the thirty half-length portraits, the Zen abbot Genchu Shugaku
(1359-1428) wrote short biographical notes which run counter
to the direction of gaze. On each scroll, five Zen masters are
arrayed in three-quarter profile. The chain beginning with
Sakyamuni ends with the Japanese abbots Muso Soseki (1275-
1351) and Shun’oku Myoha (1311-1388).
Sakyamuni’s role as founder of religion on earth is even
more strongly accentuated in two other Zen themes - his
ascetic practices in his search for enlightenment (Japanese:
Kugyo Shaka) and his return from the mountains (Japanese:
Shussan Shaka), after he had realised that the extreme
asceticism and self-mortification he had practised for six long
years in total solitude could lead him no nearer to the goal of
enlightenment. The second of these themes, in particular - the
return from the mountains - became one of the most popular
and most frequently treated themes in Zen circles, precisely
because it shows the historical Buddha in recognisably human
guise. The question whether a Shussan Shaka picture confronts
us with a Buddha reaching enlightenment as he faces the
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 51

shining morning star, or with an ascetic weakened by hunger

and cold, is one that can only be answered in each individual
case by a study of the inscription on the picture.29
Any Zen priest taking up the theme of Sakyamuni’s return
from the mountains, and setting about writing a quatrain for a
painting depicting this theme, had always to come to terms
anew with two factors: his understanding of Buddha’s en¬
lightenment, and his own progress along the difficult road of
spiritual purification. In the last resort, any act of unilateral
decision-taking is, from the Zen point of view, a retrograde
step into the web of logical-discursive thinking. Zen Buddhism
knows nothing of an ‘Either-or’ but only ‘this as well’. This
open-minded attitude to the Shussan Shaka theme; which is
indeed formulated neutrally and undogmatically as ‘Sakyamuni
emerging from the mountains’ instead of ‘Return of the
Enlightened One’, is reflected in an extremely subtle poem
written by the Chinese ch’an master I-shan I-ning (Yishan
Yining, 1247-1317) for a painting of this theme now lost:
To lead the Self from inside the door is easy.
To go out through the door from the Inner of the Self is
difficult.
In the six years (Sakyamuni) broke nothing and joined
nothing together.
(Like) the Great Bear (he) turns his face towards the
south.30
These lines are to be found in the ‘Collected Sayings’ of I-
shan I-ning who devoted the last eighteen years of his life to
spreading Zen in Japan, where he became one of the most
influential teachers. He was revered as a markedly intellectual
representative of the Chinese ch’an clergy. He was as securely
at home in the field of Confucian philosophy as he was in the
Chinese tradition of historiography and in various branches of
literature. The Japanese have him to thank for the introduction
of poetic forms, techniques and stylistic trends which were
particularly highly valued during the Sung (Song) Dynasty, and
finally he emerged as one of those responsible for founding that
long-lived literary movement, known in the history of Japanese
literature as Gozan bungaku, ‘The Literature of the Five
Mountains’ (i.e. of the five great Zen monasteries).
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 53

This episode — the return of Sakyamuni from the mountains

— is not to be found in any of the older Mahayana canonical
texts which give a detailed account of the historical Buddha’s
life and works. Accordingly it is not to be found in the classical
Buddhist art of the T’ang and pre-T’ang periods: neither in the
biographical narrative pictures in the cave-temples nor the wall-
paintings which once adorned the great Chinese monasteries
(these alas irrevocably destroyed in the orgies of destruction
connected with the Buddhist persecution of 844/45) nor in the
traditional picture-sequences showing the 'Eight Events’ in the
life of the Buddha (Chinese: Shih-cbia pa-hsiang/Shijia baxiang;
Japanese: Shaka basso). This suggests that the theme of the
Buddha’s return from the mountains first arose in the cb’an
circles active in the revitalisation of Buddhism in the post-T’ang
period, and was developed by artists associated with these
circles in the tenth century into a most impressive and, as the
sequel was to show, a most effective piece of imagery.
The accepted and undeniable masterwork — and, at the same
time, one of the oldest extant versions of the Sbussan Shaka
theme dating from the first half of the thirteenth century - was
done by the renowned court painter Liang K’ai (Liang Kai).
Dietrich Seckel has called it ‘in spiritual content and artistic
form, one of the most significant pictures of the homo
religiosus in the whole history of art’. The picture shows the
historical Buddha pausing hesitantly at the mouth of a ravine
with steep rocky walls, as he makes his way back into the
world from the solitude of the mountains. The frail figure of
the ascetic, tested in suffering, is imbued with inner composure
and deep seriousness. He stands barefoot on the snowy path;
his hands are concealed in his garment, and held before his bare
breast. His head is bent slightly forwards. The mouth is broad
and firmly closed, the eyes are narrow and drawn upwards,
with long eyebrows, the nose is noticeably lengthened —
features which identify Sakyamuni as an Indian. His unkempt
hair and beard testify to his years of seclusion in the mountains,
and the thin bracelet on his right upper arm reminds us that he
is the scion of a princely house. On his head there is a

Sakyamuni Returning from the Mountains (Shussan Shaka), by Liang

K’ai (first half of the thirteenth century). Hinohara collection, Tokyo
54 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

suggestion of the excrescence known as the usnisa, and the ears

are exaggeratedly large — these features being two of the most
important bodily characteristics of the Buddha.
But Liang K’ai (Liang Kai), in common with most other
Chinese painters and in contrast with the practice of their
Japanese colleagues, has not painted a nimbus round the head
of the Buddha. Sakyamuni’s gaze does not seem to be fixed on
any external object in particular: in profound and withdrawn
composure he seems to be concentrating on his own inner Self.
From the mountains behind him there blows a gentle breeze
which forms ruffled folds round the hem of his garment and
makes corners of it flap out in front; it is as though a divine
afflatus were lending the momentarily hesitant redeemer-figure
encouragement and stimulus as he prepares to take the difficult
step back into the world. The only colour in the picture which
is otherwise done in ink on silk is the warm muted red of the
garment, echoed in the lips and in the arm-bracelet. The three-
quarters profile presentation of the figure, the fluttering
garment and the path which comes from an indefinite
background and tends slightly downwards, give the complex
and densely ordered composition a clear orientation towards
the right. And yet the figure of the Buddha forms the quiescent
centre and focus of concentration between the lines of the
composition which cross each other diagonally; not least
because it provides the only perpendicular assertion in the
picture. Parallel to the silhouette of the foreground cliff
debouching in the lower right-hand corner, runs the rear
demarcation of the snowy path which hugs the abrupt upward
thrust of the strangely incomprehensible massif. This is cut
across by a rocky wall almost as high as the picture; the wall
leans to the right and forms an exact diagonal to the picture.
The cliff, like the upper part of the bare, ghostly-skeletal tree,
stands at right angles to the other two main components in the
picture - the foreground rock and the path. Only the bizarre
shape of the thick, dried-up old tree trunk with its clutching
roots, pushes beyond the left-hand margin of the picture and
breaks up this subtly conceived asymmetric pattern of opposing
parallels at right angles to each other.
Along with the masterly graduation of the several compon-
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 55

ents, it is the clear differentiation in their formal handling that

helps to suggest a spatial depth of unfathomable dimensions.
Moist washes, applied flatly and fading into a soft uniform
grey, bathe the ravine, especially the upper part, in a vague
nebulous haze. Against this, the leafless branches and twigs in
the immediate foreground stand out in sharp contrast. Short
strokes done with a sharp brush and jet-black ink combine T-
shapes and crosses, and are not devoid of a certain abstract
quality related to calligraphy. The precise articulation of the
formal language proceeds thus from foreground to background,
leading from linear graphic values to plane painted surfaces
which then dissolve in an empty backdrop.
Soon after it was painted, at the latest in the fourteenth
century, Liang K’ai’s (Liang Kai’s) picture must have found its
way to Japan, presumably taken there by one or another of the
numerous Chinese or Japanese pilgrim monks, as it can be
fairly positively identified with a Sbussan Shaka scroll men¬
tioned in association with two landscapes in the catalogue of
the shogunal Ashikaga collection. Today, the work is in the
Hinohara collection in Tokyo. The picture evoked an enor¬
mous response in Japan, and had a rich progeny. The Sbussan
Sbaka version produced by the Zen monk and painter Ue
Gukei, certainly active between 1361 and 1375, could hardly
have been painted in ignorance of the great Sung (Song)
masterpiece which must have been the object of devout
admiration in initiated circles.
Over against the tradition set by Liang K’ai (Liang Kai),
which offered a literal interpretation of Sakyamuni’s return
from the mountains, and placed the Buddha figure in a more or
less detailed landscape, painters working in monochrome ink
techniques concentrated on portrayal of the figure itself. Either
they discarded the landscape altogether or restricted themselves
to the abbreviated suggestion of a few key elements. In works
belonging to this type we find a consciously unpretentious and
spontaneous linear treatment of figures, well suited to ink
painting, which is in sharp contrast to the academic polish, the
conservatism, even the archaistic line-techniques displayed in
works of the other school. The oldest Chinese Sbussan Sbaka
picture in monochrome ink so far identified was acquired by
56 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1970. It bears an inscription,

dated 1244, in the hand of the important cb’an master Ch’ih-
chiieh Tao-ch’ung (Chijue Daochong, 1170-1251), which, in
translation, runs somewhat as follows:
Since entering the mountain, too dried out and emaciated,
Frosty cold over the snow,
After having a twinkling of revelation with impassioned
eyes
Why then do you want to come back to the world?
The second day of the eighth month in the chia-ch’en (jiachen)
year of the Ch’un-yu (Chunyu) reign [1244], eulogized by
Tao-ch’ung (Daochong), resident of T’ai-po (Taibo) moun-
tain.
In the simplicity of its overall conception the painting resembles
the oldest Japanese version extant of the Shussan Shaka. This
picture, which is in the Seattle Art Museum, is presumed to
have been painted at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in
the Kozanji at Kyoto, on the basis of a Sung (Song) work. The
drawing has been done with jet-black ink and a relatively dry
brush in very cursory and extempore fashion, and it bears two
seals of the well-known Kegon monastery, which became,
under the leadership of the great reformer, Myoe Shonin (1173-
1232), one of the most influential centres of religious and
artistic creativity in medieval Japan. Here it was that imported
Chinese religious pictures, Buddhist paintings, book illustra¬
tions, monographic sketches and stone rubbings were copied in
great numbers, leading to the extension and enhancement of
Buddhist iconography throughout Japan; and it is clear that
this process was not primarily determined by the purely
religious significance of the works of art. Myoe Shonin of the
Kozanji was a tolerant, cultured abbot, a man of many
interests. He was friendly with Myoan Eisai (1141-1215), who
had studied in China, the man who brought the teachings of
the Rinzai school to Japan, and the founder of the first
Japanese Zen monastery, and therefore well acquainted with
the ideology and the practices of Zen Buddhism. So it comes as
no surprise that a series of typically Zen Buddhist pictures
appeared in the Kegon monastery, including the ink drawing of
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 57

the Shussan Shaka now in Seattle, and several related

representations of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, to which we
now turn our attention.

THE BODHISATTVAS

In the world of Zen, Avalokitesvara is without a doubt the

most popular of all the Bodhisattvas. Like Sakyamuni, how¬
ever, in Zen art, the ‘Lord who looks down (on the suffer¬
ings of the world)’ as he is known (Chinese: Kuan[shih]yin/
Guan[shi]yin; Japanese: Kannon [or Kanzeon], does not con¬
front us in the elaborate trappings of sacral splendour and
supernatural majesty. Rather, he meets the seeker after
enlightenment as a simple helpmate, gracious and accessible,
his feet firmly planted in earthly reality: for the Chinese,
indeed, on their native soil, as they very early on imagined the
residence of the Bodhisattva, the Mount Potalaka mentioned in
the Avatamsaka-sutra (Chinese: Hua-yen-ching/Huayanjing;
Japanese: Kegon-kyo), to be on a small island off-shore from
Ning-p’o (Ningpo) in the modern province of Chekiang
(Zhejiang); Potalaka was transformed into P’u-t’o-lo-chia
(Putolojia; Japanese: Fudaraka).
In the Zen Buddhist context, then, a favourite setting for
Kuanyin (Guanyin) is a rock round which the waves break, and
on which he sits in a relaxed and contemplative pose;
sometimes it is a cave, a bamboo grove or a waterfall, less
frequently he is shown sitting on a lotus leaf which floats on the
waters. Zen painting does not totally discard the eri face
presentation which orthodox religious painting preferred for
redeemer-figures on such an exalted level; but the Bodhisattva
is preferably shown in a decidedly informal three-quarters
profile attitude, often leaning, casually one might say, against a
rock, or even cooling his feet in the rushing waters of a
mountain stream — as in one of the hanging scrolls of the
Muromachi period (fifteenth century), now in the Kenchoji in
Kamakura, showing the thirty-three magnificent manifestations
of Kannon. It was precisely such extensive illustrative cycles
which, pari passu with the development of the Potalaka concept
58 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

in illustrative and narrative terms, offered an opportunity

for unorthodox iconographic innovation and fantastic details
of embellishment. In these Kannon pictures, nature becomes an
essential component: a component which is mystically trans¬
figured by the radiant presence of the Bodhisattva, and due not
least to the transparent circular nimbus which is often shown
round his head. Tradition has it that as early as the ninth
century, the T’ang (Tang) painter Chou Fang (Zhou Fang,
active between 780 and 810) represented Kuanyin (Guanyin) in
a landscape setting.
In Zen art, Avalokitesvara is most frequently shown in the
PandaravasinI form, wearing a simple white robe. In China,
this form is known as Pai-i Kuanyin (Baiyi Guanyin), in Japan
as Byakue Kannon. It is not clear when this form first made its
appearance. According to Chapters 2 and 3 of the Hsiian-ho
hua-p’u (Xuanhe huapu), the ‘Catalogue of the Imperial
Collection of Paintings of the Hsiian-ho (Xuanhe era, 1119-
1125)’, whose foreword is dated 1120, there were in the
possession of the artistically erudite Sung (Song) Emperor Hui-
tsung (Huizong, 1082-1135), himself a gifted painter, three
early representations of the white-robed Bodhisattva: two of
these dating from the first half of the tenth century by Tu Tzu-
huai (Du Zihuai) and Ts’ao Chung-yiian (Cao Zhongyuan),
and the third by the eighth-century Hsin Ch’eng (Xin Cheng),
of whose origins nothing is known. He is said to have settled in
the cultivated and developed region of Shu in south-west China
(modern Ssu-ch’uan/Sichuan) where he made a name for
himself as a specialist in Buddhist figure themes. In his
catalogue of famous painters in Ssu-ch’uan (Sichuan), the I-
cbou ming-hua lu (Yizhou mingbualu, chapter 1), which was
probably completed in 1106, Huang Hsiu-fu (Huang Xiufu)
tells us that in the year 780 Hsin Ch’eng (Xin Cheng) was
commissioned to carry out wall paintings for the Ta-sheng-tz’u-
ssu (Dashengcisi), one of the great Buddhist temples in Ch’eng-
tu (Chengdu). Again, the influential Sung (Song) scholar-painter
Li Kung-lin (Li Gonglin, c. 1049-1106) was evidently much
preoccupied with the theme of the white-robed Kuanyin

Kuanyin in a White Robe fPai-i Kuanyin); Yuan period (late thirteenth

century). Engakuji, Kamakura
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 61

(Guanyin), although no original work from his hand has

survived. One of his representations is known to us from a
stone engraving dated 1132.
During the second half of the twelfth century, even
conservative circles of Buddhist figure-painters seem to have
been very well acquainted with the Pai-i Kuanyin (Baiyi
Guanyin) theme, preferably treated in monochrome ink.
Between 1178 and 1188 a series of paintings of the ‘500
Arhats’ comprising originally 100 hanging scrolls, was carried
out by the painters Chou Chi-ch’ang (Zhou Jichang) and Lin
T’ing-kuei (Lin Tingguei) — of whom nothing further is known
— for the Hui-an-yiian (Huianyuan) monastery, situated to the
south-east of Ning-p’o (Ningpo). One of these paintings shows
five Arhats admiring an ink-drawing of Kuanyin (Guanyin)
robed in white. The Bodhisattva sits on a rocky plateau close to .
an overhanging cliff, behind which a waterfall plunges into the
abyss. He is leaning sideways on a rock in a relaxed position,
supporting his chin with his right hand. In the riot of colour
surrounding it, this black-and-white drawing has the effect of
an exotic ‘foreign body’: which is exactly the effect it seems to
be having on the Arhats who are viewing this no doubt
typically ch’an work with some astonishment and amusement.
The earliest independent Byakue Kannon pictures which are
still extant date from the thirteenth century. For the most
important example among them we are indebted to the ch’an
monk Mu-ch’i (Muqi). It is signed by the painter in the bottom
left-hand corner and bears his seal. This Kuanyin (Guanyin)
picture is the centre-piece of the triptych which we mentioned
earlier, whose flanking scrolls show a crane and an ape with
her young. Collector seals on all three pictures show that the
triptych was once in the possession of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu
(1358-1408); that is to say, it must have been taken to Japan at
a relatively early date. In the sixteenth century, Taigen Sufu
(died in 1555), the 25th abbot of the Myoshinji, acquired the
picture and presented it to the Daitokuji in Kyoto, where it has
been reverently preserved up to the present day.

Kuanyin in a White Robe (Pai-i KuanyinJ, by Chiieh-chi Yung-chung

(early fourteenth century); inscription by Chung-feng Ming-pen (1263-
1323). Cleveland Museum of Art
62 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

Apart from Avalokitesvara, two other Bodhisattvas were

accepted into the iconographic repertory of Zen painting, but
they never achieved anything like the same popularity. These
are Manjusri (Chinese: Wen-shu/Wenshu; Japanese: Monju)
and Samantabhadra (Chinese: P’u-hsien/Puxian; Japanese:
Fugen), who figure already in older iconography as attendants
of Sakyamuni. They incorporate two aspects of the historical
Buddha: on the one hand his insight and wisdom, and on the
other hand his redemptive power, his energy and his dynamism.
In their Zen Buddhist representation, they too appear in
earthly, human simplicity, sometimes with fresh young faces
and straggly hair hanging down; they wear simple monastic
garments, without any trace of lavish adornment.
Their dignity, power and wisdom entitle them to specific
mounts - a lion for Monju and a white elephant for Fugen. But
these creatures do not fare proudly through the clouds with
lotus blossoms under their feet, nor are they bedecked with
lavish trappings, saddles or canopies as in traditional sacral art.
As a rule they are shown lying comfortably on the ground, and
not infrequently we can detect a mischievous smile on the face
of the elephant. The elephant also lacks the six tusks which
symbolise in orthodox art the ‘Six Supernatural Insights or
Perfections’ (paramitas) of the Bodhisattva, or the conquest of
the six sources of temptation. Monju and Fugen, reclining,
relaxed and in contemplative repose, on their allotted creatures,
are usually shown in three-quarter profile against an empty
background.
Among the oldest Japanese works of this Zen Buddhist type
are two ink paintings on silk, from the Yomei-in in the
Tofukuji. The inscriptions for these scrolls were done by Zosan
Junku (1233-1308), the sixth abbot of this great Zen
monastery, a year before his death. An exceptional case is
provided by a representation of Fugen in the Freer Gallery of
Art, Washington, DC, by Takuma Eiga (active in the late
fourteenth century) who has placed a Bodhisattva, often
erroneously identified as Monju, in a landscape setting.
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 63

THE ARHATS

The strict ascetic discipline of the Arhats (Chinese: Lohan;

Japanese: Rakan), and their determination to reach enlighten¬
ment through their own dynamism (Chinese: tzu-lilzili; Japan¬
ese: jiriki) ensured that these Buddha-disciples, whose anteced¬
ents go back to the oldest stratum of Buddhist iconography,
should be seen as embodying the very essence of Zen Buddhist
monastic virtue. The ‘venerable ones’ who have raised them¬
selves above the earthly circle of samsara, usually figure in
specific formations, most frequently in groups of sixteen. They
are distinguished one from another by specific attributes,
ranging from superhuman deeds and miracles to individual
characteristics and gestures; and they are always presented as
rugged old men, sometimes endowed with a strange spiritual
potency.
Their iconography was not rigidly canonised, and this gave
artists plenty of scope for creative variation and individuality.
And yet, in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, the arhat-cycles which were produced in Zen
Buddhism, less for private spiritual exercise than as works
designed for public ritual, seem to have petrified into stereo¬
typed series with very largely similar component designs; a
process in which the Japanese medieval painters seem to have
benefited not a little from their Chinese models. Two main
streams of Arhat representation go back, on the one hand to
the poet, painter and calligrapher Kuan-hsiu (Guanxiu, 832-
912), who was active in the last years of the T’ang (Tang)
dynasty, and, on the other, to the Sung (Song) master Li Kung-
lin (Li Gonglin, c. 1049-1106).
Kuan-hsiu (Guanxiu) is one of the first cb’an artists whose
work and life we can discern in more or less clear contours; but
alas the Lohan figures he created — under the influence of
dream visions, it is said — are known to us only through copies
or stone rubbings. He was an eccentric figure, closely bound up
with Taoism, and he had the power to fix moments of religious
ecstasy in the distorted faces of his Arhats, and to confront us
with convincing examples of deepest belief, will power and
inflexible earnestness in the struggle for spiritual liberation. But
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 65

the earliest series of sixteen Arhat configurations may date in

fact from an even earlier time. The authors of the Hsiian-ho
hua-p’u (Xuanhe huapu, chapter 10), writing in the early
twelfth century, mention two such Lohan cycles, one on four,
the other on eight scrolls, to be found in the imperial collection
among the works of the celebrated T’ang (Tang) poet and
painter Wang Wei (699-759). In his early years Wang Wei had
been a court official, and after the death of his wife in 730, he
turned to deep belief in Buddhism. He created wall paintings
for several Buddhist monasteries in and around Ch’ang-an
(Changan), and very significantly chose as his literary name the
characters Mo-chieh (Mojie), by analogy with the Chinese form
of the name Vimalaklrti - Wei-mo-chieh (Weimojie) — the half¬
legendary Indian sage who had reached the deepest insight as a
lay disciple.
The learned court official, poet and painter, Li Kung-lin (Li
Gonglin) had established close bonds of friendship with the
leading lights in the Buddhist clergy of his time and locality. He
was known for his rich inventiveness, his unorthodox ideas and
iconographic innovations, which led to many a figure of the
traditional Buddhist pantheon being seen in an entirely new
light. He it was who brought the so-called pai-miao (baimiao)
technique — a method of painting in lines without colours,
known since the eighth century - to highest perfection. A
painter-monk named Fan-lung (Fanlong) who was working in
his following during the twelfth century, is accredited with an
excellent handscroll, now in the Freer Gallery of Art in
Washington, DC. It shows sixteen Lohan with their disciples
and worshippers, in an extraordinarily subtle line technique
which may rank as the best example we have of Li Kung-lin’s
(Li Gonglin’s) pai-miao (baimiao) style. Certainly it is not by
chance that two colophons at the end of the scroll are by
distinguished ch’an priests: Yuan-sou Hsing-tuan (Yuansou
Xingduan, 1254-1341), the 48th abbot of the Ching-shan
(Jingshan), and the great abbot Chung-feng Ming-pen (Zhong-
feng Mingben, 1263-1323), who, after he has described and
praised the work, remarks: ‘Lao-pien T’i-t’ien (Laobian Tidian)

Detail from a handscroll showing Sixteen Arhats, attributed to Fan-

lung (twelfth century). Freer Gallery of Art, Washington DC
66 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

stores this painting in his sack. One day after meditation he

brought this out to show it to me and asked me to inscribe after
the painting. Respectfully written by Ming-pen (Mingben), the
old priest who resides at the Hsi-t’ien-mu-shan (Xitianmu-
shan).’33 There can be no doubt that representations of Arhats
in the tradition of Li Kung-lin (Li Gonglin) were very popular
in ch’an circles and were very warmly received, especially
during the fourteenth century.
Both in China and in Japan, painters liked to place their
Arhat figures in fantastic landscapes: desolate caves in the
rocks, charming gardens, or at least in front of a screen with a
landscape painting. Often, Buddha-disciples who have attained
to inner liberation are shown accompanied by a servant, or by
an animal symbolising their magical powers. Often again they
are accompanied by quite ordinary creatures. Thus, in several
related representations of the 16th Arhat, Cudapanthaka, we
find him seated meditating in a cave, surrounded by a flock of
cheeky sparrows. They seem to feel secure and happy in the
presence of the holy man, who is not in the least put out by the
fact that no less than a dozen of them are hopping about on his
lap and hiding in his garments.
In contrast to this intimate, not to say loving relationship
between creatures of a lower order and the world-transcending
Buddha-disciple, the ch’an painter-monk Mu-ch’i (Muqi)
throws another and more dramatic light on the relationship in
a superb monochrome painting which is clearly independent,
not forming part of a series; the picture is now in the Seikado
Foundation in Tokyo. Mu-ch’i (Muqi) shows us a Lohan in a
mist-covered mountain cave, his ugly face marked by the
strain of world-rejecting ascetism. A huge snake is approaching
him, with open jaws and aggressive mien. It has already laid its
head over his left shoulder and is staring upwards at him as
though challenging him. But the Arhat, the protector of
Buddha-teaching appointed by Sakyamuni himself, is so deeply
sunk in meditation that he takes no notice: effortlessly
overcoming the dangers germane to his natural environment
through the power of his enlightenment which can hold in
thrall all the forces of the cosmos.
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 67

PU-TAI (BUDAI)

If the Arhats represent the serious, disciplined and ascetic

aspect of the spirit of Zen, in figures like Pu-tai (Budai), Han-
shan (Hanshan) and Shih-te (Shide) or Feng-kan (Fenggan) we
come across a new religious dimension, one marked by
cheerfulness, joie de vivre, unconventionality and humour.
Over the years, so many legends and anecdotes have collected
around Pu-tai (Japanese: Hotei) that it is no longer possible to
disentangle the true historical facts of his life. It is clear that he
was an itinerant Chinese mendicant monk named Ch’i-tz’u
(Qici), who hailed from Ssu-ming (Siming, i.e. Ning-p’o) and
who died in 916 (or 905) in the Yiieh-lin-ssu (Yuelinsi), a ch’an
monastery in which he had, exceptionally, spent three years. All
sources describe him as an unfailingly good-humoured character,
fond of practical jokes, with a pot belly and an equally large
sack in which he collected his alms and into which he also put
stones and wood. His popular nickname, Pu-tai (Budai), means
‘hemp-sack’, but is certainly a euphemism for his ample belly.
On his way from place to place he is said to have kept on
murmuring things which no one could understand; he also
played with children, laughed a lot and danced.
This enigmatic figure, regarded by posterity as an incarna¬
tion of the future Buddha, Maitreya, was seized upon by Zen
painters as a protagonist of the free-and-easy life-style typical
of Zen, careless of needs and indifferent to authority. We see
him laughing as he points at the moon or into empty space,
patting his belly which his garment is never able to cover,
yawning luxuriously and stretching himself sleepily; sometimes
he rests pensively on his beggar’s sack, playfully tries to draw
the ‘pillow’ from under the head of a child who has fallen
asleep on his sack, or watches a cock-fight. Then again, an eye
may suddenly appear on his back, and his follower Chiang
Tsung-pa (Jiang Zongba) scours the spot; or he is shown
happily marching through the countryside with his sack slung
over his shoulder on the end of his pilgrim’s staff. In Japanese
popular belief Hotei ranks among the popular ‘Seven Gods of
Good Fortune’ and is regarded as the patron saint of children.
It was not long after his death, so we are told in a late tenth-
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 69

century source, that pictures of the eccentric ch’an mendicant

began to be painted in the coastal regions of East China, in the
present-day province of Chekiang (Zhejiang). The Butsunicbi-
an komotsu mokuroku, an inventory of Chinese art treasures,
especially paintings and specimens of calligraphy, which was
prepared in 1363 in the Butsunichi-an, a small subtemple of the
Engakuji in Kamakura on the basis of an earlier work (1320)
and amplified in 1365, mentions an imported Pu-tai (Butai)
picture, which must have been painted in 1163 at the latest, as
it bears an inscription by the eminent ch’an master Ta-hui
Tsung-kao (Dahui Zonggao) who died in that year. This
picture may perhaps be identical with one of the two pictures
whose inscriptions are recorded in the yu-lu (yulu, chapter 20),
the ‘Recorded Sayings’ of the priest.
Again, in a relatively early source — the ‘Collected Works’ of
the ch’an master Mi-an Han-chieh (Mian Hanjie, 1107-1186) -
we find a reference to a Pu-tai (Budai) representation in the
twelfth century; and the Ju-ching Ho-shang yii-lu (Rujing
Heshang yulu, chapter 2) mentions a poem which Dogen’s
teacher Ch’ang-weng Ju-ching (Changweng Rujing, 1163-
1228) composed for a picture entitled ‘Pu-tai (Budai) listens to
the wind in the pines’. The theme is reminiscent of a short
handscroll in the Senoku Hakkokan (Sumitomo collection) in
Kyoto, which shows the fat bald-headed mendicant in a forest
clearing between big pines whose tops are partially shrouded in
mist. This interesting and under-estimated picture, painted in
ink on silk, has been wrongly attributed to Ma K’uei (Ma Kui),
the brother of the court painter Ma Yuan (Ma Yuan), who was
active in the imperial academy round about 1200; and it is one
of the few Zen Buddhist figure paintings in the handscroll
format. The transverse scroll had established itself in East Asian
painting as the best medium for narrative themes with
illustrations, and, thanks to the decorative pseudo-biographical
tales and the fantastic episodes which proliferated round these
half-historical or legendary figures, had gained a foothold in
Zen painting too.

Hotei (detail) by Mokuan Reien (died 1345). MO A Museum of Art,

Atami
70 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

Sung (Song) and Yuan (Yuan) paintings of the san-sheng

category, most of them hanging scrolls, reached Japan in great
numbers very early on. In the Gyomotsu on-e mokuroku
(fifteenth century) no fewer than nine Pu-tai (Budai) representa¬
tions are catalogued as belonging to the collection of the
Ashikaga Shoguns. These include a work by Ma Yuan (Ma
Yuan) bearing an inscription (added at a later date) by the
ch’an monk Tsung-lo Chi-t’an (Zonglo Jitan, 1318-1391), and
an unusual half-figure portrait, for which the ch’an priest
Chien-weng Chii-ching (Jianweng Jujing), who was active
towards the end of the Southern Sung (Song) dynasty, is said to
have written the inscription. What is probably the oldest
independent Japanese representation of Hotei dates from the
end of the thirteenth century. It bears an inscription dated in
accordance with 1290 by the Zen prelate Nampo Jomyo (1235-
1308) who had studied in China. The artist is anonymous and
the picture is unfortunately not in the best of condition; but in
this picture of Hotei, laughing happily as he rests in indolent
comfort on his well-stuffed sack, the Shinju-an of the Daitokuji
in Kyoto possesses one of the earliest Japanese Zen paintings in
monochrome ink technique.

THE THREE SAGES OF

T’lEN-T’AI-SHAN (TIANTAISHAN)

The celebrated Zen hagiography published by Tao-yiian

(Daoyuan) in 1004 — the Ching-te ch’uan-teng lu Jingde
chuandenglu), i.e. the ‘Records [made during] the Ching-te
(Jingde era, 1004-1007) on the Transmission of the Lamp’ —
gives biographies of a total of 1701 Indian and Chinese ch’an
masters, going back to the ‘Seven Buddhas of the Past’; and
among these we find Feng-kan (Fenggan; Japanese: Bukan),
Han-shan (Hanshan; Japanese: Kanzan) and Shih-te (Shide;
Japanese: Jittoku) who, as we read, are said to have reached the
‘gate of Zen’ though they were not particularly well known
(chapter 27). In fact, we are concerned here with three
legendary figures who have been granted a somewhat doubtful
historical authenticity on the basis of the foreword to a T’ang
(Tang) collection of poems. Under the title Han-shan shih
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 71

(.Hansbanshi), the anthology contains 300 ‘Poems of the Cold

Mountain’.
The author of the foreword is taken to be Lii-ch’iu Yin
(Liiqiu Yin), a prefect who lived in the neighbourhood of T’ai-
chou (Taizhou) towards the end of the eighth and the beginning
of the ninth century. Most of the poems in his collection he
ascribes to Han-shan, a few to Shih-te (Shide) and Feng-kan
(Fenggan); and he remarks that he found them on trees and
rocks, on the walls of houses or in rooms in the nearby village.
Lii-ch’iu Yin (Liiqiu Yin) describes Han-shan as a queer old
fish, poor though learned, with shabby clothes and eccentric
habits who lived in the vastnesses of the T’ien-t’ai (Tiantai). He
often visited the Kuo-ch’ing-ssu (Guoqingsi) in the not too far
distant provincial capital of T’ang-hsing (Tangxing) where he
was given leftovers by a monastery kitchen-hand, named Shih-
te (Shide). As a small child, Shih-te (Shide) had been found by
Feng-kan (Fenggan) and raised in the monastery — hence his
name, which means ‘foundling’. Han-shan (Hanshan) is said to
have spent hours in the monastery corridors talking to himself
or laughing aloud, and when the monks who were thus
disturbed in their meditations tried to chase him away, he is
said to have stopped in his tracks, laughed loudly, clapped his
hands — and disappeared.
Shortly before leaving to take up a new post in the
neighbourhood of T’ien-t’ai-shan (Tiantaishan), Lii-ch’iu Yin
(Liiqiu Yin) was much troubled by violent headaches which no
doctor could cure; no one could help him except the ch’an
master, Feng-kan (Fenggan), from the Kuo-ch’ing-ssu (Guo¬
qingsi), who was accompanied wherever he went by a friendly
tiger. Lii-ch’ui Yin (Liiqiu Yin) inquired of Feng-kan (Fenggan)
if there were other Buddhist teachers in his old monastery to
whom he could turn for advice in matters of belief; whereupon
Feng-kan (Fenggan) referred him to Han-shan (Hanshan) and
Shih-te (Shide) who, he claimed, were in fact incarnations of
the Bodhisattvas Manjusri and Samantabhadra.
Once installed in his new post as magistrate, Lii-ch’iu Yin
(Liiqiu Yin) lost no time in making his way to the Kuo-ch’ing-
ssu (Guoqingsi) in search of the two sages. He met them in the
kitchen and bowed reverentially to them. Han-shan (Hanshan)
and Shih-te (Shide) were just then warming themselves at the
72 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

stove. They burst out laughing and began to shout: ‘Feng-kan

(Fenggan), that big mouth! You don’t even recognise the
Buddha Amitabha [Feng-kan, Fenggan] when you see him.
Why do you bow to us, what is that supposed to mean?’
Aroused by the noise, the monks ran to the kitchen where they
saw these strange goings-on. Whereupon Han-shan (Hanshan)
and Shih-te (Shide), hand in hand, made a run for it, and
disappeared into their hiding-place in the neighbouring moun¬
tains. Later, when the prefect had gifts in the shape of clothes
and medicaments sent to them, Ffan-shan (Flanshan) greeted
the messengers with shouts of ‘Thieves, thieves!’ and crept out
of sight in a cave which closed behind him. Shih-te (Shide) also
disappeared.
It was on the basis of this charming story in the foreword,
which may well be a purely literary fiction, and of certain
poems in the ensuing anthology, that Zen literature and
painting developed three of their favourite characters — rough,
wild fellows as unbridled in their merriment as they are in their
spiritual freedom and inner peace. A typical poem from the
‘Cold Mountain’ anthology runs as follows in translation:

Do you have the poems of Han-shan in your house?

They’re better for you than sutra-reading!
Write them out and paste them on a screen
Where you can glance them over from time to time.34
Han-shan (Hanshan) is often represented with a brush and an
empty book scroll, less frequently with a bucket for his
leftovers; and sometimes he is shown pointing with one finger
upwards into empty space. Shih-te (Shide) is usually provided
with a kitchen-broom as his attribute; and from the Sung
(Song) dynasty onwards the two were preferably shown as a
giggling pair of fools with tousled hair, either together on a
hanging scroll or separately in a diptych. Sometimes they are
featured in a painting or a pair of hanging scrolls, together with
their old spiritual mentor Feng-kan (Fenggan), who is usually
shown as a bald-headed and bearded monk.
A particularly charming hanging scroll in ink on silk,
showing the three Zen eccentrics, is traditionally attributed to
Mu-ch’i (Muqi) but is more likely to be by a member of his
circle or by one of his successors. The picture belongs to a
private collection in Japan. It is full of humour and psycholo-
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 73

gical insight; it shows Han-shan (Hanshan) in the act of

starting to write something with a pointed brush on a
perpendicular cliff in the left-hand margin of the picture, while
the barefoot Shih-te (Shide) has laid aside his broom and is
grinding ink on a rock for his inspired friend. Near by, old
Feng-kan (Fenggan) crouches, all huddled up, in front of a cave
which is just visible in the mist. A mountain stream rushes by.
Feng-kan (Fenggan) is stroking his beard with his right hand,
and, like Shih-te (Shide) beside him, is following with
amusement Han-shan’s (Hanshan’s) unconventional and off-
the-cuff way of writing a poem. When we look closer we can
see that he has already written four characters which are
actually the opening line of one of the poems recorded in the
‘Cold Mountain’ anthology:

My mind is like the autumn moon

Shining clean and clear in the green pool.
No, that’s not a good comparison.
Tell me, how shall I explain?35
One of the best works uniting Han-shan (Hanshan), Shih-te
(Shide) and Feng-kan (Fenggan) in a pair of hanging scrolls, a
triptych or a handscroll, is the Japanese diptych produced by
the Buddhist figure-painter Reisai, who was demonstrably
active between 1435 and 1463; the diptych is now in the Burke
Collection of Japanese Art in New York. The right-hand scroll
shows a rear view of the bald-pated Bukan, sitting on a flat
rock, with the head of his sleeping tiger visible behind it; the
left-hand one gives a rear view of Kanzan, gesticulating in lively
conversation with his laughing friend, Jittoku. Reisai has placed
his figures in the lower quarter of the picture, on stage-like
plateaus which drop abruptly away, and he uses schematic
clouds floating before an empty background to suggest an
infinite expanse of space. Most of the other known representa¬
tions of this theme show us the unorthodox partners in Zen,
Han-shan (Hanshan) and Shih-te (Shide), against a barely
suggested landscape stripped down to its essentials; sometimes,
indeed, all detail of a purely decorative nature is simply
discarded.
,
Kanzan and jittoku on the left with Bukan and his tiger on the right;
diptych by Reisai (mid-fifteenth century). The Mary and Jackson
Burke Collection of Japanese Art, New York
76 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

During the fifteenth century, the Ashikaga shoguns had

several Chinese pictures dealing with this motif in their
collection, including one attributed by Noami in his catalogue
to the scholar-painter Li Kung-lin (Li Gonglin), who died in
1106; and a second, alleged to be by the painter-monk Mu-ch’i
(Muqi), who was especially deeply venerated in Japan, and
which bore an inscription by the no less renowned abbot Hsti-
t’ang Chih-yii (Xutang Zhiyu, 1185-1269). Again, the Engakuji
in Kamakura was, according to the Butsunichi-an komotsu
mokuroku, already in the middle of the fourteenth century, in
possession of a pair of hanging scrolls, showing Han-shan
(Hanshan) and Shih-te (Shide), inscribed by the same cb’an
master. This goes to show the popularity of the theme in
medieval Japan: and from then on a host of delightful variants
was produced.

THE FOUR SLEEPERS

From the scurrilous trio of T’ien-t’ai-shan (Tiantaishan), of

which Zen literature made such colourful and enigmatic use,
there developed a new and unusually pleasing motif in art:
Feng-kan’s (Fenggan’s) tame tiger was brought in as an equal
partner with the other three figures, and all four are now
shown huddled together in deep slumber as the ‘Four Sleepers’
(Chinese: ssu-shuilsisbui; Japanese: shisui). It is not clear
exactly when this theme was introduced, but it seems to be
firmly established in the Zen repertory from the early thirteenth
century onwards, although the earliest examples extant today
date from about a hundred years later. The earliest evidence we
have for artistic preoccupation with this subject is to be found
in a poem in the Ju-cbing Ho-sbang yii-lu (Rujing Hesbang
yulu, chapter 2) which the abbot Ch’ang-weng Ju-ching
(Changweng Rujing, died in 1228) composed for a representa¬
tion of the ‘Four Sleepers’ which is no longer extant.
Inscriptions for pictures dealing with the theme are also to be
found in the ‘Collected Works’ of other cb’an masters of the
Southern Sung (Song) and the Yuan (Yuan) dynasties. The
writers are much taken up with dreams which give us in sleep
insight into the true nature of things and into our own selves.
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 77

Thus, for example, the ch’an priest Ch’iao-yin Wu-i (Qiaoyin

Wuyi, died in 1334) wrote as follows for a ssu-shui (sisbui)
picture which has likewise not survived:
Man and tiger form a unity.
Why are they such faithful companions,
When their hearts and outward appearances are so
completely diverse?
Dream-thought changes the confusion.
The wind shakes pines and gateways.
It is often late in life that we attain to cheerful and
contented guise.

And another well-known abbot of the Yuan (Yuan) period,

P’ing-shih Ju-chih (Pingshi Ruzhi, 1268-1357) wrote a poem
containing the lines:

Huddled together and woven into a ball, each is sunk in

his dream,
the tiger in tiger-self, the man in man-self.
From such utterances it is clear that the ‘Four Sleepers’ theme
was supposed to be a visualisation of that ‘insight into one’s
own nature which leads to becoming a Buddha’. The sleepers
symbolise the absolute transcendence of contradiction achieved
by the spirit as purified by Zen praxis and liberated from
enmeshment in the illusions of here-and-now. In this happy
quartet the non-duality of man and beast visualised in peaceful
sleep and dream, the repose which comes with enlightenment,
the sunyata which cancels out all contradictions, find adequate
form as perhaps in no other theme in Zen painting.
The central Buddhist idea of non-duality was formulated by
the third Chinese cb’an patriarch, Chien-chih Seng-ts’an
(Jianzhi Sengcan, died in 606) in his Hsin-hsin-ming (Xinxin-
ming), the ‘Enigraving of Belief in Mind’, as follows:
If an eye never falls asleep,
All dreams will by themselves cease:
If the mind retains its oneness,
The ten thousand things are of one suchness.
When the deep mystery of one suchness is fathomed,
All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements:
78 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness,

We return to the origin and remain what we are.

Forget the wherefore of things,

And we attain to a state beyond analogy:
Movement stopped is no movement,
And rest set in motion is no rest.
When dualism does no more obtain,
Even oneness itself remains not as such.
In the higher realm of True Suchness
There is neither ‘other’ nor ‘self’:
When a direct identification is asked for,
We can only say, ‘Not two.’36

In Japan also, the dream was used very early on as a metaphor

for the dialectic of Being and Appearance, and for the
transcending of duality through insight into true Being. In the
Kokin wakasbu, the first imperial ‘Anthology of Ancient and
Modern Japanese Verse’ completed about 905 for Emperor
Daigo (885-930), there is a short poem composed of thirty-one
syllables:

Is the world a dream?

Is it intrinsic? Tell me! —
Neither intrinsic,
Nor dream, as far as I know.
A Something, a Nothing in One.37

Right down to the present day, priests skilled with the brush
have never tired of writing the character meng (Japanese: mu,
yume), ‘dream’. Others had it incorporated in their clerical
names, as for example the eminent Muso Kokushi (1275-
1351), ‘National Master of the Dream Window’; or the
Chinese cb’an monk T’an-e (Tane, 1285-1373) who wrote a
poetic inscription for a picture of the ‘Four Sleepers’ (now in
the National Museum, Tokyo) to which we shall return in a
moment. T’an-e (Tane) was known as Meng-t’ang (Mengtang),
‘Dream Hall’, and as Wu-meng (Wumeng), ‘Dream of Nothing¬
ness’. This same profound philosophic-poetic name was
assumed by the 30th Tofukuji abbot, Issei (died 1368), who
had been privileged to receive, when a student in China, a
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 79

eulogy on his priestly name Mumu, ‘Dream of Nothingness’,

from the hand of the ch’an teacher Yueh-chiang Cheng-yin
(Yuejiang Zhengyin, 1267-post 1333) - the original of which is
still extant.
Along with the ssu-sbui-t’u (sisbuitu) attested in the yu-lu
{yulu) of the ch’an masters, we also find in the Gyomotsu on-e
mokuroku two representations of the ‘Four Sleepers’ described
as side-pieces, with the almost inevitable attribution to Mu-ch’i
(Muqi), which is today not always taken at its face value.
However, we do know of three qualitatively top-flight originals
dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, which differ
greatly in their artistic concept. What is perhaps the oldest
treatment of the theme preserved today is by the Japanese Zen
painter-monk Mokuan Reien, who worked in China for the
two decades preceding his death in 1345; and a certain Hsiang-
fu Shao-mi (Xiangfu Shaomi; perhaps Shao-mi from the
Hsiang-fu monastery) added the inscription, which takes up
once again the theme of the ‘Great Dream’ dreamt by the ‘Four
Sleepers’ huddled together:

Old Feng-kan embraces his tiger and sleeps,

All huddled together with Shih-te and Han-shan
They dream their big dream, which lingers on,
While a frail old tree clings to the bottom of the cold
precipice.
Shao-mi of the Hsiang-fu [temple] salutes with folded
hands.38
Mokuan’s masterpiece — in the Maeda Ikutoku Foundation,
Tokyo — is an example of the monochrome ink style which was
much used in Zen circles during the late Sung (Song) and the
Yuan (Yuan) periods, a genre which depends for its effect on its
spontaneity and its unconventional use of pictorial materials.
In sharp contrast are the other two fourteenth-century
versions, which date very probably from the same time as
Mokuan’s. One, painted in colour on silk, concentrates
exclusively on the group of figures; it is now in the Ryoko-in of
the Daitokuji in Kyoto. The other, a monochrome treatment
which makes a totally different impression, is almost identical
as regards the arrangement and outlines of the figures but is
additionally enriched by a lavishly laid-out landscape. In its
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 81

finely detailed linear language it connects with the stylistic

tradition of Li Kung-lin (Li Gonglin, c. 1049-1106). This
hanging scroll is now in the Tokyo National Museum. On the
basis of biographical details extracted from inscriptions by the
three ch’an priests P’ing-shih Ju-chih (Pingshi Ruzhi, 1268-
1357), Hua-kuo Tzu-wen (Huaguo Ziwen, 1269-1351) and
Meng-t’ang T’an-e (Mengtang Tane, 1285-1373) we may
assume that this extraordinary work was produced between
1329 and 1348. The ‘Four Sleepers’ present the loftiest Zen
Buddhist ideals in covert, not to say unprepossessing guise.
Raised above the earthly cycle, a point subtly stressed by their
removal in peaceful slumber to the land of dreams, they convey
to a very high degree the ‘simplicity’, ‘naturalness’, ‘subtle
profundity or deep reserve’, ‘freedom from attachment’ and
‘tranquillity’, to name only some of the qualities which
Hisamatsu Shin’ichi has specified as the essential characteristics
of a Zen work of art.
One final proof of the widespread popularity of the ‘Four
Sleepers’ theme, and one remote from its Zen Buddhist origins,
is provided by a Turkish miniature dating from the early
Osmanli period. This small tondo, which was probably made in
the fifteenth century at the court of Mehmet the Conqueror,
must certainly have been inspired by a Chinese prototype.
Feng-kan (Fenggan) or Bukan was also treated as a theme on
his own in Chinese and Japanese figure painting. Then he is
shown riding or resting on his tiger, or standing beside it. He
seems to have found his way into the iconographic repertory of
Zen painting long before his friends from the Kuo-ch’ing-ssu
(Guoqingsi); because, even if the celebrated ink-on-paper
representation of a monk resting with his eyes closed on his
sleeping tiger is no more than a late thirteenth- or early
fourteenth-century copy, the signature bearing the name of the
eccentric artist Shih K’o (Shi Ke, died post 975) must surely
serve as evidence for the early conversion of the legend into art
in the tenth century. The work once belonged to the Shohoji in
Kyoto, and is today, together with its pendant showing a
monk, perhaps the second ch’an patriarch, Hui-k’o (Huike) in

The Four Sleepers (detail) by Mokuan Reien (died 1345); inscription

by Flsiang-fu Shao-mi. Maeda Ikutokukai, Tokyo
82 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

deep meditation, in the Tokyo National Museum. Here we see

Feng-kan (Fenggan) as exemplar of the enlightened Zen
patriarch, forgetful of everything around him, whether he is in
deep sleep or in meditation. A slightly divergent copy of the
pendant to this work was used by a painter, presumably in the
Yuan (Yuan) period, to reinterpret the figure of Feng-kan
(Fenggan) by adding a sleeping tiger and some elements of
landscape; and thereupon to present it in iconographic unity as
the centre-piece of a triptych, with Han-shan (Hanshan) and
Shih-te (Shide) on the flanking scrolls. These three pictures,
painted on silk, belong to the Fujita Art Museum in Osaka, and
have not had the attention they deserve.

HSIEN-TZU (XIANZI) AND CHU-T’OU (ZHUTOU)

Another two eccentric figures encountered in Zen-Buddhist

imagery are Hsien-tzu (Xianzi, also called Hsia-tzu/Xiazi;
Japanese: Kensu), or ‘Clam’, and Chu-t’ou (Zhutou; Japanese:
Choto), the ‘Pig’s Head’. According to early sources in the
eleventh century, Hsien-tzu (Xianzi) was a pupil of the ch’an
master Tung-shan Liang-chieh (Dongshan Liangjie, 807-869).
It was said of him that he roamed the riverside in order to catch
shrimps and clams for food, a practice normally not allowed to
a devout Buddhist. Enlightenment, it is reported, was attained
by him while catching a shrimp. Both Chinese and Japanese
artists, including the two important painter-monks, Mu-ch’i
(Muqi) and Kao, presented him from the thirteenth/fourteenth
century on, as a bearded old fellow in shabby clothes which he
wore for years on end; he has a fishing net and is proudly
holding his catch - a live shrimp in his raised hand.
Similarly a monk named Chih-meng (Zhimeng), who lived
during the eleventh century, and who came from Wu-chou
(Wuzhou) — he is also known as the ‘Sage of Chin-hua (Jinhua)’
- owes his curious nickname, ‘Pig’s Head’, to his favourite
delicacy. The renowned ch’an master Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Dahui
Zonggao, 1089-1163) who directed the fortunes of the

Kensu the Shrimp-eater, by Kao (first half of the fourteenth century).

Tokyo National Museum
:

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 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 85

important monastery on the Ching-shan (Jingshan), and who

resided in the 19th generation on the Yii-wang-shan (Yuwang-
shan) as supreme head, prepared an inscription for a,
regrettably lost, picture of Chu-t’ou (Zhutou); his colophon is
preserved in his ‘Collected Sayings’, the Ta-hui P’u-cbiao
Ch’an-sbih yu-lu (Dahui Pujiao Cbansbi yulu, chapter 12).
Later Hsien-tzu (Xianzi) and Chu-t’ou (Zhutou) were presented
in paired hanging scrolls — presumably because by flaunting
their favourite foods they cocked a snook at the vegetarian diet
prescribed for the Buddhist clergy.

BODHIDHARMA

From very early on, the focus of attention for Zen painters was
unquestionably the founder of ch’an in China, the 28th
patriarch after Sakyamuni — Bodhidharma (died before 534).
Some modern scholars tend to cast doubt on the very existence
of this Indian patriarch, and there is no doubt that such
historical facts as are contained in the various accounts given
by ancient chroniclers are heavily encrusted with legend. One
of the most popular episodes in the story is the meeting of
Bodhidharma with the Emperor Wu (464-549) of the Liang
dynasty. As befitted a worthy promoter of the Buddhist cause
in China, the monarch is supposed to have invited the Indian
monk to his court at Nanking (Nanjing), in order to learn
something of the latest developments in ch’an at first hand. But
the inquisitive Emperor could make very little of the taciturn
and paradoxical answers he got from this strange holy man.
The ch’an patriarch took the initiative and put an end to this
unfruitful dialogue by quitting the imperial court without even
taking official leave, and making his way north to a monastery
in the state of Wei on the Sung (Song) mountain, where he then
spent nine years in meditation.
However much this meeting was related and expanded upon
subsequently, it seems to have awakened little interest among
painters; at least, no very early treatment of the theme is

Bodhidharma Crossing the Yang-tze on a Reed; inscription by Ch’ang-

weng Ju-ching (1163-1228). Destroyed in war
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 87

known to us. Very likely there was no great eagerness among

ch’an painters to blot their founder’s newly consolidated
reputation by recalling his less than polite behaviour to the
Emperor and his less than auspicious start in China. Instead,
attention was paid in one phase of the founder’s apotheosis, to
those no doubt apocryphal episodes in the Bodhidharma life-
story, which endowed the Indian patriarch with supernatural
and miraculous powers. Thus the legend of his ‘Crossing the
Yangtze (Yangzi) on a Reed’ after his abrupt departure from
the court of the Liang Emperor, came to be very popular
among painters and literati. The credulous masses took the
story as literal truth, while the educated cb’an priests saw in it a
metaphor for the extraordinary powers of the unconventional
patriarch.
There is some evidence to suggest that as early as the
beginning of the twelfth century, the story of Bodhidharma’s
miraculous crossing of the Yangtze (Yangzi) was no longer a
novelty. But the oldest representations extant of the theme —
known in specialist literature by its Japanese name Royd (toko)
Daruma — date only from the thirteenth century. The close
relationship between this Bodhidharma type and the figure of
Sakyamuni returning from the mountains lies not only in
certain formal details — e.g. the garment fluttering out in front
as the wind blows from behind the figure, the red colour of the
garment (except in monochrome ink drawings), the hands
always hidden by the habit and crossed in front of the breast -
but also in the conceptual statement, which is in fact summed
up by the hands. Dietrich Seckel has shown very convincingly
that this gesture of the hands, which is specific to Zen
iconography and which is usually found in the Shussan Sbaka
as well as in the Royd Daruma, is an indication of the ‘silent
possession of the truth’. ‘For Bodhidharma too, as original
exemplar of Zen enlightenment, “non-speech” is characteristic.
At the same time, the concealment of (the hands) probably
serves to obviate the otherwise unavoidable choice of a specific
mudra - a well-formulated statement, an utterance through a

Bodhidharma Facing the Cliff in Meditation with Hui-k’o who has

Cut off his own Arm, by Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506), dated 1496.
Sainenji, Aichi prefecture
88 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

precise symbolic gesture; in the Zen sense, therefore, we should

perhaps speak of a non-mudra, even of an anti-mudra.’39
According to the legend, Bodhidharma subjected himself to
ascetic privations no less dire than those undertaken by the
historical Buddha; and he is said to have spent nine years
meditating in front of a rocky cliff in the Shao-lin-ssu
(Shaolinsi) near Loyang (Luoyang). The copious collection of
biographies which the monk Tao-yiian (Daoyuan) compiled
round about 1004, the Ching-te ch’uan-teng lu (Jingde
chuandenglu) mentions the occurrence on Mount Sung (Song);
and the Ch’uan-fa cheng-tsung chi (Chuanfa zhengzongji),
the ‘Chronicle for the Transmission of the Teaching in the
True School’ by the ch’an priest Fo-jih Ch’i-sung (Fori Qisong,
1007-1072), finished in 1061 and dedicated the following year
to the Northern Sung (Song) Emperor Jen-tsung (Renzong,
reigned 1022-1063), says that Bodhidharma was called ‘the
wall-gazing Brahman’ because of his curious method of
meditation. The term pi-kuan (biguan), literally ‘wall-gazing’,
is found in very early sources which contain the first reactions
to the teaching of Bodhidharma, as noted down by a disciple
of the patriarch. The expression seems to refer originally to
a particular way of meditating. Some scholars are of the
opinion that this may be a metaphor for the ineffable ‘steepness
and suddenness of enlightenment’, rather than a literal
description of a posture in meditation, as it was, in the sequel,
understood by later writers. Thus, ‘Bodhidharma’s nine years
of deep meditation while “facing a wall” in the Shao-lin-ssu
(Shaolinsi)’ may well be the product of a misunderstanding on
the one hand, and the exuberant imagination of the Sung
(Song) literati and painters on the other.
In painting, the theme was considerably intensified by the
addition of a directly related event reported in the life-story of
Bodhidharma. A ch’an disciple named Hui-k’o (Huike) heard
tales of the unswerving meditation of the Indian patriarch, and
decided to make his way to the Sung-shan (Songshan) and ask
the great master to take him on as a pupil. But Bodhidharma
ignored him. Finally, Hui-k’o (Huike) cut his left arm off in
earnest of his determination to make any and every sacrifice for
the ch’an succession, and to submit to any adversity. Where¬
upon Bodhidharma accepted the courageous Chinese applicant,
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 89

and appointed him, after he had attained to enlightenment, as

second patriarch in what was to be the long chain of
succession.
This key episode in Zen is depicted for us in a large hanging
scroll by the celebrated Japanese painter-monk Sesshu Toyo
(1420-1506). The picture, which is imbued with deep religious
solemnity and overpowering dramatic force, is in the Sainenji in
the Aichi prefecture. Sesshu, who had entered a Zen monastery
at the age of eleven, painted this moving picture in 1496 when
he was 77 (76 by Western reckoning) as he records in his own
hand near the left-hand margin. The two ch’an patriarchs are
shown in strict, analogous profile: the bald-headed Hui-k’o
(Huike) with his stubbly beard, staring resolutely ahead, in
artistically daring intersection, the amputated limb held in front
of his breast, and the black-bearded Indian patriarch in
immovable composure, his open eyes fixed unswervingly on the
rock-wall.
In this powerful figure, the painter has succeeded in
confronting the viewer with a typically Zen-Buddhist paradox:
the apparent contradiction implied in performing ‘heavy labour
of the spirit’ to the point of exhaustion, while the body is
motionless in repose. Similarly, the striking contrast between
the bizarre rocks, with their vibrating dappling and striation,
and the few broad bold strokes used to delineate the otherwise
white, blank figure of the Bodhidharma, must be seen as an
inversion of the natural order through the spirit of Zen: the
rocks seem to be awakened to breathing life, while the
meditating man approximates to a lifeless and immovable
block of stone. In this masterpiece, Sesshu has given us a
shocking visualisation of radical Zen logic leading to the total
relinquishment of the Self. For those who are in search of true
enlightenment, he has provided an exemplary zenki-zu, a ‘Zen
support-picture’ of the very first rank.
The fantastic tales adorning the life, the work and the person
of the Indian founder of ch’art in China, did not end with his
death. A legend current already in the tenth century tells how
the monk Sung-yiin (Songyun) from Tun-huang (Dunhuang)
was returning home after a three-year pilgrimage to India
whither he had been sent by the Wei Emperor Hsiao-chuang
(Xiaozhuang, reigned 528-530), when he met Bodhidharma,
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 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 91

then recently defunct, making his way to the Buddhist

homeland. This encounter is supposed to have taken place in
Ts’ung-ling (Congling) in Central Asia; and Bodhidharma
seemed to have only one of his shoes with him. When Sung-yiin
(Songyun) told the emperor about the strange meeting, the
order went forth to open Bodhidharma’s grave - and indeed
there was the other shoe!
The theme of ‘Bodhidharma Returning to the West with one
Shoe’ (abbreviated in Japanese to Sekiriki Daruma) figured in
literature from a relatively early date; and both Chinese and
Japanese painters had taken it up by the thirteenth century at
the latest. In our opinion, the best representation extant of the
themeis to be seen in the Masaki Art Museum in Izumi-Otsu
near Osaka. It bears an inscription dated 1296 from the hand
of the Sofukuji abbot Nampo Jomyo (1235-1308) who had
studied in China. The picture is one of quite exceptional
importance for the history of East Asian painting, showing as it
does how early ink painting techniques and styles were received
in Japan from Sung (Song) China. In type and in the treatment
of certain motifs - e.g. the garment blown forwards by the
wind - the picture links up with representations of the Royd
Daruma and the Shussan Shaka.
Even if it is hardly possible to trace precise lines of influence,
we may justifiably postulate a mutually fructifying interaction
between these three themes, a reciprocity sited ultimately in the
general intellectual and artistic climate of the period, and one
which can be held responsible for the formal similarities in
treatment. Each of these themes is concerned with the depiction
and the artistic expansion of legendary biographical details,
with dynamic and action-filled ‘narrative pictures’ commemor¬
ating historical episodes which have fundamental implications
for the Zen school. In this respect they differ sharply from the
genre of static representation of redeemer-figures (in the Zen
context, it is misleading to talk of a ‘Kultbild’ or ‘picture for
worship’ and the term is better avoided) - e.g. representations

Five Zen masters from a series of thirty portraits in six hanging scrolls,
flanking a representation of Sakyamuni (see illustration p. 49), by
Kichizan Mincho (1352-1431), dated 1426; inscriptions by Genchu
Shugaku (1359-1428), Rokuo-in, Tofukuji, Kyoto
92 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

of the historical Buddha as a religious founder at the head of a

long line of patriarchs, or certain pictures of the Bodhisattva
Avalokitesvara.

PORTRAITS OF PATRIARCHS

In contrast to these themes which turn on visualisation of the

instantaneous, the momentary, the evanescent, which have to
do with a specific spatio-temporal singularity, the essential
static portraits of the great ch’an patriarchs seek to achieve
independence from time and space, a bridging of the spatio-
temporal gap.40 The classical mode of representation of
Bodhidharma, now exaggerated to superhuman dimensions, is
the half-figure in three-quarter profile. The characteristic traits
of these idealised portraits lie in the non-Chinese features of the
patriarch in his simple monastic robe, his full beard, his large
ears with ear-rings, and, above all, his hypnotic and compelling
gaze. In point of fact, there is an apocryphal legend concerning
the exaggeration of the eyes, to the effect that Bodhidharma,
angered by the fact that out of weariness his eyes had fallen
shut during meditation, cut off his eyelids. At the spot where
they fell to earth, it was said, a bush had made a miraculous
appearance — the tea plant. And in fact the practice of drinking
tea was early on adopted in Zen circles, as a means of resisting
tiredness during lengthy meditation.
Extant originals allow us to follow the history of the half¬
figure patriarch portrait as far back as the twelfth century.
Certainly one of the most impressive representations of the
Indian founder patriarch is the portrait done in a few powerful
brush strokes and velvety soft ink washes on paper: the
hanging scroll belongs to the Myoshinji in Kyoto, and has long
been the central piece of a triptych. The flanking scrolls show
Pu-tai (Budai) and Feng-kan (Fenggan). Both paintings are by
Li Ch’ueh (Li Que), a painter from whose hand we have
unfortunately nothing else; the Pu-tai (Budai) scroll is signed by
him in the lower left-hand corner. The anonymous picture of
Bodhidharma bears in its upper half a four-line gatha, reading
from left to right, by Mieh-weng Wen-li (Mieweng Wenli,
1167-1250). In the quatrain, this important ch’an abbot refers
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 93

to two episodes in the life-story of the first patriarch - the

fruitless encounter with Emperor Wu of Liang, and the
mysterious return journey of Bodhidharma, after his death,
through the deserts of Central Asia.
One might expect the single portrait to be the oldest type in
the evolution of Zen Buddhist portraiture, but in fact the genre
starts with the group portrait. The oldest examples which are
both documented and still extant, are concerned with portraits
of patriarchs in order of succession. The very nature of the
iconographic undertaking dictated in advance the most suitable
form of representation — the linear series of pictures. In general,
this linear series was conceived as a row of single portraits on
separate hanging scrolls, arranged in sequence. Sometimes,
however, artists varied the format by putting a group
comprising five portraits on one single hanging scroll, so that
several such scrolls could be seamlessly joined up to form a
linear series. Thus, the capacity of a linear series, which may
comprise anything between three and forty hanging scrolls, is
not exclusively determined by the number of persons repre¬
sented. In the arrangement of the portraits, strict attention was
usually paid to ensuring that the Zen masters represented were
genealogically ordered to left and right of the central axis,
marked perhaps by a picture of Sakyamuni. As a rule,
patriarchs bearing uneven numbers face left: that is to say, their
portraits were hung to the right of the central picture, or to the
right of an imaginary central axis. Masters with even numbers
are shown in three-quarter profile looking to the right: that is,
their pictures are hung on the left. And, as such portrait rows
are concerned above all with ancient Zen masters, the
dominant form of representation is the half-length figure held
to be suitable for patriarchal portraits.
Portrait cycles of Buddhist patriarchs have a long history in
the Orient, and they are the prerogative of no single school.
What especially distinguishes Zen portraits vis-a-vis portaits of
the Chen-yen (Zhenyan; Japanese: Shingon) or T’ien-t’ai
(Tiantai; Japanese: Tendai) patriarchs is their realism, which is
closely linked to their religious function, and which has
separated and grown out of the prevailing concept of the
portrait as an idealisation of the subject. But we must not
overlook the fact that representations of the early ch’an
94 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

patriarchs in the so-called sosbi-zd are almost exclusively based

upon idealised transmissiori of the master’s personality, and
that these images fulfil, as in other schools, general functions in
worship.
Among the oldest attested series portraying the first six cb’an
patriarchs in China are the scrolls, now lost, which were still in
the extensive collection belonging to the Sung (Song) Emperor,
Hui-tsung (Huizong, 1082-1135), a lover of the arts, at the
beginning of the twelfth century. Evidence for this is forth¬
coming from the Hsiian-bo bua-p’u (Xuanbe huapu, chapter 5)
where we find the pictures attributed to the figure painter Ch’en
Hung (Chen Hong), who was active at the T’ang (Tang) court
around the middle of the eighth century. If this attribution is
correct, the pictures were produced at the very time that Shen-
hui (Shenhui, 668-760) was engaged in a dispute with his
master, Hui-neng (Huineng), the sixth patriarch, regarding the
legitimacy of the doctrinal succession, a dispute which was not
finally settled until 796 when Emperor Te-tsung (Dezong)
convoked a council to deal with it.
Subsequent series portraying the first six cb’an patriarchs in
China formed part of the standard repertory of Buddhist figure¬
painting. In the I-chou ming-hua lu (Yizbou mingbualu, preface
dated 1006) we find further references to series of wall
paintings of this nature in various important temples in what is
now Ssu-ch’uan (Sichuan). These were works by artists such as
the emigre painter Chang Nan-pen (Zhang Nanben, active in
the second half of the ninth century), the cb’an painter-monk
Ling-tsung (Lingzong), who was also active in Ch’eng-tu
(Chengdu) around the middle of the tenth century and painted
a series for the Ta-sheng-tz’u-ssu (Dashengcisi), and his cousin
Ch’iu Wen-po (Qiu Wenbo, active c. 932-965) who did a set
for the cb’an monastery of Ch’ien-ming-ch’an-yiian (Qianming-
chanyuan). At this time, the Ta-sheng-tz’u-ssu (Dashengcisi)
possessed a subtemple, the Liu-tsu-yiian (Liuziyuan), devoted
specifically to the ‘Six Patriarchs’.
Unfortunately, Huang Hsiu-fu (Huang Xiufu), the author of
the ‘Record of Famous Painters active in I-chou (Yizhou)’ tells
us nothing about what these early portraits of patriarchs
looked like. Perhaps they were half-figure portraits, as later
became customary; but they may also have been series of small
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 95

scenes showing the ch’an patriarchs, surrounded by their

pupils, officiating at the formal installation of their successors
as repositories of the true teaching - in other words, a sort of
‘ordination’ scene. We may mention two examples of this sort
of picture: first, a copy of the Ch’uan-fa cheng-tsung ting-tsu
t’u-chiian (Chuanfa zhengzong dingzu tuquan) - the ‘Illustrated
Scroll with the Transmission of the Law in the True School by
the Appointed Patriarchs’ - which the Japanese monk Joen
completed in 1154 after a Chinese original of 1061, and which
was kept in the Kanchi-in of the Toji at Kyoto until its
acquisition by the MOA Museum of Art in Atami; and
secondly, an early thirteenth-century ink drawing done by an
anonymous artist after a Chinese woodblock print of 1054,
which is in the collection of the Kozanji near Kyoto.

PORTRAITS OF PRIESTS

In Zen Buddhism the portrait occupies a central place; and

among the portraits of important masters which have come
down to us, those showing an abbot ‘in cathedra’ are by far the
most common. The preferred form for portraits of contempor¬
ary priests, and also for posthumous representations of those
defunct, is the so-called ‘chair portrait’ (Chinese: i-tzu-hsiang/
yizixiang; Japanese: isu-zd) which shows the master sitting with
his legs crossed in an ecclesiastical chair with arm-rests and
often a high back. The chair (Chinese: ch’ii-lu/qulu; Japanese:
kyokuroku) is often covered with a richly ornamented cloth of
fine quality, and in front of it, on a low foot-rest, are the
abbot’s shoes. His hands are lying in his lap and as a rule he
holds a fly-whisk (Chinese: fu-tzulfuzi\ Japanese: hossu) or an
admonition slat (Chinese: cbu-pi/zhubi-, Japanese: shippei)
which serves to give pupils a well-meant blow on the shoulder,
should attention waver during zazen.
These priest portraits, which are known in Japanese Zen
terminology as chinso, and which are to be distinguished both
typologically and iconographically from the soshi-zd, the
patriarchal portraits, are almost exclusively dominated by one
mode of representation - the three-quarter profile view, facing
to right or to left. The strict right-angle profile is not found in
96 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

Zen Buddhist single portraits, and the en face pose is very rare.
Except where iconographic considerations demand it, there is
no suggestion of a background;' and the question whether we
are dealing with an indoor or an outdoor setting remains open
— deliberately so, so that all our attention can be focused on
the subject himself. It is very rare to find a Zen priest portrayed
against a landscape background.
An integral component of the chinso is provided by the
inscriptions (Chinese: tsan/zan; Japanese: san) which are
normally in the upper third of the picture, that is, above the
head of the subject. In the case of contemporary pictures (juzo)
these inscriptions were composed by the master being por¬
trayed, at the request of one of his pupils, and written down in
his own hand. These dedications, which are often in verse, are
so personal in content or refer in such arcane terms to certain
happenings and oddities in the master-pupil relationship, that
they are, as far as non-initiates are concerned, completely or, at
best, partly incomprehensible. Zen priests wrote their dedica¬
tions in both directions on their portraits, from right to left as
well as from left to right, which is contrary to general
conventions in East Asia. The determining factor here is the
direction of the gaze, as the tsan (zan) normally begins in that
part of the picture towards which the subject is looking. This is
also true, by the way, for many other kinds of Zen Buddhist
figure-paintings.
For a most illuminating commentary on the principles
informing representation in both lifetime portraits and post¬
humous pictures of Zen masters, we have to thank the Chinese
ch’an priest Chu-hsien Fan-hsien (Zhuxian Fanxian, 1292-
1349) who was working in Japan from 1329 onwards, and
who not only made a name for himself as a teacher and an
abbot in more than one important monastery, but whose
talents were also applied to literature and painting. In his T’ien-
chu-cbi (Tianzbuji), the ‘Collection of the Heavenly Pillar’,
which is included in chapter 3 of his ‘Collected Sayings’, we
find him inveighing against the rule which had by then - the
Yuan (Yuan) period - been long established, according to
which a Zen master drawn from life should always be shown
looking to his right in heraldic terms; while a portrait of a
defunct master should always show him in three-quarter profile
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 97

looking to his left. By and large, this differentiation between

living and dead subjects, along with its corollary that the
inscription should always run counter to the direction of the
gaze, was duly observed in Zen painting, as the available
material will bear out. Posthumous portraits (izo) were usually
inscribed by pupils or by doctrinal successors of the priest
portrayed, and, in fact, in the contrary direction to the
traditional right-to-left line of script.
The earliest independent ‘chair-portrait’ of a Zen master that
we know of, is that of Mu-an Fa-chung (Muan Fazhong, 1084-
1149) in the MOA Museum of Art in Atami. It may well have
been painted in his lifetime, for the long-haired bearded priest
of the Huang-lung (Huanglong) school is shown in the
indicative pose for portraits from life: that is, he is looking to
his right. Presumably something happened to prevent him from
inscribing his likeness with his own hand; the eulogies on the
picture, composed in 1150/51, that is to say, immediately after
his death, are by two anonymous successors.
The most important chinso are no doubt those which were
produced during the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth
century. Three of the most beautiful works in Chinese
portraiture as a whole were dedicated by the ch’an masters
depicted, to their Japanese pupils. In 1238, the great Ching-
shan (Jingshan) abbot, Wu-chun Shih-fan (Wuzhun Shifan,
1177-1249) dedicated his likeness to the pilgrim monk, Enni
Ben’en (1202-1280), who was studying under his tutelage; in
1241, Enni Ben’en returned from China to Kyoto, where in
1255 he founded the Tofukuji, and it is there that what is
probably the most celebrated of all Zen Buddhist portraits has
been preserved and venerated from the thirteenth century until
the present day. Twenty years later, in 1258, the influential
ch’an master Hsii-t’ang Chih-yii (Xutang Zhiyu, 1185-1269)
inscribed his portrait for his disciple Sempo Honryu from the
Jomyoji in Kamakura; today, the picture is in the Myoshinji in
Kyoto. Finally, in 1315, the Zen priest Enkei Soyu (1285-1344)
returned from a nine-year sojourn in China with a portrait of
his master, Chung-feng Ming-pen (Zhongfeng Mingben, 1263-
1323) which is signed by an otherwise unknown artist named I-
an (Yian). In 1325 Enkei founded the Kogenji in his old
homeland, the province of Tamba, and in this old monastery
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 99

the marvellous picture of the eccentric, long-haired, corpulent

ch’an master has been preserved. Japanese cbinso run into
enormous numbers, so that we can do no more than mention
the many impressive portraits of such eminent Zen personalities
as Enni Ben’en, Muso Soseki (1275-1351) or Ikkyu Sojun
(1394-1481).

PICTURES OF ZEN ENCOUNTERS

A specific category of Zen Buddhist painting is provided by the

so-called zenki-zu — ‘Pictures of Zen Encounters or Zen
Activities’, sometimes also called ‘Zen support-pictures’. The
scenic representations originally appeared by preference in
handscrolls — a very suitable format as their main function was
to tell a story; but they also appeared in separate hanging
scrolls. In either form, they set out to encourage and stimulate
the seeker after enlightenment by presenting in graphic and
paradigmatic form decisive events in the lives of exemplary
patriarchs, or encounters and dialogues between an enlightened
Zen master who has overcome the world and a representative
of some other spiritual culture. The zenki-zu fulfil the same sort
of function as was served in early Christianity and the Middle
Ages by the original devotional literature; and in so far as this
is true, we are not misrepresenting them when we think of them
as ‘devotional pictures’, or, in the widest sense, ‘visual aids to
Zen’.
In their title many of these representations have the
disyllable wen-ta (wenda; Japanese: mondd), literally ‘question
and answer’. In Zen Buddhist writings these didactic ‘dialogue-
pictures’, which have a strong narrative and historical content,
are designated as ch’an-hui-t’u (chanhuitu; Japanese: zen-e-zu),
that is, ‘Pictures of Zen Encounters’. Some kind of systematisa¬
tion seems to have been fixed as early as in the thirteenth
century; thus, in the yii-lu (yulu) of well-known cb’an masters,
we not infrequently find as many as twelve or thirteen
illustrated episodes in the same or at least similar sequence. The

Li Ao Visiting the ch’an Master Yao-shan Wei-yen, by Ma Kung-hsien

(mid-twelfth century), Nanzenji, Kyoto
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 101

series leads off usually with the story of the cb’an priest Huang-
po Hsi-yiin (Huangbo Xiyun, died c. 850) who answered the
importunate questioning of a young monk by striking him three
times in the face. The novice thus instructed later ascended the
throne as the 16th Emperor of the T’ang (Tang) dynasty, under
the name of Hsiian-tsung (Xuanzong, reigned from 846 to 859).
Another typical Zen encounter is represented by the visit of
Li Ao (died c. 844) to the cb’an master Yao-shan Wei-yen
(Yaoshan Weiyan, 751-834). Li Ao was a Confucian, the gov¬
ernor of Lang-chou (Langzhou) and a friend of the rabid oppo¬
nent of Buddhism, Han Yu (Han Yu, 786-824). When he came
to Yao-shan Wei-yen (Yaoshan Weiyan) seeking instruction,
the cb’an master simply ignored his illustrious guest. Thus pro¬
voked, Li Ao finally lost his patience and said crossly, ‘Seeing
your face is less impressive than hearing your name’, to which
the wise cb’an master calmly replied, ‘How is it that you value
the ear more than the eye?’ Impressed by this answer, Li Ao
bowed in reverence and asked, ‘Which is the right way (to en¬
lightenment)?’ Yao-shan Wei-yen’s (Yaoshan Weiyan’s) answer
was to point with one finger upwards, and downwards with the
other hand, a strange gesture which Li Ao failed to understand.
Finally the master added, ‘The clouds are in the sky; the water
is in the vase.’ Now Li Ao understood, and spontaneously
recited the following verse:
His ascetic body is as dry as that of a crane.
Under a myriad pine-trees lie two bundles of sutras.
When I came to ask the way to enlightenment, all he said
was:
‘The clouds are in the sky; the water is in the vase.’
Two outstanding pictures dealing with this ‘Zen-encounter’
theme have come down to us from the Sung (Song) period. In
style, these two paintings are diametrically opposed to each
other, representing, one might say, the two poles of Zen
Buddhist painting. One of them, a hanging scroll, bears in the
lower right-hand corner the signature of Ma Kung-hsien (Ma
Gongxian), who occupied a high position in the Imperial
Academy during the Shao-hsing (Shaoxing) era (1131-1162)
and who wore the ‘Golden Girdle’, a distinguished honour

The Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, Chopping Bamboo, by Liang K’ai (first

half of the thirteenth century). Tokyo National Museum
102 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

awarded to court painters for exceptional services. The picture

has a clear linear structure and is painted in delicate colours on
silk. It is now in the Nanzenji in Kyoto. It shows Li Ao in
official robes standing before a large natural-stone table, his
hands crossed in front of his breast in token of reverence.
Behind the table, on a bamboo seat under a towering pine, sits
the wizened figure of Yao-shan Wei-yen (Yaoshan Weiyan); he
is pointing with his fingers and his face is creased with mirth.
On the table is a blossoming plum branch in a bulbous vase
with a long neck. Close by are two scroll cases, an open, oval
ink-stone and a small bowl.
In sharp contrast to this work, unambiguously committed as
it is to academic tradition, which conveys the content in concise
narrative terms, the anonymous painter of the other version (on
loan to the Princeton University Art Museum) has adopted a
free and uninhibited approach to the theme and has had
recourse to the expressive potentialities of delicate ink strokes
and watery grey washes. Today, the work is mounted as a
square hanging scroll, but was originally very probably part of
a handscroll. It bears a colophon by the ch’an abbot Yen-ch’i
Kuang-wen (Yanqi Guangwen, 1189-1263) which he composed
between 1254 and 1256 during his term of office in the Ling-
yin-ssu (Lingyinsi):
All moments of enlightenment come like lightning.
To scorn the eye and extol the ear is
As though one were between water and clouds.
Say not that there is no other way!
The Abbot of Leng-ch’iian (Lengquan), Kuang-wen
(Guangwen)

ENLIGHTENMENT PICTURES

Another group of zenki-zu are representations of eminent Zen

Buddhist personalities caught in the decisive moment when
enlightenment suddenly hit them. At first glance, these pictures
often seem very unremarkable as regards content, in that they
show everyday situations, ordinary occupations, often border¬
ing on the trivial: a monk wading through a river, a mendicant
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 103

priest under a blossoming tree in a landscape setting, a monk

chopping bamboo or sweeping the monastery yard. The first of
these themes - the monk wading through the river - refers to
the founder of the Ts’ao-tung (Caodong) school (Japanese:
Soto school), Tung-shan Liang-chieh (Dongshan Liangjie, 807-
869) who was crossing a river one day when he saw his
reflection in the water and attained enlightenment. The second
is the ch’an master Ling-yiin Chih-ch’in (Lingyun Zhiqin) who
lived in the ninth century, and who suddenly experienced satori
at the sight of peach blossom. The third is the sixth patriarch,
Hui-neng (Huineng) who suddenly made the breakthrough to
enlightenment when he heard the sounds of bamboo being
chopped; and the fourth is Hsiang-yen Chih-hsien (Xiangyan
Zhixian, ninth century) who was sweeping the yard as usual
one day when a small stone sprang from the broom and hit a
hollow bamboo cane, making a slight sound which broke the
silence and was enough to trigger enlightenment.
Finally, this category of Zen Buddhist ‘enlightenment
pictures’ also comprises such themes as ‘Pu-tai (Budai)
Watching a Cock-fight’ or ‘Hsien-tzu (Xianzi) Catching a
Shrimp’. Without a knowledge of Zen literature and where
there is no commentary, such works are difficult if not
impossible to understand. Many of these themes occur as
chance episodes in biographical compilations; others again
figure as meditation exercises in well-known koan collections.

PARABLE PICTURES

The ‘parable pictures’ form yet another category of zenki-zu;

and, at first glance, they are no more likely to disclose their
paradigmatic character than are the ‘enlightenment pictures’.
Zen masters were particularly fond of using one particular
parable as a means of introducing students to and instructing
them in Zen — the parable of the ‘Ox and its Herdsman’ which
is held to epitomise various levels of awareness and knowledge.
When the Ashikaga Shogun Yoshimitsu asked the influential
Zen abbot Zekkai Chushin (1336-1405) to explain the basic
tenets of Zen Buddhism to him, the abbot used this parable
which appears in many versions, both in painting and in
104 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

literature, as didactic textbook for his lessons with the regent.

The simile of the ox and herdsman is intended to help smooth
the step-wise path (conceived mostly in ten stages) to insight
into the true nature of things.
The earliest sets of ‘Ten Oxherding Pictures’ (Chinese: shih-
niu-t’u/shiniutu; Japanese: jugyu-zu) seem to have appeared in
China around the middle of the eleventh century. In some of
these, the steps on the way of Zen are symbolised by an ox
which is transformed from being pitch-black through ten
gradual stages of lightening in colour till it appears as snow-
white, and finally vanishes from sight altogether, so that an
empty circle logically represents the release from adhesion to
the phenomenal world. Another series of ‘Oxherding Pictures’,
with an accompanying text, which ultimately derives from the
Chinese cb’an master K’uo-an Chih-yiian (Kuoan Zhiyuan, c.
1150), found widespread popularity during the fourteenth/fif-
teenth century in Japan, where it has been transmitted in
several handwritten, painted and printed editions. Here, each
stage on the way to supreme understanding is set out in an
explanatory prose paragraph followed by four lines in verse.
These short poems emphasise the same ideas once more.

1 LOOKING FOR THE OX

To begin with, we never really lost him, so what is the use
of chasing him and looking for him? The herdsman
turned his back on himself and so became estranged from
his ox. It moved away into clouds of dust and was lost.
The herdsman’s home and mountains recede into the
far distance; the mountain paths and roads suddenly
become confused. The desire to catch the ox and the fear
of losing him burn like fire; doubts assail him about the
right course to take.

Alone in the wilderness, lost in the jungle, he is searching,

searching!
The swelling waters, far-away mountains, and unending
path;
Exhausted and in despair, he knows not where to go,
He only hears the evening cicadas singing in the
maple-woods.
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 105

2 SEEING THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE OX

By relying on the sutras and explaining their meaning, he
carefully studies the doctrine and begins to understand the
first signs. He realizes that all vessels [of the Law] are
made of one metal and that the Ten Thousand Things are
composed of the same substance as he himself. But he
does not yet distinguish between right and wrong
doctrines, between truth and falsehood. He has not yet
entered that gate. He has discovered the footprints of the
ox, but that discovery is, as yet, only tentative.
By the water, under the trees, scattered are the traces of
the lost:
Fragrant woods are growing thick - did he find the way?
However remote, over the hills and far away, the ox may
wander,
His nose reaches the heavens and none can conceal it.

3 SEEING THE OX
Following the sound [of the mooing of the ox] he enters
the gate. He sees what is inside and gets a clear
understanding of its nature. His six senses are composed
and there is no confusion. This manifests itself in his
actions. It is like salt in seawater or glue in paint
[invisible, indivisible, yet omnipresent]. He has only to lift
his eyebrows and look up to realise that there is nothing
here different from himself.
Yonder perching on a branch a nightingale sings
cheerfully;
The sun is warm, the soothing breeze blows through the
willows green on the bank;
The ox is there all by himself, nowhere is there room to
hide himself;
The splendid head decorated with stately horns, what
painter can reproduce him?
4 CATCHING THE OX
The ox has been hiding in the wilderness for a long time,
but the herdsman finally discovers him near a ditch. He is
difficult to catch, however, for the beautiful wilderness
still attracts him, and he still keeps longing for the
The Flute-playing Herdsman Rides home on the Back of his Ox (the
sixth stage from a series of ‘Oxherding Pictures’) (detail); attributed to
Li Sung (early thirteenth century). Private collection, Japan
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 107

fragrant grasses. His obstinate heart still asserts itself; his

unruly nature is still alive. If the herdsman wants to make
him submissive, he certainly will have to use the whip.
With the energy of his whole soul, he has at last taken
hold of the ox:
But how wild the ox’s will is, how ungovernable his
power!
At times he struts up a plateau,
When lo! he is lost in a misty, impenetrable
mountain-pass.
5 HERDING THE OX
As soon as one idea arises, other thoughts are bound to
follow. Through Enlightenment all these thoughts turn
into truth, but when there is delusion they all turn into
falsehood. These thoughts do not come from our
environment, but only from within our own heart. One
must keep a firm hold on the nose-cord and not waver.
Never let yourself be separated from the whip and the
tether.
Lest he should wander away into a world of defilement:
When he is properly tended, he will grow pure and
docile;
Even without chain, nothing binding, he will by himself
follow you.
6 RETURNING HOME ON THE BACK OF THE OX
The battle is over. There is no longer any question of
finding or losing the ox. Singing a woodcutter’s pastoral
song and playing a rustic children’s melody on his flute,
the herdsman sits sideways on the ox’s back. His eyes
gaze at the clouds above. When called he will not turn
around, when pulled he will not halt.
Riding the ox he leisurely wends his way home:
Enveloped in the evening mist, how tunefully the flute
vanishes away!
Singing a ditty, beating time, his heart is filled with a joy
indescribable!
That he is now one of those who know, need it be told?
108 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

7 THE OX FORGOTTEN, THE MAN REMAINS

There is but one Dharma, and the ox represents its
guiding principle. It illustrates the difference between the
hare net [and the hare] and elucidates the distinction
between the fish trap [and the fish], [This experience] is
like gold being extracted from ore or like the moon
coming out of the clouds: one cold ray of light, or an
awe-inspiring sound from beyond the aeons of time.
Riding on the ox he is at last back in his home,
Where lo! there is no more the ox, and how serenely he
sits all alone!
Though the red sun is held up in the sky, he seems to be
still quietly asleep;
Under a straw-thatched roof are his whip and rope idly
lying beside him.
8 BOTH MAN AND OX FORGOTTEN
All desire has been eliminated; religious thoughts have all
become void. There is no use to linger on where the
Buddha resides; where no Buddha exists one must quickly
pass by. One is no longer attached to either, and even a
thousand eyes will find it difficult to detect it. The
Hundred Birds bringing flowers in their beaks are nothing
more than a farce on real sanctity.
All is empty, the whip, the rope, the man, and the ox:
Who has ever surveyed the vastness of Heaven?
Over the furnace burning ablaze, not a flake of snow can
fall:
When this state of things obtains, manifest is the spirit of
the ancient master.
9RETURNING TO THE FUNDAMENTAL,
BACK TO THE SOURCE
Clear and pure from the beginning, without even a speck
of dust, he observes the growth and decay of forms,
remaining in the immutable attitude of non-activity. He
does not identify himself with transitory transformations,
so why should he continue the pretence of self-disciplining?
The water is blue, the mountains are green. Sitting by
himself he observes the ebb and flow, the rhythm of the
Universe.
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 109

To return to the Origin, to be back at the Source -

already a false step this!
Far better it is to stay home, blind and deaf, straightway
and without much ado.
Sitting within the hut he takes no cognizance of things
outside,
Behold the water flowing on - whither nobody knows;
and those flowers red and fresh - for whom are they?
10 ENTERING THE CITY WITH HANDS HANGING
DOWN
The Brushwood Gate is firmly closed, and the thousand
sages are unaware of his presence. He hides his innermost
thoughts, and has turned his back on the well-trod path
of the saints of antiquity. Picking up his gourd, he goes to
the city; carrying his staff, he returns home. Visiting
wineshops and fish stalls, his transforming presence brings
Buddhahood to them all.

Barechested and barefooted, he comes out into the

market-place;
Daubed with mud and ashes, how broadly he smiles!
There is no need for the miraculous power of the gods,
For he touches, and lo! the dead trees come into full
bloom.41

From one of the early ‘Ten Oxherding’ sets, four pictures are
known to us, one of which has survived in the form of a Kano
school copy of 1675. From this period at the latest, the small
square hanging scrolls are attributed to Li Sung (Li Song, active
c. 1190-1230). Whatever doubts one may have regarding this
traditional attribution, it is certain that the scenes, circularly
composed in fine brush-lines and with delicate ink-washes,
bespeak the hand of a gifted Sung (Song) master; and the
probably authentic inscriptions by the ch’an priest Shao-lin
Miao-sung (Shaolin Miaosong), who directed the Ching-tz’u-
ssu (Jingcisi) as its 29th head, and who, as 33rd abbot on the
Ching-shan (Jingshan), was Wu-chun Shih-fan’s (Wuzhun
Shifan’s, 1177-1249) direct predecessor, point to a date for the
composition of the series somewhere in the first third of the
thirteenth century.
About a hundred years later, according to reliable sources,
110 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

the Japanese artist Muto Shui whom we have to thank for the
wonderful half-figure portrait of his Zen master, Muso Soseki
(1275-1351) in the Myochi-in in Kyoto, painted ‘Ten Oxherd-
ing Pictures’ which are, alas, no longer extant. It must have
been an extraordinarily important work, for Muso presented it
(together with a frontispiece in his own hand) to the ex-
Emperor Suko ( = Fushimi) who was living in the Komyo-in;
and in 1382 the handscroll moved no less an experienced
expert in literature and art than the Zen priest Gido Shushin
(1325-1388) to make two entries in his diary. A complete set of
ten circular pictures mounted in one handscroll, illustrating the
‘Ten Oxherding Songs’, has been traditionally attributed to the
Zen Buddhist painter-monk Shubun (active c. 1423-1460). It is
no surprise that this series of paintings came to be associated
with his name since it was handed down to the present day in
the Shokokuji, the famous Zen monastery in Kyoto where
Shubun had lived. The compositional scheme and certain
stylistic features lead us to postulate derivation from the
woodblock illustrations in one or more printed versions based
on K’uo-an’s (Kuoan’s) original. No doubt, the same back¬
ground underlies the jugyu-zu handscroll which is preserved in
the Hoshun-in of the Daitokuji. According to Japanese experts,
this scroll belongs to the early stage of development of the
Kano school in the fifteenth century.
The prompting and educative parable of the ox and its
herdsman is paralleled in Zen art by prophylactic and
admonitory pictures designed to point out those misleading
paths which may present themselves to the seeker after
understanding of his own Self, but which lead far afield from
the true goal. The most popular symbol of the unenlightened
self hopelessly enmeshed in the realm of earthly phenomena is
the monkey trying to catch the reflection of the moon in the
water (rarely shown in actual treatment of the theme) and
thereby failing to see the real moon. On one humorous version
of this monkey theme, in the Hosokawa collection in Tokyo,
the painter, Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768), the powerful renovator
of late Zen in Japan and a leading master of the so-called Zenga,
has bequeathed us the following verse:

A monkey reaches out for the moon reflected in the

water;
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 111

He will go on trying till he dies.

If he lets go, he sinks to the bottom.
The light shines brightly in all directions.42

Among the many versions of the monkey theme which are

associated - even in early Japanese sources - with the name of
the celebrated Chinese ch’an painter-monk, Mu-ch’i (Muqi), is
a hanging scroll bearing an inscription by Hsii-t’ang Chih-yii
(Xutang Zhiyu, 1185-1269). This picture, which is mentioned
in the Butsunichi-an komotsu mokuroku — that is to say, a
century after its putative origin, it was already in the Engakuji
at Kamakura - shows a ‘Monkey practising zazeri. The
practice of sitting in meditation was central in most Zen
monasteries, and virtually all serious adepts placed high moral
value on it. Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) who brought the Soto
school of Zen to Japan, wrote as follows in his ‘General
Instructions for the Promotion of zazen’:

If you truly wish to attain to enlightenment, lose no time

in practising zazen. Cast off all bonds, calm the ten
thousand things, think not of good and evil, judge not
concerning right and wrong, arrest the flow of conscious¬
ness, put a stop to the activity of wishing, imagining,
judging, think not of becoming a Buddha!43
We must ask ourselves, however, what it means when a
ch’an monk like Mu-ch’i (Muqi), who was well acquainted
with the practice, shows us a monkey deep in meditation. Is it
meant as a parody? As a covert dig at the contemporary clergy?
Or is it a tribute to the monkey as ‘The Great Holy One who
equals Heaven’ (ch’i-t’ien ta-sheng/qitian dash eng) to whom in
South China temples were actually consecrated? Probably what
we have here is sarcastic criticism of a religious practice which
had become altogether too one-sided, which had degenerated
into an end in itself and which a monkey with a penchant for
practical jokes might well try to imitate. The T’ang (Tang)
master Nan-yiieh Huai-jang (Nanyue Huairang, 677-744) had
already warned of the peril of spiritual cramp in the automatic
practice of zazen. One day, he discomfited his pupil Ma-tsu
Tao-i (Mazi Daoyi, 709-788), a highly zealous monk who
never stopped meditating, by presenting him with a parable
which seemed to poke fun at reason. ‘Why’, he asked him, ‘do
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 113

you practice zazenV Ma-tsu (Mazi) answered, ‘I want to

become a Buddha.’ Whereupon Huai-jang (Huairang) picked
up a tile and began to polish it on a stone. His pupil asked him
in some embarrassment what was the reason for this strange
behaviour, and the master explained that he wanted to make
the tile into a mirror. Ma-tsu (Mazi) was unconvinced: ‘How
can a tile become a mirror by polishing it? ’ he asked. To which
Huai-jang (Huairang) replied: ‘How can one become a Buddha
by practising zazenV In ch’an circles of the period, the mirror
was already a current metaphor for the pure, enlightened spirit;
and by reminding his pupil (in the deepest sense of the word) of
this, the master was making it clear that the idea that one must
become a Buddha is actually an obstacle on the path to the
basic experience of Zen: namely, the insight that every creature
already is or has Buddha-being.
Centuries later, the last great representative of modern Zen
in Japan, Gibon Sengai (1750-1837) followed Mu-ch’i’s
(Muqi’s) example of the meditating monkey with another
cryptic work in the same spirit of critical irony. A few pale-grey
brush-strokes giving the contours of a frog are accompanied by
the line: ‘If a man becomes a Buddha by practising zazen . . . ,’44
The following line remains unuttered but the implied thought is
clear: because of its posture, a frog seems to be practising zazen
all the time, so it should have become a Buddha long ago.
Josetsu, a Zen monk and painter who was active in the
Shokokuji at the beginning of the fifteenth century, also had
recourse to metaphor to demonstrate the senselessness of trying
to reach the essence of Zen via the convulsive use of unsuitable
means, methods and instruments. One of his most famous
paintings, in the Taizo-in of the Myoshinji in Kyoto, done in
ink and delicate colours on paper, shows an old man by a
mountain stream who is trying to catch a slippery catfish with a
narrow-necked bottle-gourd — an obviously hopeless enterprise.
It is probable that the Ashikaga Shogun Yoshimochi (1386-
1428), a talented painter himself and a Zen enthusiast,
commissioned Josetsu to illustrate this Zen literary riddle
known in specialist literature as Hydnen-zu: the occasion being

Blind Men Feeling their Way across a Bridge, by Hakuin Ekaku

(1685-1768). Private collection, Hamburg
114 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

a meeting of the Kyoto clerical literati around 1413. No fewer

than thirty-one Zen ‘literati-monks’ (bunjinso), including such
important gozan representatives as Daigaku Shusu (1345-
1423), Gyokuen Bompo (1348-post 1420), Genchu Shugaku
(1359-1428) and Daigu Shochi (died in 1439) were assembled
to compose short poems on the theme. They wrote them on a
sheet of paper to be attached to the reverse side of a small
screen used to display Josetsu’s picture. Subsequently the
calligraphies were mounted above the painting thus forming
one hanging scroll. The combination of painting, poetry and
calligraphy in a single art-form was particularly popular in Zen
circles in Japan during the first half of the fifteenth century. In
the programmatic claims made by these shigajiku, ‘Scrolls with
Poems and Painting’, we may see the first pioneering steps
towards the creation of a Gesamtkunstwerk, conceptually
multi-layered in each of its aspects.
From at the latest the period of the highly original cb’an
master, Chao-chou Ts’ung-shen (Zhaozhou Congshen, 778-
897), a man renowned for his paradoxical utterances, the
bottle-gourd, a typical attribute of Taoist magi in China from
the earliest times, was regarded in Zen circles too as something
special. The gradual shedding of feelings and desires was
compared to penetration of the gourd, as was also relapse into
meditation in the seated position. It is initially difficult to get
into the gourd, as the opening is so small; then the view-point
becomes wider, but soon one lands in a further impasse. When
this in turn is overcome, one has the feeling of being on a calm
lake. In the long run, however, the bottle-gourd must be
destroyed, if we are to penetrate to complete independence of
all the limitations and constrictions of the phenomenal world.
And as late as the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, we find Sengai (1750-1837), much admired for his
exuberant and humorous imagination, painting a calabash
floating on the waves: an image which he explains, in an
accompanying inscription, as a simile for final truth which,
however hard we try to reach it, always manages to elude our
grasp. Now it dives under, now it bobs up again — the one
thing we cannot do is catch hold of it, though it swims there
before our eyes.
It is only blind trust and unremitting adherence to the belief
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 115

in the goal of enlightenment which will lead us, quite

unexpectedly and often in old age, when we have ceased to
hope for it, to the other shore. This is what Hakuin (1685-
1768) seeks to convey in several almost identical parable-
pictures, showing two or three blind men cautiously feeling
their way across a dangerously narrow bridge. His commentary
to these pictures runs as follows:

For life in old age let an example be

The groping of the blind, who are crossing a bridge.45
In the spiritual climate of Zen, the breakthrough to enlightened
vision could happen in the course of ordinary everyday life.
This basic attitude is given artistic expression in a pair of
pictures, for example, showing a ‘Priest Sewing under Morning
Sun’ (Chinese: chao-yang pu-chui/zhaoyang buzhui; Japanese:
choyo hotetsu) and a ‘Priest Reading his Sutra-assignment by
Moonlight’ (Chinese: tui-yiieh liao-cbing/duiyue liaojing; Japan¬
ese: taigetsu ryokyd). In the view of Zuikei Shuho (1391-1473),
a priest of the Shokokuji in Kyoto, it was a Sung (Song) poet
named Wang Feng-ch’en (Wang Fengchen) who gave an
impetus to this typically Zen product, through his couplet
which we have just quoted.
The fact that short inscriptions on pictures were recorded in
the yu-lu (yulu) of well-known cb’an masters, e.g. of Hsii-t’ang
Chih-yii (Xutang Zhiyu, 1185-1269) or of Yiieh-chien Wen-
ming (Yuejian Wenming, mid-thirteenth century) goes to show
how popular these perennially associated themes were during the
late Sung (Song) period. The earliest example still extant, and
at the same time the best, a chao-yang/tui-yiieh (zhaoyang/dui¬
yue) picture of much charm and subtle humour, is the pair of
hanging scrolls painted by the otherwise unknown Wu Chu-tzu
(Wu Zhuzi) in the year T295, now in the Tokugawa Bijutsukan in
Nagoya. The right-hand picture shows a bald-headed monk on a
rocky outcropping who is trying to thread a needle; the thread
passes round his big toe and is held in the left corner of his mouth.
On the companion scroll, another aged priest crouches with
crossed legs on a rock; he is holding a manuscript scroll close
up to his eyes in order to decipher the sutra text in moonlight
which is not otherwise indicated in the picture.
Structurally, the diptych is conceived as a whole with the
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 117

two figures facing each other, in sweeping grey brush-strokes

with a few deeper touches of ink. Towards the upper edge of
each scroll near the outer margin is an inscription in the artist’s
hand, which follows older convention by running along the
same line of vision of the monks (shown in three-quarter
profile). In Japan too, the choyd/taigetsu theme was treated
over and over again from the early fourteenth century onwards,
as a constant and paradigmatic admonition to the Zen devotees
to remember two important aspects of monastic life: on the one
hand, the constant intermingling of intellectual and manual
activities, neither of which can claim precedence over the other:
spiritual-religious discipline and the physical routine of handi¬
crafts, to which one must freely give oneself. On the other hand
the obligation to remain, from early morning to late evening,
from the first ray of sunshine to the light of the moon, wakeful
and receptive in all that one does, ready for the sudden and
unexpected breakthrough to self-awareness: the moment of
‘seeing into one’s own nature’.

BAMBOOS AND ORCHIDS

We have already spoken in some detail about the iconographic

significance in Zen art of certain plants and animals, for
example the monkey, the ox and plum blossom; and now a few
remarks may be in order on the hidden layers of meaning to be
discovered by the discerning eye in many other apparently
ordinary everyday objects. From the graphic repertory of the
cultured amateur painters, the literati, Zen painters borrowed
two themes which made a very special appeal to them — the
bamboo and the orchid, usually shown in association with
bizarre rocks. Their charming form, their elegance and the
properties associated with them in the oriental mind make both
plants an inexhaustible source of inspiration and an ideal
vehicle for the expression of specifically Zen Buddhist ideas. In
addition, the close technical and artistic connection that exists
in this particular area between calligraphy and painting offered

Rocks and Bamboo in the Wind; inscription by Ch’ing-cho Cheng-

ch’eng (1274-1340). Nezu Art Museum, Tokyo
118 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

the dilettante monk an invaluable opportunity for the sponta¬

neous jotting-down of spiritual insights or personal impressions.
And what mattered here was less polished virtuosity than an
artless and unassuming, often playful insouciance.
For orientals, the bamboo embodies fundamental ethical
values: its straight growth is compared with the upright
character of an exemplary gentleman, its hard, regular stem
with inner rectitude; though flexible, it is stable and firm like a
noble spirit, and its leaves remain green throughout the
seasons, suggesting the constancy, the power of resistance and
the unshakable loyalty of a moral paragon. Furthermore, in
apparent contradiction with its outward strength, it is hollow
inside: which corresponds to the Zen ideal of ‘inner emptiness’
(Chinese: k’ung/kong; Japanese: ku). The bamboo possesses all
of these virtues in simple and unassuming form, and it is small
wonder that in Zen circles the ethical values symbolised by the
plant, such as uprightness, strength, simplicity and purity, were
deeply admired.
It also becomes clear why, from at least the tenth century
onwards, Zen abbots in both China and Japan, had some of the
rooms in their monasteries decorated with pictures of bamboo.
As one of the ‘Four Gentlemen’ (Chinese: ssu-chiin-tzu/sijunzi;
Japanese: shikunsbi) the bamboo joins the plum blossom, the
orchid and the chrysanthemum in representing the four
seasons; and as one of the ‘Three Pure Ones’ (Chinese: san-
ch’ing/sanqing; Japanese: sansei) it was, together with old trees
and rocks (or, according to another tradition, plum blossom
and rocks) associated with high ethical and aesthetical
standards, from the time of the statesman, poet, painter and
calligrapher Su Tung-p’o (Su Dongpo, 1036-1101) onwards.
This explains why in their writings Su and his friends never
tired of urging meditative immersion in the nature of the
bamboo which could lead to mystical identification with it.
Ideas such as these were bound to find fruitful soil among Zen
disciples, and the many poems and colophons on paintings by
Zen Buddhist monks on the theme of the bamboo that have
come down to us bespeak deep understanding and inner
consensus. The Chinese ch’an priest Ch’ing-cho Cheng-ch’eng
(Qingzhuo Zhengcheng, 1274-1340), who was working in
Japan from 1326 on, begins the poem he wrote on an ink
Orchids and Rocks, by Tesshu Tokusai (died 1366). Sanso Collection,
USA
120 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

painting of ‘Windblown Bamboo among Rocks’ (now in the

Nezu Museum, Tokyo) with the line:

The purity of rocks, how could it resemble the purity

of bamboo!

The word ch’ing (qing), meaning ‘pure’, which the author has
as first component in his four-character clerical name, appears
no less than five times in the four-line verse. This is a striking
testimony to the high value placed by the Zen adept on the
moral ideal symbolised by the bamboo.
Nor was the artistic treatment of the orchid (epidendron)
with its long, thin, pliant leaves, its subdued blossom and its
exquisite perfume, left in the hands of the dilettante literati. On
the contrary, it is probably no coincidence that some of the
most famous and most skilful painters of orchids were in fact
Zen Buddhist monks: such as, on the Chinese side, Hsiieh-
ch’uang P’u-ming (Xuechuang Puming, died post 1349) who
was active in the Yiin-yen-ssu (Yunyansi) and Ch’eng-t’ien-ssu
(Chengtiansi) at Soochow (Suzhou) and, on the Japanese side,
the abbots he influenced — Tesshu Tokusai (died in 1366) and
Gyokuen Bompo (1348-post 1420). Contemporary and conser¬
vative critics, it is true, ranked Hsiieh-ch’uang’s (Xuechuang’s)
pictures as, at best, suitable ‘only for display in monk’s
quarters’ but this ck’an abbot must have enjoyed exceptional
popularity as a painter, for we learn from other sources that
every household in Soochow (Suzhou) had an orchid study
from his hand.
Blossoming as it does in out-of-the-way places, the orchid
was equally regarded as a symbol of womanly elegance, joyous
elation, modesty and restrained nobility. In the Yuan (Yuan)
period, when China was under Mongol occupation (1279-
1368) the orchid became, especially for artists and intellectuals,
a symbol of loyalty to the ancien regime, the overthrown Sung
(Song) dynasty. Depicted then as no more than a play of lines
against an empty background - that is to say, not rising from
‘soil stolen by the invaders’ - it became an emblem of political
and spiritual underground resistance and of refusal to serve the
barbarian conquerors. In his representations of orchids, Hsiieh-
ch’uang P’u-ming (Xuechuang Puming) was of course mainly
Radish, by Jonan Etetsu (1444-1507). Sanso collection, USA
122 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

concerned with Buddhist ideas. He often arranges the leaves in

pairs, the longer ones symbolising the spiritual lineage of the
Mahayana - ‘Leaves of the Great Vehicle’ - while the shorter
leaves were ‘Leaves of the Lesser Vehicle’ — the Hlnayana.
Literati and Zen clergy alike were fond of depicting orchids
in all sorts of weather: in wind, sunshine, moonlight, rain and
snow. The ch’an priest Hsi-sou Shao-t’an (Xisou Shaotan,
active 1249-1275), for example, wrote poems for three four-
part series of this nature, which are to be found in chapter 6 of
hi§ ‘Collected Works’; and Yen-ch’i Kuang-wen (Yanqi Guang-
wen, 1189-1263), a ch’an master well known for his many
colophons on paintings, added a quatrain to a picture of
orchids traditionally attributed to Yii-chien (Yujian). The
combination of orchid with bamboo, thorn-bush and rocks has
figured in China since the thirteenth century, in Japan since the
fourteenth, as part of the standard repertoire of the artist with
literary inclinations.

FRUIT AND VEGETABLES

Fruit and vegetables seem rather prosaic subjects in comparison

with the elegance of bamboo and orchid paintings, and it was
only in the monastic setting of Zen that they might appear to
merit attention. The radish (Japanese: daikon) and the turnip
(Japanese: kabu) — both of them items in the strictly vegetarian
diet of the monastery — are the vegetables most frequently
selected for individual representation. Kigen Dogen, who was a
stickler for the rigorous observation of monastic discipline,
pointed out that daily tasks in the kitchens were just as
important as daily meditation or reading sutras, and that
centuries earlier the most venerable ch’an masters had held the
office of tenzo or ‘head chef’. In his Tenzo-kyokun of 1237
Dogen maintains that the vegetables chosen for the meal can be
compared with the taste of daigo, one of the Five Tastes (gomi).
As a fine-quality, nourishing extract of milk it was said to be
the best of drinks which could also be used to cure all kinds of
illness, and which served as a simile for the Buddha-nature, the
true Teaching or Nirvana. In Sanskrit it was called sarpirmanda:
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 123

If one chooses a simple vegetable and feeds the monks

with it, then, provided that the [chef] has prepared it in
due devotion to the law of the Buddha, it will be equal to
foods tasting of daigo. Just as all rivers flow into the
Great Pure Sea of the Buddha-law, there is basically
neither daigo taste nor vegetable taste, but only that of
the Great Sea .... And if one nourishes a shoot of the
True Teaching {doge) and nurtures the Holy Seed-corn of
Buddha, all the more are the daigo taste and the taste of
vegetables identical and in no way different. . . This is
worth heeding. Let one reflect earnestly that the vegetable
nourishes the seed from which Buddha arises, and causes
the shoot of True Thinking to grow. Therefore let no one
despise vegetables, but value them. He who wants to lead
the way [to the Truth] in the world of men and of heaven,
must be capable of bringing men closer to knowledge
with the help of the simple vegetable.46
Given such claims, it is not surprising to find fruit and
vegetables, radishes and turnips, aubergines and cabbages,
persimmons (,kaki) and horse-chestnuts being promoted to the
status of suitable subjects of Zen art, and painter-monks like
Mu-ch’i (Muqi), Jonan Etetsu (1444-1507) or Sesson Shukei {c.
1504-c. 1589) giving them a firm footing in their iconographic
repertoire. Nature’s simplest products contain, as Dogen
asserts, the essence of the Buddha-law: they give an authentic
‘fore-taste’ of the final truth of Zen, one which is translated
into visual-metaphoric terms in the ink drawings of the
masters. And this being so, what we have to consider here is
not simply still-life but specifically Zen Buddhist ‘ciphers of
transcendence’, sparse and austere in their objectivity and
soberly direct in what they convey.47

BIRDS: COCKS, SPARROWS AND WILD GEESE

What we have been saying about vegetables goes also for a

series of pictures of birds which seem at first glance to have
little to do with religion, and several unpedantic pieces of
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 125

calligraphy, in which, however, basic concepts of Buddhist

ethics are visualised, and the Zen concept of a spiritualised
nature is made manifest. Let us take for example the picture of
a ‘White Cock under Bamboo’ by the cb’an painter-monk
Lo-ch’uang (Lochuang) who was active in the second half of
the thirteenth century in the Liu-t’ung-ssu (Liutongsi) at the
West Lake near Hangchow (Hangzhou) - that is to say, in the
same monastery where Mu-ch’i (Muqi) had just recently been,
or perhaps still was, abbot. Lo-ch’uang (Lochuang) himself
provides a decoding for this picture, which is now in the Tokyo
National Museum. From the earliest times, the cock, the tenth
creature in the Chinese zodiac, has been regarded in China as a
main representative of the male yang principle. The white cock
was revered as a holy creature, which possessed the power of
holding evil influences at bay, and the colour of his plumage
was an unmistakable pointer to the purity and the clarity of his
mind.
Lo-ch’uang (Lochuang) covered the background with a
uniformly grey ink-wash so that the cock may assume clear
contours. Energy, decisiveness and harshness mark the features
of the head which is proudly raised and facing left in profile.
Following traditional custom, mainly observed in Zen portrait¬
ure, the master wrote his quatrain against the facing direction
of the main subject, that is, from left to right. It is clear that,
for him, the inscription was not of equal entitlement with the
picture itself, but something compositionally subordinate, an
auxiliary aid to its understanding:

His mind is fixed on the beginning of the fifth

night-watch.
Deep and secret he conceals his Five Virtues.
Looking up he awaits the time of brightness.
The East is already delicately tinted.
Lo-ch’uang (Lochuang)

The nocturnal scene is set in the first, third and fourth lines. In
anticipation of first light, the cock is concentrating on his daily

Sparrow and Bamboo, by Kao (first half of the fourteenth century).

Yamato Bunkakan, Nara
126 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

duties as the responsible head of his flock, mindful as we are

told in the second line, of his ‘Five Virtues’. In an ancient
commentary, the Han-shib wai-chuan (Hansbi waizhuan) of
Han Ying (c. 135 BC), which sets out to clarify the moral
principles contained in the classic ‘Book of Songs’, the Shib-
cbing (Sbijing), we are told that the cock is characterised by the
following five virtues: his crown-like comb symbolises literary
cultivation (wen), the spurs on his legs indicate his warlike
spirit (wu), his fearlessness and gallantry when faced by
enemies show his courage (yung/yong), his unselfish benevo¬
lence is demonstrated by the fact that when he finds food he
summons his hens (jen/ren) and his precise, dependable instinct
for time and punctuality point to his reliability (bsin/xin).
These five qualities which the cock incorporated for
educated Chinese from the Han period onwards, and which
were certainly familiar to Lo-ch’uang (Lochuang), can apply in
the widest sense to any man of noble spirit, but are here no
doubt, translated into visual terms by a cb’an priest with the
lofty virtues of an exemplary abbot in mind. At the fifth watch,
round about 4 a.m., that is, life begins to stir in a Zen
monastery, and it is on this diurnal point that the abbot’s
thoughts are fixed: well before day-break he is mustering his
five virtues, mindful of the well-being of the monks entrusted to
his charge. It is my opinion, therefore that in this, perhaps the
only painting by Lo-ch’uang (Lochuang) that has come down
to us, we are being reminded of fundamental principles of Zen
Buddhist ethics. Furthermore, the white cock is a reminder that
it was at the beginning of the fifth night-watch, as he was
looking at the morning star gleaming in the eastern sky, that the
historical Buddha Sakyamuni experienced his Great Enlighten¬
ment, the ‘Time of Brightness’ referred to in the third line of the
poem - an experience on which the thinking and striving of all
Zen Buddhists is focused.
A moving testimony to the conviction that the Absolute can
be revealed in the simplest of forms, and a liking for the
humblest representatives of nature, is provided by a ‘Eulogy for
a Dead Sparrow’ by Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481) dating from the
year 1453, which is now in the Hatakeyama Kinenkan in
Tokyo. In this ‘Requiem’ the eccentric Zen priest treats the
sparrow as a pupil, who has attained enlightenment, by giving
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 127

it a confirmation name; indeed, he goes so far as to compare its

death with the Buddha’s entry into Nirvana:

I once raised a young sparrow that I loved dearly.

One day it died suddenly, and I felt an intense sense of grief.
So I buried it with all the ceremonies proper for a man.
At first I had called it Jaku-jisha [‘Attendant Sparrow’].
But I later changed this to Shaku-jisha [‘Sakyamuni’s
Attendant’].
Finally, 1 gave it the Buddhist sobriquet Sonrin
[‘Honored Forest’].
And I attest to this in this gdtba:

His bright gold body, sixteen feet long [lying between]

The twin sal trees on the morning of his final nirvana,
Liberated, free of the heretical cycle of sarnsara,
Spring of a thousand mountains, ten thousand trees,
and a hundred flowers.
1453, eighth month, nineteenth day,
Kyounshi Sojun.48
Metaphorical comparisons with central figures in the
succession of the historical Buddha Sakyamuni are also to be
found in an unfortunately badly damaged picture of ‘Two
Sparrows in Bamboo’ by the Zen Buddhist painter-monk Ue
Gukei, who was demonstrably at work in Kamakura between
1361 and 1375. Several references to him in the Kuge-shu, an
anthology compiled by one of the central figures in Zen circles
of Kamakura and Kyoto, Gido Shushin (1325-1388), indicate
that he was a pupil of Gido’s friend Tesshu Tokusai (died in
1366). Gukei signed this charming little painting in the bottom
right-hand corner, and on the upper-right hand part the Zen
priest Tenan Kaigi (died in 1361) wrote a short poem. He was
the eighth abbot of the Daijiji in Kumamoto Prefecture, where
the hanging scroll has been handed down to the present time.
The quatrain reads from left to right(!):
Flying come the sparrows of Kasyapa.
Out surges the dragon of Maudgalyayana.
In the grove is the sacred child.
Who is to open a Bodhisattva’s palace?
Tenan.49
128 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

Kasyapa and Maudgalyayana are reckoned among the Ten

Great Disciples of the historical Buddha. The latter is renowned
in Buddhist tradition for his spiritual power and his mastery of
supernatural forces, while Kasyapa is known for his silent
understanding of the essence of Buddha’s teaching — an
understanding made manifest by his smile when he alone
among the audience grasped what Sakyamuni meant by holding
up a flower in response to a far-reaching question on belief.
Sparrows were without doubt a favourite theme among Zen
Buddhist painter-monks: little feathered friends whose un¬
trammelled freedom and joie-de-vivre incorporated the ideal
of liberation from earthly fetters which Zen adepts sought.
Even if no poems or other written comments expressly identify
a picture as such, most representations of sparrows have to be
seen in the light of the religious intention of the priest-artist.
After all, it is a generally underlying Zen notion that Buddha-
nature is omnipresent in all sentient beings and phenomena
even in their smallest, most mundane form; and it is not by
chance that unpretentious pictures of this kind are particularly
valued in Japan among devotees of the tea ceremony, which
ultimately originated and developed in the Zen monasteries.
The antecedents of the parable of the ‘Ox and its Herdsman’
can be traced back all the way to India. A Hinayana sutra
describes eleven ways of looking after cattle, and compares this
with the duties incumbent upon a Buddhist monk. Less familiar
to most of us are the hidden layers of meaning in paintings
showing wild geese and reeds, a pictorial theme which might
have its original iconographic source also in old Indian
Buddhist traditions. ‘Reeds-and-Geese’ had been popular in
China from the late tenth century onwards. They came to
acquire a religious significance in medieval Zen circles in both
China and Japan. Four main aspects of wild geese — their flight
{hi), their honking cry (myo), their sleep (shuku) and their
feeding (shoku) - were used as metaphors for the ‘Four Correct
Demeanours’ of Zen Buddhist monastic discipline, known in
Chinese as ssu-wei-i (siweiyi), in Japanese as shi-igi: correct
walking {gyd), correct dwelling (/«), correct sitting (za) and
correct reclining {go). It is true, we cannot make an exact
correspondence between the four aspects of wild geese in
nature and the four demeanours of Zen priests, but the
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 129

relationship between them is more than a mere numerical

identity. It is not clear whether these ‘Wild Geese-and-Reeds’
pictures were meant from their inception to be taken in an
allegorical sense, or whether it was the Zen masters of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries who first gave them this
paradigmatic association.
In the second part of the Kundaikan sayuchdki, a manual
compiled towards the end of the fifteenth century for the
shogunal collection of Chinese art, we find a discussion as to
how the works of art in the official reception room (zashiki) of
the Ashikaga residence should be arranged. It contains a sketch
of a set of four ‘Geese-and-Reeds’ hanging scrolls on the
tokonoma wall, arranged from right to left in the order of
crying, flying, sleeping and feeding. The collocation of four
typical stages in the daily life of the wild geese is certainly not a
chance one; the reference to exemplary monastic discipline
would at that time have been perfectly obvious to everyone,
and it no doubt served as a reminder for the priests and lay
brethren going in and out of the Ashikaga residence, where, as
Zen adepts, they were more than welcome. It is plain that ‘Wild
Geese-and-Reeds’ sets of this sort were painted and hung to
exercise an encouraging and admonitory influence on the
viewer; that is to say, they served more than a purely decorative
purpose. This also explains why so many interiors of Chinese
and Japanese Zen monasteries were adorned with this particular
pictorial theme. This is not only attested in the literature of the
period; we also find evidence in the medieval handscrolls or
emaki — e.g. in scroll No. 12 of the fourteenth-century Genjo-
sanzd-e, the illustrated biography of the celebrated Chinese
T’ang (Tang) priest Hsiian-tsang (Xuanzang, 603-664), now in
the Fujita Bijutsukan in Osaka. Even today, one often
encounters representations of wild geese and reeds on sliding
doors (fusuma) or folding screens (bydbu) in the Zen
monasteries of Japan.
As to why wild geese should be chosen as a metaphor of
monastic discipline, we have no definite proof; but a specula¬
tion may be allowed. It is certain that in China wild geese were

Wild Geese and Reeds; inscription by I-shan I-ning (1247-1317).

Private collection, Japan
132 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

deeply admired because of their unfailing instinct for time and

place of migration, for the extraordinary precision of their
flight pattern and the unswerving loyalty to each other
displayed by pairs. Ethologists have emphasised an exemplary
degree of conjugal fidelity as one of the most noteworthy
characteristics of the genus. In China, thanks to the intimate
relationship between man and nature and to a gift for
ethological observation which Western consciousness has very
largely shed, wild geese have always been and still are regarded
as symbolising marital fidelity. Finally, the wild goose figures
widely in Chinese literature and history as a reliable messenger.
In Buddhist sources, we sometimes find the wild goose as a
motif in a Zen koan. But such references throw little light, if
any, on our question. More promising is an old Indian tale
about wild geese, which was incorporated into the didactic
moralising Buddhist literature where it was amplified and
shaped to conform to Buddhist ethics. Without going into
detail regarding the purely literary embellishments in the
various versions, here is the gist of the story.
In a previous existence the historical Buddha Sakyamuni was
the king of the wild geese. One day he flew with his skein of
geese from the Citrakuta Mountain to a famous and very
beautiful pond near Benares, where he was caught in a trap and
was left hanging by one leg from the snare. He waited until his
flock had eaten their fill; then he gave a warning cry, the geese
rose up in great alarm and flew away. Only his faithful army
commander Sumukha, an incarnation of Sakyamuni’s disciple
Ananda, remained at his side, in spite of the Buddha’s
entreaties that he too should make his escape. When the
trapper arrived on the scene, he was amazed to find that only
one of the two geese was actually snared. Sumukha explained
the matter to him, telling him of the virtue of loyalty between
friends and to one’s master, and the trapper was so moved that
he released the king of the wild geese there and then. To thank
him for his generous act and to see to it that he should be
suitably rewarded, the two birds decided to be presented to the
king of Benares, in whose service the trapper was employed.
The king listened with amazement to the moving story, and had
his obedient servant richly rewarded. Thereupon the king of the
wild geese made his teaching known to the king of Benares and
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 133

discussed with him the law of right conduct, before returning

with Sumukha to his subjects on Mount Citrakuta.
Illustrations of episodes from the so-called Hamsa-Jataka,
are found among the wall paintings of the fifth and sixth
century in the Buddhist caves of Ajanta in India (Caves II and
XVII); and there are four splendid stone reliefs dealing with the
same theme at the Borobudur in Java, dating from about 800.
It seems not unlikely that this legend of one of Sakyamuni’s
earlier existences provided the impetus for the allegory of the
wild geese which was obviously so highly thought of in
medieval Zen circles in both China and Japan: after all, here we
have the archetypes of Buddhist monasticism, the ultimate
source Sakyamuni and one of his first two disciples, Ananda,
taking on the guise of wild geese as an analogue of correct,
exemplary monastic demeanour in whatever situation, as an
everlasting token of essential Buddhist ethics.
The eminent Japanese Zen priest Tesshu Tokusai was
particularly preoccupied with the ‘Wild Geese-and-Reeds’
theme, clearly in response to his own inner convictions and his
own ethical attitudes. It is known that his life was marked by
strict monastic discipline, and that spiritually he was completely
taken up with his intellectual and artistic endeavours. In his
paintings he concentrated almost exclusively on ostensibly
worldly and everyday subjects, such as monkeys and oxen as
well as orchids, bamboo and rocks. Tesshu Tokusai had been
trained under Muso Soseki (1275-1351) in Kyoto, and during
the 1330s, following the precedent of other gozan monks,
continued his studies in China. He served as primate in the
Ch’eng-t’ien-ssu (Chengtiansi) in Soochow (Suzhou) where, in
1344, the ch’an master Hsiieh-ch’uang P’u-ming (Xuechuang
Puming), who specialised in orchid painting, was appointed to
the abbot’s chair. Tesshu probably met the respected Chinese
painter-monk in Soochow (Suzhou) and he must have been
familiar with his paintings. Only one year before Hsiieh-
ch’uang (Xuechuang) assumed the abbacy of the Ch’eng-t’ien-
ssu (Chengtiansi) Tesshu had returned to Japan. In 1362 he
became the abbot of one of the most important Zen
monasteries in Kyoto, the Manjuji, and four years later he died
in the Ryuko-in, a subtemple in the precincts of the Tenryuji.
One of Tesshu’s closest friends and a fellow disciple of Muso
134 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

Soseki was the eminent gozan priest Gido Shiishin (1325-

1388). Renowned both 'for his own outstanding literary
accomplishments and his trenchant criticism of the superficiality
of Zen monks’ secular pursuits, he praised Tesshu’s excellence
in painting and calligraphy. In a eulogy on a fine ink painting
of ‘Orchids, Bamboo, Thorns and Rocks’ written after Tesshu
had passed away, Gido expresses not only his admiration for
his friend’s artistic achievements but also his emotional
attachment to him: ‘When the old Zen priest played with
painting, his brush was divine; both painting and calligraphy
were unique and outstanding .... From time to time I open the
scroll and tears wet my scarf.’50 Parts of his literary output
have survived in an anthology entitled Embushu. It contains a
poem in memory of a dead wild goose. Like Ikkyu’s ‘Requiem’
for his sparrow, Sonrin, it is imbued with a deep affection for
an innocent creature. The poem has the title ‘Mourning the
Death of a Goose’:
Long ago I dug a pond and planted reeds for you,
Always anxious that you might be bitten by a fox and die.
How I regret that you spent your life evading hunter’s
arrows
Only to leave me now, but not as a messenger carrying
my letter.
I could make friends with ground birds, but I have little
time for them;
I could talk with parrots, but I have no interest in their
chatter.
I pray that you will revive as a bird on the Pond in the
West
And await me there, preening the feathers of your green
coat.51

In one of his best works, a pair of hanging scrolls in ink on

silk (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Tesshu Tokusai has depicted all four aspects of the wild goose
theme: twenty-five birds figure in each scroll, six of them flying,
the others in groups on flat sandbanks, eating busily, having a
nap, or raising their heads to utter their harsh cry. The
execution is perhaps over-cautious, and there is a sameness in
detail, a fondness for parallelism and repetition; but the geese
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 135

are shot through and through with the pulsating beat of life,
and they exude an aura of late autumnal loneliness and chill,
underlined by the stiff, pointed wind-blown sedge, which
Tesshu has painted with startling, almost aggressive vivacity.
Both scrolls bear the artist’s square seal, one in the upper right,
the other in the upper left. One of the pictures has in addition a
short dedicatory inscription for a Chinese friend, but this is
unfortunately damaged and incomplete.
Among the oldest extant representations showing reeds and
wild geese in their four basic aspects as analogues of the correct
behaviour of a Zen monk, are two hanging scrolls which once
probably formed a pair but which today, as a result of
successive remountings, vary slightly in size: they date from the
early fourteenth century and are now in private Japanese
collections. In the left-hand picture, three geese are sitting on a
spit of land, close behind each other: the one in front is feeding,
the second is sleeping and the third is stretching its neck
upwards as it gives its cry. The right-hand scroll shows two
geese flying away over sedge which is being lashed by wind and
rain. The poetic inscriptions on each painting are by the
Chinese ch’an master I-shan I-ning (Yishan Yining, 1247-1317)
who was active in Japan from 1299 till his death, where he was
greatly esteemed in clerical, intellectual and political circles.
Many pictures bearing inscriptions in his hand are extant in
Japan.
The two quatrains are written in two vertical lines. In them,
the master has used his great literary skill to suggest the
approach of winter and longing for the clear autumn days on
the banks of the Hsiao and Hsiang (Xiao and Xiang) — two
rivers renowned in Chinese literature for their scenic beauty.
They are in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, and flow
into the Tung-t’ing (Dongting) lake; and it was to this area that
the geese returned every year to winter. This encourages us to
assume that it was here, in the provinces of Hunan and
Chekiang (Zhejiang) that artists first turned their attention to
wild geese and reeds. The theme is used independently from the
end of the tenth century on, and its spread in the eleventh
century is associated with the names of the court painter Ts’ui
Po (Cui Bo), the painter-monk Hui-ch’ung (Huichong) and of
the imperial scion Chao Tsung-han (Zhao Zonghan). Its
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 137

original intention was to give expression to a feeling of

melancholy: it evokes thoughts of withering plants and grass in
the cold of winter, the march of the seasons and the
corresponding migration of many birds, the irresistible rhythm
of nature; but if the emphasis is on the transitory and on what
passes away, there is also a pointer to new life springing up, to
return and to reunion.
It was inevitable that such ideas should appeal to the literati
of the Northern Sung (Song) dynasty. One poem, which the
celebrated Su Tung-p’o (Su Dongpo, 1036-1101) composed
when he saw a picture of wild geese and reeds by Hui-ch’ung
(Huichong), runs as follows:

Hui-ch’ung’s reeds-and-geese in mist and rain

Lure me out to sit by the Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers and
Tung-t’ing Lake,
And make me want to hire a skiff to go home.
Such is what a painting must do, as the ancients rightly
said.52

LANDSCAPE: EIGHT VIEWS OF HSIAO (XIAO)

AND HSIANG (XIANG)

It is from this purely literary viewpoint too that what is

probably the most typical coupling of wild geese and reeds is
treated in pictures entitled ‘Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar’,
one of the ‘Eight Views of Hsiao (Xiao) and Hsiang (Xiang)’.
The first sets of the Hsiao-Hsiang pa-ching (Xiaoxiang bajing;
Japanese: Sbosho hakkei) were allegedly painted by Sung Ti
(Song Di, c. 1015-1080) and during the late eleventh century
the titles of the individual themes appear to have taken the
established order in which they are now known:

Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar

Returning Sail off Distant Shore
Mountain Market, Clear with Rising Mist

Detail from the handscroll, ‘The Dream Journey to the Hsiao and
Hsiang’, by Li from Shu-ch’eng (c. 1170). Tokyo National Museum
138 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

River and Sky in Evening Snow

Autumn Moon over Lake Tung-t’ing (Dongting)
Night Rain on Hsiao (Xiao)'and Hsiang (Xiang)
Evening Bell from Mist-shrouded Temple
Fishing Village in Evening Glow.53

The Hsiao-and-Hsiang (Xiao-and-Xiang) theme itself very

probably extends back into T’ang (Tang) times. In a eulogy on
a new screen by an amateur painter named Liu, who was
officiating as a judge, the great poet Tu Fu (Du Fu, 712-770)
concurs that the landscape on the screen may well be a
representation of the two celebrated rivers:

I have heard it said that you first painted the landscape of

your home district, and that now you are yielding to your
desire to paint interesting ideal landscapes .... Con¬
fronted with this picture, spirit and mind are consoled,
and one realises that you have indeed put your heart into
painting on silk ....
If this picture does not show part of the rocky Hsiian-
p’u (Xuanpu) of the K’un-lun (Kunlun) Mountains, it
may be taken from the region of the rivers Hsiao (Xiao)
and Hsiang (Xiang) which now flow past here.54

Poetry-filled landscapes like this, their lineaments determined

by weather conditions, by season of the year or hour of the
day, by quality of light, by distant sounds, must have appealed
very deeply to the eyes and the spirit of the Zen adept; for here
was nature revealing herself in all her pulsating variety, her
inexhaustible riches and her timeless quietude. These were
landscapes for the mind as much as for the eye, mappings of
existential experience into which the visionary beholder could
transpose himself, and in which he was offered intensive
experience of the infinity and richness of nature, and her
ceaseless flux in the stream of existence. From needs such as
these there arose — probably shortly before 1170 - one of the
most beautiful ink paintings extant from any period. It is a
handscroll, more than four metres long, now in the Tokyo
National Museum, entitled ‘Home Traveler’s Vista of Hsiao
(Xiao) and Hsiang (Xiang)’ (Hsiao-Hsiang wo-yu t’u/Xiao-
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 139

xiang woyu tu). According to the colophons dated 1170/1, the

otherwise unknown cb ’an monk Yiin-ku Yiian-chao (Yungu
Yuanzhao) commissioned the picture from an artist named Li
who came from Shu-ch’eng (Shucheng) in Anhui Province: his
reason being that, for thirty years, he had journeyed around
without ever seeing the two famous rivers; now in his old age,
he could fulfil his desire and at least pay them a visit lying on
his back and looking at a picture of the marvellous scenery.
In delicately evanescent and aqueous greys, there opens up
before our eyes a wide panorama of rivers and mountains, in
which the ground of the unpainted paper has a main function
as integrating component of the whole composition. This blank
ground suggests wide expanses of water, mist-shrouded gorges
and valleys, and the vastness of the sky. The velvety softness of
the ink washes with its richly modulated gradation of tone
creates a homogeneous atmosphere, into which every detail
blends; and it sets the tempo for the flowing movement in the
picture from right to left, which is based on smooth transitions
and spatial intersections, with no abrupt caesura to bring the
eye to a stop. The painter has almost completely eschewed firm
contours and precise linear statement. Only where he is
indicating the presence of buildings, bridges, boats and figures,
does he allow himself a fine, restrained line technique. And yet,
this indefinite haziness is by no means amorphous. It is true
that if we take any section of the landscape and enlarge it, the
counterpoint of aqueous wash and ink tinges with the activated
background will tell us nothing further about the object or
objects thus isolated; but we are made all the more aware of
the immediacy of the creative act itself, and hence of the
sensitive and spiritualised character of this artist. Contemplat¬
ing this magical landscape, the ch’an monk Yiin-ku (Yungu)
must have found it easy indeed to make his dream journey, to
traverse hundreds of miles with the eye of the spirit, and find
himself serenely transported into the longed-for vision of Hsiao
(Xiao) and Hsiang (Xiang).
How surprisingly close reality and unreality may lie to each
other, and how in Zen the annulment of the frontier between
them is felt to be a pointer towards the insight into the true
nature of things, is strikingly set out by a sixteenth-century
Chinese ch’an monk in a letter to a friend:
140 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

In my youth I once read [in the writings of Seng-chao

(Sengzhao, 384-414)] that ‘even whirlwinds that tear up
mountains by the roots are really at rest, that the
turbulent stream is not flowing, that the warm air dancing
over the lakes in spring is not moving, and sun and moon
as they fare on their paths are not really circling.’ For
many years I doubted these words. But then I spent a
winter in P’u-fang (Pufang) with Master Miao-feng
(Miaofeng). We were preparing a new edition [of the
works of Seng-chao (Sengzhao)] and I was reading the
proofs. When I came to the sentences [quoted above] I
suddenly saw their meaning, and I was enlightened. My
joy was boundless. I sprang up and threw myself at the
feet of the image of Buddha — but strangely my body
remained motionless. I drew the door curtain aside and
stepped outside to look about me. A gust of wind shook
the garden trees, and falling leaves whirled through the
air. But as I saw it, not a single leaf moved, and then I
knew that the storm which tears up the mountains by the
roots is (really) completely at rest.55
But the objects in the picture, mountains and woods,
rocks, and water, flowers, animals, and men — forms
sprung from the void — stand there fully revealed in their
actuality, plunged in the concrete situation of the Flere
and Now — and yet not in a mere Here and Now. Hence
the impression of continual evanescence, as though the
definite were being absorbed back into the indefinite, the
formed into the formless, thus making visible the primal
Ground from which they come.56

This applies very well to the versions of the traditional ‘Eight

Views of Hsiao (Xiao) and Hsiang (Xiang)’ which are
attributed to the painter-monks Mu-ch’i (Muqi) and Yii-chien
(Yujian), who were working near the end of the Southern Sung
(Song) dynasty. Sections from sets by both of these painters are
still to be seen in Japan. Via a progressive loosening and
slurring of the formal structure and a filtering and reduction of
objects therein to shorthand indications, highly suggestive
pictures are generated which demand the active collaboration
of the viewer, and have an immediate effect on the imagination.
 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 141

Everything is discarded except what is absolutely necessary;

and yet the sketch-like quality of such works has nothing to do
with what Western art understands by the word ‘sketch’: what
we have here is the definitive product, spontaneously formu¬
lated, of a spiritual ‘taking-thought’. Neither Mu-ch’i (Muqi)
nor Yii-chien (Yujian) nor, indeed, their successors, the
Japanese painters of the Muromachi period (1336-1573) were
concerned with the exact reproduction of reality; rather, they
sought to grasp the inner vitality of things, their inner essence,
and their ear was quietly receptive to the ‘spirit resonance’, if
we may use a classic expression from the ancient Chinese
theory of art.
How landscape paintings should be appreciated by devoted
Zen adepts was expounded by the eminent Japanese Zen
master Dogen on 6 November 1243 in a lecture on ‘Plum
Blossoms’ recorded in his famous work Shobo-genzo (vol. 59);
referring to his deeply revered Chinese teacher Ch’ang-weng
Ju-ching (Changweng Rujing, 1163-1228) he sets out:
My late master, an ancient Buddha, said, ‘Our original
face possesses no life or death; spring is in the plum
blossoms, as beautiful as a painted landscape.’ When we
paint a spring landscape we must not only paint willows,
or red and green plums and peaches; we must paint spring
itself. If you only paint those objects it is not a real
painting. It has to be nothing but spring itself. And there
has been no one in either India or China who can paint
spring like my late master. His skill was very precise. The
‘spring’ we have been referring to is this ‘spring’ of the
painted landscape. Spring must occur effortlessly in the
painting. Plum, blossoms are necessary for this kind of
painting. Spring must
ching’s (Rujing’s)] skillful means are truly wonderful.

SHIGAJIKU: SCROLLS WITH POEMS

AND PAINTINGS

From the fourteenth century on, landscape painting in Japan as

practised by Zen Buddhist masters was very much under
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 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES 143

Chinese influence; and, along with the classic Hsiao-and-

Hsiang (Xiao-and-Xiang) theme, it was mainly representation
of landscape in the four seasons of the year (shiki sansui-zu)
that attracted Zen adepts. Their efforts to produce as compre¬
hensive an expression as possible of their culture, their tastes
and their common interests, were instrumental in the first half
of the fifteenth century in helping to create a new kind of picture
which they called shigajiku — ‘Scrolls with Poems and
Paintings’. On many of the narrow, elongated scrolls the poetic
inscriptions dominate the visual impression so much that the
painting in the lower part seems almost of secondary interest.
The main concern was to document the getting-together of like-
minded friends, the meeting of literary coteries (yusha), led by
well-known bunjinso or ‘literati-monks’, as they took shape in
Kyoto round the great Zen monasteries.58 The collocation of
calligraphy and painting, of word and image, of brush, ink and
paper, however charming, was of secondary importance. For
their possessors, such composite works had a very special
affective value: most of them were presented to Zen priests as
parting gifts or as tokens of friendship. The picture is often of a
solitary hut, a hermit’s study, or a pavilion by the side of a lake
or on a river-bank, in the depths of the mountains: but these
are not the mountains of the familiar homeland setting, but
idealised mountains in the far-off landscape of China -
something which most Zen monks had never seen with their
own eyes, but which they knew all the more intimately from
literature and painting.
Shosaizu - ‘Pictures of a Writing-studio’ - as this type of
shigajiku is called, do not show a specific building in a specific,
well-defined place. What the Zen adept saw in such a literary
hermitage was rather an ideal place for self-identification, for
finding one’s true self. To make at least a temporary spiritual
getaway from the busy world of a big-town monastery, the
monk would hang a shosaizu up in his private studio, trusting
that he could project his thoughts and his wish for peace and
quiet into the picture. One of the earliest shosaizu is a hanging
scroll, now in the Konchi-in of the Nanzen-ji at Kyoto,

Cottage by a Mountain Stream, attributed to Kichizan Mincho (1352-

1431), dated 1413. Konchi-in, Nanzenji, Kyoto
144 ZEN ICONOGRAPHY: THEMES AND GENRES

attributed to Mincho (1352-1431). Kei’in-shdcbiku, ‘Cottage

by a Mountain Stream’ has a preface dated 1413, in which the
Zen priest Taihaku Shingen, writing two years before his death,
says that the monastery has become a ‘noisy and annoying
place — but one must face up to the noise of the market-place
with a heart as quiet as water’, and this is why such a painting
is ‘a picture for the heart’ (sbinga). Six of the most prominent
gozan literati in Kyoto, including Daigaku Shusu (1345-1423)
and Gyokuen Bompo (1348-post 1423) contributed poetic
inscriptions which are, in tone and diction, as faithful to
Chinese tradition as is the picture itself.
 Painting in the Service of Zen:
Duties and Functions

The lavish decoration of Buddhist monasteries was an essential

function of Buddhist sacral art in the Far East. One of the
foremost functions of religious pictures was the so-called
cbuang-yen (,zhuangyan; Japanese: sbdgon), ‘sanctification
through ornamental splendour’: the visualisation of the super¬
natural beauty of the holy figures and of the numinous sphere
in which they resided, thus actualising the sacred presence in
men’s hearts. As the religious focus in ritual, the Buddhist
painting became the crystallisation point of reverence and
devotion; it could serve as a basis for the transition to
transcendence, or it could be a precious sacrificial or votive
offering. A Zen picture, on the other hand, is never called upon
to acquire a magically evoked surrogate reality, and act as a
contact point between the worshipper and what is worshipped.
Rather, its functions are limited to a few basic requirements:
for one viewer it may be a kind of memento, for another, it
may have a hortatory or encouraging effect; it may be a
document of spiritual or amicable bonds, a token of ethico-
moral values or, finally, a general statement of Zen Buddhist
ideology.
It is natural that a school which seeks to free itself from the
fetters of strict orthodox ritual, dogma and iconography, and
which lays its main stress on the life and personality of its
founder and its great patriarchs and on the uninterrupted
handing-down of authentic teaching ‘from mind to mind’,
should be especially interested in recapitulating the decisive
events in the lives of these, its great forebears. Thus the
portraits of patriarchs - usually in series, showing successive
generations of Zen Buddhist founder-figures, outstanding
masters of a school or famous abbots of well-known monaster¬
ies — serve as timeless figures reminding the Zen community of
their spiritual heritage. They serve as memorial and votive

145
146 PAINTING IN THE SERVICE OF ZEN

pictures which were hung in the Founder’s Hall or above the

altar in the Lecture Hall, at commemorative celebrations, such
as the k’ai-shan-cbi (kaishanji;'Japanese: kaisan-ki) the ‘Mem¬
ento mori rite [in honour of] the Mountain-Opener’, or on the
anniversary of the day of the founder’s death. In the case of the
historical Buddha Sakyamuni, two of the most important
celebrations in the liturgical year were in honour of his
birthday and the anniversary of his death; and a third was the
eighth day of the last month (Chinese: la-pa/laba; Japanese:
rohachi, also rohatsu) the day when looking at the morning
star, Sakyamuni achieved the breakthrough to enlightenment.
On the occasion of this, the great emancipation, a meditation
session lasting seven days takes place in Zen monasteries. This
exercise is known in Japanese Zen as rdhacbi-sesshin, and it
concludes with the recitation of the hymn on the ‘Great
Compassion’ (daihi) performed before a Shussan Sbaka-zu, a
picture of ‘Buddha Returning from the Mountains’.
The fifth day of the tenth month is sacred to the memory of
Bodhidharma, the first ch’an patriarch in China; and on this
day portraits of him, featuring incidents in his life and work,
decorate the precincts of Zen monasteries. The commemorative
function is also discharged by those Zen portraits made
immediately after the death of a high priest, and which are
therefore still eloquent of his personality. These portraits were
borne in funeral processions and ceremonies. The third
anniversary of the death of the Chinese Zen master I-shan I-
ning (Yishan Yining, 1247-1317) who was so deeply venerated
in Japan, was celebrated by the monastic community of the
Nanzenji in Kyoto on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month
in 1320. The ex-Emperor Go-Uda (1267-1324) who was taking
part in this ‘High Mass’ wrote a eulogy in his own hand on the
picture of the abbot which was being used in the ceremony.
This ruler had abdicated from the throne in 1287, and in his
day he had shown I-shan I-ning (Yishan Yining) boundless
trust, support and reverence. For a Zen disciple entering a
monastery, the initiation ceremony was less of an official mass
than a private religious exercise carried out in an intimate circle
of like-minded friends. However, it too was an occasion when
the portraits of eminent Zen masters were sometimes unrolled.
We know from the Ashikaga Shogun Yoshimitsu (1358-1408)
 PAINTING IN THE SERVICE OF ZEN 147

that when he took monastic orders in 1395, he received the

tonsure seated before a portrait of the venerated, and politically
extremely influential Muso Soseki (1275-1351), the founder
abbot of the Tenryuji; and that he urged those present — his
friends, noblemen and high military dignitaries - to follow his
example.
Chinso — portraits of Zen masters painted from life - had a
dual purpose. For the Zen pupil, the portrait of his master
together with the master’s dedication, was, firstly, a visible
token of the spiritual bonds linking them: a Zen point d’appui,
spiritual sustenance, which the recipient hung up in his study so
that he could communicate with the exemplar even in his
physical absence. Secondly, the portrait of a Zen master
provided the disciple with documentation and authentication of
the true doctrinal succession. In this capacity, the picture took
on the function of a yin-k’o (yinke; Japanese: inka), a certificate
of mastery attained.
In our discussion of various forms of Zen Buddhist painting
we have already mentioned its task of providing the Zen
disciple with paradigmatic examples in support of his own
efforts, its role as sign-post. It remains only to mention an
admittedly secondary, purely decorative role played by many of
these works, which embellished monastery rooms in the shape
of sliding doors or folding screens; or which, in their role as
‘tea-pictures’ (cha-gake) formed the aesthetic catalyst in that
apotheosis of cultured refinement and restful simplicity - the
tea ceremony.
 Formal Principles and
Technical Means

Zen Buddhism lays claim to ‘a special tradition outside

scriptures’; it aims at an absolute Nought lying beyond all form
and colour, at emptiness, and it has virtually abandoned any
attempt to present religion in terms of lavish show and
decoration. Almost inevitably, then, the painting associated
with it was bound to break with the traditional conventions of
orthodox Mahayana art and take to other paths, following very
different formal principles and making use of very different
artistic techniques and materials. Thus, Zen painting has never
attempted to depict even its loftiest religious beings, the Buddha
himself and the Bodhisattvas, in numinous glory and super¬
natural remoteness. This is why it could afford to dispense with
two formal principles which played an essential part in
traditional religious painting: on the one hand, the representa¬
tion of graduated levels of existence, extending from the highest
and most ineffable sphere of the Buddha in all its other-worldly
harmony and incorporeal abstraction, down to the tellurian
sphere of men; and on the other hand, the principle of hieratic
scaling which differentiated figures in size and structural
prominence in accordance with their religious ranking.
The sacred figures of Zen remain always on the level of
human and earthly experience. Even when spiritually idealised
or given heroic intensification, they remain identifiable as our
earthly partners, empirically accessible. Figures formed by and
imbued with the spirit of Zen always have — apart from a few
exceptions - a historical dimension. In general, we may say that
Zen painting takes as its starting point what is present and
commonplace; it lays value on biographical details and it takes
for granted what is anecdotal and legendary and integrates it
into the work just as readily as it deals with what is everyday
and unpretentious. However, it does not seek to offer a stock¬
taking corresponding exactly to appearances, by means of

148
 FORMAL PRINCIPLES AND TECHNICAL MEANS 149

either realistic or illusionist means. It is only the chinso - the

portraits of Zen Buddhist masters done from life — that try, in
keeping with their raison d’etre as delegates, to present the
spiritual presence of the subject with as great a degree of
verisimilitude as possible, and independently of space or time.
Here, Zen painting too follows relatively strict rules, which, as
we saw, go so far as to make direction of gaze the determining
factor in deciding in which direction an inscription is to run: a
convention which has left its mark on a large part of Zen
Buddhist figure-painting.
In other respects, however, Zen painting enjoys a freedom
from rules, systems and principles which is difficult if not
impossible to define in detail. When we were discussing the
aesthetics of Zen and its attitude to art, we saw that the typical
Zen work of art is marked by such characteristics as
asymmetry, simplicity and naturalness. Axiality, parallelism, en
front presentation — whatever is associated with symmetry is
discarded in favour of a rhythmic correspondence and balance
which seem to arise spontaneously in a single act of cognition,
carried out with somnambulistic security. The objects in the
picture ‘go together’ of themselves, as it were, obedient not to
some rationally designed plan of composition or ordering
principle, but to an inner logic and an inner necessity. From
this are generated latent tensions: between painted and
unpainted surfaces, between line and wash, between light and
dark, between object and space. Zen painting has been able to
reduce its objects to their essentials while avoiding any crucial
diminution in their real status, and to eliminate whatever
diverts attention from the core of the artistic statement. Pari
passu with this distillation of a concentrate goes the subordina¬
tion of colour: indeed, to a great extent, colour is discarded. In
portrait painting, it is true, we are shown Zen abbots in
splendid and colourful regalia: elsewhere, especially in pictures
of Arhats, we also encounter the use of colours. Sakyamuni and
Bodhidharma usually appear in a simple red monk’s robe.
The basis of Zen art, however, is the monochrome ink¬
painting. This is what best meets Zen demands for spontaneous,
individual expression, for meditative absorption, for simplicity
and, in the last resort, for an all-embracing emptiness. At its
apogee, Zen Buddhist ink-painting could draw on techniques
150 FORMAL PRINCIPLES AND TECHNICAL MEANS

which had developed over centuries in secular painting in

China, and which had reached a high pitch of perfection. The
so-called ‘broken ink’ technique (Chinese: p’o-mo/pomo;
Japanese: baboku), the application of the fluid medium in
graduated washes, without any suggestion of firm contours or
colours, opened up hitherto unsuspected possibilities for
individual and emotional artistic expression. The technique
probably harks back to the painter-poet Wang Wei (699-759)
who was idealised by the literati painters; and full realisation of
the potential for artistic expression residing in this new
technique was probably reserved for those painters of the
Southern Sung (Song) dynasty (1127-1279) who were accorded
the highest veneration in Zen circles in both China and Japan.
About the same time, towards the end of the seventh and the
beginning of the eighth century, another new technique came to
be used, one which even then was felt to be eccentric — the
‘splashed ink’ manner; and it so happens that in Chinese this
is also read p’o-mo (pomo), though written with different
characters; in Japanese it is read batsuboku. This technique
owes much of its artistic charm to painters who ignored
traditional norms and acted in accordance with their inner
freedom: a charm arising from their light-hearted play with
brush and ink, and from the chance effects thus naturally
generated. As classic examples of radical abbreviation, of
reduction to a few essential elements, we may take the sections
preserved in Japan, from the two sets of the ‘Eight Views of
Hsiao (Xiao) and Hsiang (Xiang)’ which are attributed to the
Sung (Song) painter-monks Mu-ch’i (Muqi) and Yii-chien
(Yujian). On the Japanese side, the Zen priest Sesshu Toyo
(1420-1506) painted in 1495 a landscape (now in the Tokyo
National Museum) which is the most celebrated work in this
technique so congenial to the free spirit of Zen.
Similar tendencies had been making themselves felt in the
field of calligraphy; and around the middle of the eighth
century they reached a first apogee in the impetuous creations
of the ‘mad monk’ Huai-su (725-c. 785) who is said to have
exercised his hand — especially when he was drunk — on banana
leaves, wooden boards, clothes and walls. His eccentric style of
writing was admired not only among the unconventional Sung
(Song) literati, but, significantly, was from the thirteenth to
 FORMAL PRINCIPLES AND TECHNICAL MEANS 151

the fourteenth century onwards very warmly received by

Chinese and Japanese Zen monks. For example, it is from this
source that the free, cursive style of I-shan I-ning (Yishan
Yining, 1247-1317) ultimately derives, and Gido Shushin
(1325-1388) compared in a colophon the loose style of writing
of his friend Tesshu Tokusai to the calligraphy of the wild
T’ang (Tang) monk.
For the painter too, the apparently haphazard handling of
his materials presented an opportunity for an unprecedented
freedom and immediacy in self-expression. Now he could give
visual form to his most fleeting reactions. Here, the accent is on
‘jotting down the [instantaneous] idea’ - hsieb-i (xieyi), as it is
called in Chinese, in which exact reproduction of objects, the
effort, that is, to achieve formal verisimilitude, takes second
place to an entirely personal way of graphic expression - the
artist’s ‘handwriting’. The dynamic, rough brush-work and the
deliberately unpolished use of the ink combine to produce an
effect which was very popular in unconventional Zen painting:
as the brush ‘flies over’ the painting surface the hairs of the
brush are spread so that the white of the paper is actually
visible through the stroke, giving the effect known in Chinese
as ‘fei-pai’ (feibai; Japanese: hibaku) — ‘the over-flown white’
(not ‘flying white’, as usually incorrectly translated). It fixes a
fleeting moment of consummation. When a brush-stroke was to
have this striated, almost clumsy effect, painters and calligra¬
phers alike preferred to use an old frayed-out ‘dry brush’
(Chinese: k’o-pi/kebi; Japanese: kappitsu).
Pride of place in the wide spectrum of artistic means and
ends is taken by the line. Classical art in East Asia, both
religious and secular, is essentially built up on a cool, distanced
and supra-personal linear language. Here the line has no special
value in itself: it is evenly thin, precise and functional, and,
whatever its rhythmic-musical qualities and its ornamental
effect, its main purpose is always to separate spaces and to act
as a contour in defining spaces thus delimited as objects. In its
purest form this is achieved by the so-called ‘drawing on white’
(Chinese: pai-miao/baimiao; Japanese: bakubyd) which discards
colour altogether. This remained a department of figure¬
painting. Its most important representative was the painter-
poet, antiquarian and court official Li Kung-lin (Li Gonglin, c.
152 FORMAL PRINCIPLES AND TECHNICAL MEANS

1049-1106), and it was very rarely used in the treatment of Zen

Buddhist themes. The potential sublimity of expression which
Zen art could also achieve via the pure line-drawing may be
gauged from the Sixteen Lohan handscrolls attributed to Fan-
lung (Fanlong) in the Freer Gallery of Art, a Yuan (Yuan)
painting showing the ‘Four Sleepers’ in the Tokyo National
Museum, or the almost ascetically austere and nearly demater-
ialised representations of the Bodhisattva ‘Kuanyin in a White
Robe’ by the ch’an painter-monk Chiieh-chi Yung-chung (Jueji
Yongzhong), who was a pupil of the abbot Chung-feng Ming-
pen (Zhongfeng Mingben, 1263-1323) and lived in the Huan-
chu-an (Huanzhuan) just outside Soochow (Suzhou). One of his
Kuanyin drawings is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The antithesis of the strict, uniformly fine and dematerialised
lines of the pai-miao (baimiao) is provided by the lively and
expressively modulated lines of the ink-painting. This takes a
first and unchallenged place in Zen Buddhist painting, espe¬
cially where the depiction of figures is concerned. Its vitality
comes from a flexible ebb and flow which not only confers a
certain two-dimensionality upon the work, but also gives the
objects depicted corporeal substance and plastic volume thanks
to its subtle properties of shading and modelling. Varying
thickness of line coupled with immanent gradation in tone
ensures smooth flowing transition between line and plane
surface, between brightness and darkness, between object and
empty ground, between body and space: a reciprocal dialectic
through which is achieved the openness which is congruent
with the essential aims of Zen, and which eschews unilateral
commitment and finality. The flowing ink-line, obedient to laws
which, in the final analysis, have nothing to do with the object
portrayed, does not conceal its generation; rather, it lets the
viewer follow the process of its becoming, and thus take part in
an act of creation which is at once timeless and fleeting.
The painter Liang K’ai (Liang Kai), who was active in the
Imperial Academy in the first half of the thirteenth century, was
in close contact with the cb’an clergy of Hangchow (Hangzhou)
and treated a number of typically Zen Buddhist themes in the
course of his stylistically very wide-ranging output. Inter alia,
his name is inseparably associated with a reductionist linear
language, known in Chinese as chien-pi (jianbi), in Japanese as
 FORMAL PRINCIPLES AND TECHNICAL MEANS 153

gempitsu-tai. Seeking as it does the most extreme abbreviation

and concentration of the image as conceived, this spontaneous
use of ‘abbreviated brush’ is very close in its intensity and
purity to the essence of meditative Buddhism. A poem
contained in the anthology of the ch’an master Pei-chien Chu-
chien (Beijian Jujian, 1164-1246) who seems to have been a
close friend of the eccentric court painter, begins with a
sentence which sums up the chien-pi (jian-bi) technique:
Liang K’ai [Liang Kai] is sparing with his ink, sparing as
though it were gold; but when he is drunk, [the treasured
drops of ink] could suddenly become a downpour.
Sometimes singing, sometimes silent, this heavenly music
comes and goes by its own will. While the ordinary
painters could do nothing but [lay down their brushes
and] become completely lost.

The 37th abbot of the Ching-tz’u-ssu (Jingzisi) presented this

poem to ‘the Imperial Attendant Liang of the Court Service’, as
we learn from the title.
Along with the extreme abbreviation of this ink technique,
from the thirteenth century on, Zen Buddhist figure-painting
made use of a related stylistic idiom, whose effect depends on
the intimate relationship between the form depicted in delicate
pale-grey ink lines, sparingly accentuated and pointed where
necessary in deep black, and the empty ground. The Confucian
scholar Lou Yo (died 1213) caught its ephemeral character well
when he called it wang-liang-hua (wanglianghua; Japanese:
morydga), which means something like ‘apparition painting’ or
‘ghost painting’.59 Lou Yo, who was on friendly terms with
several well-known ch’an masters, had an opportunity to
observe this, at the time, novel style in the work of the painter-
monk Chih-yung (Zhiyong). This Chih-yung (Zhiyong) is
supposed to have lived during the second half of the twelfth
century in the Ling-yin-ssu (Lingyinsi), one of the biggest ch’an
monasteries in Hangchow (Hangzhou), and to have painted his
pictures with an ink-solution so thin and watery that the object
depicted could hardly be recognised: in ‘ghostly fashion’ it
surfaced, as it were, only to disappear again in the circumam¬
bient emptiness. Figures executed in such a pale ink tone that
they appear almost formless and unreal represent the pictorial
154 FORMAL PRINCIPLES AND TECHNICAL MEANS

embodiment of a concept of ‘being and non-being’, images of

the paradoxical Zen philosophy^ regarding reality and illusion.
It would be difficult to find a better description of the
ambivalent ‘hovering’ quality of wang-liang-hua than that
given by Dietrich Seckel:

But it is precisely in the visualisation, the making¬

conscious of the ontologically determined boundaries of
the phenomenal, and in the suggestion that they can be
crossed, that the quintessential achievement of this art —
and hence of the viewer inspired and moved by it — lies.
The ‘sketchiness’ of a Zen picture is therefore something
quite different from what we in the West understand by
‘sketch’. It is an abbreviated statement which concentrates
on the essential inner nature of things, something we can
only guess at, and which at the same time offers an
apparent paradox: the self-set aim to cross a self-set
boundary. But religious insight will see that there is no
real paradox here; and in the same way the realm of
depicted objects fades gradually into the realm of the
empty ground, from which they seem now to emerge and
into which they now seem to fade back, dream-like and
shadowy: a ground which seems to shine through their
very transparency. Here we are taken close to a limit
where the limitless looms before us, and where contradic¬
tion is transcended.60
‘Mountain Market, Clear with Rising Mist’ from a series of ‘Eight
Views of Hsiao and Hsiang’, by Yii-chien (second half of the thirteenth
century). Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo
 Notes

1 Originally published in German as Zen in der Kunst des

Bogenschiessens, Konstanz, 1948.
2 The Method of Zen, London, 1960, p. 57. Originally published in
German as Der Zen-Weg, Weilheim/Obb., 1958.
3 Daisetz T. Suzuki in his introduction to Eugen Herrigel’s book Zen
in the Art of Archery, p. 10.
4 Daisetz T. Suzuki in his introduction to the original German
edition of Eugen Herrigel’s book Zen in der Kunst des Bogen¬
schiessens only, p. 8.
5 Only in the German edition of Eugen Herrigel: Der Zen-Weg, p. 9.
6 Huang-po, Der Geist des Zen. Der klassische Text eines der
grossten Zen-Meister aus dem China des 9. Jh., hrsg. von John
Blofeld, Bern, Miinchen, Wien, 1983, p. 83.
7 Cf. Wilhelm Gundert, Bi-ydn-lu. Meister Yiian-wu’s Niederschrift
von der Smaragdenen Felswand, verfasst auf dem Djia-schan bei Li
in Hunan zwischen 1111 und 1115, im Druck erschienen in
Sitschuan um 1300, Miinchen, ch. 1-33, 1960, chs. 34-50, 1967,
chs. 51-68, 1973.
8 Cf. Heinrich Dumoulin, ‘Das Wu-men-kuan oder “Der Pass ohne
Tor” ’, Monumenta Serica, vol. VIII, 1943, pp. 41-102, and
Dumoulin, Wu-men-kuan: Der Pass ohne Tor, Monumenta
Nipponica Monographs, no. 13, Tokyo, 1953.
9 For an excellent survey of the history of Zen Buddhism in India,
China, and Japan see Heinrich Dumoulin, Geschichte des Zen-
Buddhismus, vol. I, Indien und China, Bern, 1985, and vol. II,
Japan, Bern, 1986.
For the complex organisation of the gozan system see the
thorough study of Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains. The Rinzai
Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan, Cambridge, Mass.,
and London, 1981.
10 The Method of Zen, p. 52.
11 Daisetz T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), London,
1949, p. 24.
12 Zen and Japanese Culture (Bollingen Series LXIV), Princeton,
1959, pp. 31 f.

156
 NOTES 157

13 Ibid., pp. 44f.

14 Cf. Lao-tse, Tao-Te-King. Ubersetzung, Einleitung und
Anmerkungen von Gunther Debon, Reclam Universal-Bibliothek
no. 6798/98a, Stuttgart, 1961, p. 76.
15 See John M. Rosenfield, ‘The Unity of the Three Creeds: A Theme
in Japanese Ink Painting of the Fifteenth Century’, in Japan in the
Muromacbi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi, Berkeley,
Los Angeles, London, 1977, p. 223.
16 Ibid., p. 219.
17 Daisetz T. Suzuki, Sengai. The Zen Master, London, 1971, no. 46,
p. 103.
18 The original Japanese edition was published in Kyoto, 1958. Zen
and the Fine Arts, translated by Gishin Tokiwa, Tokyo/Palo Alto,
1971, pp. 28 ff.
19 Cf. in this connection Wilhelm Gundert’s admirable translation
under the title Bi-ydn-lu (see note 7).
20 Translation by Ann Yonemura in Japanese Ink Paintings, ed.
Yoshiaki Shimizu and Carolyn Wheelwright, Princeton, 1976,
no. 9, p. 88.
21 Cf. Wilhelm Gundert, Bi-ydn-lu, vol. 1, Munchen, 1960, p. 264.
22 Zen und die Kiinste. Tuschmalerei und Pinselschrift aus Japan, ed.
Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst der Stadt Koln, Koln, 1979,
no. 2.1, pp. 38f.
23 Dietrich Seckel, Jenseits des Bildes. Anikonische Symbolik in der
buddhistischen Kunst. Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Heidelberg,
1976, p. 61.
24 Shobogenzo (The Eye and Treasury of the True Law), translated
by Kosen Nishiyama and John Stevens, vol. II, Tokyo, 1977,
pp. 146 ff.
25 Translation by Fumiko E. Cranston in Song of the Brush. Japanese
Paintings from the Sanso Collection, ed. John M. Rosenfield,
Seattle, 1979, no. 22.
26 Jan Fontein and Money L. Hickman, Zen Painting et Calligraphy,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1970, no. 42, p. 99.
27 Ibid., p. 99. The ‘Diamond Throne’ refers to the Vajrasana or
Bodhimanda, the seat where the Buddha attained Enlightenment;
and the ‘one body’ to the universal Buddha-nature.
28 Dietrich Seckel, Buddhistische Kunst Ostasiens, Stuttgart, 1957,
p. 236.
29 See Helmut Brinker, Shussan Sbaka—Darstellungen in der Malerei
Ostasiens (Schweizer Asiatische Studien, Monographic 3), Bern/
Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1983.
30 Ibid., pp. 27f. and p. 118.
158 NOTES

31 ‘Shakyamunis Riickkehr aus den Bergen’, Asiatische Studien,

XVIII/XIX, 1965, p. 37.
32 Translation by Wai-kam Ho jn: Eight Dynasties of Chinese
Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum,
Kansas City, and The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1980,
no. 65, p. 83.
33 Thomas Lawton, Chinese Figure Painting, Freer Gallery of Art,
Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, Washington, D.C., 1973, no. 20,
p. 99.
34 Cold Mountain. 100 Poems by the T’ang poet Han-shan,
Translated and with an Introduction by Burton Watson, New
York and London, 1962, p. 118.
35 Ibid., p. 115.
36 Daisetz T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), London,
1949, pp. 220 f., and Daisetz T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism,
Kyoto, 1935, pp. 95 f.
37 After the German translation of Wilhelm Gundert in Lyrik des
Ostens, Miinchen, 1952, p. 425.
38 Jan Fontein and Money L. Hickman, Zen Painting et Calligraphy,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1970, no. 29, p. 73.
39 Asiatische Studien, XVIII/XIX, 1965, p. 64.
40 For questions relating to Zen Buddhist portraiture see Helmut
Brinker, Die zen-buddhistische Bildnismalerei in China and Japan
(Miinchener Ostasiatische Studien, Bd. 10), Wiesbaden, 1973.
41 The English translations of the prose paragraphs are taken from
Jan Fontein and Money L. Hickman, Zen Painting et Calligraphy,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1970, pp. 116 f.; the translations of
the short poems are based with a few alterations on D.T. Suzuki,
Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), London, 1949, pp. 371 ff.
42 Rose Hempel, Zenga. Malerei des Zen-Buddhismus, Miinchen,
1960, fig. 22, p. 62.
43 Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen. Geschichte und Gestalt, Bern, 1959, p.
163, and Heinrich Dumoulin, Geschichte des Zen-Buddhismus,
Bd. II, Japan, Bern, 1986, p. 55.
44 Daisetz T. Suzuki, Sengai. The Zen Master, London, 1971, no. 40,
pp. 94 f.
45 Kurt Brasch, Zenga. Zen-Malerei, Tokyo 1961, fig. 54, p. 168;
and Rose Hempel, Zenga, Malerei des Zen-Buddhismus, Miinchen,
1960, fig. 27, p. 62.
46 Oscar Beni, ‘Die Lehre des Kiichenmeisters. Das Tenzo-kyokun
von Dogen’, Oriens Extremus, 22/1, Juni 1975, pp. 78 f.
47 The Edo artist Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800), layman and son of a
Kyoto greengrocer, expresses in a painting his devotion for
vegetables by euphemistically likening a reclining radish surrounded
 NOTES 159

by a group of vegetables to the Buddha’s parinirvana. This so-

called Yasai-nehan, ‘Vegetable Nirvana’, is in the Kyoto National
Museum; cf. Jorinde Ebert, ‘Das Gemuse-Nehan von Ito Jakuchu’,
in XIX. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Freiburg i.Br., 1975, Vortrage
(ZDMG Suppl. Ill, 2), Wiesbaden, 1977, Bd. 2, pp. 1584-8, and
Yoshiaki Shimizu, ‘Zen Art?’, in Zen in China, Japan, East Asian
Art, ed. H. Brinker, R.P. Kramers, C. Ouwehand (Schweizer
Asiatische Studien, Studienhefte, Bd. 8), Bern/Frankfurt am Main/
New York, 1985, pp. 97 f.
48 Jan Fontein and Money F. Hickman, Zen Painting et Calligraphy,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1970, No. 52, p. 125.
49 Richard Edwards, ‘Ue Gukei - Fourteenth-Century Ink-Painter’,
Ars Orientals, VII (1968), p. 172.
50 See Japanese Ink Paintings, ed. Yoshiaki Shimizu and Carolyn
Wheelwright, Princeton, 1976, no. 30, p. 224.
51 Ibid., p. 234.
52 Ibid., p. 218.
53 For a discussion of the Hsiao-and-Hsiang theme in western
languages and further bibliographical references see Richard
Stanley-Baker, ‘Mid-Muromachi Paintings of the Eight Views of
Hsiao and Hsiang’ (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1979);
Richard Stanley-Baker, ‘Gakuo’s Eight Views of Hsiao and
Hsiang’, Oriental Art 20 (1974), pp. 283-303; Alfreda Murck,
‘Eight Views of the Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers by Wang Hung’, in
Images of the Mind, The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1984,
pp. 213-35, and No. 4, pp. 226-77.
54 Tu Fu’s Gedichte, trans. Erwin von Zach, Harvard-Yenching
Institute Studies, VIII, vol. 1, Cambridge, Mass., 1952, II -57,
pp. 73 ff.
55 Wolfgang Bauer, China und die Hoffnung auf Gluck. Paradiese,
Utopien, ldealvorstellungen, Munchen, 1971, p. 246.
56 Eugen Herrigel, The Method of Zen, London, 1960, p. 54.
57 Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo (The Eye and Treasury of the True
Law), vol. II, trans. Kosen Nishiyama and John Stevens, Tokyo,
1977, p. 150.
58 A good selection of poems by Zen literati has been translated by
David Pollack: Zen Poems of the Five Mountains, American
Academy of Religion: Studies in Religion, 37, New York and
Decatur, GA, 1985.
59 A thorough investigation of this mode of painting was made by
Shujiro Shimada: ‘Moryoga’ [‘Apparition Painting’], Bijutsu
kenkyii, Nos 84 (1938) and 86 (1939).
60 Buddhistische Kunst Ostasiens, Stuttgart, 1957, pp. 248 and 249.
 /4RKANK

THE MAGUS OF STROVOLOS

Kyriacos C. Markides

In this vivid account, Kyriacos C. Markides introduces us to the

rich and intricate world of Daskalos, the Magus of Strovolos.
In what appears at first to be an exercise in fantasy, we see
Daskalos draw on a seemingly unlimited mixture of esoteric
teachings, psychology, reincarnation, demonology, cosmology
and mysticism, from both Eastern and Western traditions. But
Daskalos is first and foremost a healer, whose work is firmly
rooted in a belief in ‘Holyspirit’, or absolute love, and whose
aim is the expansion of reason and spiritual evolution.

‘The work is a real contribution and exemplifies the best

aspects of participant observation.’ MICHAEL HARNER

‘This is a really marvellous book. I certainly think it is one of

the most extraordinary accounts of a ‘magical’ personality since
Ouspensky’s account of Gurdjieff.’ COLIN WILSON

1-85063-027-5
 4RKANK

MEDITATION
Eknath Easwaran

Meditation is a technique for training the mind—especially

attention and the will—so that we can set forth from the
surface level of life and journey into the very depths of
consciousness.

This book offers a complete guide—specific and systematic

ways to
• sharpen concentration
• gain resilience in times of stress
• release deep reserves of energy
• live fully in the present
• learn to love
• attain a higher mode of knowing
• live in harmony with all life

1-85063-067-4
 /4RKANK

ASTROTHERAPY
Gregory Szanto

In the search for a deeper awareness of our true nature and the
meaning of our lives, astrology is an ideal complement to
psychotherapy. Astrology is unique in that it provides a model
of each individual human psyche as it is reflected in the
horoscope. If we use the symbolism of astrology as a key to
human understanding and self-realization, it shows us the way
to experience our nature fully and to transform it.

The goal of therapy is to enable the individual to get in touch

with him or herself as a whole, and thereby discover the inner
harmony that unites each of us with our source. This practical
book shows how the realization of the human psyche can be
brought about by uniting the insight contained in the ancient
art of astrology with the knowledge that has been gained in the
modern science of psychotherapy. Through this synthesis the
new science of astrotherapy enables us to experience the inner
reality that is our personal destiny.

1-85063-059-3
 /1RKANK

ORIGINS OF THE SACRED

By Anne Bancroft

From the earliest days of human life on earth, humankind has

had a feeling for the sacred, a desire for contact with the divine.
Each age has had its own distinctive expression of the reality
beyond sense-experience: the cave bear worship of Neanderthal
man in the Ice Age; the animal magic of the shaman as depicted
in cave paintings in France; the identity of the spirit with the
earth herself as shown in barrows and stone circles; the great
Mother Goddess who was worshipped as the seas formed
around in coasts, revealed in a rock-engraved language of
spirals and lozenges, eyes and circles - and so on, up to the
flowering of the medieval Christian mystics against a back¬
ground of war, plague and persecution.
By examining the symbols for the sacred from 250,000 years
ago to the tenth century AD, as seen in the microcosm of
western Europe, this book shows how other humans at other
times have asked the same questions that we ask, and what
they have found as man progresses towards a more intense
awareness of his own nature and place in the universe.

1-85063-052-6
 dRKANK

MABON AND THE MYSTERIES OF BRITAIN

By Caitlin Matthews

The Mabinogion, one of the oldest collections of magical

stories from British mythology, has intrigued and delighted
readers and listeners for hundreds of years. Caitlin Matthews
here provides the first reader’s guide to the complex text and
sub-text, dealing with the mythological patterns which underlie
the Mabinogion. On another level, Mabon and the Mysteries of
Britain is a deep exploration of the Western Mysteries as they
emerge from the tales of the Four Branches, of Culbwch and
Olwen and of Taliesin. Within these stories lie the identities of
two major figures of the native tradition: Mabon, the
Wondrous Youth who is lost and found, and Modron, his
mother, the Great Goddess herself. The initiatory pattern of
Britain’s inner guardians is revealed in the Succession of the
Pendragons: the release of Mabon is effected with the help of
the Totem Beasts, before the birth of time; while the cosmic
harp of the Wondrous Youth ushers in the Aquarian Age.

1-85063-052-6
 /4RKANK
TIMELESS WISDOM FOR TOD A Y

ARKANA is the paperback imprint devoted to books that contribute

towards our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe.
The challenge facing us at the end of the twentieth century is to learn to
live harmoniously with ourselves, with each other and with the planet that
sustains us. ARKANA makes available to a new generation of readers
classic works which have been a source of inspiration and guidance from
the earliest times to the present day, and new books from the leading
edge of contemporary thinking.

ZEN IN THE ART

OF PAINTING
This new study reveals all the mystery of the Zen approach to painting. The
impact of Zen art comes from its synthesis of elementary power and meditative
silence, of unaffected simplicity and unfathomable depth, of sparkling humour
and a subtle feeling for the miracles of everyday life. Zen painters, working
from the basis of religious enlightenment, see the world around them with
changed eyes. This is reflected in the seven qualities of their art - asymmetry,
simplicity, sublimity, naturalness, depth, freedom, repose and consistency -
some of which transcend purely aesthetic values and point to lofty moral and
religious ideals.

Zen painting is not an isolated and clearly differentiated genre of East Asian
art. As this book shows, it must be seen in its proper setting of the general
history of art in China and Japan on the one hand, and the overall
development of Buddhist art in the East on the other.

Cover illustration: The Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng,

Chopping Bamboo by Liang K'ai (first half of
the thirteenth century). Tokyo National Museum

Mind, body, spirit and

those interested in Japanese painting