Hotei
Kano Takanobu Japanese
Calligrapher Tetsuzan Sōdon Japanese
Hotei, a popular figure in the Zen pantheon, is often depicted as a rotund, good-humored monk carrying a large sack. A semihistorical figure, he is believed to have lived in southern China in the late ninth century and was eventually recognized as a manifestation of Miroku, Buddha of the Future. The poetic text here, from a eulogy for Hotei by the Chinese Daoist Bai Yuchan (1194–1229), was inscribed by Tetsuzan Sōdon, a leading monk-scholar who served as abbot of the Zen monastery Myōshinji in Kyoto.
Hotei’s sack encompasses
the Great Emptiness.
Holding a staff, he tramps
around three thousand worlds.
Miroku claps his hands, and laughs—
ha, ha! The bright moon shines,
the wind disappears.
—Translated by John T. Carpenter
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