Three Poetic Verses of Teaching by Ikkyū Given to His Disciples
Motsurin Jōtō (Bokusai) Japanese
Not on view
Motsurin Jōtō was one of the top disciples of Ikkyū Sōjun, a monk known for both his rebellious attitude toward institutional Zen Buddhism and his idiosyncratic brush writing. He became recognized as a devoted advocate of his master’s teaching and served as the abbot of Shūon’an, a small temple in the rural village where his master had been based, about twenty miles south of Kyoto. Owing to this connection, Shūon’an is affectionately known as the “Ikkyū Temple” (Ikkyūji or Ikkyūdera). After Ikkyū died, Motsurin founded the Shinjūan sub-temple at Daitokuji and dedicated it to his master; he also compiled a chronological record of Ikkyū’s accomplishments, the Chronicle of Ikkyū (Ikkyū Oshō nenpu). Didactic Poems transcribed here belongs to a category of calligraphies preserving the teachings of Ikkyū, and are composed as three seven-character quatrains.
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