Kannon by a Lotus Pond

The Buddhist monk and prolific amateur painter Hakuin Ekaku is credited with reviving the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism after an extended period of decline, and with making its teachings more accessible to the public. Born in Harajuku in Suruga province (present-day Numazu, Shizuoka prefecture), he joined the local Shōinji Temple at age fourteen. Later, after a fourteen-year pilgrimage that took him across Japan to meet various Zen masters and popularize Zen teachings, he returned to the Shōinji and remained there until his death. As a Zen master, Hakuin focused on zazen (seated meditation) and paradoxical anecdotes or dialogues called kōan, the contemplation of which may lead to spontaneous awakening. Hakuin’s bold, sometimes humorous, and altogether unprecedented paintings were an important vehicle for his teachings, which spread far beyond the monasteries and captured the minds of laypeople.

Influenced by his mother’s deep devotion to Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, Hakuin created numerous images of the deity seated above a pond or inlet filled with lotus flowers, symbols of Buddhist salvation. Over the course of centuries, first in China and Korea, the originally male deity had come to be depicted in androgynous or female manifestations in early modern times. In the Zen tradition Kannon is usually depicted meditating alone on a rocky shore, referred to as White-Robed (Byaku-e) or Water-Moon (Suigetsu) Kannon. Here, the bodhisattva is shown in a leisurely pose, leaning on the ledge at a precipitous angle on a mat of leaves, her loosely fitting white robes—rendered in reserve—with strong outlines, accented by bands of gray ink wash flowing over the cliff. In front of her is a ruyi ceremonial scepter, and a single sutra scroll—no doubt the Kannon Sutra, Chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra. Behind her is a vase on a red lacquer stand that holds a willow branch—used as a wand to ward off illness and evil—and a sprig of plum, signaling the season is early spring. In the background the orb of an oversize moon forms a halo of sorts around the Buddhist deity. Hakuin’s image draws on a centuries-long tradition of painting in East Asia showing Water-Moon Kannon gazing upon the reflection of the moon on the water’s surface. Due to earlier acquisitions as well as more recent ones, The Met’s collection can now relate the evolution of this age-old East Asian iconography from its first iterations in fourteenth-century Japan, though a late Edo-period rendition by Sakai Hōitsu, and even a sublime ink painting on the theme by Meiji artist Amano Hōko. Hakuin’s version can be seen in this art historical context as a radical interpretation of the imagery meant to both startle and delight viewers.

The inscription—in Japanese, not Chinese, is brushed in a craggy cursive script, and arranged in two vertical columns: a longer, orderly line on the left and a shorter, slightly tilted one on the right, creating a calculated asymmetry. This subtle imbalance echoes the pose of Kannon resting on a rock below. The text, which alludes to the compassion of Kannon, however, is not a text found on other paintings to our knowledge and can be deciphered as follows (read left to right):

慈悲をよろづの本とせよ
Jihi o yorozu no moto to seyo…

Compassion should be the root of all things…

—Trans. John T. Carpenter

Further research is required on the source of this quotation, but it cannot be a coincidence that the same phrase appears twice in a long, discursive letter sent to the daimyo Ikeda Tsugumasa (1702–1776) of the Okayama domain, which was entitled the “Little Strawberry (Hebi-ichigo 邊鄙以知吾), and preserved in the Collected Writings of Hakuin (Hakuin Oshō zenshū, 5.4, 401–450). It was originally written in 1754, around the time this inscribed painting was created, but it was considered too polemical and critical of the current political scene to be published at the time (and was only published a century later). Hakuin’s letter admonished “unwise rulers” (ankun 暗君) who tried to alleviate financial crises of their own making by raising taxes on the poor, and castigated monks who went along. In one longer passage, Hakuin wrote, “Compassion should be the root of all things, whether the great deeds of the bodhisattvas or the divine ruler.” In this case, and in Edo-period usage in general, “divine ruler” (shinkun 神君) refers to the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu (1543–1616). In this letter and other writings Hakuin promoted compassion not only as a pathway to personal salvation, but also as a social virtue that brings about communal prosperity. This fusion of a Buddhist concept into a social framework (adhering to Confucian principles) aligns with Hakuin’s practice of advocating for the application of Buddhist principles within society.