HAKUIN EKAKU (1685–1765)
Hakuin is widely considered the most important Zen monk of the last five hundred years.
Hakuin was born in a small village near Mt. Fuji. At the age of fourteen, he became an apprentice monk at Shoin-ji in Hara where his cousin was the priest. For the next ten years of his life, Hakuin studied under many masters. He was an intent student, often going days without eating or sleeping.
Hakuin had his first true enlightenment experience at the age of twenty-three under the uncompromising discipline of an old priest named Etan Shoji. Hakuin was with this teacher for only eight months when he was called back to Shoin-ji. He settled at Shoin-ji where, with this small village temple as his base, he eventually revitalized Zen Buddhism in Japan.
Hakuin revived and systematized the Rinzai Zen method of koan study, in which the student is given a nonsensical word puzzle called a koan to solve, such as the one Hakuin himself invented: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" A koan must be intensely concentrated on at all times until the mind, having completely exhausted every possible answer, gives up and the answer that does not involve logical thinking emerges from the depths of the student's own being.
Throughout his long life, Hakuin had many increasingly deeper enlightenment (satori) experiences. Because of this, he came to realize the importance of continued training after the initial breakthrough of one's first satori experience.
Hakuin was much loved by the common people. Although he was strict with his disciples, he was gentle and understanding with the people who lived near Shoin-ji, often recommending to them simpler practices better suited to their needs.
Hakuin actively taught right up to his death at the age of eighty- four. His latest paintings contain a profoundly spiritual power. The older he grew, the greater his brushwork became.
