Hakuin Ekaku: “Song of Meditation”

About the Author

One of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism, the Zen master Hakuin (“White Seclusion”) Ekaku, also known as Hakuin Zenji, was born Sugiyama Iwajiro on January 19, 1686, in a small Japanese coastal village at the foot of Mount Fuji on the Tokkaido Road between Tokyo (Edo) and Kyoto. Even as a child, he was oppressed by the fear of hell and had been trying to seek a way of salvation and enlightenment, which he finally discovered in Zen Buddhism. At the age of fifteen, having finally gained the approval of his parents, he joined monastic life by being ordained by Soduko Fueki at the local Zen temple, Shoinji. Soon after, he was sent to the neighboring temple of Daishoji, where he served for four years as a novice and had a chance to read the Lotus Sutra, often considered the best of all Buddhist teachings.

At the age of eighteen, reading the story of the brutal murder by bandits of the well-loved ninth-century Chinese Chan master Yantou Quanhuo, with his terminal cries being heard miles away, Hakuin was greatly distressed and resorted to writing poetry and calligraphy for solace. His desperate search for the true path was answered when he read some Zen stories of Ming Dynasty China (1368–1644) collected in Zekan Sakushin (“Spurring Students to Break through the Zen Barrier”). From then on, he resolved to practice Zen and resume his Buddhist life for his personal redemption. At the age of twenty-two came his first experience of satori (enlightenment) at Eiganji Temple, after meditating for seven days.

At the age of thirty-one, he returned to Shoinji Temple, where he had been ordained, and became its abbot. It is here that his fame as a Zen master began to soar and he was able to attract numerous monks and lay disciples to study under him. With a teaching style both vigorous and unpredictable, he was bent on driving the students to their utmost efforts and digging out their deepest potential. He set four cardinal principles for his monks to follow: an unshakable faith in the teaching of the Buddha, the constant application of the koan, the perpetual continuity of purpose, and the eventual discovery of nirvana, all through their own efforts. (A koan, from the Chinese gong’an, is a story, dialogue, question, or statement whose meaning must be discerned through intuitive, rather than rational, perception. Hakuin is credited with the famous koan “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”) Altogether, Hakuin is credited with having trained and cultivated more than ninety enlightened successors.

Hakuin is well known for his penetrating analysis and application of koans, which he made indispensable to the Zen practice. He taught that the struggle to get an answer to a seemingly impossible question by means of meditation would facilitate and quicken one’s awakening. In so doing, he was able to revolutionize Japanese Zen. Through his famous koans, he could first arouse doubt in the monks and then urge them to use intuitive insight to crack the mystery. He warned the monks never to rest on the limited enlightenment they had achieved; instead, they should always persevere in finding the truth and exert themselves toward the ultimate enlightenment.

In Hakuin’s lifetime, Zen Buddhism had become the court religion and was thus losing some of its purity and essence. Hakuin made a significant contribution to its restoration, rejuvenation, and purification, reclaiming and reinforcing its original genius. His representative works include Keiso dokozui (“Poisonous Stamens and Pistils of Thorns”), Hogo-roku (“Record of Talks on the Law”), Orategama (“The Embossed Tea Kettle”) and Yasen kanwa (“A Chat on a Boat in the Evening”). His teachings constituted a new foundation for Rinzai Zen in Japan. On January 18, 1769, Ekaku Hakuin Zenji—Zenji being an honorific meaning “Zen Master” or “Zen Teacher”—went to Hara and departed the world there at the age of eighty-three.