Hakuin Ekaku

Hakuin was born in 1686 in Hara, a village at the foot of Mount Fuji. As a child, terrified by a sermon on the hells, he resolved to become a monk, and was ordained at fifteen. After years of wandering and doubt, he experienced a first awakening in 1708 at the sound of a distant temple bell, but his teacher, the hermit Shōju Rōjin, rejected his pride and drove him through a severe training.

Exhausted by his efforts, he fell ill with what he called “Zen sickness”, and recovered, by his own account, through breathing and visualization methods taught by a hermit, which he later described in Idle Talk on a Night Boat. In 1716 he became abbot of the small temple of Shōin-ji in Hara, where he taught for the rest of his life, drawing students from all over Japan.

He revived the Rinzai school, which had declined, by organizing kōan practice into a system, and created new kōans, the best known asking for the sound of one hand. He wrote extensively, in Japanese as well as Chinese, for lay people as well as monks, and left a great body of ink paintings and calligraphy. He died in 1769. All Rinzai lineages in Japan today descend through him.