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The Embossed Tea Kettle: Orate Gama and other works of Hakuin Zenji

By Buddhism Now on 16 November 2022 • ( 0 )

Zen Master Hakuin was a man of extraordinary gifts, mystic and practical, strong and gentle, imbued with true compassion and with an open eye for the miseries of the human situation on all levels. Moreover, he was a great painter — unique among the artists of his time — as well as a prolific writer with an acute power of observation.

The Embossed Tea Kettle
Orate Gama and other works of Hakuin Zenji

by Zen Master Hakuin

Translated from the Japanese
by R.D.M. Shaw, D.D.

New edition abridged and revised
by Diana St Ruth.

Though the earth is hard, tread on it softly! Great things are destroyed by little things. If you are careless about little things, you will accomplish nothing.
Everybody — Wake up!
Zen Master Hakuin

Hakuin Zenji (1685-1769) averted the decline of the Rinzai movement and became the founder of modern Zen

I practised introspection continuously, and before only three years had passed — even though I had not taken any medicines or received any treatments by acupuncture or moxacautery — all those former illnesses of mine had been thoroughly swept away as if by some predetermined fate.

And not only were my illnesses healed, but also those things which were difficult to understand, those things which were difficult to enter into or penetrate, and which until then I had been unable to grasp with my hands or feet, or get my teeth into. I now penetrated them intuitively, right to their roots and down to their depths.

And I have experienced this joy six or seven times. Besides all this, I have forgotten just how many times I have experienced ‘little visions’ — those joys which make one dance.

For the first time, I realised the meaning of the words: ‘The eighteen great enlightenments of wonderful joy, and the little joys which are without number.’ In truth, I have not been deceived.

Zen Master Hakuin