Four-Line Poem

This work of dynamic, rapidly and fluidly brushed, faintly angled Chinese characters in cursive script comprises a four-line poem, inscribed in dark ink on paper and mounted as a hanging scroll. The writer of this vibrantly inscribed calligraphic work, Feiyin Tongrong, or Hiin Tsūyō, as he is known in Japan, was a Chinese Buddhist monk who studied under several renowned Chan (Japanese: Zen) masters, served as abbot at several Chan monasteries, and inspired disciples to bring a new form of Chan Buddhism to Japan, where it took root and flourished. A gifted calligrapher, Feiyin was historically important as the teacher of Ingen (Chinese: Yinyuan Longqi, 1592–1673), who founded the Ōbaku school of Zen Buddhism in Japan and established the Ōbaku head temple of Manpukuji at Uji, Kyoto.

The poem on Zen meditation reads:

I’ve practiced Zen up to the point
where in myself I get it;
Now understood in clarity,
to whom might I pass it on?
All I see is this autumn moon,
filling the whole of heaven,
A single wheel effulgently
illuminating the stream out front.

Written by Old Monk Rong, the thirty-first
abbot of the Linji [lineage] at Jingshan.

Translation by Jonathan Chaves