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The Tools of One-Handed Zen : Hakuin Ekaku's Technological and Artistic Charisma

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The Tools of One-Handed Zen : Hakuin Ekaku's Technological and Artistic Charisma University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2015 The tools of one-handed Zen : Hakuin Ekaku's technological and artistic charisma. Brandon James Harwood 1982- University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Harwood, Brandon James 1982-, "The tools of one-handed Zen : Hakuin Ekaku's technological and artistic charisma." (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2100. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2100 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE TOOLS OF ONE-HANDED ZEN: HAKUIN EKAKU’S TECHNOLOGICAL AND ARTISTIC CHARISMA By Brandon James Harwood B.A., University of Louisville 2005 M.A., University of Louisville 2008 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Humanities Department of Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2015 Copyright 2015 by Brandon James Harwood All rights reserved THE TOOLS OF ONE-HANDED ZEN: HAKUIN EKAKU’S TECHNOLOGICAL AND ARTISTIC CHARISMA By Brandon James Harwood B.A., University of Louisville 2005 M.A., University of Louisville 2008 A Dissertation Approved on April 16th, 2015 by the following Dissertation Committee: _____________________________ Annette Allen, Dissertation Director _____________________________ John Gibson _____________________________ Albert Harris _____________________________ Patrick Pranke _____________________________ Ying Kit Chan !ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to all people in the past, present, and future who are interested in learning about the world around them and reaching out to others the world over who are both comparable to themselves and still profoundly different. !iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Despite the image of a scholar working on her or his research alone, buried under the books of a corner room high in the ivory tower, I find that most of my work really happens in conversation with other people. So, I have many more people that have helped shape my work than I can even name, but I will try to start to do so here: I would like to thank my family (Tarren, Phillip, Mom, Mamaw, and Aunt Jennie) for supporting me and making me feel valued. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Ph.D. program who made working hard not about being competitive with each other but instead about striving to understand truth and beauty. I would also like to thank my advisors throughout my career so far (Annette Allen, Albert Harris, Patrick Pranke, John Gibson, Ying Kit Chan, Elaine Wise, Osbourne Wiggins, Natalie Polzer, and Mary Ann Stenger) for being paradigms of the sort of professional and the sort of person I would like to become. I would like to thank Michael Horton and Matthew Livers for loving me and being loved by me while I was a neurotic Ph.D. student, which surely could not have been easy. I would like to thank Ira Byelick, Leigh Viner, and Todd Keonig for their friendship and for their conversations with me, which continue to help me learn more about the world and its glorious works of profundity. Lastly, I would like to thank Tiffany Hutabarat who has been a superb teammate both in the digital world and in the material world, and who has discovered with me that team comp is the key to success in all things. !iv ABSTRACT THE TOOLS OF ONE-HANDED ZEN: HAKUIN EKAKU’S TECHNOLOGICAL AND ARTISTIC CHARISMA Brandon J. Harwood April 16, 2015 When people think of a Zen kōan, they probably think of Hakuin’s “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” This is appropriate as Hakuin’s ministry has become such an important part of Rinzai Zen that all current masters trace their lineage to him. In this paper, I hope to illuminate one of the reasons that Hakuin became so influential in his time and in the history of Japanese Zen. I argue that Hakuin was a charismatic teacher that used the technological innovations of woodblock printing and the wealth of some of his students to duplicate and disseminate his paintings and writings for free to a wide audience of lay people and monks, effectively solidifying his teaching as doctrinal. Despite the caricature of the Zen master as aloof, antisocial, and perhaps humorless, I hope to show Hakuin as charming, funny, engaged, and perhaps tech-savvy in his cultural context. !v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………iv ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………….……v PREFACE: PLATING POISONOUS FOX SLOBBER…………………………….….1 GATHERING TO HEAR THE GOD OF FOXES: THE POWER OF HAKUIN’S CHARISMA………………………………………………………………………….…6 An Introduction to the Subject of Mysticism………………………………..….9 Charismatic mystics: Paragons of virtue, Engaged with the World, and Creatively Innovative………………………………………………………………….……22 An Introduction to the Subject of Mystics’ Creativity………………………….26 An Introduction to the Life of Hakuin……………………………………..……28 “IS THAT SO?”: THE MASS CULTURE OF THE EDO PERIOD AND HAKUIN’S ADAPTIVE RESPONSE……………………………………………………………….35 The Cultural Developments in Edo Period Japan………………………….……38 Hakuin and the Power Structure of Edo Period Japan……………………….….47 Hakuin and the Popular Culture of the Edo Period………………………….….52 “THE REALM WHERE VERBAL EXPRESSION CAN’T REACH”: THEORIES OF ART AS EXPRESSION, INSTRUCTION, AND TRANSFORMATION………….…..58 “AFTER ALL, WHAT DO THEY COME TO?”: HAKUIN’S THOUGHTS ON ART AND ITS ROLE IN HIS SUCCESS WITH HIS COMMUNITY………..……………100 Scholarship, Art, and Buddhist Thought……………………………………..…103 !vi Hakuin’s Writings about Art……………………………..…………………..…110 Hakuin’s Encounters with Art in his Youth……………………………….……111 Hakuin’s Spread of Dharma through Art and the Encouragement of Consistent Practice…………………………………………………………………………………117 Hakuin’s Motivation of Students through Certificates…………..……………..121 Hakuin’s use of Art to Instruct his Students On Rinzai Zen Buddhist Principles and Practice………………………………………………………………………….…124 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………..….131 CURRICULUM VITAE………………….……………………………………………137 !vii PREFACE PLATING POISONOUS FOX SLOBBER Although many people, even within the academy, might not know the name of Zen Master Hakuin, most people in U.S. society, at least, have heard of the nonsensical Zen kōan “What is the sound of one hand clapping.” Many might be familiar with it from The Simpsons, where Bart Simpson tries to find a way to answer the puzzle by smacking his fingers against the palm to create a dull whack sound. From a Zen perspective, Bart has missed the point of the exercise in an instructive way, demonstrating the tendency of our “monkey mind,” as Zen terms it, to force the question into dichotomy—I can make some sound—instead of recognizing that the question itself prevents any answer when considered on its own terms—a clap requires two hands. It might be that a similar slip of the dichotomous mind is at work when someone considers the work of mystics like Hakuin himself and tries to define them as introspective without any desire or interaction with the world of their time. Hakuin was and is a well-respected Zen mystic; that is, he had achieved great insight into the Zen understanding of reality, which requires dedication to practices designed to develop such insight. Hakuin’s influence was so great that all of the Rinzai Zen masters practicing today trace their lineage back to Hakuin (Kasulis 112). More than that, Rinzai Buddhism was on the decline in the 18th century, and might have even shrunk into obscurity, but because of a charismatic, artistic, "1 technologically aware mystic like Hakuin, it became a very important religious order. In the 20th century, when Japanese scholars of the Ky!to School, D. T. Suzuki and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, and Masao Abe, begin to try to explain Japanese culture to the rest of the world, it is a Rinzai Buddhist training that informs those globalizing thinkers. So, Hakuin, far from being only interested in a psychological, introspective contemplation, was a person deeply interested in the people of his time, and through his charisma, and ability to impress people with his art, provided an important force of Japanese (and global) history. In Hakuin’s Sokkō-roku Kaien-fusetsu1 (translated as Talks given introductory to Zen Lectures on the Record of Sokkō) he regularly uses the metaphor of poisonous fox slobber both in reference to false teachers of Zen in his time, but also the proper teaching of Zen represented by the great patriarchs. He equally calls his own teaching fox slobber, and though he treats it as dubious as other teachers do, it is clear from his criticism of the 1 Because of the vast number of writings I cite from Hakuin, I will be applying the following abbreviation system; the translator and translation publication dates are in parentheses: ZW: “Zazen Wasen: The Song of Zazen by Hakuin” in Zenkei Shibayama’s A Flower Does not Talk—Zen Essays (Kudo 1970) MH: The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings (Yampolsky 1971) YK: “Yasenkanna: An Autobiographical Narrative by Zen Master Hakuin” in The Tiger’s Cave: Translations of Japanese Zen Texts (Leggett 1977) ET: The Essential Teaching of Zen Master Hakuin: A translation of the Sokk!-roku Kaien-fusetsu (Waddell 1994) BC: The Secrets of the Blue Cliff Records (Cleary 2000) FW: Hakuin on Kensho: The Four Ways of Knowing (Low 2006—a compilation of translations) PM: Hakuin’s Precious Mirror Cave: A Zen Miscellany (Waddell 2009) WI: Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Hakuin (Waddell 2010) CD: Beating the Cloth Drum: The Letters of Zen Master Hakuin (Waddell 2012) "2 other teachers that he must believe that he has some greater claim to the true teachings than they.
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