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Internet gallery of calligraphy in the Institute collection

The Institute for Zen Studies has over 350 scrolls in its collection. A periodically renewed selection of especially outstanding works will be displayed on this site.

The Sixth Patriarch

The Sixth Patriarch

Date 2011/9/22
Author Tōrei Enji (1721-1792)
Details Chōshōdō 115
The Sixth Patriarch painting and inscription: The Great Teacher Sixth Patriarch -- I'm pleased to say that today I'm absent.
Paper: 34.2 x 59.3 cm
Mounting: 127.0 x 61.2 cm
Tōrei Enji was born into the Nakamura family in Kanzaki, on the eastern shores of Lake Biwa in present-day Shiga Prefecture. He became a monk at the age of nine, and at the age of seventeen entered Daikō-ji, located in present-day Miyazaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, to train under the important Zen master Kogetsu Zensai (1667-1751). At the age of twenty-three he began training under Hakuin at Shōin-ji in Hara. The following winter he went to Kyoto to convalesce from an illness, but later returned to Hara and, at the age of twenty-nine, received inka from Hakuin. At forty he assumed the abbacy of Ryūtaku-ji in Mishima, not far from Hara, and held that position for thirty years. From seventy he resided at Zuizen-ji in the vicinity of present-day Nagoya, and at the end of his life became abbot of Reisen-ji near his birthplace. His posthumous title was Butsugo Shinshō.

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