“In both spiritual training and dealing with the world, keep in mind the example of blind men crossing a log bridge.”¹

 

Hakuin painted this subject several times with varying numbers of blind men.² Despite this, there is little variation in the treatment of the landscapes, which appear like the example here, as a spare and empty chasm with a few encroaching trees or loosely defined mountains in the distance for scale and perspective. With relatively little brushwork, however, Hakuin is able to conjure a vast emptiness that can only be traversed—very carefully, slowly, and with great deliberation—via a round log. This “vast emptiness” has often been related to Buddhist metaphors of gorges and rivers (symbolic of samara and the ignorance of the unenlightened), which must be crossed in a vessel, typically a boat. This empty vessel is meant to symbolize the teachings (or sacred images) of the Buddha, which can ferry the observant across to the shores of enlightenment.

 

As Hakuin’s inscription instructs, students of Zen should proceed slowly and methodically across the “log bridge” of life, implying that, without the enlightenment of the Buddha, we are all effectively blind, riddled with uncertainty as we carefully inch forward across the log bridge. Interestingly, Hakuin’s metaphor also implies that enlightenment—the crossing of the bridge—could occur suddenly and at any moment, for the blind men do not know when they will reach the other side.

 

The metaphor of blind men and blindness in general were often invoked by Hakuin in his sermons. They also appear throughout his writings, used most frequently as shorthand for the unenlightened. As noted by Stephen Addiss, Hakuin also applied this analogy—the hazardous bridge that may end at any moment—to the ephemerality and unpredictability of life, writing:

 

“Both the health of our bodies

and the fleeting world outside us

are like the blind men’s

round log bridge—a mind

that can cross over is the best guide.”³

 

—Bradley Bailey