“This is the wall-facing Great Master Bodhidharma”¹

As the inscription notes, this relatively minimal sketch represents the back of Daruma, or Bodhidharma, as he sat for nine years in unbroken meditation in a cave in China, so long that he supposedly left an impression of his shadow on its wall. In only a few gestural brushstrokes, Hakuin suggests the draping robe of the master, as if approached from behind, a subject painted numerous times by Hakuin and others. More than a simple abstract shape, however, Daruma is actually a moji-e or “word-picture,” with his body formed from a slightly distorted version of the character nin, meaning “endurance,” or “patience,” a further reference to Daruma’s lengthy zazen meditation, which he embodies in this work.

—Bradley Bailey