Hakuin's Prescription Radiance of the Dark

Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO | April 9, 2005, April 28, 2006
The old folks talked about how we all unfold sutra scrolls from our toes as we walk and our mouths as we speak, waving from the bright green tips of our new growth and falling out the tops of eggs as we peck them open. It's spring, the season of unfoldings both delicate and flamboyant — a good time for two talks inspired by artists. The first is an exhortation inspired by an old-style preacher and painter, Hakuin Ekaku of eighteenth century Japan — whose, um, directness I seem to have been channeling a bit that night; the second is a meditation on how koans are like the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, seventeenth century Dutch master of the pervading light. Hakuin would probably be pleased that his Prescription for the Penetrating-One's-Nature-and-Becoming-a-Buddha Pill was passed around during a retreat, while Vermeer might be surprised to find his oil and canvas evocations of peace enlisted to show how we work with koans, and koans work with us.