Zen Buddhism, and Its Relation to Art — A Closer Reading

Buddhist Background and the Rise of Zen

Waley first outlines the two main forms of Buddhism that reached China: the Lesser Vehicle (Hīnayāna) and the Greater Vehicle (Mahāyāna). The Lesser Vehicle, with scriptures partly recording Shākyamuni's actual words, offered no divine assistance; adherents aspired only to become Arhats, 'ascetics ripe for annihilation.' The Greater Vehicle, by contrast, fabricated lengthy sermons attributed to the Buddha and introduced merciful Bodhisattvas who renounced Buddhahood to help mankind. By the sixth century A.D., over two thousand Mahāyāna works had been translated into Chinese. Waley then notes that among the many Chinese sects, Zen supplied a 'key' that made art discussable in a new language after the twelfth century.

The Rokutsūji School and Mokkei's Innovations

Waley highlights the Rokutsūji monastery, refounded around 1215 A.D. by the Zen priest Mokkei on the shores of Hangchow's Western Lake. Mokkei, he writes, was 'the first to practise the swift, ecstatic type of monochrome' associated with Zen, using hurried swirls of ink to capture visions produced by wine, tea, or absorption. Waley describes two kinds of Zen paintings: representations of animals, birds, and flowers achieved through intense visualization rather than life study, and illustrations of episodes from Zen teachers' lives, which were essentially dramatic. He cites the example of Tanka burning a wooden Buddha statue for firewood, noting the same controversy appears in the Nō play Sotoba Komachi.

Zen's Influence on Nature and Artistic Legacy

Waley connects Zen to the passionate love of nature in Far Eastern poetry and art, arguing that because the Buddha-nature is immanent in everything—'stone, river and tree'—humans possess an intimate means of contact with nature. The songs of birds, noise of waterfalls, and wind in pine-trees are 'utterances of the Absolute.' He notes that Zen art did not flourish long in China, but in Japan it inspired major painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including Sesshū and, in a decadent way, Kanō masters like Tsunenobu. Waley also mentions the problem of distinguishing works by Mokkei from those by his Japanese successor Mokuan II.

Waley's essay is a concise, text-based introduction rather than a comprehensive survey. Readers should note that his claims about Zen's artistic influence are grounded in specific examples—Mokkei's monochrome, Tanka's iconoclasm—and his reliance on early Chinese colloquial sources. The excerpts do not cover later developments or provide a full account of Zen doctrine; the essay's value lies in its focused, evidence-driven observations about a little-documented subject.

This essay on Zen and art made me think of my grandfather’s worn Bible, margins filled with hesitant pencil. He never explained, only pointed. Reading about Mokkei’s misty mountains, I felt that same quiet certainty—truth resting just beyond clear sight—that I found years later in The Supernatural in the New Testament, Possible, Credible, and Historical Or, An Examination of the Validity of Some Recent Objections Against Christianity as a Divine — Reading Notes. Both books ask for faith in the unseen, patiently.