436
Perhaps, looming within his obsessive poignancies of self-depiction, he anticipated
the brevity of the end, and thus, in a sense, the futility of all his brushstrokes for
posterity. Writes Émile Michel, “Broken by poverty, and crushed by bereavements,
the old master was not long parted from his son. The greatest of Dutch painters
passed away with no record of his disappearance but the brief entry in the deathregister of the Wester Kerk: ‘Tuesday, October 8, 1669, Rembrandt van Rijn, painter,
on the Roozegraft, opposite the Doolhof. Leaves two children.’”
22
47.4 The Zen of Rembrandt’s Self-Portraiture
Rembrandt’s multiple enlightenments mirror Asiatic schools aspiring to Satori and
kenshō, Zen bodhi, as encapsulated in most Western translations since the period of
the orientalist Max Muller (1823–1900), particularly his 50-volume set of The
Sacred Books of the East (1879–1894). But in fact bodhi, or budh,—“to wake up, to
recover consciousness”—is too easily mistaken for what has been suggested to be a
“Christian” orientation to the word.
23
Bodhi, the name of the tree under which
Buddha had his first or second enlightenment—depending on which theory and
school of thought one adheres to—signals in either case the ultimate catharsis,
awakening, an event leading to Buddhahood.
24
That process entails confronting
human nature, one’s own and others.’ The relations are not without unrelenting nonabsolutes. Every wrinkle in Rembrandt echoes the same face of Buddha (Fig. 47.3).
This great reality is enshrined throughout Zen study, and with it the perilous,
persistent challenge of penetrating the veil that covers human fragmentation and
inconsistency; and the struggle to achieve some measure of lucidity in our lives. The
Ch’an Blue Cliff Record, 100 koans, or densely contradictory paradoxes in versification, was first compiled during the Song Dynasty rule of Emperor Huizong, and
modified by the Ch’an authority, Yuanwu Kegin (Engo), in the early twelfth century.
A century later, the Gateless Barrier compilation of 48 Zen koans by the Chinese
master Wumen Huikai (1183–1260) was added to the legacy of Rinzai study (the
collection known as “Wumen Guan”) by which disciples were challenged to find
conceptual means of transcending contradiction, duality; circumventing walls of
adamant logic with alternative forms of clear and radiant thought.
The twentieth century regards these transcendental hurdles under the aegis of
2500 years of discourse and epistemology; of precise paradoxical narratives that
debate endlessly (1) the distance between abstraction and the sensory world, (2) the
meaning of that world to the mind, the limitations of which are infinite, thus
22 See Rembrandt Harmensz Van Rijn – A Memorial Of His Tercentenary, 1606–1906, by Émile
Michel Of The Institute Of France: With Seventy Plates: Published by Willian Heinemann,
London, 1906. p. 118.
23 See Robert S. Cohen, Beyond Enlightenment: Buddhism, Religion, Modernity, Routledge,
Abington, UK, 2006, pp. 1–3.
24 See Suzuki, D. T. Essays in Zen Buddhism, Grove Press, New York, 1994, p. 229.
47 Sakya Coming Out of His Mountain Retreat
Perhaps, looming within his obsessive poignancies of self-depiction, he anticipated
the brevity of the end, and thus, in a sense, the futility of all his brushstrokes for
posterity. Writes Émile Michel, “Broken by poverty, and crushed by bereavements,
the old master was not long parted from his son. The greatest of Dutch painters
passed away with no record of his disappearance but the brief entry in the deathregister of the Wester Kerk: ‘Tuesday, October 8, 1669, Rembrandt van Rijn, painter,
on the Roozegraft, opposite the Doolhof. Leaves two children.’”
22
47.4 The Zen of Rembrandt’s Self-Portraiture
Rembrandt’s multiple enlightenments mirror Asiatic schools aspiring to Satori and
kenshō, Zen bodhi, as encapsulated in most Western translations since the period of
the orientalist Max Muller (1823–1900), particularly his 50-volume set of The
Sacred Books of the East (1879–1894). But in fact bodhi, or budh,—“to wake up, to
recover consciousness”—is too easily mistaken for what has been suggested to be a
“Christian” orientation to the word.
23
Bodhi, the name of the tree under which
Buddha had his first or second enlightenment—depending on which theory and
school of thought one adheres to—signals in either case the ultimate catharsis,
awakening, an event leading to Buddhahood.
24
That process entails confronting
human nature, one’s own and others.’ The relations are not without unrelenting nonabsolutes. Every wrinkle in Rembrandt echoes the same face of Buddha (Fig. 47.3).
This great reality is enshrined throughout Zen study, and with it the perilous,
persistent challenge of penetrating the veil that covers human fragmentation and
inconsistency; and the struggle to achieve some measure of lucidity in our lives. The
Ch’an Blue Cliff Record, 100 koans, or densely contradictory paradoxes in versification, was first compiled during the Song Dynasty rule of Emperor Huizong, and
modified by the Ch’an authority, Yuanwu Kegin (Engo), in the early twelfth century.
A century later, the Gateless Barrier compilation of 48 Zen koans by the Chinese
master Wumen Huikai (1183–1260) was added to the legacy of Rinzai study (the
collection known as “Wumen Guan”) by which disciples were challenged to find
conceptual means of transcending contradiction, duality; circumventing walls of
adamant logic with alternative forms of clear and radiant thought.
The twentieth century regards these transcendental hurdles under the aegis of
2500 years of discourse and epistemology; of precise paradoxical narratives that
debate endlessly (1) the distance between abstraction and the sensory world, (2) the
meaning of that world to the mind, the limitations of which are infinite, thus
22 See Rembrandt Harmensz Van Rijn – A Memorial Of His Tercentenary, 1606–1906, by Émile
Michel Of The Institute Of France: With Seventy Plates: Published by Willian Heinemann,
London, 1906. p. 118.
23 See Robert S. Cohen, Beyond Enlightenment: Buddhism, Religion, Modernity, Routledge,
Abington, UK, 2006, pp. 1–3.
24 See Suzuki, D. T. Essays in Zen Buddhism, Grove Press, New York, 1994, p. 229.
47 Sakya Coming Out of His Mountain Retreat