Bodhidharma (Daruma)

The first patriarch of Zen Buddhism, Bodhidharma (Japanese: Daruma) reportedly spent nine years in silent meditation facing a wall. In this portrait, the monk's characteristic shaggy brows and beard frame a fixed gaze and lips set in a determined downward arc. A dark stroke of ink curves under his chin and around one shoulder to outline his simple monk's robe. Splashed ink at the top of the stroke marks the forceful application of the artist's brush and draws attention to Bodhidharma's face.

The artist, Nantenbo, was a Buddhist monk who worked to revive the practice of Zen during the early-twentieth century. An inscription above the painting reads from left to right, and is a variation on a couplet attributed to Bodhidharma:

一 結 来
華 果
五 自
葉 然
開

Ikka goyo wo hiraku
And bears fruit according to its own nature
kekka shizen ni kitaru

Translation by Stephen Addiss, in Stephen Addiss, The Art of Zen: Paintings and
Calligraphy by Japanese Monks, 1600–1925 (1989), p. 192.