Patience

Bunshō trained briefly under the greatest Zen teachers and reformers of the first half of the twentieth century, Nantenbō (1839–1925) and his trusted disciple Deiryu (1895–1954). Bunshō did much to keep Zen teaching and art alive during a period of social change in Japan, which saw many of the country’s traditional cultural and religious beliefs challenged by rapid westernization and industrial modernization. Like his mentors, Bunshō had no formal education in art, and following Zen practice, his paintings and calligraphy are primarily images about meditation: on the one hand imagery that grew from meditation and on the other inspiring visual tools for meditation.

This calligraphy, brushed with great vigor with the customary oversized brush used for such large-scale pieces, consists of the single word “patience”. A central Zen philosophic statement, the word evokes the longer phrase often used by the eighteenth-century Zen master, Hakuin:
“Patience, a virtue greater than any precept or ascetic practice.”
In this way, what might otherwise be viewed as a simple calligraphic statement reverberates with a hallowed Zen instructional tradition.