Hakuin Ekaku 1686 – 1769

Hakuin Ekaku was a Japanese Rinzai Zen master, painter, and reformer of the Zen tradition. After a long and intense practice marked by repeated breakthroughs in kensho, he settled at the small temple of Shoinji and rebuilt a flagging Zen lineage by training a great number of disciples. He systematized koan training into a graduated curriculum that remains the basis of Rinzai instruction, and he composed the famous koan beginning with the question of the sound of a single hand. His Song of Zazen and Wild Ivy, an autobiography, are widely read.