A Mouthless Crow and Crazy Clouds

“Conceal your path,

with fallen pine needles

so that no one may discover

your true dwelling”

In 1392, Japan fell into a temporary hush. Fifty years of struggle between two factions of the imperial family, during which two separate courts existed simultaneously, came to an end. The Southern Emperor Go-Kameyama surrendered the three Sacred Treasures of Japan and recognized the primacy of the Northern Court in Kyoto—and, more importantly, the power of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the third of his house. It was the Shogun who applied his military and political weight to facilitate the transfer of power, at least symbolically, to the fifteen-year-old Emperor Go-Komatsu.

A year later, the Emperor's eldest son was born. It was a political disaster. The infant was the son of an imperial concubine, the daughter of one of the Southern Court’s greatest generals, who had been given to the Emperor as part of the peace treaty. The court acted swiftly; that autumn, the concubine and her son were expelled and sent to a private estate on the outskirts of Kyoto. Despite his lineage, the boy was never recognized as the Emperor's firstborn or as the heir to the throne.

This tender child would eventually transform from the rejected scion of the Japanese Emperor into one of the most fascinating and colorful figures in the history of Zen in particular, and Japanese history in general. He was a monk, poet, calligrapher, drinker, teacher, wanderer, lover of prostitutes and vagabonds, painter, musician, and a devoted aesthetician.

His name was Ikkyū.

Ikkyū

At the age of five, after living with his mother in a small estate near Kyoto, Ikkyū was sent to a Zen monastery belonging to the Rinzai school. Sending him to the monastery was intended not only to provide him with an education but, primarily, to protect his life from the forces of the Northern Court and the Shogunate.

The boy proved to be a prodigy—quick-witted and remarkably musical. From a young age, he showed a special interest in Chinese language, literature, and history, which were central to learning in pre-modern Japan. In his thirteenth year, Ikkyū moved to the ancient Zen temple of Kennin-ji in the capital, Kyoto. The monastery was one of the "Five Mountain Temples," the most important Zen institutions of the era. It is said that in the courtyard of Kennin-ji there was a garden containing tea bushes grown by the monk Eisai (1141–1215), the Zen master who not only sowed the first tea plants on Japanese soil but also imported the Rinzai school from China. Who could have known then, as the fourteen-year-old boy entered the monastery gates, that he would one day elevate the cult of tea and its aesthetics to such lofty heights?

Kennin-ji, Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1202.

During his formative years, the young Ikkyū studied under several teachers who influenced him deeply.

The first was Ken’ō Sōi, who lived in a small hermitage on the shores of Lake Biwa. Ken’ō was a modest, free-thinking monk, an abbot who steadfastly refused to grant “inka” certificates—documents attesting to spiritual attainment. In an era when Zen enjoyed unprecedented popularity among the warrior class and the nobility, such certificates were given easily, and sometimes even sold. It is no wonder he remained without students. Ikkyū stayed with Ken’ō for four years, during which he progressed in his practice and absorbed his teacher’s disdain for honors and the flaunting of external spiritual trappings.

Lake Biwa.

Shortly before Ikkyū turned twenty, Ken’ō died. The grieving young man attempted to end his life by drowning in the cold waters of Lake Biwa, saved only by the quick reaction of his mother's servants. Ikkyū’s sorrow led him to the conclusion that he must deepen his training, and he sought out a suitable teacher.

Kasō Sōdon (1352–1428) was a stern, highly regarded Zen master who preferred to spend his days with a few disciples in a small, impoverished temple at the foot of Mount Hiei. Kasō demanded uncompromising practice from his students. His method relied on zazen meditation to develop increasing one-pointed concentration, and on koan practice. Koans are questions or statements designed to undermine the practitioner's conceptual thinking and break the logical and intellectual habits that prevent one from experiencing reality as it truly is. An emphasis on koan practice is a distinct characteristic of the Rinzai school to which Kasō belonged. Kasō’s uncompromising approach was exactly what Ikkyū was looking for.

Ikkyū remained with Kasō for nine years, practicing under harsh conditions of cold, scarcity, and endless chores. To bring in some necessary income for the impoverished monastery, Ikkyū utilized his talent with the writing brush, working in a doll shop in Kyoto, painting patterns on the paper clothes of toys.

During his years at the monastery, Ikkyū developed a habit of meditating on a small fishing boat, which he would borrow from a fisherman in the evening. It was while he was in this small boat that he experienced his first moment of awakening. Satori.

Naturally, one cannot know or understand what Ikkyū experienced that evening as he floated on the quiet waters of Lake Biwa. However, from his writings, we learn that the echoing cry of a crow circling above was what dispersed the fog over his consciousness, shattering his perception of the self and its related distinctions. The separation between object and subject, between the experiencer and the experienced, and between existence and non-existence dissolved, leaving behind a clear consciousness dwelling in an eternal present. Or so the texts tell us.

Ikkyū returned to the monastery. His teacher Kasō recognized the change in him and confirmed that his student had awakened. However, Ikkyū left the inka certificate his teacher had written for him on the ground.

Calligraphy by Ikkyū.

Ikkyū was free to go and wander to broaden and deepen his understanding of reality as he now experienced it, but he remained to nurse the ailing Kasō until his condition improved.

Upon his final parting from his teacher, Ikkyū turned to a life of wandering—a chapter of his life that lasted three decades. Ikkyū’s refusal to tie himself to a person or place, or to settle down, was exceptional in an era when Zen was tightly bound to the establishment.

Ikkyū’s approach was, to a large extent, a blatant defiance of what he saw as the fake piety of the Zen establishment in Kyoto. In his insistence on a life of wandering, wearing a simple black robe and straw sandals while the Zen establishment wore expensive silk robes and helped manage the Shogun’s affairs, he made an explicit statement about how a true man of Zen should conduct himself. Yet, it may have equally been the realization of a non-dual and non-discriminatory approach toward reality in all its layers. Ikkyū’s “Zen of the taverns” found no difference between the zazen bench and a prostitute’s bed, or between the temple altar and the tavern counter.

“After ten days in this temple, my head is spinning; the ‘red thread’ of passion pounds in my loins. If you wish to find me another day, look in the fish stall, the sake shop, or the brothel!”

Ikkyū’s anti-establishment stance and the contempt he held for the capital’s temples and their inhabitants—whom he saw as pursuers of luxury and honor—brought reciprocal hostility from the city's Buddhist establishment. However, this fact does not seem to have troubled him much. Ikkyū chose to spend his days in the company of beggars, artists, prostitutes, theater people, and types who blended these fields. He often visited brothels dressed in his black monk’s robe, just as he performed rituals and gave sermons while wearing ragged peasant clothes and straw sandals.

Central to Ikkyū’s aesthetic philosophy was the ideal of *fūryū* (風流; Chinese: *fēngliú*). This vague and multi-layered concept began in Chinese culture as a representation of an idealistic state of mind tuned toward earthly pleasures, especially music, fine literature, and the joy of friendship and the company of women. Later in Chinese history, during the chaotic end of the Wei Dynasty (late 3rd century AD), the term became an ideal for the cultured and educated person who simultaneously held unconventional views on life and reality. Famous representatives of this approach were the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove" (竹林七賢; *Zhúlín Qī Xián*). This merry band spent the political upheavals of their time in drowsy drunkenness and lively metaphysical discussions. It is told of one member that he spent two full months drunk to avoid a marriage proposal from the imperial family, and of another who wandered the countryside followed by a cart of liquor and a servant armed with a shovel, so he could be buried by the roadside should he fall defeated by excessive drinking.

The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove.

Ikkyū, who began his path as a devoted student of Chinese literature, language, and history, was familiar with the literary legacy of these colorful figures. He integrated references to their poetry into his major work written in classical Chinese, the *Kyōunshū* (“Crazy Cloud Anthology,” 狂雲集). Ikkyū’s writing reaffirms the connection between Zen thought and the Chinese Daoist heritage alongside and from which it developed. It also reflects the author’s spiritual world, which included a deep familiarity with classical Chinese history, philosophy, and culture, Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, and Ikkyū’s personal development and unique interpretation of these traditions.

Daoist thought, in its simplest terms, is directed toward moving through space in a way that does not interfere with the “natural” course of the universe, without conceptualization or dualistic thinking. The Daoist sage’s heart’s desire is a spontaneous, intuitive, and always-flowing understanding of the hidden laws at the heart of all phenomena, living in a state of constant “suchness,” without effort or intention.

Zen Buddhism (Chinese: *Chán*), which developed in China from the sixth century AD through constant contact with local Chinese belief systems, absorbed much of the Daoist spirit. Zen’s emphasis on daily action as a valid expression of Buddhist practice—and even as an inseparable companion to the awakened mind—constitutes a further development of Mahayana thought, the “Great Vehicle” of later Buddhism.

This development demonstrates a further departure from the early Buddhist model of awakening, which prescribed the practitioner-monk’s detachment from worldly activity in the pursuit of extinguishing the root of desire and attachment, and consequently, rebirth in the world of Samsara.

Ikkyū’s activities brought to an extreme expression the idea that there is no separation between Samsara and Nirvana, and that the Buddha-mind can be found at the bottom of a sake cup no less than in a mountaintop monastery.

Yet, as mentioned, Ikkyū was an uncompromising man of Zen who did not hesitate to lash out with his tongue at anyone he identified as fake, pretentious, or insincere toward the spirit of Zen as he saw it. He regarded meditation as an inseparable part of the Buddhist path.

As previously noted, the *fūryū* ideal held a central place in Ikkyū’s life and work. However, unlike the Chinese hedonistic shade, Ikkyū’s *fūryū* expressed an ideal of elevating the physical and everyday, transforming it into an aesthetic essence experienced sensually and sometimes even erotically.

The eccentric Ikkyū became a magnet for the leading artists, intellectuals, and “Dharma bums” of his generation. Among these artists were Komparu Zenchiku (1405–1468), a master of Noh theater, and Murata Shukō, the pioneer of the *wabi-cha* (わび茶) style of the tea ceremony.

Tea culture was imported to Japan from China in the ninth century, borrowing the stylized and sometimes aesthetically excessive Chinese approach, using shiny and heavily decorated tea utensils.

Under Shukō and his successors, the tea ceremony underwent a transformation and adaptation to Japanese culture outside the aristocratic courts. This change turned the tea ceremony into a practice expressing spiritual and aesthetic subtleties, emphasizing simplicity, sincerity, humility, and formal ruggedness. The aesthetics of the tea ceremony bring the fading world of phenomena—the world of the peasant and the hermit monk, of decay and fleeting beauty—into an essence of movement, intention, and timeless experience.

Ikkyū’s thought, which advocated poverty and complete detachment from all attachment, also contributed to the development of the gardening style popularly known today as “Zen gardening.” This style first developed in the monasteries of the Rinzai school, to which Ikkyū belonged.

In its minimalism, this style expresses an aesthetic of poverty—a garden representing the “frozen music” of space and emptiness. It is a space that contains no flowers, trees, or movement, and thus exists in a state of timelessness. Yet, at the same time, it is an expression of time itself. In this space, stones float in a state of eternal present, in a sea of granite that is eternity itself.

The stones for the garden were carefully selected and placed so that their shades, shapes, and veins would be seen with maximum clarity under light rain or moonlight. The moisture gathered in their hollows adds an aesthetic dimension, so that the moon’s glow rises out of basic formal poverty. This concept was influenced by Ikkyū’s *fūryū* philosophy—a conscious ecstasy derived from the simplest and most basic things.

Ryōan-ji—a dry “Zen” garden. Kyoto, Japan.

“If you break open the cherry tree,

where are the flowers?

But in springtime, see how they bloom!”

Ikkyū’s primary written work is the *Kyōunshū* collection, or the “Crazy Cloud Anthology.” The collection contains over a thousand poems written in classical Chinese, reflecting Ikkyū’s spiritual world—a world of deep familiarity with classical Chinese history, philosophy, and culture, Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, and Ikkyū’s personal development and unique interpretation of these traditions.

Following the terrible Ōnin War that occurred in his time, which destroyed the city of Kyoto and heralded the twilight of the Ashikaga Shogunate and the future rise of the House of Tokugawa, Ikkyū was forced to recommit to the Rinzai institutions he loathed. At the age of 81, Ikkyū was appointed abbot of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto and was responsible for its restoration after the horrors of the war.

Ikkyū died at the age of eighty-seven, leaving his students and admirers the direct instruction: “Shit and piss, and just be ordinary.”

“Nature is a murderer, I will not sing to it,

I hold my breath and listen

to the dead singing beneath the grass”

Ikkyū was and remains one of the most significant figures in the history of Japanese Zen. His talent and sensitivity placed him in a key position of spiritual authority, as well as a source of inspiration for many of the intellectuals of his time. This status places Ikkyū in a unique position in the history of the arts and the connection between philosophy and Zen aesthetics in Japan. A nobleman and a wanderer, a spiritual teacher and a drunkard, a poet, calligrapher, and sensitive artist of the human spirit, Ikkyū’s figure represents the spirit of Zen in its most refined and direct form.