Orategama (The Embossed Tea-Kettle)

Text

A three-part collection of letters by Hakuin (1751) addressed to a daimyō, a nun, and a fellow Zen master. The Orategama lays out Hakuin's mature account of kōan introspection (kanna-zen), naijikan energy practice, and the necessity of post-satori cultivation — the framework that shapes modern Rinzai training to this day.

tr. Philip B. Yampolsky, The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings, Columbia University Press 1971

license: fair_use

Original language

Attribution

• Attributed To
  Hakuin Ekaku

Lineage: Rinzai

By Hakuin Ekaku

• Not Knowing How Near the Truth Isproverb
• Meditation in Activityproverb
• Song of Zazen (Zazen Wasan)verse
• The Soft Butter Meditation (Orategama)sermon
• Letter to a Sick Monk on Introspective Practicesermon

From Orategama

• The Soft Butter Meditation (Orategama)
• Letter to a Sick Monk on Introspective Practice

Sources

• contentZen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2 — Japan

  Heinrich Dumoulin (trans. James W. Heisig & Paul Knitter)

  Volume 2, chapter on Hakuin Ekaku

  Hakuin's letters in the Orategama are among the most important programmatic statements of Rinzai Zen in the Edo period and have shaped its training methods up to the present.