Perhaps the most celebrated of the late-Edo Period Zen artist-priests, Sengai Gibon (1750-1837) left a large number of ink paintings on Zen-related subjects, of which by far the largest collection is in the Idemitsu Museum opposite the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
Born in present-day Gifu Prefecture, Sengai became a monk at the age of 11 and studied Zen first at Seitai-ji near his own village, and later at the Toki-An near Kamakura. A bit of an overachiever, while still in his 20s he answered the koan (a Zen riddle calculated to trigger insight) "Why did the Patriarch come from the West?" with the poem:
Sakyamuni (Buddha) entered extinction 2,000 years ago; Maitraya (The Messiah-like Buddha) won't appear for another billion years — Sentient beings find this hard to understand, But it's just like this — the nostrils are over the lips.
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