Daruma (Bodhidharma), the founder of Zen Buddhism, is shown as so often in three-quarter view with his characteristically humorous yet stern expression, an earring dangling from his left ear, and a faint color wash suggesting his red robe.
Reading Nantenbō’s 14-character calligraphy from left to right, a common arrangement in Zen painting inscriptions, contrasts the Mushi mata mushū 無始又無終 (Without beginning and without end) eternity of the changeless Buddha mind with the distracting Sandoku (Three Poisons) of greed, ignorance, and hatred.

Signed at top right Hachijūichi-ō Nantenbō (Nantenbō, aged 81), with seals Nantenbō before the inscription and Hakugaikutsu and Tōjū after the signature.

Nakahara Nantenbō was, after Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1769), probably the most celebrated exponent of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism in the last 500 years; like his great predecessor he was both a radical reformer and an accomplished and prolific artist whose leadership laid the foundations for the later development of Zen into a global religious and philosophical movement. Born into a southern samurai clan in 1839, he lost his mother at the age of seven and four years later was sent to a Zen monastery where he received instruction in the Buddhist canon, as well as Chinese classics. At age 18, he traveled to the Enpukuji near Kyoto, a Zen temple notorious for its strict training regime. He first attained a degree of enlightenment there but it was only after another eight years of spiritual discipline under a variety of masters that he was recognized by Razan Genma as his full dharma heir at age 26.

Nantenbō (literally “Nandina Wood Stave”) was famous for a stave which he cut from an ancient tree in 1873, using it to discipline his students. The military and naval heroes Kodama Gentarō and Nogi Maresuke were among the many recipients of his muscular version of Rinzai Zen training. His subsequent career was characterized by unsparing self-discipline and a ceaseless battle against greed, complacency, and indiscipline in the great Rinzai institutions. In his later years, Nantenbō increasingly used painting and calligraphy as a means of expressing the Zen spirit that lies beyond words. As noted by Matthew Welch, “Nantenbo followed in the footsteps of other Zen masters, particularly of the Edo period..for whom Zen painting was a significant mode of expression. Their simple pictures were a convenient and vivid means of making abstruse Zen principles more accessible to lay people” (Matthew Welch, “Ushering Zen into the Twentieth Century: Nakahara Nantenbo,” in Audrey Yoshiko Seo with Stephen Addiss, The Art of Twentieth-Century Zen: Paintings and Calligraphy by Japanese Masters, Boston and London, Shambhala, 1998, pp. 17–34).