Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Shakyamuni Emerging from the Mountains
1244
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Painting: 70.7 x 30.3 cm (27 13/16 x 11 15/16 in.); Overall with knobs: 166.4 x 49.9 cm (65 1/2 x 19 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- China, Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Shakyamuni emerged from the mountains after years of ascetic practices, which anticipated his sermon in Deer Park and attainment of enlightenment under the bodhi tree. However, this figure of Shakyamuni can be interpreted as having already achieved enlightenment and reentered the earthly world to spread the dharma (Buddhist law). Chijue Daoching’s inscription mentions his indifferent glance at the morning star, suggesting nonattachment:
Entering the mountains he was much too thin and withered. The snow is overlaid with frost—it is cold. Casting an indifferent glance, he saw a [morning] star. Why should he once again emerge among the world of men.
