Shussan Shaka

rdf:langString Shussan Shaka

rdf:langString Wuzhun Shifan

rdf:langString Zhongfeng Mingben

rdf:langString Chijue Daochong

rdf:langString Songyuan Chongyo

rdf:langString He forcibly spoke of the six years as the time of completing his way.

rdf:langString With the beauty of a dragon and the air of a phoenix.

rdf:langString "I see that all living [creatures] are completed into Buddhas since some time.

rdf:langString After having a twinkling of revelation with impassioned eyes

rdf:langString Huanzhu Mingben salutes with respectfully folded hands.

rdf:langString At midnight he passed over the city wall

rdf:langString At midnight he saw the morning star.

rdf:langString Before his feet emerged from the mountains

rdf:langString Frosty cold over the snow,

rdf:langString He got loose from foolery and let go silliness.

rdf:langString If one calls him "You"

rdf:langString In the mountains his cold words had increased.

rdf:langString It still is not he.

rdf:langString Since entering the mountain, too dried out and emaciated

rdf:langString That is originally You.

rdf:langString The day he came out of the mountains [because] he

rdf:langString The venerable master Shijia comes.

rdf:langString These words were running through the world:

rdf:langString Why then do you want to come back to the world?

rdf:langString could no [longer] bear hunger and cold,

rdf:langString [But] the Honorable [Śākyamuni] was not aware of it.

rdf:langString Ha, ha, ha...! He glances over ten million miles of billows.

rdf:langString He who emerges from the mountains and has entered the mountains:

rdf:langString There is only You, old fellow, who is still lacking complete Enlightenment.

rdf:langString Shussan Shaka (Japanese: 出山釈迦 shussan shaka; Chinese: 出山釋迦 chūshān shìjiā; English: Śākyamuni Descending from the Mountain) is a subject in East Asian Buddhist art and poetry, in which Śākyamuni Buddha returns from six years of asceticism in the mountains, having realized that ascetic practice is not the path to enlightenment. The story of Shussan Shaka is an important subject in painting from both China and Japan, but rarely or never found in Buddhist art outside of East Asia, where a mountain retreat is not part of the story of this part of the Buddha's life. According to the story, Śākyamuni, after leaving his palace, retreated into the mountains to seek enlightenment. Accompanied by five other ascetics, he meditated and fasted to a severe extent, his body becoming thin and emaciated. After six years, Sujata, a young girl, gave Śākyamuni a quantity of milk rice, which he ate. Once he made this decision to end his fast, the five people practicing asceticism with him were disappointed and left him. So, a solitary Śākyamuni descended the mountain, left the life of extreme austerity behind him, and traveled instead to Gaya, the city that would become known as the famous site of his enlightenment under the bodhi tree. As a subject in art, Shussan Shaka is distinctive in its emphasis on the humanity of the historical Buddha, who in this and some other East Asian subjects is often given a beard, and a realistic, rather thin and dishevelled appearance, in contrast to traditional depictions of the Buddha in art. Key interpretive debates about paintings on this theme pivot on the question of whether the artist portrays Śākyamuni as enlightened or not.