If you take this portrait of me to be real,
Then what am I, really?
But why hang it there,
If not to anticipate people getting to know me?
Looking at this portrait,
Can you say that what is hanging there
Is really me?
In that case your mind will never be
Fully united with the wall {as in Bodhdharma’s wall-gazing
meditation cave}.
~ Dogen
Accompanying a portrait of the master painted at Kōshōji Temple in the late 1230s. This portrait was used as an object of veneration by the assembly. From the Chinese poetry collection.