2-744-710 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Illustrated Miraculous Origins of the Yuzu Nenbutsu School (Yuzu Nenbutsu Engi Emaki), 1300s. This painting is the second of a pair of horizontal scrolls. The first scroll--in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago--depicts the biography of the Buddhist monk Ryonin. The scroll here begins with scenes of Ryonin’s death and tells of miracles ascribed to the following of his teachings. Ryonin asserted the total interconnectedness of all things, or yuzu. He preached that by the act of entering the name of anyone needing intercession in a registry, a flood of accumulated merit from all the registry’s participants could generate miraculous outcomes.