和顔愛語 wagan aigo A Gentle Face, Loving Words

和顔愛語 (wagan aigo): a gentle, smiling face and kind words.

Two Buddhist dictionaries define 和顔愛語 as a gentle, smiling face and kind words. The four characters say a gentle face, loving words. The Pure Land and Shin schools read them wagen aigo, and Zen teachers read them wagan aigo.

和顔愛語 is part of a line in the Sutra of Immeasurable Life. There a bodhisattva meets others with a gentle face and loving words, and anticipates their wishes. A commentary on the sutra from 1670 explains that last part with a mother. She attends to her infant before it has said anything.

A Buddhist dictionary says 和顔愛語 is now familiar as a school motto and on hanging scrolls. Books printed in the 1880s ask it of brothers, and of a son toward his parents. A talk printed in 1915 told post-office staff that with a gentle face and loving words no quarrel arises.

The four characters are the first half of a line in the Sutra of Immeasurable Life, the scripture of the Pure Land schools, traditionally dated to a translation into Chinese of 252, where the bodhisattva who became Amida meets every being, through ages of practice, with a gentle face and loving words and answers what they wish before they ask; the same four characters stand, in other practices, in the sixty-fascicle Flower Garland Sutra translated in 418–420.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 和顔愛語.

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Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase brushes your scroll by hand when you order it. Each scroll bears her red seal, 英利, and her signature.

The scrolls are 12 1/4" W × 43" H (31 × 109 cm) with real silk borders and Japanese paper that are layered so the scroll hangs straight and will not warp over time. The scrolls themselves are made by Sankō (株式会社三幸) in Gifu prefecture, which has been making high quality scrolls since 1947, and we have worked with Sankō for over two decades.

Eri Takase was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds the rank of Shihan, the highest rank in Japanese calligraphy, from the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo. About Master Takase