The Sefless Hare

Origininal story of "The selfless hare"

The painting is based on a fable from "The Jakata tales", an Indian story collection that talks about the Buddha's previous incarnation.

In this story it explains the myth behind the Moon Rabbit. Once upon a time, in a forest deep in the mountains of India, the Bodhisattva was reborn as a hare. He had three friends, an otter, a monkey and a jackall, and these four friends lived together and each of them got his food from his own hunting ground.

 

One day, Sakra - The ruler of Heaven decided to pay a visit to Earth. He disguised as a lost and hungry beggar monk, as he wanted to test the virtue of the creatures living in the forest. Seeing the poor beggar monk, the four animals spread out looking for food to give him, hoping to earn some merits. The monkey climbed up the highest tree and brought back sweet, ripe mango. The otter dived into the Ganges and caught seven red fish. The cunning jackal found a lizard and stole a jar of curds from a nearby village. Alone the hare, whose food was a bunch of grass, had nothing else to offer to the monk but himself. He told the beggar monk to gather a pile of logs and dry grass, kindle a fire, then jump into the middle of the burning flame. He offered himself as food to the beggar.

 

The Sakra then revealed his true form as the ruler of Heaven. He was deeply moved by this selfless act of scarification and wanted to make known this virtue to the whole world for eternity. He saved the hare from the fire, and carved the shape of the hare onto the moon's surface. Until know, when we look up on the moon, we can see the shape of the selfless hare.

Inspiration:

When I came across this story about the Moon Rabbit, immediately I wanted to recreate the scene of the divine sacrifice: the fiery bonfire against the darkness of the night. The blazing flame is consuming the rabbit, tearing his flesh apart, yet the rabbit who chose to initiate the act of sacrificing himself show no remorse and with determination, he continues to dance in the flame hysterically, ready to face his ending, knowing that there is "No beginning, no end" where death and life is a continuum, and death is not just simply a transition into another realm of beings, but it can be an opportunity for liberation from the samsara - an endless cycle of life and death. In this story, the rabbit is considered a previous incarnation of the Buddha, so I thought that this attitude is aligned with the Buddhist teachings that will come after when the rabbit, in one life, reborn as the prince who will eventually became the Gautama Buddha.

On a more personal note, I decided to show the flesh and bone of the rabbit as a hint of the gruesome aspect of religion, when one is greatly obsessed with an idea and he lost his own humanity in the religious pursuit. We can see along our history the most gruesome killings are the one motivated by religion, and until know it is still happening in every corner in the world. Even though Buddhism endorse love and compassion and absolutely against harming others sentient beings, but we can see what is going on with the massacre against the Rohingya muslim in Myanmar. We have to be careful with our belief, our faith. Of course, this is just a tiny hint and I would like to leave it for interpretation rather than explaining this to the audience. 

To make this painting, I also took a great inspiration from the most beautiful flame of Japan (in my opnion): En'bu (1925) by Nihonga painter Hayami Gyoshu. What is so great of this painting is how alive the flame appears with such minimum color choice, and within the realism manner, we can see how Hayami Gyoshu painted the flame in a more decorative manner, like the flame in religious Tibetan painting. Of course, I did not copy the painting of Hayami Gyoshu, but rather study the way he executed the artwork in order to create an artwork that pay tribute to his mastery.