In the spring of 2017, Kobori Geppo, the abbot of Daitokuji Ryokoin, a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, traveled to San Francisco for a conference. During the trip, he and his followers paid a visit to the city’s Asian Art Museum, which at the time was preparing two different exhibits on Buddhist art: “Flower Power,” about the symbolism of plants in contemporary paintings, sculptures, and pop art; and “A Billion Buddhas,” about the portrayal of the Buddha in Tibetan culture. 

Charmed by the museum’s warm welcome, the abbot made its curators an offer they could have neither foreseen nor refused. Back in Japan, inside the heavily guarded storage facility of the Kyoto National Museum, Daitokuji Temple kept a painting by the legendary Chinese artist and monk Mu Qi. Known as Six Persimmons, this abstract still life of autumn fruit had long been regarded as the Mona Lisa of Zen Buddhism, its enlightened composition pointing observers in the direction of nirvana. Made during the 13th century, it was famous for its beauty as well as its inaccessibility, having never been displayed outside of Japan, until now.

“The abbot chose us,” Laura Allen, the Asian Art Museum’s chief curator of Japanese art, clarifies over Zoom. “We are very honored that he thought of us as the right venue,” adds assistant curator Yuki Morishima, who together with Allen turned Daitokuji’s proposal into an exhibit titled “The Heart of Zen.” Running from November 17, 2023 until December 31, it will first show Six Persimmons, followed by another, slightly less iconic but equally hypnotizing still life Chestnuts. In addition to outlining Mu Qi’s global reception, the once-in-a-lifetime exhibit will answer an initially bewildering question: whether his paintings are truly the spiritual masterpieces we think they are. 

Mu Qi—also spelled Muqi or Muxi, and sometimes called Fachang—was a Chan Buddhist monk who lived during the final days of the Southern Song dynasty. Largely ignored by his home country—one Chinese text from 1365 refers to his work as “coarse, ugly, and lacking in ancient techniques”—his unconventionally atmospheric brushwork and preference for seemingly mundane subjects acquired a devoted following in Japan, where they would influence painting for centuries to come. 

Mu Qi’s rise in popularity is understandable, as even today his deceptively simplistic paintings possess a calming aura that cannot be easily replicated. In the case of Persimmons, this effect derives from the image’s seemingly spontaneous but actually quite meticulous construction. Foregoing the realistic detail that defines many a Western still life, the monk allows his fruits to float inside an empty space. By creating contrast between size and color, he further manages to produce a composition that is diverse yet unified, energetic but balanced.

The longer you stare at the painting, the more its design appears to illustrate concepts central to Zen Buddhism, including groundlessness. Persimmons are a powerful metaphor for human mortality. Harvested during the fall—a season of death and dying—the bittersweet-tasting fruit (described as a combination of mango, cinnamon, and roasted pepper) ripens just before it begins to rot, and can be dried and preserved to make candy. 

Rendering the fruits’ exteriors with single, circular strokes, Mu Qi evidently wanted to evoke the ensō, a Buddhist symbol of strength, connectedness, letting go of expectations, and embracing imperfection in yourself and others. Read from left to right and right to left, the arrangement of the persimmons also seems to suggest the cycle of life, with small, white fruits giving way to bigger, darker ones. As Chinese art historian Friedrich Zettl observes in his blog: 

“We enter the world with nothing as if coming from the light. In our early years, we are innocent and inexperienced (persimmon #2 from left), but full of vitality. During adolescence, we start at the very bottom (#3), looking up to our superiors. It’s worth noting that the perspective of #3 is from above, emphasizing our inferiority. We reach the zenith of our life and work (#4) and become superiors ourselves. From then on, it’s a downhill journey until we leave this life with nothing.”

Zettl goes on to note that Mu Qi chose a subject that had not yet been depicted in Chinese painting. Free of the cultural connotations that tied down paintings of bamboo and blossoms, Six Persimmons could not be scrutinized for hidden meaning, observed only for what it was. 

And yet, when approached from a Buddhist perspective, even this explicit lack of symbolism becomes, in a way, highly symbolic. Just as Zen Buddhists favor meditation over the study of scripture and sutra, so does Mu Qi’s still life depict an object without imposing a narrative. 

The still life also evokes what Zen practitioners refer to as nonconceptual understanding. “Contrast Muqi’s Persimmons with Song paintings that make literary, poetic, historic references,” another Chinese art historian, the late James Cahill, once explained in a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley. “In Zen, viewer and viewed do not stand apart, but occupy a continuum. Chan artists cut though the overlays of style and literary references to present direct, unmediated image without intrusion of styles.”

For a long time, Cahill’s interpretation of the painting—as an unrivaled illustration of Zen teachings—reigned supreme, so much so that, to this day, many of its admirers are shocked to learn about its original reception in feudal Japan. Although certainly revered, none of this reverence was directed toward its spiritual subtext. Rather, Persimmons was appreciated for its aesthetic and aesthetic alone. Its first Japanese owners, the well-to-do Tsuda family, used it as a decoration for their tea ceremonies, held in a period when the beverage started to be accompanied by fruits and nuts. Seldom looked at directly, the still life remained in the background, contributing to the mood instead of the conversation. 

Persimmons arrived in Japan when Zen Buddhism was still restricted to monasteries, exerting little influence on wider Japanese culture. The painting became associated with Zen only once its audience had become acquainted with the movement as well. In a 2021 study published in the Korean Journal of Art History, art historian Heeyeun Kang of Seoul National University argues that the Japanese upper class began to promote Persimmons as the poster child of Zen Buddhism as part of a larger project to “emphasize Zen as their [national] identity.”

When Zen started catching on in the West, too, critic Okakura Tenshin proclaimed that Zen culture, forgotten in its native China, had become inextricably Japanese in character. Fellow critic Aimi Kōu used Okakura’s sentiment to essentially rewrite their country’s cultural history, starting with a fateful reconsideration of Six Persimmons. “Only the artist with a thorough experience of Zen could have achieved such sureness of effect with such apparently simple means,” echoed Yasuichi Awakawa’s decisively titled book Zen Painting, published in 1970. In Persimmons, the philosopher Hisamatsu Shin’ichi asserted, the true Buddha appeared as the “Formless Self,” awakened to existence’s inherent emptiness. 

By the early 1900s, Mu Qi’s painting had become such an unequivocal emblem of Japan that the government declared it an “Important Cultural Property” despite its foreign origin.  

Japan’s Zen-centered reappraisal of Persimmons was blindly accepted by Western scholars like Cahill, who himself was one of the most prominent sinologists of his time. Beating him to it, though, was the equally influential orientalist, Arthur Waley, whose 1922 essay “Zen Buddhism, and Its Relationship to the Arts” described the still life as “passion (…) congealed into a stupendous calm.” Providing contested support through the writings of a 12th-century monk named Dogen, Swiss translator Helmut Brinker later referred to Mu Qi’s fruits as “ciphers of transcendence.” 

Studying Japan’s treatment of Mu Qi not only prevents us from drawing erroneous conclusions from his work but also helps us better understand the role of art in Zen. In reality, notes one of the didactic texts at the “Heart of Zen” exhibit, paintings like Persimmons “live side by side at Zen temples with myriad visual objects: colorful priest portraits, traditional Buddhist icons, incense burners, tea wares, and ecclesiastical robes among them. Encountering them together, we can honor the heterogeneous nature of monastic experience, as well as the multiple lives and reception of objects over time.”

But even though Six Persimmons wasn’t initially received as a Buddhist masterpiece, that doesn’t mean it cannot resonate with the viewer’s own spiritual journey. Having seen the painting only in the form of reproductions, Morishima, the assistant curator of “Heart of Zen,” readily recalls her excitement when coming face-to-face with the real deal. Staring at the paths of individual brushstrokes, unbroken and confident, and sensing the weight of the empty space around the fruits, one simply cannot help but feel a certain calm. Maybe it’s a placebo effect, brought on by the painting’s inescapable reputation. Maybe it’s real and authentic, and, as such, one the reasons the Tsuda family kept it around for so long. 

The post The Untold History of ‘Everybody’s Favorite Zen Painting’ appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Even if you have not read Journey to the West, a 16th-century Chinese novel attributed to the Ming dynasty poet and politician Wu Cheng’en, you have probably heard of one of its main characters: Sun Wukong. Wukong, better known in English-speaking countries as the Monkey King, or simply Monkey, is an ambitious and mischievous warrior whose unending quest for power and wisdom leads him to challenge just about every demon and deity in the Chinese pantheon. After being defeated by the Buddha, who dares him to jump out of the palm of his hand, Wukong spends 500 years imprisoned under a mountain topped by an unbreakable seal. His freedom arrives in the form of a traveling monk named Xuanzang, who promises to remove the seal if the prisoner agrees to become his peace-loving disciple and come on a long and perilous journey to India to retrieve a set of Buddhist scriptures.

The reasons for Wukong’s enduring popularity are as numerous as they are difficult to explain. As a character, he is simple yet complex, easy to appreciate but tough to analyze. A charismatic trickster in the image of Loki or John Milton’s Lucifer, his archetype is familiar to readers from all walks of life, and his active and impulsive temperament stands out favorably next to that of the calm and collected Xuanzang. True to his species, he is also fond of pranks, at one point tricking three Taoist priests into drinking his urine after mistaking it for “holy water.” Wukong’s untrained mind—his reckless behavior, emotional volatility, and childish sense of humor—contrasts with his unparalleled skill as a martial artist, a compelling duality that can also be found in many modern fictional heroes, from best-selling manga One Piece’s Monkey D. Luffy and Dragon Ball’s Son Goku to award-winning animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Aang.

But just as Wukong’s magnetic personality has historically overshadowed the other characters of Journey to the West (also embarking on the journey are Pigsy, a gluttonous pig demon, and Sandy, a complacent water demon), so too can the novel’s swashbuckling plot—which largely consists of Wukong saving Xuanzang and the other disciples from various monsters-of-the-week—distract from its spiritual subtext. This subtext is so buried that the Chinese diplomat and literary scholar Hu Shih (1891–1962), a leading interpreter of Journey to the West during the 20th century, argued the novel should be accepted for what it appears to be on the surface: an entertaining story without a deeper meaning. C. T. Hsia (1921–2013), a historian and literary theorist, disagreed, writing that Wukong and Xuanzang’s misadventures through China reveal an “unreconciled tension” between its three principal schools of thought: Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.

According to Hsia, Journey to the West embraces intellectual and religious pluralism, imploring its readers to accept “life in all its glory and squalor.” Of the three schools, Buddhism plays the most significant role in the story. It is the Buddha who manages to stop Wukong’s rampage against the gods, the bodhisattva Guanyin who guides him and Xuanzang on the road to India, and the Buddhists who tend to suffer under the corrupted rule of the other religions. Upon closer inspection, their entire pilgrimage appears to function as an allegory for the winding path toward enlightenment, explaining and illustrating key Buddhist concepts like karma, compassion, and emptiness. This makes the novel a particularly engaging read for anyone who is interested in Buddhism but feels intimidated by its notoriously esoteric canon.

In essence, Journey to the West is an allegory for how to gain wisdom to perceive truths about reality. Xuanzang, described by one scholar as a “well-meaning practitioner whose obsession with the outward forms of piety hinders him from true perception,” proves to be a terribly slow learner. Throughout the novel, he routinely places his trust in demons that take on the appearance of adorable animals, abandoned children, and kindly grandmas, despite repeated warnings from Wukong, who instantly sees through their disguises. One particularly striking example of Xuanzang’s ignorance happens in chapter fourteen, where he lashes out at the Monkey King for killing a group of robbers who stopped them in their tracks. “How can you be a monk when you take life without cause?” Xuanzang asks, oblivious to the dramatic irony embedded in his question. Not only are readers supposed to think that Wukong did have a cause—self-defense—but they may also notice that the robbers seem to represent touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste: the very senses clouding Xuanzang’s judgment.

Although Wukong is Xuanzang’s student, he tends to act like the teacher. His name, which he received from a Taoist priest after completing his training and gaining immortality (as well as the ability to transform into seventy-two different creatures and objects), literally means “monkey awakened to the void,” a quality he demonstrates through his frequently insightful dialogue. “Seek not afar for Buddha on Spirit Mount,” he lectures Xuanzang, “Mount Spirit lives only in your mind. Maintain your vigilance with the utmost sincerity, and Thunderclap will be right before your eyes. But when you afflict yourself like that with fears and troubled thoughts, then the Great Way and, indeed, Thunderclap seem far away.”

Thunderclap is the monastery where Xuanzang must collect the holy scriptures, a place that ends up taking him more than seventeen years to reach. That’s a long time, especially when considering that Wukong—in addition to all his other superhuman feats—is capable of riding on top of a cloud and traversing 54,000 kilometers in a single somersault. Readers often wonder why the Monkey King doesn’t put Xuanzang on his back and jump over all the trials and tribulations slowing them down. When one of his fellow disciples, Pigsy, asks him that same question, Wukong responds that “it is required of Master to go through all these strange territories before he finds deliverance from the sea of sorrows; hence even one step turns out to be difficult. You and I are only his protective companions, guarding his body and life, but we cannot exempt him from these woes, nor can we obtain the scriptures all by ourselves.”

In other words, Wukong is telling Pigsy that the journey is the destination—an adage that, though reduced to a cliché at present, would have still sounded fresh in the 16th century. Its meaning turns literal when, later in the story, the pilgrims discover that some of the demons blocking their path were sent there by none other than Guanyin. “What a rogue is this Bodhisattva!” Wukong shouts, after somersaulting back and forth to confront her. “She even promised that she herself would come to rescue us when we encounter grave difficulties, but instead, she sent monster-spirits here to harass us. The way she double-talks, she deserves to be a spinster for the rest of her life.” Despite his frustration, he understands her motivations: the demons aren’t preventing them from completing their pilgrimage; they are an indispensable part of the pilgrimage itself. 

All this symbolism comes full circle on the steps of Thunderclap, where the pilgrims discover—to Xuanzang’s dismay as well as the reader’s—that the scriptures they came all this way for do not contain a single word; they are completely blank. 

The sinologist Andrew H. Plaks, subscribing to Shih’s proposition that Journey to the West is a surface-level narrative devoid of deeper meaning, regards the empty texts as a final joke played on the overly analytical reader, suggesting that “the illusion of progress may itself be the greatest impediment to its ultimate attainment.” Francisca Cho Bantly, a professor of Buddhist Studies at Georgetown University, begs to differ, interpreting the novel’s conclusion as a profound statement on the attainment of nirvana. In an article titled “Buddhist Allegory in the Journey to the West,” she writes that “enlightenment does not exist beyond the self and thus cannot be an object of attainment.”

Journey to the West maintains that personal transformation and self-improvement are best achieved through active involvement in the world, rather than through meditation, asceticism, and isolation. Where Xuanzang acts as an ambassador of the latter enclave, Wukong thoroughly embodies the former. Receiving the title of Victorious Fighting Buddha and ascending to Buddhahood upon completing the pilgrimage, Wukong demonstrates that you don’t need to be an apathetic sage to cultivate your spirituality, nor renounce your own identity in order to live in perfect harmony with the rest of the universe. For all its crude humor and explosive battles, Journey to the West leaves its readers with a characteristically unpretentious yet surprisingly wise message: if a monkey can do it, so can you. 

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