Calligraphy: No Thing (Nothing) (Buji)

This monk-scholar and reformer, also known as Venerable Jiun, is often considered one of the most powerful Zen calligraphers in the Edo period (1610–1868). Like other Zen master calligraphers, Jiun Onkō stressed in his own highly distorted calligraphy the discovery of truth outside and beyond the established orthodox paths.

Using a favorite implement—a course brush made of split bamboo—he wrote quickly and vigorously in bold, heavily inked strokes. Jiun’s rustic brush and the speed of his writing have produced a good deal of “flying white,” where the paper shows through the gaps and spaces of the broken brushstrokes, a feature often seen in Jiun’s writings.

Here, the first of two characteristically rough, frayed, and intentionally inelegant Chinese characters (at right) spells “No Thing”, which may also be constructed, in typical Zen-like elusiveness, as “Nothing” or “Nothingness, while the following one (at left) states “Thing”. The phrase expresses one of the fundamental philosophical concepts of Zen tradition: the illusory nature of dualist views of the world.