“Come in brightness, and I will smash that brightness! Come in darkness, and I will smash that darkness!— Brushed by the 76-year-old fellow, Lazy Ox.”

Fuke (Puhua, in Chinese) is a legendary figure who lived in ninth-century China. According to legend, the itinerant man wandered through villages, ringing his bell and screaming the quotation that Chingyū cites in this inscription. The phrase, which is often found on paintings of Zen staffs, famously concludes with: “Come with nothing, and I will smash that too!”

In this painting, Chingyū places Fuke atop clouds, signifying his ascent into heaven, a reference to another episode from the end of Fuke’s life, in which he had himself nailed inside a coffin to be buried, but his body miraculously vanished before he could be interred.

 

—Bradley Bailey