Blank Scrolls: Emptiness in East Asian Art & Philosophy
The year is 2008. All around, bus stops and billboards blare the orange-red banner of the latest animated film: an anthropomorphised, head-kicking black-and-white giant above the words Kung Fu Panda. You are seven, or eleven or twelve, or perhaps even older; but regardless, the film is a hit. It is praised for its “mature themes, faithfulness to the Chinese environment and tradition, action sequences, and writing”, à la Wikipedia. The plot is upbeat, the characters heart-warmingly funny.
For those who can understand them, the names are a humorous nod to the Chinese inspiration behind the film: ‘shifu’ translates to ‘master’, while Oogway means turtle. Despite the unmistakably American nature of the film in humour and script, Kung Fu Panda has seeds of Chinese influence beyond its comic appellations and evidently Chinese aesthetic.
Such influence becomes apparent at the climax of the film. For those who have forgotten the finer details of the plot, a brief recapitulation of the scene in question: after completing his training with Shifu, Po returns to the Valley of Peace in order to confront Tai Lung, who has broken out of prison in order to take the Dragon Scroll by force and thereby become the eponymous Dragon Warrior. An intense battle between our hero and his rival ensues. Po manages to secure the scroll - only to find that it is blank. Both the heinous Tai Lung and our fluffy protagonist are in shock, convinced that some mistake has been made. And yet no, there has been no such error: what they hold between their paws is the true Dragon Scroll. The snow leopard is baffled and outraged, but Po, staring at the glossy blankness of the scroll, has a revelation. To quote from his adopted father, “There is no secret ingredient… it’s just you.” It is here that a parallel might be found between this modern blockbuster and a canonical Chinese classic, Journey to the West.
The latter dates from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 ), and its influence on Chinese culture is hard to overstate. Numerous live action and animation adaptations of the tale have been made, and most recently a new English translation by Julia Lovell (a graduate of the Asian and Middle Eastern Faculty of the University) was released in 2021. Journey to the West describes the pilgrimage of the Chinese monk Xuanzang, sometimes referred to as Tripitaka, and a band of companions to India in order to bring Buddhist texts back to China. The company, composed of a devout Buddhist monk, a horse, two kinds of spirit-animal and the infamous Monkey King, face a total of 98 challenges before they reach their final destination. Upon their arrival they receive scriptures from the Buddha and his disciples, which transpire to be as blank and wordless as the Dragon Scroll. Unlike Po, however, Xuanzang and his companions fail to understand the significance of the empty scriptures, and instead demand written texts. These they bring back with them, thereby achieving the monk’s initial aim. Yet before they leave, the bodhisattvas inform them that the blank scriptures are in fact the true ones:
“The blank texts are true, wordless scriptures, and they really are good. But as you living beings in the east are so deluded and have not achieved enlightenment we’ll have to give you these ones instead.”
While this parallel between two seemingly opposed spheres of culture at first seems absurd, both Kung Fu Panda and Journey to the West share a recognition of the value of space and emptiness. Admittedly, the emphasis in Kung Fu Panda is not so much on the emptiness of the scroll as its capacity for reflection, thereby revealing how the ‘secret’ is none other than oneself. Yet is this not itself an expression, albeit simplified, of the importance of emptiness in achieving clarity - or even enlightenment? The blankness of the scroll allows for Po’s image to be reflected, and one might apply this - as ludicrous as it may seem - to everyday life. Moments of emptiness allow us to understand ourselves better: they provide us with an opportunity for self-reflection. (In the case of Kung Fu Panda, this is literal; but really, it is rather a clever rendering of what can be an obscure and inaccessible message.)
A more obvious mark of the importance afforded to emptiness in East Asian thought can be seen in traditional Chinese and art. Classical Chinese paintings are often characterised by the relative abundance of empty space in their compositions. Instead of the intensity of European oil paintings, where the underlying canvas or medium never shows unless a work is unfinished, East Asian paintings often leave large swathes of paper or silk untouched.
In an aesthetic sense, such space serves many a purpose. Emptiness is not passive; rather, it plays an active role in engaging the viewer’s eye and mind. The prevalence of space in such works invites the onlooker to ‘complete’ the painting of their own accord. Theirs is a delicate beauty conveyed in precise articulations of line and mere suggestions of form: tone and shadow are kept to a bare minimum, and when present are applied with the utmost attention.
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (1348-1350) by Huang Gongwang (left section) [Source: Wiki]
Works such as Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (1348-1350) by the Chinese painter Huang Gongwang, with their subtlety and delicate balance, demonstrate a mastery of composition in their use of emptiness. Such paintings could not be more different from their 14th century European counterparts, which instead are crowded and cluttered with religious imagery.
In Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, the horizon is merely suggested by the watery outline of a few low-lying mountains; neither the sky nor the land nor the sea are clearly demarcated, a decision that serves to create a sense of vastness and boundlessness greater than any of which might have been achieved through the use of outline and shading. Negative space - the space around and between objects - thus functions as a technique to enhance the forms which are defined.
Adoration of the Magi (1423) by Gentile da Fabriano [Source: Wiki]
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (1348-1350) by Huang Gongwang (right section) [Source: Wiki]
Such aesthetic differences reflect those of philosophy. An oft quoted epithet by Laozi, celebrated as the founder of Daoism and thought to have lived around 571 BC, is suggestive of the prevalence and deep-rooted recognition of the importance of space:
We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the centre hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use.
Here, emptiness does not constitute lack, as it might do in a Western context; instead, it is recognised as crucial to the formation of a whole, and integral to an object’s function. To many, suggesting that a pot is only a pot because of the space within it seems like a redundant, if not obvious, observation. Indeed, amongst the proliferating distractions of our modern lives, such ideals seem nigh impossible to achieve: mindfulness and meditation are all very well in theory, but the practising of them is a different matter. And this is not exclusive to the elusive concept of “the West”; the metropolises of East Asia are notoriously frenzied. At rush hour on the Seoul Underground, or in the streets of Beijing, it is almost impossible to spot anyone not on their phone. In cities around the world, busyness is somehow both symptomatic of and synonymous with modernity. As citizens of the modern world, and particularly for those who live in the city, emptiness seems to have no place in our lives. The mere idea of it is uncomfortable to many, myself included. Whether it be an absence of music, some visual distraction or a task with which to engage, space in any guise often leaves us feeling unsettled. Perhaps this is inevitable, given the fast-paced nature of modern lives. Omnipresent advertisements feed us the notion that a life replete with the material is the route to fulfilment, ‘grind’ culture and unrealistic conceptions of productivity shame us into believing that taking time off is detrimental to our long-term aims.
And yet if we look towards traditional East Asian painting and philosophy, the significance and value of emptiness becomes a little clearer. Drawing from art, we can see that negative space allows one to appreciate existing forms and apply their own imagination and perspective. Blank scrolls in Kung Fu Panda demonstrate that emptiness facilitates self-reflection, and Journey to the West hints that this might be the key to enlightenment. By its very lack of content, emptiness is symbolic of potential: it is pregnant with possibility, not only on a visible, 2D plane, but in our day-to-day lives as well. When not occupied with anything else, our minds can wander, and it is in these moments of emptiness that there might be born an idea or an inkling of epiphany, which may transpire, in some way or another, to contribute to the busier parts of our lives.
