Five Hundred Arhats No.65 · The Venerable Who Contemplates the Body as Impermanent | Traditional Hand-Painted Chinese Ink Zen Buddhist Figure Painting | 100×50cm

Five Hundred Arhats · No.65 The Venerable Who Contemplates the Body as Impermanent

Contemplating the body as impermanent is the essence of the four foundations of mindfulness: to see this body arise and cease, change and finally dissolve, and through impermanence shed clinging and win liberation. The venerable looks down upon his own body with a calm expression, showing in that awareness clarity about the physical form and abiding in the unarising, unceasing nature.

Painted by Li Zongyi in the freehand Chinese ink (xieyi) tradition, the brushwork is fluent and the ink tones layered from dense to pale, capturing the arhat’s spirit in a few assured strokes. The blank paper itself breathes Zen; figure and spirit are one, blending monastic solemnity with the literati’s ease. Each of the Five Hundred Arhats bears its own name and practice, uniting faith, art and collectibility — an original, non-reproducible hand-painted work.

Size: approx. 100×50cm (4.5 square chi) | Traditional hand-painted Chinese ink Zen Buddhist figure painting | On paper