On Six Persimmons by Master Muqi Fachang
- Yen Nguyen
- Nov 30, 2025
- 5 min read
Minh-Hoang Nguyen
HCM, 29-11-2025
Six Persimmons is a painting created by Master Muqi Fachang (牧谿 法常), a Chinese Chan Buddhist monk and artist, in the 13th century. Although the painting was not particularly well-known in China at the time it was created, once it was brought to Japan, it came to be regarded as a national treasure there.
It is not easy to deeply understand the meaning of this painting. One can search far and wide and still find no proper explanation—if any exist, they tend to be inadequate. And should someone of profound insight comprehend it, their understanding would likely follow the Daoist manner: once understood, one sees no need to explain it. Today, during a discussion, I had the fortune of hearing my teacher share his reflections on Six Persimmons, inspired by GITT–VT Bitcoin analysis [1].
Upon attaining that insight, my teacher also felt no need to speak further, so with humility I record here a small fragment of what I could grasp—because I sense that in these chaotic times, such understanding may carry great meaning.
It can be said that this painting reflects the monistic nature of the Dao. Thus, it does not merely mirror the philosophies and principles of Laozi [2], Zhuangzi [3], or “the old” Kingfisher [4], but it also sheds light upon modern societal phenomena—such as the value of Bitcoin. Even when interpreted through mathematical reasoning, the interpretation remains valid.
The main ideas are as follows:
First, and most immediately, the painting shows six persimmons.
Why persimmons? Because they are a fruit without inherent symbolic meaning. Culturally, they may be considered “mundane” or “ordinary.” Economically, they are also of little value, since they grow abundantly in China. Daoism holds the principle of “no distinction between noble and base”, so the ordinary and the extraordinary are one.
Can something as mundane as a persimmon speak of Heaven and Earth?
Yes—it may even do so more profoundly. This alone is wondrous.
Why six persimmons and not another number?
Although 6 has no intrinsic significance, it is 5 + 1. Five may represent the Daoist theory of the five elements. Then, is it 5 or 6? In reality, 6 is 5, because the first or the last persimmon is simply the one.
The two persimmons at the beginning and end are drawn simply and hollow. Hollowness is 0. 0 is nothingness. Both the beginning and the end are 0. Its existence is its non-existence—birth is decay. It arises from 0 and returns to 0. The first 0 is round and beautiful; the final 0 is distorted by decay.
That the first and last zero do not appear the same is because of the four fruits in between. These four represent the process of going through the worldly realm. The number four also embodies the Buddhist stages of life: birth, aging, sickness, and death. Experiencing worldly suffering, the final 0 is warped by lingering attachments. Master Muqi was a Chan Buddhist painter and a progenitor of Japanese Zen.
But why would a Chan Buddhist monk depict a Daoist philosophy?
This reflects the “unity of the three teachings” (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism). This phenomenon has been previously analyzed through the mechanism of cultural additivity [5].
Where, then, is Confucianism?
In the painting, the fourth persimmon is large and dark, representing the point of culmination. Where does it arise from?
It appears after a stumble, reflected in the third persimmon. A contemporary analogy may be the crash in Bitcoin prices—its value shaped by the desires of the masses. Why?
From that stumble, it grows through error into mature. This is where Confucianism emerges. The fourth, intensely dark persimmon reflects peak growth driven by greed—powerful in appearance, full of ambition and dualistic thinking (good–evil, right–wrong, noble–base...).
For example, there was global uproar over someone discarding a hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet into a landfill, then desperately searching for it, even offering $70 million for the right to dig through the garbage. Absurd, yet real—where greed transforms 0 into 1[6].
Mathematically, let the landfill contain elements . For to belong to , it must satisfy the universal set property : it is trash. What belongs to trash must be trash. Can the Bitcoin hard drive satisfy the negation of ? No—if it did, it would not exist within . And if it does not exist, it cannot be found. The answer is: there was no hard drive or Bitcoin at all. What exists here is the distortion caused by greed.
Many believe in the story because the information resonates and stimulates their greed.
However, the fourth persimmon is also a predictor of decline. Why? Because having risen high with pride, it cannot escape the deterioration of the next stage, shown in the fading intensity of the fifth persimmon.
Across the composition, on a vast sheet of paper, aside from the six persimmons, there is nothing else. This expresses infinite emptiness, like the universe—fundamentally void.
When the final fruit returns to 0, where does it head to?
Toward nothingness—nowhere.
When viewing the painting, why must one look from left to right?
Because it follows the Way (Dao). Left to right aligns with the natural order—like the sun rising in the East and setting in the West, like the sweep of a clock’s hands. Even in cognition, one recognizes the wrong to know the right, from not-knowing to knowing.
Although there is directional movement, left–right or wrong–right are both 0. Zhuangzi stated this clearly: indistinguishability of right and wrong.
Master Muqi Fachang must have attained enlightenment. The six persimmons of Six Persimmons reflect the functioning of the universe, society, nation, humanity, and beyond. The Dao is not a specific realm—it is the mechanism governing Heaven, Earth, and the cosmos. To fully articulate all meanings would require a book of 10,000 pages, only to create further entanglement without guaranteeing understanding—perhaps even leading to misunderstanding due to dualistic thinking. Is this not the very caution Laozi gave at the opening of the Tao Te Ching?
“The dao that can be told
is not the eternal Dao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.”
Perhaps that is why those who truly understand the painting write nothing at all—so that 0 remains whole with the Dao.
_____
(*)Note: This discussion was enriched by contributions from Prof. Vuong Quan Hoang and inspired contemplation for the upcoming Kingfisherish Wandering’s stories [7].
References
[1] Vuong QH, La VP, Nguyen MH. (2025). Bayesian probabilistic exploration of Bitcoin informational quanta and interactions under the GITT-VT paradigm. arXiv, arXiv:2511.17646. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.17646
[2] Laozi. (1868). Tao Te Ching.
[3] Zhuang Zhou. (1964). Zhuangzi.
[4] Vuong QH. (2024). Wild Wise Weird. https://books.google.com/books?&id=rq82EQAAQBAJ
[5] Vuong QH. (2018). Cultural additivity: behavioural insights from the interaction of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in folktales. Palgrave Communications, 4, 143. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0189-2
[6] Ronald I. (2025, Feb. 14). Man who lost $800 million bitcoin in landfill wants to buy the garbage dump. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/14/uk/james-howells-landfill-bitcoin-gbr-intl-scli
[7] Nguyen MH. (2025). Kingfisherish Wandering. http://books.google.com/books/about?id=0WGOEQAAQBAJ
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