Sekong
色空
“Form and Emptiness”
His Story
Head of the Iron Threshold Temple, the Jia clan’s own burial temple outside the city, where the family’s coffins wait. When Qin Keqing’s funeral cortège leaves the mansion in Chapter 15, it is Sekong who has the temple made ready to receive her. He does no more than that in the novel. His name is the pair of words the Heart Sutra turns on — 色 form, 空 emptiness — carried by a man whose work is arrangements.
In Xiang Li's Hands
The only sheet in this group given real colour. He sits, shaved head, eyes lowered, a white robe under a patchwork kasaya of red and yellow blocks clasped at the shoulder with a ring. Hands folded low. Grey wash clouds behind. Calm and rich at once.
The Calligraphy
色空 — the dharma name alone, two small characters in the top corner, set against the seated bulk of him.
Connections
- Qin Keqing 秦可卿 — her coffin is the reason his temple enters the novel at all.
- Jia Zhen 贾珍 — orders the funeral on the scale that fills the Iron Threshold Temple.
- Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — rides out with the cortège to the temple in Chapter 15.
Others of the same kind · nun / monk / Taoist Miaoyu 妙玉 · Jingxu 净虚 · Zhishan 智善 · Zhineng 智能 · Zhitong 智通 · Yuanxin 圆信 · Da Liao 大了 · Qinxiang 沁香 · Hexian 鹤仙 · Ma Daopo 马道婆 · Zhang Daoshi 张道士 · Wang Yitie 王一贴
Dream of the Red Chamber
Xiang Li painted all 413 characters of the novel between 1975 and 1985, the first person to complete the entire cast. See the whole collection · Chinese Empresses
