Chinese Poem to Celebrate a Senior Monks Sixtieth Birthday late 17th-early 18th century Duzhan Xingying (Japanese: Dokutan Sh?kei) ???? The ?baku Zen monk Duzhan Xingying, better known as Dokutan Sh?kei in Japan, has brushed two long and one short columns of bold, Ming-style cursive calligraphy to transcribe a Chinese poem composed in eight lines, five syllables each. Balanced on the left is a half-column of characters, of the same size and style, comprising the calligraphers signature. The verse was composed on the occasion of another (unnamed) monks sixtieth birthday—no doubt someone senior to Duzhan in the monastic ranks—and eulogizes the subject using natural metaphors such as the clear moonlight (a symbol of Buddhist wisdom) and the vocabulary of the transmission of the Dharma (Buddhist Law). Though brushed with unrelenting energy, each character remains in its own self-contained orbit of energy, with only seven pairs of characters connected by a brushstroke; nowhere are more t