本
Symbols Spirit
nature of self
性
ㄅㄣˇ ㄒㄧㄥˋ běn xìng
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
What you fundamentally are underneath habit and circumstance. In Buddhism the same term means the buddha-nature already in you.
Before you commit
Choose with careNever use 性 alone. In modern Chinese it reads as sex before it reads as nature, and it is a common mistake on badly made tattoos.
Cultural note見性, seeing one's nature, is a core Chan phrase, usually paired with 成佛. This vocabulary is Buddhist and readers will hear that.
At small sizes本 is five strokes and 性 eight - both open and clean. The pair sits comfortably at small sizes.
Meaning
Original nature; the inborn character of a person.
The everyday word for what someone is really like before any training.
Other characters for “nature of self”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts