Step Into the Void

Hello my dear Toads.  Are you all ready to take a journey?  I hope so.  In Japan there are different aesthetics that guide their daily lives, their culture. “Enso” means “circle”; it symbolizes the Void, or also elegance, the Absolute.  Zen Buddhists believe that only that a person who is mentally and spiritually complete can draw a true enso.  It is easy to draw small ones but much harder to draw a larger one.  Sometimes calligraphy or conventional artists will draw an enso daily as a spiritual exercise.

Drawing the enso should be drawn in just a couple of breaths - inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.  The enso represents the finiteness of our lives; but it also being a circle, represents the infinity of our lives.  The center of the circle is empty yet, it is also full.  Full of possibilities, of joy, sorrow, life, death,  the blackness of night, the light of the stars and the moon.  Our life compared to trees is very short - our lives compared to a butterfly is very long.  You will notice the circle is drawn clockwise - in the natural flow of life, or flow of water.

But the inside of the circle, the Void is where we are going.  We are going to step inside the circle.  This space, the void, is known as “ma”.  There are one dimensional, two dimensional, three dimensional, four dimensional spaces and more.

- One-Dimensional Realm 梁間 (hari-ma) One Beam span  Flat space, one dimensional, no depth of field.

- The Two Dimensional Realm  六畳の間 (roku jo no ma) Six-tatami room (literally: six tatami area. Tatami are woven straw mats often used for sleeping) In Japanese house space is often measured using the length and width of tatami mats - The Three-Dimensional Realm 空間 (ku-kan) Space (literally: empty place). 

There are many more spaces in the Japanese void.  The ones I am most concerned with in this prompt are the first three.  You can write a poem about the one dimensional space or one beam span or, the light of the full moon. Often the light from the full moon gives the landscape a flat, one dimensional look.  Any space that is empty, a true void.  Write an imaginative piece about a trip to the moon or the moon in the black sky.  Or a one sided argument or love affair, unrequited love. Or even yourself when you have experienced a deep loss.

Or you can write about the two dimensional space.  Basically, your house or a house that means a great deal to you or, a home that inspired fear.  There are many thoughts to this two dimensional plane.  A home full of memories that are good is a lovely thing.  A home that inspires fear is loathsome.  But you can choose which one you prefer.  A library, a hospital, a school – all of these are also two dimensional spaces. Or it can also be a marriage or a happy relationship. An experience with depth.

There is also the three dimensional space:  The empty space.  This can be a desert, the oceans, or outer space.  Write about camping in the woods or sitting by the ocean, alone or, taking a trip in outer space or about the sun, moon, stars, planets.Let your imagination occupy one or more of these spaces. Be sure to identify the space you are writing about.  You do not have to use the Japanese kanji for the spaces.  Just let us know what you are writing about.  

Read the poems of others and enjoy.  Post the poem you want read below on our beloved Mr. Linky.Let your poem be brief as an enso or let it be long.  The choice is yours.