Engaging our Circle of Presencing Emptiness
In Zen culture that developed in Japan the use of the Enso in art and
calligraphy is pervasive, where the Enso circle is the most popular of
calligraphies. The historical roots go back to India, where the initial concept
of zero was represented by the bindu or dot, the intrinsic spirit-life seed within all
reality. This later evolved into the circle or Sunya and then to the Buddhist
paradoxical idea of Emptiness or Sunyata - the ‘empty’ (sunya) that is completely ‘full’
(ta). The prajna paramita/ heart sutra describes this paradoxical view:
Form is emptiness (sunyata), emptiness is form;
Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form;
That which is form is emptiness, and that which is emptiness is form.
The same is true for all the skandas: form, feeling, thought, volition, discernment
The 6th century Hsin Hsin Ming authored by the 3rd Great Ch’an/Zen Ancestor, Seng T’san,
would use the image of ‘round and perfect’ equating to ‘great space’ in speaking of the ultimate
completion:
Round and perfect like great space.
Nothing lacking, nothing in excess
In the European West, the 15th century philosopher and mystic, Nicholas de Cusa
writes of:
“…the likening of an infinite circle to oneness.”
And that:
“God is an infinite circle…an infinite sphere.” (On Learned Ignorance ch. 21) Later, the
French 17th century Philosopher Blaise Pascal would intuitively echo the
Buddhist idea in his rationalistic theology:
“God is that circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere”.
In the late nineteenth century, theosophic mystic, Helena Blavatsky, through her ‘transmural view’
of a ‘boundless principle’ which bridges the ideological gap between East and West. She
anticipated 21st century theoretical physics, by initiating the idea of a ‘Zero point’ or boundless
circle; a fulcrum point, intrinsic to the universe itself. (The Secret Doctrine v.I p.601)
The Zen monk/artist of the late 18th century, Sengai, fills his Enso drawing
with both wisdom and humor. He draws an Enso and writes next to it:
“Eat this and have a cup of tea!”
So, the reality is placed in front of us and invitation is offered for
us to ‘eat this’; the Enso, the ultimate Zero of (shunyata) emptiness.
This is not a theoretical idea or abstraction but placing our attention 100% in this present moment
in the act of drinking tea. How to drink this cup of tea with undistracted, seamless unity of our
awareness; tea, awareness and drinking tea as one act.
Engaging this seamless practice, moment after moment in our daily life is Zen.
ENSO ZEN
‘Enso Zen’ could also be termed ‘Wabi sabi Zen’ or the ‘Zen of the Natural
World’. A Zen monk is called an ‘Unsui’, literally ‘Cloud-Water’, someone whose
activity is unified with nature, to float like a cloud and flow like water.
Succinctly expressed:
Flowing water
Does not
Argue
With itself
-Tashiro Roshi
So, this ‘flowing water’ as an image gives us pause to engage, then to see and
BE the non-dual state.
In Zen philosophy, the Enso symbolizes the unity of subject and object, space
and time or Being-Time (Uji)
Sasaki Roshi says:
“Not only self, but everything, exists with space as body and time as its
content. In the case of self, the body is space and the mind is time. It is
impossible for either body or mind to exist independently. Self means the action
of oneness of body and mind. This world, too, is the action of oneness of space
and time. Therefore, it is said in Buddhism, that this world is the action of
the interdependence of the two things.”
So, from this viewpoint, Enso is simultaneously the container and contained, in
the process of containing.
Sasaki Roshi also speaks of Buddha as ‘the center of gravity’. Yet it could also
be said that ‘Buddha is NO center of gravity’ or ‘Zero is NO zero’ …and Enso
that is NO Enso. Everything is complete ‘As It Is.’
The following poetic Zen saying expresses the simultaneous paradoxical oneness
of the relative and unified VEIW in the following image:
“One moon shows in every pool; in every pool the one moon.”
