Ma
The Poetics of Emptiness
By Andō
Ma, a Japanese word pronounced “maah” essentially translates as space or time. It embodies both the emptiness of space (the gap) and the nature of time (temporality). What it points to is fundamental.
間 is the character for ma. Originally, this character consisted of the character “moon” (月), rather than the current character “sun” (日), under the character for “gate” (門).
We could picture 間 ma as moonlight shining through a gate or doorway. It’s a poetic image, full of meaning. A spaciousness flooded with gentle light, a moment in time, and space. The original version of 間 ma speaks more poetically, with its subtle sense of moonlit space, than the unsparing light of the sun.
Much has been written on ma as it relates to two and three dimensional space and design. Here, I explore other attributes of ma, its more subtle aspects, including ma in language, and in time.
This verse from Saikontan (Vegetable Roots Talks, a Japanese translation of a 16th century Chinese text) expresses ma:
Length of time depends upon our ideas.
Size of space hangs upon our sentiments.
For one whose mind is free from care,
A day will outlast the millennium.
For one whose heart is large,
A tiny room is as the space between heaven and earth.
In other verses, Saikontan invites us through simple language, to find ma in our life:
Climbing
to high elevations
makes the heart
expansive.
Looking out
on flowing waters
takes one’s thoughts
far away.Looking at
the single shred of cloud
or the crane in the field
wakes one’s thoughts
to transcendence.
We’re invited to spend time looking out across vast, empty space, or to bring our gaze to a single figure on an empty ground, such as the cloud in an empty sky or the crane in an empty field. It shows us ways to transcend the mundane, through simplicity of being, and the spaciousness it brings to the moment, and to our life.
Ma has been described as “an emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled”, and as “the silence between the notes which make the music.”
There can be no beauty to words on paper, without the space of the paper, nor in a drawing, without the space absent of marks. The most essential part of good music, like good conversation, is the silence, the space between notes and phrases.
We find ma in all the great arts of Japan. Just consider for a moment, the sense of space in ikebana, the art of flower arranging. Notice ma too in the sense of space and time in the tea ceremony, time taken for anticipation in the incense ceremony, the expanse of paper in calligraphy, and both time and timelessness in zazen meditation. Ma is essential to all these arts.
Ma, as a pause in the written word, is both the space between words, and their bridge, spanning behind and between sound and silence. The 15th century poet and teacher Shinkei said of ma in poetry: “In linked verse, put your mind to what is not.” Notice the space in which the verses of Japanese poetry arise and fall. It’s how I write my own poetry, and how I teach it as a contemplative practice. Especially find it embodied in the spaciousness of good haiku.
Ma is the space a thoughtful speaker puts between and around words, that leave us breath-held, waiting for the next. It is the pace of such thoughtful speech. There is an economy and elegance to such use of language, such is ma.
Ma is applicable not only to space (two and three dimensional), but also to time, the fourth dimension.
What happens when we bring a different sense of time into being? Return to Saikontan for a moment—“For one whose mind is free from care, a day will outlast the millennium.”
In a busy contemporary life, it is easy to feel there is not enough time to do everything properly. Ma can bring about peace of mind, through rendering a spaciousness around our thoughts. A different pace of thinking and being brings with it a deep restfulness.
Bring ma to your home, your speech, your activities, to your relationship with time and activities, and you too can find that “a day will outlast the millennium” and even “a tiny room is as the space between heaven and earth.”
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