by Mark Wilkerson
The Line
Stretched for miles.
From the ceremonial dais on the circular landing below the final seven of the 300 Palace steps, it wound down, then wove through the 300 stones in the garden, each painstakingly selected and placed (the mountain of the immortal, the turtle of calm, the pillar of enlightenment, and the great crane of freedom) in all of their varied interactions. The line trailed around and around the 300 rings of the labyrinth, and finally snaked out through the tiny gilt-edged doorway in the monstrous portcullis and into the street beyond.
The street itself sang out with the furious yet muted cries of vendors, the rhythmic yet random clicking and clacking of looms hurriedly making the ritual prayer flags, the low thrumming rumble of barrows wheeling water jugs to those so long waiting in line. But this noise, as though by a barometric pressure unseen but felt, dampened to near silence as the line stretched upward to its destination. There, only the gentle scuffing of a sandaled foot, the sighing of a breath, the single definitive stroke of a brush on rice paper, could be heard. For this event among the many events of a lifetime, indeed of all the lifetimes of the thousands in the line, demanded reverence. This was after all the final judging, on the final day of the 1000, of The Perfect Enso contest.
The line was not made up of the contestants, from starving artist to marshal artist, from Monk to Manchu, from student to Sensei, who but for the one now standing before the judges, had tried their hand, one by one and wrapped in the timeless but time-consuming rituals of art and faith, to create the perfect Enso. This line was made up of the adoring; the devotees of a centuries old symbol; a symbol so ingrained in their faith and culture that it was sewn into the fabric of their souls. This line was made up of those seeking “the way,” come from the four directions and beyond, to witness the choosing of the perfect Enso.
Yes, they were here for the Enso, the iconic Zen symbol of everything and nothing. The Enso, alternately referred to as the circle of enlightenment, the infinity circle and the lost symbol of Reiki, was the most drawn, painted, sketched and carved symbol in all of the East. To the untrained eye, and certainly at first glance, the ancient symbol appears to be no more than a loosely drawn irregular circle of black ink on a pale and empty background. But to those on the one path, the Enso is everything. It is the “satori” or enlightenment; it is a transcendental study in contrast. The Enso is the symbol of the beginning and the end, the circle of life, the connectedness and isolation of all existence. It is emptiness and fullness, presence and absence. It is boundless but confined by boundary. It is the infinite and the no-thing. It represents the perfect meditative state of the empty yet full mind. It is both secret and ubiquitous.
The Enso is the moon, itself a symbol of enlightenment, as in the cautionary Zen allegory, “Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.”
The creation of an Enso represents the long sought moment in the life of the artist when the mind is freed, when the spirit creates using the body only as its tool kit. The process itself is strictly ritualized yet endlessly variable. The Enso must be black ink on a white background. The brush must be wood; the bristles rounded to a pointed tip. Yet the choices are many; ink thickness and tone; the touching and twirling of just dipped bristles against the ink pot to drain off excess ink; the size of the brush, the length of its handle; the texture and material of the bristles, from rough plant fiber to silky human hair; the positioning of the brush from traditional vertical to laid flat and all angles in-between; the point where the circle begins and ends; the direction, clockwise or counter, of the stroke; the position of fingers, wrist, elbow, and shoulder; eyes open or closed; even the posture, stance and foot positioning of the seated, or standing, artist; all are crucial to the artist, and to the art of the Enso.
Only a person who is spiritually complete can create a true Enso. In the hands of a Zen Master the power of the Enso is released, helping those who see it, truly see it, to reach a higher level of consciousness. The Enso is made in one movement, eliminating the possibility of modification, leaving pure the flow from spirit to Enso. The very imperfection and contours of the Enso, which must be painted by human hand rather than constructed as a mathematically correct circle, make the Enso a manifestation of perfection. It is the memory of the perfect moment that as a memory no longer exists. This then is the path of the Enso. The hitsuzendo or “way of the brush.”
It was springtime, the season of newborns. From leaf to lamb, life bloomed. Each of the 300 cherry trees lining the Palace Road was a calming riot of green, pink, and red. The last sprinkling of spring snow shined smooth white on the crevassed gray of the surrounding mountain peaks, which in their turn were highlighted by the soft pale blue of the sky.
The boy now standing before the revered judges, the thousands crowded around, and the thousands more lined up serpentine through the courtyard, himself was a contrast. His manner and face bore the spontaneous smiling curiosity of the very young, yet if he was to look up from his lowered lashes one would see the eyes of the sage. In profile, in a certain slanting light, the boy was the most extraordinarily beautiful human ever seen. But with a slight turn of his head or an unnoticed cloud shadow the boy became, although still well pleasing to the eye, far from the embodiment of human perfection.
He touched the brush gingerly, turning it one fingered on the ground as though it was a minute hand on the face of a clock. He turned it one way and then the other seemingly at random; then with two fingers he broadened the sweep, and then with his whole hand he swept the brush in complete dusty circle around his feet.
The old monk, a Buddhist Master in “the way of the brush,” once of great renown but now almost forgotten, was seated in the back row of the seven rows of seven judges. He thought he noticed that the brush, while appearing to move spontaneously, had halted briefly in each of the four directions, South, West, North, East. And, as he cocked his head to better use his good eye, he thought the boy nodded minutely at each such pause. Then the boy pressed the tapered tip of the handle to the earth for a single heartbeat, the brush opening skyward. Again the slight nod. Then, so abruptly it caused a sharp whistling intake of breath from the crowd, the boy gripped the brush firmly in his fist, rotated it bristles-to-Earth, and jammed it into the collection of dirt that had been tracked onto, and then swept from, the dais over and over for the thousand days of competition before him. The boy twisted the brush into the dirt forward and then back. And again, the slight nod.
The boy lifted the brush, dribbling bits of dirt from the now splayed bristles. In sharp contrast to all who had come before, this process borrowed only a moment from time and it all was done with a smile of irresistible knowing. The boy, a study in movement and stillness, then danced a dance to which only he knew the movements. Many later claimed it was a rapid form of the first sutra of Tai Chi, or a vague form of Chi Gong. Some even said it resembled the long forgotten Crane style of Kung Fu. But the judges, discounting as preconceptions such vague impressions, agreed it was simply a series of random movements; a child’s dance, no more. All save one judge that is.
The boy, his perfect crooked smile waxing and waning like birdsong, dusted the excess dirt from the bristles, wiping them on his robe once at his belt, then his naval, then his chest; then in rapid succession his chin, forehead, and crown before turning to the ink pot at his feet.
The boy settled. All movement ceased. His eyes closed. Even his breathing, a moment before the panting of a dancing child, stopped. After such an interval that the crowd watching was compelled to hold its own collective breath, the boy began a long purring inhale. It filled his stomach, his chest, and then in turn lifted his shoulders, chin and head. The vast intake seemed to pull in all of the available air, leaving the crowd breathless, the birds silenced, and the tree limbs leaning. Even the boy’s eyes, fingers and toes swelled, so deep was the pull. Then, a pause.
The sudden suspension of all movement galvanized the crowd into expectant forward-leaning stillness. With an explosive exhale that forced the crowd to huff and back a surprised half step, the boy’s hand blurred down and deep into the ink pot. In one continuous motion the brush dipped twirled and lifted, to circle once the lip of the ink pot. Ink poured from the brush in dirt thickened black streams. Then a flash of black as the boy raised the tip to the sky and without slowing turned it to crash down, not to the rice paper now fluttering away on a sudden puff of breeze, but to the marble of the dais itself.
The brush was twirling and circling even as it touched the marble. Those closest, including the judges reflexively covered their eyes expecting a blinding splash of ink. But, thickened to a perfect smooth yet rough paste from the dirt so recently ground into the brush, the ink flowed smoothly without splash or drip to its circular track. The brush followed the pathway, unseen but nonetheless there, that had been worn by the thousands of Enso painters with their thousands of circular strokes, on the tens of thousands of sheets of rice paper, which over and over had been meticulously and precisely placed on this very marble surface. You see, all that had come before quite literally had paved the way for this brush, held at this moment, by this boy. But, no one knew it. Only the brush knew the way.
Later, no one could agree whether the first motion was clockwise or counterclockwise. No one could remember whether at any point the brush hesitated or flowed continuously. People disagreed as to whether the brush contacted the marble straight down or at an angle. Did the brush turn in the boy’s hand as it turned its own circle? It all happened so fast. A split second of flexing hips, an arc of the shoulders, a right angled jut of elbow, and a smooth linked twirling of wrist, hand and fingers, and it was done. All that those watching saw, save one old man who kept his good eye on the boy, was a black tipped brush blurring for a half heartbeat in a perfect circle. It ended as it began, abruptly and with stunning grace.
The boy stood vibrating slightly, his face, as it had been throughout, serene. His eyes half lidded but alert, he held the brush before him as a fencer would hold his foil, delicately balanced with the tip up and angled away from his heart and toward the sky.
No one but one observed these details. The image in the marble invited, and then pulled the eye downward, demanding to be seen. Black ocher on pale marble, thicker here and thinner there, winking with light and shadow, glowing with depth and dimension; this was an Enso that took and kept captive one’s gaze.
This Enso was perfect. Not too large. Not too small. Not too dark. Not too light. Not too thick or too thin. Not too even. Not too rough. Circular but not too circular. A complete but not quite complete circle, the beginning blurring and lifting into the end, tail to head, head to tail. Evoking the earth, moon and sun; life, love, peace, passion, precision, abstraction, logic and emotion, this Enso truly was perfect.
It drew the eye around, across, up, and down, leaving one with a sense of wandering with a purpose. This Enso drew the viewer into, through, and then beyond the image. What at first seemed a flaw, upon reflection became a delicate deliberate choice that spoke in whispers to the soul. For reasons shared yet secret, everyone was captivated.
For this event among the many events of a lifetime, indeed of all the lifetimes of the thousands in the line, demanded reverence.
This Enso, in that moment, on that last day of the one thousand days of The Perfect Enso Contest was indeed perfect. The judges as one, and with their eyes still held by the image in the marble before them, stood and bowed. They bowed first to the Enso, then to the boy who even as they turned was himself turning away, and finally to the crowd that was now thunderously applauding, cheering and bowing to the Enso, the boy, to each other.
With the Enso as catalyst all of those present could feel, as a tangible pulsing wave, the upwelling of spirit; that deep bass booming of the drum of connection. Connection to a simple black circle on a white stone slab. Connection to a boy who defied all logic, expertise, and expectation. Connection to a crowd of fellow beings sharing a singular experience. Connection to a country, a continent, a world, a universe. For this one moment, there was no fear, war, famine, unrest, or hatred. There was instead a surge of hope for a world that, like the Enso before them, was perfectly possible.
The boy breathed in. The boy breathed out. Time regained itself. The boy moved. He turned his feet and then his eyes to the judges. He bowed. He laid down the brush. And for the first time the boy looked up, catching the eyes of each judge. And then, turning in a slow circle he looked into the eyes of each and every one of the now silent crowd.
The boy turned from the dais and toward the cherry grove on the hill behind. The boy’s feet began to move, carrying him toward the new blossoms. The old judge, standing at the back, pulled himself from the reverie of the perfect Enso before him and cleared his throat, wiping the still flowing tears from his face.
He coughed quietly, then once again and said, “My child, we thank you. You have left us the Perfect Enso. The prize is yours. Your kingdom awaits. You only need tell us how you, amongst all the thousand thousand competing, created this Perfect Enso?”
The boy hesitated still looking toward the tree, then turned deliberately and bowed deeply. He spoke for the first and only time, “I am pleased that you are pleased. But I want no prize. Is not that tree, there on the hill with the new blossoms… Is not that tree beautiful? The circle in the ink? It was nothing. A breath in, a breath out. A moment in a moment. Nothing more.”
The boy again bowed deeply to the old master and walked away.
The old Master came back to himself at the sound of gasping. The gasping became a blowing wind of astonishment and loss. He turned, and following the eyes of the crowd, looked down to see that what the boy had said was true. The perfect Enso was only a moment within a moment, nothing more.
You see, the marble, having been worn by the brushwork of thousands of Enso’s, and thousands of sweepings between contestants, had become porous. Thus, even as the old man turned toward it, the dark of the Enso was sinking into the marble. Within the space of four breaths, the perfect Enso was only a dim gray shadow. As the last of the ink sank away, the remaining earth from it left a diminished but detailed reminder of the Enso. But then, lifted like the rice paper before it on a puff of the mild spring breeze, this too disappeared. Like the sunset the day before and the one to come that day and the next, the brilliance of the Enso and all of the light and shadow it had gathered and cast, sank, faded and was gone.
The old Master stood absolutely still. He breathed in. He breathed out. He looked to the hills beyond the cherry trees and sighted the boy, now bending to examine a newborn lamb. The old man smiled. The boy stopped, turned, and once again looked directly into his eyes. Both the old man and the young nodded once and bowed one last time. And then the boy went on his way.