ma
While it is difficult to define the Japanese spatial concept of ma in a few choice and illuminating words, one can begin to conceive of its principles by pondering it as a consideration of seeing, hearing and, perhaps, feeling and expressing (a) the intervals and emptiness of space; (b) the void between all things; (c) a pause in time; and (d) a simultaneous experience of form and non-form. Ma speaks as much of what is not there, what is not said or expressed, than what is there. It provides an intriguing perspective for entering the space between notes in music; the spaces between the flowers and the branches in an Ikebana arrangement; the pauses within a poem; the space left unbrushed in calligraphy and brush paintings (the non-form of the empty space ending up preserving the movement(s) of the brush when the calligrapher swooshed ink across the empty white space); the experience of the non-form, whether conscious or unconscious, bound to the experience of the form and the experience of the form bound to the non-form.