ensō

So I am definitely a fan of tattoos. I'll never rock a full sleeve or anything like that, but I think having a few, meaningful symbols, representative of who you are, placed permanently on your being can be a beautiful thing.

In June, I had two done. One on my foot and the other on the inside of my left wrist. The latter is a huge source of inspiration for my writing self. One look at it can, at times, pull me through whatever uninspired slump I'm in back to the keyboard with renewed fervor. The tattoo is an image of an ensō.

Ensō is a Japanese word for circle. It's a zen character referred to as the circle of enlightenment. Through study, I've found that it means different (well, actually similar) things to different people. It can symbolize holistic awareness/clarity, strength, balance, and life (among other things). What touched me at once, upon reading, about the ensō is the way it's used in Zen art.

Zen Buddhist painters strive to create a perfect (sometimes opened sometimes closed) ensō with just one brush stroke. They say that in order to bring a perfect ensō into existence, it's necessary to shut off the mind and simply let the creativity flow through their fingertips. As soon as I discovered this, the ensō became more than just a pretty picture to me. It became my emblem, the very representation of the soul behind who my writer self truly is. The way ensōs are created in Zen art, is exactly how I've always written best. Turning off the errant and disruptive thoughts in my brain and just letting my fingers flow over the keys has always been the saving grace behind what I write.

A simple google search will give you a ton of information about the ensō, but if you're really interested I highly recommend Audre Yoshiko Seo's "Ensō: Zen Circles of Enlightenment".  The forwarad, written by John Daido Loori, is enlightening and beautiful.  The book contains images of ensōs from the seventeenth century all the way to present day (as of 2007 anyway).  You can purchase it on Amazon here.

♥ me