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MA. What a slippery customer this is. Or, is it? Between stimulus and response, you know, that place where the silence is boundless in a boundless arena. This iinfinity is MA. The plastic material of things becoming. It's here that a haiku's living diorama, its little inner movie, plays to the audiences of one. Noh theatre is a place to study this effect. Noh, as we know, uses MA-gaps to blossom the implications of a previous sequence of action in the mind's eye (like the spaces in a haiku do) . . .
on a journey
resting beneath the cherry blossoms
I feel myself to be in a Noh play
Basho
The Tardis. What does it represent, really - in the psyche? We could say the Tardis is the ubiquitous (everywhere) point-of-consciousness which can zip hither and thither and anytime, all in a trice! This nipping around (or, on pause, maybe viewing a haiku's inner video clip) is 'the viewer in MA'. I'd float the notion that Doctor Who's Tardis is the vehicle of the mobile-point-of-consciousness, personified. The vehicle which flits around time and space and then settles into a local scenario - just like we may do, using our own; 'all seeing Eye of Horus' (Egytian version of the Tardis - look it up).
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MA as negative space may be better defined as 'MA: the synthesis of negative/positive space, where the negatives and positives conjure their maya (illusionary dramas we cognize to be reality)' - but that would be another story. Maybe the good Doctor could slip that into his busy scheduling? ^_^
As for ma, I would like to share the following excerpt from Hasegawa Kai's lecture note:
We have translated ma severally as: “interval of betweeness,” “psychological interval (of time/space),” “between dimensions,” “the arising of psychological space,” and “creative imagination” (cf. James Hillman's monograph, The Thought of the Heart and Soul of the World). - Chen-ou
Relevent MA focus, Chen-ou. This ties in with the Hillman connect. . .
Here's a better view of Kanji ma glyph (we can see the interval, used in Japanese aesthetics), also the sense of passing through, like a torii (gateway - from the here to the now):
I wonder what the parts mean individually? There seems to be three elements that, together, compose the ma glyph image. If we know these we can dive deeper into the pond, which one suspects has no bottom. ^_^
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Image source: http://www.jp41.com/kanji/ma.html
Here is my response from a Chinese perspective:
Ideogrammatically speaking, "間" is made of two Chinese words "門" (door) and "日" (sun or day), meaning that the sunlight passes through the main gate of a house.
It can functions as a noun (the first tone) and as a verb (the fourth tone). As a noun, it means the space between; as a verb, it means putting a space between. Simply put, its connotative meaning refers to "betweenness."
By the way, one of my essay, Haiku as Ideogrammatic Montage: A Linguistic-Cinematic Perspective, deals with the ideogrammatic aspect of haiku writing from a linguistic-cinematic perspective.
I think it might interest you. It can accessed at http://scr.bi/p9LaUq
- Chen-ou
Your essay is a good one in relation to ma in haiku. It also expands the reader out into many fascinating areas of interest. My own feeling is that there is more to ma than its use in aesthetics would lead us to believe. The a priori action of visualisation in haiku, for example, allows us to experience ma itself, as well as ma in the service of a haiku's inner movie. Perhaps, ultimately, ma is the vehicle and substance of zoka ('the creative force of nature')? If this is so, then a 'unified field theory' of ma, if such is possible, might help clear up some of the current confusion in the dovecotes of global haiku - especially in terms of the deeper mysteries of haiku. What do you think, yourself, may be the relationship between ma and zoka, if any?
The first time I learned about the Japanese concept of “ma” was when I listened to Hasegawa Kai's lecture on Basho’s frog haiku , which can be accessed http://gendaihaiku.com/hasegawa/index.html
His focus on the psychological aspect of “ma” fascinated me, and this was seldom emphasized in the Chinese conception of “間.”
In terms of haiku writing, I’m not sure about its relationship to the Daoism-influenced “zoka.” To me, they are two different concepts.
If you’re interested in “zoka, ” Peipei Qui’s Basho and the Dao: The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai, is a must read (in fact it’s the only English-language book on Daoism’s influences on haiku writing in general, Basho’s in particular.
- Chen-ou
Yes, the gendai site is full of fascinating information. The backstory to Basho's frog haiku, in video one, is a gem. Here's two useful links (especially for members who may be new to all this) . . .
Basho and the Dao (Google Books) http://goo.gl/M9YVa
Zhuangzi (PDF) http://www.indiana.edu/~p374/Zhuangzi.pdf
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