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Buddhists will recognize the title, “Ten Thousand Things” (lower right). Early in the practice, whenever I would tell my meditation teacher about an “experience,” he would say drily, “how interesting and colorful.” A motif of Zen masters is the ensho, a freehand brushstroke circle evoking the plenum void, the emptiness from which all things arise. My first personal image of peace or near-emptiness was a Cape Cod pond just before dawn, with mist barely revealing smooth water and white birch trunks. But I am drawn also, it’s true, to the feeling of a child later diving into that pond from a slightly crooked dock, the glide of birds pausing in a long migration, and as Basho wrote, the sudden plop of a frog into water. 

All images and text on this site © 2006 by Craig K. Comstock and may be reproduced in any form only with his express written permission.