Sangha of Auspicious Companions

The Circle That Will Not Close

When Shoukei Matsumoto led a simple floor-sweeping exercise at a gathering, he noticed nearly everyone had the same story running through their minds: “Am I doing this right? Faster. Get it done.” Beneath that voice, Matsumoto notes, is an ethos of optimization. “The word optimization, by itself, is empty. You always optimize toward something. Toward ‘clean,’ when sweeping. Toward ‘results,’ at work. That ‘clean,’ that ‘results,’ becomes the target. But look closely, and the target turns out to be something merely set in place. Let’s say clean means this. Let’s say results mean this number. Someone, somewhere, agreed to it. At the start, it was a provisional frame.” Now, that frame has become mistaken for reality itself. But “no frame is the world.” Drawing on the Japanese concept of shu-ha-ri, Matsumoto traces how mastery is not about leaving the frames, but rather, cultivating the capacity to move seamlessly among them: “entering and leaving, never binding yourself to any one.” Through the analogy of calligraphy painting, he describes the process of engaging with (but being empty of) forms: the moment the brush lifts off the paper on its own, the circle stays open, and the self that was watching quietly disappears into the act of drawing.

Be The Change

Today, notice a form or provisional frame in your life — a “let’s say” that has quietly hardened into “it is” in your mind. Perhaps it’s a measure of success, productivity, or worth that you inherited or agreed to at some point and have since stopped questioning. Push yourself to find another definition, another way of seeing or measuring it.