Zen Enso Circle, A Window To The Mind Painting

This Zen Enso circle is brushed on Xuan rice paper with ground black Sumi ink. The Enso is mounted on silver color silk and has a natural wooden roller at the bottom. The scroll has some minor spots on the top of the hanging scroll mounting, but the presence and the spirit of the Zen Enso is as shown in the pictures. The scroll is ready to be hung. I have brushed this Enso circle in the Zen tradition. After grinding a larger quantity of ink and doing sitting meditation for a while, the mind had become calm. I filled the brush with the deep black Sumi and raising it above my head I grasped the Enso from the world of MU/Emptiness. Moving the brush slowly downwards onto the white sheet of paper I then touched the paper with the tip of the brush where I concealed the beginning of the Enso within the brush stroke. From that moment on the Enso circle came into existence, expanding slowly from the left, then upwards to the right, then downwards back to the left, and disappearing again into Emptiness. No Beginning, No End. In his Hsin-hsin-ming (On Trusting The Mind) poem the third Zen Patriarch Seng Ts’an (Jap.: Sōsan) says: The circle is like vast emptiness, Nothing lacking, Nothing superfluous. Size of the scroll in cm: 178 x 91 x 0.2 cm. The width of the scroll without the rollers is 80,5 cm or 31.69 inches. The Enso scroll will be shipped rolled in a traditionally-made silk box.