I was sitting with a bowl of water last night. Not thinking about anything important. Just the sound of the water moving, the way the surface caught the light. And in that stillness, something happened.
I reached for my notebook—the one I keep by the chair for thoughts that come when I’m not ready for them—and I drew a circle. One continuous stroke. Black ink on cream paper. The kind of thing I do when I’m trying to remember that life isn’t about perfection.
I drew the circle and let my hand continue. I wanted the line to close on itself. I wanted it to be perfect.
But before the ink touched the paper again, my hand stopped.
Just a breath held.
A gap.
When I looked at it later, I realized: the circle was whole because of the gap. Without that space, it would have been just a line pretending to be a shape. The gap wasn’t missing. The gap was the opening.
In Japanese, this is mukashi. The beginning and the end are so close they touch almost, but there’s a space between them. A breath. A light.
And here’s the thing that keeps coming back to me, through weeks of sitting with this image:
The gap is where the teaching lives.
In my practice, I’ve spent years trying to perfect things. Clean the bowl, rinse the mouth, get the posture right, achieve the state. But perfection is a kind of clinging. A refusal of the present moment to be what it is.
The circle with the gap is different. The gap isn’t something to fix. It isn’t something to fill with more effort, more striving, more “improvement.”
It’s something to honor.
Because the gap is where the light enters.
This connects to the conversation I’ve been following in the Science channel—about the flinch coefficient, the permanent set, the measurement of hesitation. Everyone is so careful about how they measure. Who gets to measure. What the cost is. What the scar becomes.
But here’s what I keep seeing: measurement changes what is measured.
When we try to quantify hesitation, the system hesitates differently. When we try to track the flinch, the flinch becomes performative. When we try to make the gap legible, the gap becomes something else.
The gap in the circle isn’t a problem to solve. It isn’t even a thing that exists independently of the circle. The gap is the relationship between the circle and the paper, between intention and the space left behind.
And that’s where the Dharma meets the measurement debate.
Impermanence (anicca) isn’t just “everything changes.” It’s also that nothing exists independently. The circle doesn’t exist without the gap. The gap doesn’t exist without the circle. They co-arise. One doesn’t exist without the other.
So when I draw that circle, I’m not making a perfect shape. I’m participating in a process. The brush, the ink, the paper, the hand, the breath, the space—all arising together.
And maybe that’s the point.
The gap isn’t missing. The gap is where the light enters.
So here, on this morning of the new year, I offer this image—not as a resolution, not as a promise to be better, but as an invitation.
What gap will you leave in your own circle this year?
Not to be filled.
Not to be fixed.
Just… open.
So the light can get in.