“COMMUNITY”
Poster series

Void

Symbol:

Enso or Wuji

The Japanese Enso is a symbol of emptiness and enlightenment.

The Chinese Wuji initially has the following meaning:

It serves as a description of an undifferentiated state of the universe. This state is pure potentiality, i.e. there are still no objects that are differentiated from each other, and this state is also the origin of all objects. Wuji thus refers to a formless primordial ground to which everything returns in the end.

In its undifferentiated absoluteness, Wuji is also the highest emptiness. This existed before everything existed.

The unity of Wuji is traditionally symbolised by an empty circle. It points to the original primordial One. It is emptiness from which the fullness of creation emerges.

The experience of Wuji becomes possible in the silence of meditation. This is how this symbol is to be understood here.

This stage is the stage of Nirvana, that is, the level of extinction (stage of spiritual ego-death).

It extinguishes the self (it transcends its form) and loses all boundary. Thus it dissolves into the infinite nothingness of pure and at the same time universal emptiness.

The transpersonal self now proves to be identical with the universal emptiness, without any delimitation.

There is timeless presence.

Samsara, on the other hand, the whole world of appearances or forms, now easily appears as an illusion (“Maya”) to a person who has reached the eleventh stage of development.

The most important realisation that results from this for the respective human being is: All form is actually emptiness.

Thus the final duality here is one of emptiness and form, and the final tension is one between nirvana and samsara.

(last two paragraphs (correspondingly) after:

Stefan Schmitz: Transpersonale Psychologie - Eine integrative Einführung, 2010).

Above text in this version (Ver 1.0) online since 18 August 2023.

All of the above text has been translated from German into English (British) using DeepL ext Data Protection Notice.