Three feet tall, he sits cross-legged inside a wooden frame in a corner of the living room. He isn’t aware of me as I tiptoe closer. Shhh. Leaning over the page, intensely seeing, he rests his left arm on one black-robed knee and lets the small black ritual bib dangle from his neck. So much love in this white porcelain face with its network of glaze-cracks, so much suffering digested and transformed into wisdom. His ink-stained porcelain hands, like two small sea-animals, seem to have eyes at the end of each finger. He has just finished drawing a circle, letting the dark ink thin out as his brush moves around the rice paper, until at the end (the beginning) there is only a faintly brushed trace of it, the mark of a mind running on empty. As for the circle’s meaning: Unity? Completion? Nirvana? Give me a break.
He looks down at his handiwork, as I look down at him, satisfied and on the brink of amusement. The mouth doesn’t show even the trace of a smile. But the smile is there, somewhere, shining in the heaven of his face like a new moon.