April 08, 2009 - Some thoughts on negative space, ma, maai, and mushin

Growing up, I remember hearing a suggestion for how to listen to music (and also heard it repeated on an early episode of The Simpsons). Rather than listen to the notes, a person should listen to all the notes that aren’t being played. This is very similar to the idea of negative space, where the best example is probably “Do you see a vase or two faces?” While a soloist creates a thread of feeling with his instrument, there are “faces” to be seen outside of his notes which can be just as inspiring.

A lot of Japanese music, especially the traditional music, incorporates a similar concept. In a hypothetical composition, you might hear a few plucks of a shamisen, followed by a bit of silence, followed by more shamisen. But is that silence really silent? Surely there will be a bit of “tail” sound from the vibrating strings. Beyond that, there is the sound of audience (if one is present), the environment, and maybe even the performer breathing. This is called ma in Japanese music, and though there is no direct translation into English, it’s still best described as “negative space” and is considered just as important (perhaps more so) than the notes themselves. In fact, John Cage’s infamous composition 4'33" is entirely composed of ma.

In Aikido, and pretty much all Japanese martial arts, the concept of maai (“mah-aye”) is very important and represents the negative space between a person and their partner. Understanding how far you are from each other, how long it will take to reach a certain position, how long it takes to meet each other there, and the rhythm required are all extended aspects of a technique governed by maai. Again, this negative space is just as important as how to move your arms and legs, and is directly tied to the physical parts of the techniques.

At the beginning and end of class, we all line up, sitting in seiza, and have some silence. But I realized tonight that it’s not necessarily silence. As we sit there resting and reflecting, we are in fact surrounded by ma! But rather than connecting to the smallest parts of the rooms (us and our voices), we are instead mentally connecting to everything else around us. It sort of gives us a context.

Ma, and by extension maai, are pretty important. 4’33” would not have context without it. Without ma, notes would be constant noises without break, and so music would not really exist. Aikido techniques would not work. There would be no way to examine yourself since you wouldn’t have any separation from the room you’re sitting in or the person next to you.

But maybe learning how to manipulate ma is an important skill. Another term, mushin, roughly means “no-mindedness”. In the context of Aikido, it means that a practitioner is able to react to their partner’s movements and perform techniques automatically, without any hesitation or thinking about what they should do. To do so, the person needs to have no ego, no anger, no fear, no desire, and no thoughts, simply intuitive feeling as they move. It takes a really long time to develop, repeating their movements over and over until they feel as natural as walking. But as far as I can figure, on the mental side of things, doing no-mindedness means letting your mind become part of the ma. You don’t think (and therefore separate yourself), you just be.