Research notes
Cover of Buddha of Nara Photo Book showing us “the space between the hands” at Yoshito Ohno studio. (Yokohama, Japan. Gustavo Thomas © 2011)
— Look at his hands… They don't come together; there is a minimal separation in between, barely a rice-paper fits in between them. There is not another one like it in all Nara. That makes it very special. Everything is compressed between his hands; It is powerful. Kazuo Ohno knew that; it is a secret…
He looks at us, smiling and thoughtful, at each and every one of us around…
- Pray with your hands together and feel a separation the width of rice-paper. -
The space between our hands contains the whole universe ...
— Pay attention to your back, as if it spoke; - a direct encounter with the whole of the space, with its corners, the front, the back, the up and down; thanking the space ...
— Know where to land your gaze while walking; if you look down you always seems sad, it is better to look neutrally forward, openly.
— Hands are the holders of the circle that is a sphere, the moon. Yoshito asks us to look at the moon, to feel the moon and see it as a manifestation of that zen circle - a circle that clearly doesn't close but which we know includes everything - and the sphere. Our hands can touch the moon, take it, split it into two, move with it, with its strength, with its attraction, with its poetry.