How to Break Free from the Tyranny of Certainty: The Japanese Concept of “Ma”

By Maria Popova
“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know,'” the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska observed in her magnificent Nobel Prize acceptance speech. But despite all we know about the power of liminality and threshold states, we yearn for a firm foothold on one side of every blurry line and move through the fundamental mystery of life armored in opinions, mistaking the magnitude of our surety for the measure of the truth, resisting with every fiber of our being the fertile, flickering in-betweenness that beckons us to not-know in order to touch the beating heart of reality with something greater than understanding.
Certainty is the dominant addiction of the modern mind.
Japanese culture offers a potent antidote to it in the ancient concept of ma, which Ann Tashi Slater details in her moving memoir Traveling in Bardo: The Art of Living in an Impermanent World (public library):
Ma means “interval” or “opening,” both in space and time. Often referred to as negative (empty) space, it’s positive in that it can birth something new. An invitation to heightened awareness, it’s seen, for instance, as open space in rooms and gardens. With regard to time, it’s a pause that invites contemplation. Ma is found in unpainted areas on folding screens, void areas in a photograph, silence during conversation, the hush between breaking waves. It’s about the vitality generated by emptiness, in the way a blank page gives rise to creative energy. It’s about being in relationship, because our engagement with ma allows fresh perspectives to emerge.
Encoded in ma is an ancient understanding of what modern science calls embodied cognition — the recognition that the body is the mind and we think not with the brain but with the world. Slater quotes architect Kengo Kuma:
In traditional Japanese space, the most important space is the void. We call that kind of void space ma. In the void, we can feel the change of light, the change of time, the change of smell, the change of temperature… The void and the human body are working together to feel something.
Drawing on one of my favorite books of all time, she adds:
The character for ma is “gate” (門) together with “sun” (日): 間. It evokes light filtering through a doorway, an idea suggested by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki in his essay about the Japanese aesthetic tradition, In Praise of Shadows… “The light from the garden steals in but dimly through paper-paneled doors,” Tanizaki writes, “and it is precisely this indirect light that makes for us the charm of a room.”
It strikes me that ma is literally written as light, for it carries the indeterminacy of light itself — how we have no way of knowing whether it will pass through the double slit as particle or wave, how consciousness may be the double slit of space and time through which reality passes between the everythingness we experience as life and the nothingness of the void, the interval repeating like a sunbeam flickering across a doorway.
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Published September 7, 2026
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https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/09/07/ma/
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* Wisława Szymborska observed that inspiration arises from "I don't know."
* Ma means "interval" or "opening" in space and time.
* Ma is often referred to as negative (empty) space but is positive because it can birth something new.
* Ma invites heightened awareness and is seen as open space in rooms and gardens.
* Ma manifests as a pause for contemplation in time.
* Examples of ma include unpainted areas on screens, void areas in photographs, silence during conversation, and the hush between waves.
* Ma relates to vitality generated by emptiness, like a blank page generating creative energy.
* The character for ma is "gate" (門) and "sun" (日), evoking light filtering through a doorway.
* The concept is linked to embodied cognition, where the body and mind experience change together in the void space.

The concept of "ma" from Japanese culture is presented as an antidote to the modern addiction to certainty by inviting an awareness of liminality and the in-between states of experience. Ma signifies "interval" or "opening" in both space and time, often representing negative or empty space that paradoxically fosters new creation and heightened awareness. It manifests in various forms, such as unpainted areas, silence, and the space between waves, suggesting that vitality arises from emptiness. Furthermore, ma is linked to embodied cognition, suggesting that perception involves the body interacting with the world rather than purely abstract thought. The character for ma combines "gate" and "sun," evoking indirect light filtering through a doorway, symbolizing indeterminacy inherent in reality itself.

The text positions certainty as an addiction of the modern mind, which seeks to measure truth by surety rather than embracing the "fertile, flickering in-betweenness." The core mechanism proposed is that engaging with ma—the indeterminate gap—allows for a richer relationship with reality, suggesting that true understanding requires acknowledging the openness inherent in experience. This echoes philosophical tendencies that value threshold states (liminality) over fixed states. By framing ma as the space where light itself exists between particle and wave, the text suggests that cognitive sovereignty is achieved not by eliminating uncertainty, but by inhabiting the indeterminacy that governs existence. The pattern suggests a critique of rigid epistemologies that privilege discrete knowledge over dynamic flow. The implications point toward fostering a mode of awareness where the transition between states—the "interval"—is recognized as the source of emergent reality, shifting focus from grasping fixed truths to experiencing the process of becoming.

How to Break Free from the Tyranny of Certainty: The Japanese Concept of “Ma”

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How to Break Free from the Tyranny of Certainty: The Japanese Concept of “Ma”

Facts Only

Executive Summary

Full Take

Sentinel — Human