Place

the character 場 (Ba or Jō), meaning "Place." When you bring "Earth" (土) and "Expanding Light" (昜) together, you get a sunlit, open area of ground. A clearing. A stage. A Place (場). It is an expanse of earth waiting to be filled with purpose and light. The 20th-century Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō developed the "Logic of Basho" (Logic of Place). He argued that true reality is found in the "place" of absolute nothingness—a field out of which all existence emerges and interacts. Like in calligraphy, the black ink creates the boundary, but the true "place" is the white expanse it embraces.