While I’m (obviously) not Buddhist, but since seeing it in Samsara, an epic film, I have been quite taken with the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of creating coloured sand mandalas. I have found aspects of the sand mandala that deeply resonate with my own faith and the story of the world as I understand it.
Working from the center, out, the creation of a sand mandala is an intricate process. The image created represents deities and depending on the deities and the scene, it can take days and weeks to finish. There are a number of rituals that surround the creation of the mandala and a whole team of monks is usually involved in the amazing art.
What struck me when I first saw a sand mandala on Samsara wasn’t the art itself though, what got me was what happens to the art. After days and weeks of painstaking effort by a group of monks, representing many hours of consistent effort to produce a sand mandala that looks phenomenal, using an untold number of grains of sand, the art is ritually destroyed with the destruction having its own ceremonies.
Once it is destroyed, the coloured sand is gathered up, taken, and released into moving water. Phenomenal.
For me it reflects a number of passages in scripture depicting the fleeting nature of life.
A voice says, “Cry out.” And I said, “What shall I cry?” “All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our Lord endures forever.”Isaiah 40:6-8
“Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.”Psalm 39:4-5
…for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.Psalm 103:14-16
This sense is captured in the great line of Ash Wednesday as the cross is marked on our foreheads to signal the beginning of lent – “Remember mortal that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” It’s also captured in Advent, in the lead up to Christmas, with those words from Isaiah appearing in one of the readings for the second Sunday of Advent.
In the Christian story this realisation and reflection on our own frailty, once properly grasped, gives way to our significance through the person of Jesus. The Christmas story, God becoming one of us, and the story of the cross and the resurrection, take on real meaning in the face of our impermanence, insignificance and disconnection from God, the Divine. Only when we know our insignificance do we then truly discover our significance through the activities of the Divine. Our insignificance and our significance are dual realities and we should never lose sight of either. The rhythm of the Christian year continually enables us to experience both while drawing us into union with that which is everlasting and permanent, God. If we were to layer Chinese (not Tibetan) philosophy over that dual reality of who we are, both insignificant yet eternally significant, it could almost be seen as fitting within the concept of yin and yang.
We keep an eye on having these dual realities in balance. When either becomes too dominant, the struggle of life takes over because of the loss of hope with one, or the struggle of unmet expectations with the other. Thankfully we move with a gracious God who enters into our insignificance because he holds us as eternally significant.
Images: Licensed under Creative Commons. From Wonderlane on Flickr.