The cartoon depicts a family of three sitting in cross-legged meditation. The caption reads, “On the road to Nirvana.” The blissful silence is broken by the child’s impatient query, “Are we there yet?”
Do we ever arrive?
Do we ever let ourselves off the incessant self-improvement hook?
Do we ever get to the place where we give ourselves permission to relax into the moment and soak up the bliss?
Do we ever let go of the delusion that if we learn just one more step sequence we will experience the Tango high?
Life as a Circle
On the other side of the world, in the Himalayas, we learn something about what is important in life and how to value it. Steeped in the ethereal beauty of their surroundings, the Buddhist monks respond by creating stunning beauty of their own:
Mandalas — incredibly detailed geometric designs made out of coloured sand — by building them out, grain-by-grain, (are) a form of meditation.
The creation of the mandala is meant to represent the world in divine form, in which everything is perfectly balanced and designed. Literally translated as “circle,” the mandala is a representation of wholeness, as the distance from its center to all points on it remains the same, no matter where it’s measured.
The process of creating a mandala is rigorous, requiring millions of pieces of sand to make a five-by-five foot square mandala. Vivid colours and ancient symbols are incorporated into their work, the monks bending over the piece for hours as they drop one grain at a time into place to create the detailed symbolic patterns.
Once the last grain of sand has been placed, the monks pray over their creation, and then the entire mandala is swiftly swept away, with handfuls given to participants of the closing ceremony, and the rest thrown into the nearest stream.
The point is to let go of what once was, because nothing is permanent — not the mandala, not your suffering, not the shoes on your feet, nor the smile on your face at this moment in time. Everything is constantly moving, called to balance and enlightenment. This realization allows you to forget the small things, and focus on the bigger picture. This shift in consciousness opens the doors for more wisdom, and for boundless compassion. It is beyond greed, status, or world dominance, religion or opinion, comfort or discomfort. When the walls of permanence are shattered, the real journey begins. (Wikipedia. Send a monthly contribution to Wikipedia. Money well spent.)
The Dance Mandala
The above, for me, describes exquisitely the meaning and experience of dance: it envelopes one in the transitory experience of movement, beauty, sensuality and creativity. And when the moment passes, when the music ends, everything goes with it.
Honouring the ephemeral nature of reality is so foreign to our Western way. We live in an outcome-focused society where the measure of a life well-spent is what we have to show for it at the end: a bigger car, a bigger house, more airmiles.
As the bumper sticker correctly captured, “The one who has the most things when they die, wins.”
Life is not about winning, accumulating, continually developing. It is about experiencing, expressing, creating, loving.
The only time and place we find this is in the present moment. When the moment passes the experience and reality go with it. We walk off the dance floor enwrapped in a soft glow that immediately begins to dissipate.
If we could hold onto the experience, bottle it and put it on a shelf to admire it in posterity, get the t-shirt, we would remain entrapped by the past. We would lose the miracle of the present moment.
It is precisely this in the moment dance that creates a sanctuary for the safe exploration of intimacy, beauty, creativity and passion.
This is the magic of dance – or creating a mandala – or gazing into the eyes of a child – or being held in a nurturing embrace. It teaches us to value those precious fleeting moments as the true treasure of a life well-lived.
In the back of my brain is pulsing the Jim Morrison lyric, “When the music’s over, turn out the lights.”