Moonstone Mandala

Song of the Dream Garden
Pillowed on your thighs in a dream garden,
little flower with its perfumed stamen,
singing, sipping from the stream of you –
Sunset. Moonlight. Our song continues.
-Ikkyu Sojun

The mandala: ‘Oasis’

Plant-like organisms are in various stages of growth - dormant, budding or blossoming. Organic flowering forms encased in rich foliage open, bulbous and buoyant, rich and radiant in their unfurling. Others remain clenched, awaiting, perhaps quietly yearning the time of release. This is a process of evolution, an opening and flowering not yet in full bloom.

At the heart of each budding or blooming flower, is an enigmatic blue globe. In the budding forms, the globe appears solid and sturdy, smooth and glassy. In the flowering forms the sphere appears malleable and fluid, rippling out from a softly glowing centre; the glassy shell has been penetrated.

An organic opulence permeates the imagery. Chlorophyll-rich greens speak of thriving lavish vegetation whist deep reds and golden oranges evoke the deep sacredness of a Buddhist temple or Tibetan monastery. An iridescent light imbues the plant life like sunbeams gleaming through stained-glass windows of churches.

There is a sacredness, a preciousness to this mystifying garden, as though the plants themselves are transparent vessels filled with a divine light. The growth and expansion of this holy garden is a treasured journey, radiant in it’s unfolding, yet full fruition is yet to be realized.

What nutrients or fertile soil nourish this flourishing utopian garden? What is the candescent life-force that infiltrates these organic vessels of air and light?

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God is the energy of the cosmos
— Joan Chittister, Benedictine nun.

The mandala: ‘Cosmic Dust’

There is a smallness within an expansiveness in this mandala. The initial vision that unlocked the journey of this painting was of an atom. The atom is represented as a small white dot in the centre of the painting. The outer limits of the mandala are reminiscent of the plasma membrane of a cellular wall, dynamic and pulsating. This microscopic theme sits within a greater spaciousness, suggestive of the expansiveness of the universe.

There is powerful motion within this painting that only relents towards the centre where the atom is pinpointed and accentuated. The mid and outer limits of the painting appear to be spiralling outward creating tension; a straining and tearing away from the point of stillness. The energy is released, dissipating and exhausting itself where the miniscule meets the macroscopic.

The mandala thus embodies the microcosm within the macrocosm, and a tension and communication between the two. The atomic and cellular components of the mandala suggest a revisitation to a very microscopic level of self. There is a strain, a sort of tearing apart and peeling back within the painting.

The painting process unleashed mini-epiphanies, unlocked elapsed memories and forgotten dreams. It was seemingly a process of delving deeply into the archives of self and activating a process of opening and undoing. Reflected in the mandala of my life, something in the matrix of self felt as though it was being rewritten, a destruction and resurrection of sorts, was taking place.

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Emerge into life, enter death
— Lao Tzu

The mandala: ‘An Emergent Reality’

Bubble-like forms hover over a partially transparent image creating a rather ethereal feel. There is a sense of delicateness and tenuousness to this painting, as if, perhaps, without the sturdy golden yellows and oranges, one could blow it all away. There is a grace to this painting; it is both steadfast and afloat. Perhaps one could say that it is suspended between two opposing forces.

There is a gentle inward-outward movement contained within the mandala. The bubble forms and shafts of light both lead one in towards the centre and out towards the periphery. Similarly, the two interlocking linear forms spiral in opposing directions: the one clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. The combined effect is of a subtle repulsion-attraction dynamic, where, whilst spinning, the one force holds the other in careful check, much like the protons and electrons of an atom. The tension created by this dynamic equilibrium is delicate but crucial. There is the sense that if this balance were upset perhaps the image would either collapse in on itself or expand forever outwards.

Within both the centre and periphery of the mandala there is nothing -nothing but emptiness. There is the hint of a journey within this painting: a circuit from nothingness to something back to nothingness. The only difference between the emptiness of the centre and the emptiness of the periphery is that the peripheral emptiness contains the whole memory, all the information of the ‘something-ness,’ within it. Much like the journey of life and death, life and death.

Is the image form that is spirit-infused, or spirit that has taken form? Is it coming or going? Is it moving or static? Is it anchored or afloat? Is it empty or full? The questions begin to fall away -the answer is always neither and both. It is whole. It is a composed state of balance, poised whilst gently rhythmic; a dynamic equilibrium. A precarious and delicate space to hold. I wonder what, if anything, emerges from this space of wholeness?

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Faith

I want to write about faith
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last and impossible
slither of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

—David Whyte

Twenty-nine stones each painted with a phase of the moon unite to form the Moonstone Mandala. Glinting in the sunlight that falls through the trees, there is a preciousness to the stones, a sense that they hold something dear. They are softly gleaming jewels, shiny dewdrops amidst Nature’s coarse patterns and earthy tones. The moonstones are nestled amidst black volcanic rock — the night sky, the darkness that holds the light.

The Moonstone Mandala, inspired by the David Whyte poem above, is a symbol of faith. Faith for some people resides in a god. My faith is a shadow of knowingness, a faint sense or tenuous trust that all life in its naked purity is an embodiment of virtue and benevolence. Perhaps ultimate goodness is not a seed that needs cultivating, or a choice that needs to be made, but is a concealed yet innate state of being, a wholesome nature hidden within everything in existence.

The higher the climb, the greater the fall. Likewise, the stronger faith is, the deeper the doubt. Even faith seems to have its consequences. Yet somehow in its demise, perhaps faith finds new life. In that tension of tearing away as the pendulum swings into the darkness of doubt, isn’t this emptying of faith already its birth into fullness? Just as the moon is most lucid against the darkest sky, maybe it is the waning embers of faith and not it’s fullest flames that radiate the strongest.

Guardian of the night sky, the moon is an ever-present entity even as it moves between fullness and emptiness, devotion and dependability are expressed in its unfailing rhythmic ascent and retreat; as is faith.

Behold the glow of the moon
illumine the world’s four quarters
perfect light in perfect space
a radiance that purifies
people say it waxes and wanes
but I don’t see it fade
just like a magic pearl
it shines both night and day

—Red Pine

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