Moonstone Mandala

I was out walking one wild and woolly afternoon having left the
house, a quiet candle-lit cocoon darkened by the shadows of a late afternoon summer storm.

Soaked by ocean-spray and stung by rain I stood out on The Point - a jutting chunk of land projecting into the ocean. Leaning into the blustery storm I gave myself up to the arms of the wind, to the currents of the cosmos, to the wild exhalation of the universe.

The storm passed through me, subsided into me, dissolved into my hara and was swallowed up. Silent stillness filled the atmosphere yet air and skin were tingling with the charged polar electrics of summer-heat and heaven’s rain.

I turned around to a double rainbow, its curved beams of impossible colour doubly awesome against a blackened sky. The sharp shock of stark beauty was the zen koan that cracked through bland consciousness, awakening a primal self. The earth was alive as it had never been alive before, charged with an electricity that connected the infinitesimal into a net of concentric circles.

I re-entered the softly-spoken silence of the house wide-eyed and bulging with exhilaration. It was then that I realised I was huge. Being careful not to bowl over the hushed table dialogue I slipped as inconspicuously as possible into a chair.

Nobody noticed that I was no longer contained within this body, that ‘I’ had been blown out of any preconceived sense of spatial self, that ‘I’ reached as far as I placed my attention.

I kept it to myself this new-found electric largeness. It was my secret that I had become the summer storm, that the zing of wilderness was alive within me.

Dark and dim
In it there is life seed
Its life seed being very genuine
In it there is growth power
- Tao De Jing

All the colours of the rainbow spring from an infinite indigo black. This seed of life sprouts from the abyss abloom with the zest and beauty of new life. Bands of vibrant colour, smooth and unblemished, are alive with lustrous newness.

Although bursting with verve and vigour, the image is distinctly contained; the crisp outer limit sharply delineates it from the boundless surrounds. It is like a seed that encases and protects the secret kernel of a vibrant new life-force.

Towards the middle of the image a blue shell is seemingly prised open by the swelling expansion of the red root-like structures and the emergent growth within. The shoots of new life are lively and erratic in their impulsive sprouting.

The deep indigo expanse, in which the germinating seed is enveloped, is present also at its core. Perhaps, like the seed of life, we humans too emerge from our surrounds, the kernel of origin alive at our core.

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Did I notice your deities dancing on heaven cloud, your mandalas of rippling colour? Or the prayer flags floating free on thin air?

No, it was only the beggars, anchored and earthbound, and the richness of robes against the poverty of the people, that I carried home in mind’s eye.

I tried not to see anything after a while. Golds and deep reds too reminiscent of the heart’s sacred chambers. A space too tender to enter.

Eyes barely open, the world a whirl of colour. Portals of the heart firmly shut. Just don’t look into the eyes of the people; the gateway to a collectively pained and tormented soul.

Escape into monastery darkness seeped in the ages of deepest kindness and wisdom. Here, recent history leaves little imprint on the age-old teachings of love and interconnection.

Giant shadowy figures splashed with gold from yak-butter candles, their solemn faces stare back knowingly. Did you know this was coming?

In this high land where the source of light resides so near, your channel to a softer realm was cut midstream. From the rooftop of the world, your sacrificial blood trickled down the mountains to the spirit-deprived and hungry world below.

And yet, Tibetan beggar, your dirt smudged face, shabby clothes and calloused hands speak a different truth to that which you carry in your eyes. The yak-butter candle burns also in their depths casting golden light on giant shadow. But would one more whisper of pain blow it out forever?

To be smiling still, when in just a week I had forgotten how, the strength of earnest hope must surely be enough. That smile across deepest darkness is the most precious thing I’ve known.

And in that charged moment of asking, I gave away near everything, ashamed to walk away owning anything but hope.

(original photos by Jeff Su)