Moonstone Mandala

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.

Two Worlds Colliding

Jing is a phenomenon in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Taoism that beholds the deepest seeds of self. It is an ambiguous substance, a form of qi denser than spirit that is often referred to as a fluid that suffuses every part of the body.

Jing is a bipartite phenomenon comprised of primordial and postnatal aspects. It is a substance where the pure undifferentiated world of our origins - the Tao - merges with a postnatal component that is of the apparent world. Heaven and earth collide.

Our Jing comes into being when the two worlds, primordial unity and postnatal duality, unite at conception. Just as we are a microcosmic union of the manifest and unmanifest realms, Jing is present in every infinitesimal aspect of self.

Finding the Kernel of Truth

Jing is generally translated as Essence as it is our fundamental nature instilled with our own individuality; it is our own personal kernel of truth. Jing encodes us not only with our true nature but holds within it the guiding force of our destiny or life’s purpose, just as a seed directs new life.

The primordial aspect of Jing is called De. The character for De contains within it the three separate characters for heart, perfectly right and action. De as a whole expresses a fusion of virtue and original nature –‘perfectly right action from the heart’.

De, being the primordial self, is birthed from the Tao and is instilled with its essence, perhaps akin to a seed from the tree of life. De is said to be imbued with our own unique destiny, yet it is up to us to bring it into fruition. “This mandate is imprinted on the jing, the fluid that governs the smooth unfolding of our individual destiny as we move from the beginning of life to the end” writes Lonny S. Jarrett.

Sprouts and Old Growth

Young children, that much closer to the origins, are generally untainted by life and live in a boundless, simple and spontaneous manner. They are said to be ‘all qi and no mind’ and live in a pure wholesome state less restrained by judgement, division, dichotomy and dualism.

As we grow older the understorey and canopy of our lives becomes a dense tangled network. Although Jing itself cannot be soiled by the trials of life and always remains a reflection of the purity and unity of the Tao it can become obscured.

Somehow the art of living seems to be in parting the tangled branches of our lives and allowing the sun and rain to caress the seeds of the new life of every moment, and to reside in the beauty, simplicity and spontaneity of new life, in touch with our true nature and personal destiny.

Lingering in Happiness
After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground

where it will disappear – but not of course, vanish
except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of the moss;
a few drops, round as pearls will enter the mole’s tunnel;

and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.

- Mary Oliver