Thoughts of a mad woman

Mountain mandalas

2008-07-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

Back in the UK for what seems to be another cool, greyish summer. Not before venturing up to McLeod Ganj, above Dharamsala in the south-western reaches of Himalaya, to visit what may perhaps be the current world capital of the mandala, and to experience life lived in the vertical for a while. How radically different in subtle psychological ways, as well as the obvious physical ones, a life spent in locations where almost every step is either up or down must be.

There must be many souls on the planet even today who have never lived a day that was not imbued with the looming presence of the wilderness towering above them, blocking out the sky with a realm that seemed a home to gods and/or other mysterious beings. Their every waking hour has been coloured by this constant reminder of the relative puniness of humanity in the face of indomitable nature and those other invisible powers. Ever over their small affairs, their fragile perches/purchase upon the precipice, a brooding mass keeps watch, as much a part of their background awareness as the sun that rises and sets beyond it, or the ever-dancing clouds that furl and unfurl around it.

Such mountain dwellers may have no conception of a journey that is not balanced on a narrow ledge that clings to the shoulders of rocky giants for safety, or that strikes out across a knife-edge above the abyss. Never a step taken without some awareness, for the gulf yawns below the unwary. What must it be like to know only a world in which the way to the next village loops and zigzags and winds back and forth for interminable treacherous hours even when the destination remains tantalisingly visible just across the valley?

Those of us conditioned by life on the level can get away with so much more impatience, and careless haste in our actions, so much more arrogance about our place in the greater picture. The land seems ours for the taking, easily and quickly traversed, while our actions are unobserved by anything greater than ourselves.

Certainly, the fruit of Tibetan Buddhist tradition that is the mandala, much in evidence in McLeod Ganj today, requires exceptional levels of patience, steadfastness and humility of its makers. And undoubtedly, Tibetan Buddhist culture ripened among landscapes yet more challenging, far more rugged, far less lush and green than the beautiful forested hills above Dharamsala that inspired these reflections on the influence of the landscape. Nonetheless, the many Tibetans who have found a home in the dramatically precipitous setting of McLeod Ganj, overlooked by a few rather junior snowy Himalayan peaks, perhaps feel at least an echo of the awesome if chilly magnificence of their mountainous homeland.

Given the abominable and outrageous situation in Tibet these days, McLeod Ganj may also be the current world centre for mandala-making. Vast, elaborate and richly coloured painted mandalas adorn the walls of the chorten in the Dalai Lama’s headquarters in exile at one end of the Ganj. Here and in nearby monasteries, the monks sometimes create stunning sand mandalas, as well as much smaller designs made in butter. Many of the shops selling Tibetan cultural artefacts that line the narrow streets of McLeod Ganj display small hand-painted renditions of traditional mandalas. These fabulously detailed works, and many more kept behind the scenes, are sold for a fraction of the price that the work involved in making them should surely be worth. Classes in the traditional Tibetan Buddhist art of mandala painting are also available.

Although these works, so closely bound up with the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism are only very distant cousins of the mandalas in this website, they share some of the same symbolic underpinning and functional significance (see the About mandalas page) and certainly reflect a similar love of detail and decoration. Many of them represent an idealised temple in which every element has a precise symbolism, and most are based around four-way symmetry, as are Meditation in the marketplace, and, to some extent, Heavenly kharabaat and One night in spring in this website. When working with a fully figurative design, particularly one featuring architecture, four-point symmetry allows for a more naturalistic-looking effect than higher symmetries can do.

Sitting here in the UK surrounded by the original painted versions of the above-mentioned mandalas, it seems they – and many of the others, too – will forever be to some extent strangers in this land. Could it be that their distant roots in a culture grown in those dramatically austere mountainscapes keep them just a little exiled from the gently undulating lush leafiness of Surrey?

Perfect worlds

2008-04-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

The former travel journalist in me bears some of the responsibility that falls on all who ply this dubious trade for unthinkingly serving up every last unspoiled corner of the earth and her cultures to the ravages of appetites greedy for exotic new pleasures. So the particular spot in which I recently found a more harmonious and wholesome reality than any I have yet experienced on the planet should remain concealed behind a light veil of imprecision.

This perfect place was, though, a magical combination of spectacular, otherworldly scenery, lushly abundant nature, a wealth of traces of the vanished magnificence of a great empire, a peaceable, relaxed local population and a vast, resonant silence and tranquility. Fairytale landscapes dotted with peaceful ruins stretched improbably away under the flaming colours and fantastical cloud formations of fabulous sunsets. Birds and monkeys chattered idly through sparkling days freshened by luxuriant vegetation and lazily flowing waters.

Even the stones gathered from beside the picture-book river were more perfect in substance, form and colour than their counterparts out in the ‘ordinary’ world. The splendour of this location has long worked its subtle magic on those who have inhabited it to create a rare sense of harmony. This in turn has perhaps led to the formation of such beautiful stones, not so much in geological time, but in a time concurrent with and interwoven with the local mental space. Nature surely cannot meld itself into such a harmonious state in places where the surrounding vibration is not so fine, so wholesome – in places charged with the ugly, disturbing energies of environmental devastation, aggression, unhappiness, pollution, greed and so on.

It is something like this subtle refinement of reality through a true harmony between the human spirit and its environment that is evoked in mandalas such as Heavenly kharabaat, One night in spring and Meditation in the marketplace - reality with the rough edges smoothed a little to create this sense of a more fully flavoured and richly rounded world. When a higher level of caring and conscious integration between the human spirit and its surroundings (and other humans, too) is achieved, then surely this kind of perfection becomes manifest.

The work of Masaru Emoto, cited in About beauty and healing, reflects a similar vision for the potential transformation of our earthly existence – a recognition of the power that lies within the human mind to effect this total renewal of a reality that is, after all, ultimately also a creation of that same human mind. It is through this power buried within each of us that the world really would be transformed by meditation, if everyone were to embrace it wholeheartedly and work to clean all minds of the junk that cannot but be reflected outside in the environments in which we live. This is how we can heal the world from the inside out.

There is no doubt that spending time in spots like my magical retreat affords a powerful reminder of the magnificence of our earthly home, and it can help to bring about a renewal, a reconnection with a deeper sense of awe and wonder at life, without which no transformation of either inner or outer reality is possible. Experiencing a strong outer silence, where this is available, can help to connect us with the inner silence that is meditation, too.

But there is a difference between this conscious inner nourishment and the greedy guzzling of earthly paradises for short-term and superficial new experiences that fuels large sections of the travel industry. The restless mind’s perpetual thirst for something new, and the profit the industry generates by catering for this appetite, together create an oppressive and often blindly destructive force. As a previously unexploited corner of the world is discovered, the inward rush of tourists soon changes its very nature, often irrevocably.

Why this insatiable greed for new locations, new experiences? Because we need them perhaps. When we no longer believe that we will be transported to paradise after we die, and the rest of our lives is often mundane, they afford us a brief escape into a fairytale or paradise world. These excursions into other people’s realities can certainly revive flagging spirits and help to put things into a healthier, more relativist perspective. But they do not have a lasting impact on our lives. We visit one, then a few months later, book a trip to another. And the photographs and home movies pile up uncontrollably. Yet revisiting these does not bring lasting contentment. It is not enough.

This is where our mind-driven society cannot help us further. Until the understanding dawns that hunting for paradise out here in the world is not the answer, we may well go on trotting across the globe, helping to wear it out – for as long as this luxury is available to us. But it is well to remember that the key to the happiness we seek does not ultimately lie in such external stimulation. It is only when we turn inwards to explore the undiscovered places within us that a deeper contentment can be found. This contentment does not depend on any first-hand experience of exotically ‘other’ locations. It doesn’t depend on anything external at all.

Earth matters

2008-02-28T23:37:00.000-08:00

While India froze this winter, much of Europe seemed to bask in unseasonably warm temperatures – another sign that the climate is breaking free of its old patterns and we are drifting into an unpredictable future – a future that is very much of our own making.

With the onset of industrialisation and the ability it gave homo sapiens to punch so far above his weight, the delicately balanced eco-system of our earthly home began to slide out of kilter. For generations, this slow tipping of the balance remained imperceptible, but as the village slowly slowly became global, the dots were gradually joined up and the picture they reveal is finally emerging in all its stark darkness.

Our species has turned into a malignant cancer on the Earth’s once beautiful surface, multiplying uncontrollably and eating away at finite resources without regard for the wellbeing of the host. Now that surface is everywhere seared and scarred and rutted and pitted and potholed and polluted and poisoned, burned and ravaged and left for dead by the fevered activity of its most industrious inhabitants. Nature is the real treasure is a reminder of the ultimate relative values of the things humans have destroyed the Earth to obtain – jewels and riches – and the things without which we cannot survive – water and nature itself.

Once exuberant and seemingly endlessly bountiful nature is forced back into ever smaller pockets and corridors across this ruined landscape. Pushed to its limits, nature is economising – eradicating species and letting go of vast areas into wasteland populated by unlovely pariah species – weeds, cockroaches, crows etc, or by nothing at all. Birds who have flown expresses this fragility of the natural environment; looked at from a distance, it appears like a soap bubble whose surface is perishing, becoming pitted with holes, fading away.

If most of us feel powerless when faced with this reality, it is not surprising – each of us is so small against the whole, and whatever actions we may take so puny, so far away from addressing the problem in all its magnitude. And yet, every small action must ultimately count, and small actions are all we can each of us do. Simply to create an inner connection with the natural world, so that we are really aware of its beauty and preciousness, helps to strengthen it, as it in turn strengthens us – this is the feeling evoked in Herbal cure from paradise and The spring of my lord.

If we become aware of the deeper implications of what we do and how we live, the way in which everything connects in one vast web of being, from which nobody can separate himself or his actions, then, too, we become less and less able to act in ways that are harmful to other parts of that whole. The time of reintegration conveys a sense of this web of interconnection between all things everywhere, including the natural world on which we all depend absolutely for our continued existence on Earth.

This subject is so vast and so vital that these few words can only skim the surface of its substance. Perhaps the mandalas may help to give deeper expression to our feelings of love and respect for our earthly home.

Religious observances

2008-01-26T03:53:00.000-08:00

A trip to Goa, (details of an exhibition of the mandalas in Anjuna, Goa, are included in About the artist) where Christianity and tourism together have created a climate in which alcoholic intoxication is far more visible than elsewhere in India, brings forth an unpopular and unfashionable opinion on the subject…

Living some of the time in the UK leaves no room for doubt that alcohol is the object of an almost religious devotion. Karl Marx may once have worried that religion might be the opium of the people, but in 21st-century Britain at least, the situation is clearly reversed: alcohol is the religion of the people – the entire British people, not just the working classes that Marx was concerned about.

If there’s one characteristic that unites all income levels in the UK, it is a profound belief in the innate splendour and eternally salvational qualities of alcohol. In the original sense of the word religion – to bind together again – drink is far more widely applied, and superficially far more effective in its way, than the communal worship of some transcendent entity ever was.

Certainly, the British are exemplary in their devotions. Every evening after work, where the Hindu may dutifully call in at the temple to ring the bell and utter a prayer or two, the UK worker trots off to offer his or her libations, and gain relief from his worldly woes, at the long, shining altar of the nearest public house. (For an alternative, and entirely harmless form of relief, visit the mandala galleries.)

Here, in the ritualistic intake of strange fuming and semi-poisonous liquids, lies the instant answer to all prayers – at least for an hour or two. As the mysterious, alchemical, temporary transformation of the being takes over, social differences can be forgotten, along with uncooperative colleagues, unpaid bills, blocked sinks and bulging waistlines. The world is suddenly a beautiful place, full of smiling faces in soft focus. After a while, it may elicit the odd blurry hymn of praise and even a shambling, wobbly dance of worship. Hey, let’s be merry – we have found a fast ride to heaven, and tomorrow we may die, or at least find ourselves back in hell again.

Without this regular act of worship, how intolerably dull and drear our lives would suddenly appear. Why would anyone deprive himself of the peerless presence of this divine liquid light source? There is no other god than this – all those wooden and marble ones have failed us, but this watery deity never fails to deliver.

And for those killjoys who choose not to partake in these religious rites, there is the threat of being branded a heretic. How dare they stand aside from the crowd, blind to the truth to which it bows down in such humble and unquestioning obeisance? What perverse spirit leads them to refuse to partake of the devotional elixir of life? Which alien doctrines must they be following? To which infidel faith do they belong? What right have they not to sacrifice themselves dutifully to this jealous and possessive god?

For there is sacrifice involved, of course: the payment of the exorbitant dues exacted by the temples for their sacred fare, the regular self-flagellation of the night and the morning after, the gradual clouding of the mind and poisoning of the body, and the occasional prostration and public humiliation when the god transports his worshippers a little beyond acceptable norms of behaviour.

There are other hazards of the religious way of life, too – vomit-strewn night-time streets and the marked tendency to mindless violence among more fundamentalist devotees are two, although such drawbacks do not appear to deter the faithful from their beliefs. Heretics may watch all these religious observances with some dismay, but when a religion becomes institutionalised, and its observances unthinking and habitual, there are some thoughts that also become unthinkable.

In his early 20th-century novel, The Immoralist, French writer André Gide created an absolutely unconventional and somehow enlightened character, Ménalque. Intriguingly, among the shunned and vilified Ménalque’s amoral and socially threatening behaviours is a wayward taste for sobriety. Sobriety, he declares, is, for him, ‘a more powerful form of intoxication, one where I retain my lucidity… I seek to heighten life, not diminish it through intoxication… I love life enough to prefer to live it awake.’ This honest and healthy attitude can only be expressed through the words of a dangerously heretical character. (The words accompanying the small mandala Inner eyes echo Ménalque’s views from a slightly different angle.)

It is indeed beautiful to see the world with a clear and unclouded head – lucidity itself adds extra sparkle and crispness. (The mandalas of the Natural cycles gallery reflect this bright, fresh vision.) Only then may all life’s absurdity and insanity, as well as its magic and mystery, stand revealed. And if the magic and mystery of this world, right here right now in front of us, cannot be seen clearly and accepted in its totality, what hope is there of clarity in any of the worlds that might lie beyond this one? (Visit the mandala galleries Mystic circles and Meditative spaces for a few speculative glimpses into the beyond.)

Cheers…

Christmas cracker

2007-12-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

As Christmas colonises the consciousness of half the planet once more, saturating minds and all available public space with its clutter of commerce and compulsory, cloying, conditioned sentiment, it is always a relief to be in India. Admittedly, in recent years, the Indian taste for festivals of any denomination does seem to have led to an upsurge in violently vermilion-coloured knitted hats fringed with white nylon fluff, curious reindeer-antler headgear that sings in the dark, and a range of similarly devotional items. With the possible exception of a sudden rash last year of street traders hawking large leather whips on and around 25 December, at least the evidence is that this festival is not being treated with any undue respect or seriousness here.

I have now evaded nine Christmasses in this way, so it is possible that these observations are outdated or inapposite, but what filters through to me here in my splendid isolation suggests not. Christmas is perhaps the outstanding example of the way in which the social machinery operates to ensure that all its subjects are thoroughly ensnared in its mechanism, body, mind and soul. (If you are just now feeling frazzled by this mechanism, take a little time out to seek some centring and peace in the mandala galleries: Thoughts of a madman and other mandalas in The world of mind gallery reflect this frazzling, but reveal also an underlying peace that is always there, and always available through some quiet relaxation with a mandala. The Natural cycles mandala gallery offers some refreshing respite from the rush, while the mandalas in Meditative spaces are windows onto another world.)

So inexorably does the season advance upon the hapless inhabitants of ‘Christian’ countries, seeping out through every channel of media and publicity in a relentlessly rising tide of hysteria, that they have no chance at all to step aside. Their active participation is structurally implicit, wherever they work or shop or play.

Participation in what, exactly? A curious assemblage of disparate beliefs and desperate behaviours. Buried at the bottom of the whole show is the ancient recognition of a cosmic event, the winter solstice, which somehow became conflated with the supposed birth of a great religious teacher. Somewhere along the line, this event was linked to the night-time visit of a certain good man bearing gifts, who gradually acquired the use of a reindeer-driven flying sleigh, as well as a residence at the North Pole and a curious fondness for chimneys.

It seems it was with this innocent character that things began to get out of hand. Santa Claus’s kind-hearted sack of presents has gradually metamorphosed into a rather cold-hearted flood of commercialism, overwhelming every marketplace in ‘Christendom’ and intruding into the remotest reaches of consumer consciousness. And so comes the compulsory and compulsive purchasing and offering of frequently unnecessary and unwanted items, which will be left swilling around the world like so much expensive jetsam after the festivities have ebbed away. Along with this surfeit of objects comes an equal excess of food and drink, poured unnecessarily into the numbed and exhausted body, and an orgy of social contact that is often dictated more by form and custom than by any true, spontaneous feeling to connect.

Such concentrated and enforced consumption of objects, food and people reduces the individual to some sort of Christmas robot, operating on autopilot according to the program installed by society. Living life from the outside in, while, at the core of the whole spectacle, an emptiness silently lurks. The remembrance of that special birth no longer resonates, dulled as it is by the dead weight of formalised, dogmatised religion. Just words, for the vast majority. (Check out Birth of a new religion.) The cosmic event still happens, quietly, majestically. The Earth turns the great corner of its annual journey, but nobody even stops to think that the depth of the darkness is passed through once more, that the sun is on the return again. Life has been snatched from the jaws of oblivion one more time. Who has space left inside to feel awe at this, when so many old movies are running on TV and the drink is bringing ever greater forgetfulness? (See the mandalas in On a cosmic scale mandala gallery for a remembrance of some of the cosmic forces underpinning our lives at all times.)

Still, and even so, here’s wishing a very merry Christmas to all those for whom this celebration is a reality. After all, there is one aspect of Christmas that really truly makes me merry: all the decorations. It is a great delight to experience the annual transformation of the dour everyday Western cityscape into a wonderland of colour and pattern and sparkle. This at least gives some real feeling of celebration in Western/’Christian’ culture, where the gaudiness and glitz that India is so much less shy about enjoying whenever an excuse can be found, seem somehow frowned upon for the rest of the year.

And, for all those who are not yet sated with the festive aesthetic, may the gilded and glittering designs in The jewel box mandala gallery take away any bitter taste in these words…

Reflections from Rajasthan

2007-11-15T07:04:00.000-08:00

What a supportive and nourishing place the built environment would be if more of it, much much more of it, were designed – or rather, allowed to grow organically – in the spirit of some of the magical old cities of Rajasthan.

Time spent strolling in the labyrinth of ancient streets and small squares clustered below the fabulous fortress of Jodhpur is enchanted by the friendliness of the people, and their easy-going sweetness cannot be unrelated to a life lived in such fantastical surroundings. For one whose daily horizons are filled by this seemingly infinite maze of ornately carved old buildings, all arranged in a vast organic sculpture of interlocking forms, much of it painted in fanciful shades of vivid blue, and with the Arabian Nights fortress towering above, some poetry, some sense of the enchantment of life must inevitably remain. When patient and masterful craftsmen have laboured until the stone house fronts have dissolved into intricate patterns of lacy filigree , how could anyone feel existence has failed to honour him with a fine enough home? In such an exuberant outpouring of beauty, magnificence and playfulness, how not to feel some celebration and gratitude?

In truth, the people of Jodhpur, who have inherited the homes built by their ancestors, are probably not even aware of their extraordinary beauty – and may be yearning for a nice modern concrete house with all mod cons – but still, this fairytale environment works its subtle magic on their nature, and is a living illustration of the ideas raised in On beauty and healing. The same can certainly be said for Jaisalmer, a delicate jewel of a city filled with equally magnificent havelis all carved out of golden sandstone. With many of these nestled inside its fantastically beautiful fortress, the whole place seems to come straight out of the Arabian Nights.

As enchanting in its way is the city of Udaipur, but here it is an astonishingly high concentration of artists, producing the exquisite miniatures for which the place is famed, that assures its special flavour. Every second shop is a feast for the eyes, filled with the dazzlingly detailed paintings on silk, board and plastic that are created in the dozens of artist’s schools and studios scattered in the environs of the town. Surely there is nowhere else on the planet where so many delicate windows open onto so many splendid and magical other worlds.

And the presence of such a dense population of artists spills over onto the walls of the city, too. Surfaces that, anywhere else, would be left blank and dead are here adorned with brightly coloured elephants and lovers and flowered borders. Again, how can the ambiance of this city fail to be affected by the presence of so many consciousnesses devoted to producing so much timeless and delicate imagery? True, all this labour is now for the tourists, but still, there is a sweetness here, a charm about the built environment – and how much more attractive the most ordinary daily life becomes when lived amid such an overflowing celebration of beauty.

The dazzling white marble Jain temples of Dilwara, near Mount Abu, and the small golden ones clustered inside the fort of Jaisalmer, are another astounding instance of Rajasthani exuberance. The exquisite intricacy of their carving defies belief, transforming marble and sandstone into weightless layers of swirled and folded lace. All over the ceilings of the temples at Dilwara and also in Jaisalmer, fantastical three-dimensional mandalas dazzle, dismay and delight. The most elaborate of my own mandalas – Pulse of the universe, Silent mirror, Eternal light and Restful restlessness – are not even pale shadows of these carved masterpieces. Osho’s words on objective art were never more apposite.

For some these remarks will seem hopelessly naïve, and I haven’t checked the crime or wellbeing statistics (if they exist) or done any proper journalistic research at all, but the lived experience of these cities is enough. It is a glimpse of the beautiful, supportive, healing environments that humans are capable of creating. The intuition has no doubt that these places promote a softer, more harmonious, contented society than all the harsh, aggressively linear geometry of concrete, steel and glass that seems to be the basis of almost every contemporary attempt to ‘improve’ our habitat. Sleek and flashy such brave new worlds may be, but their sharp shapes and stark surfaces feel inhuman and cold, and seem to preclude all the innate human impulses to surround ourselves with a more organic, decorative beauty. Small wonder, then, that those who live and work in them so often feel alienated, dehumanised and indifferent, and that so much ugliness and unkindness seems to happen in them. These Rajasthani cities are the most concrete examples I have come across of an antidote to all this modernist puritanism – living, breathing fairytale worlds that touch and heal the heart with their fancifulness and playfulness.