I exercised. I said good-bye
To a departing friend.
I went to market, ate my meals.
Took a walk. Took out the garbage.
Read a little. Meditated. Slept.
This was my mandala.
A mandala is most commonly a diagram or painting that one uses during meditation. the painting is usually brightly colored and extremely complicated. By beginning at the outer perimeter of the picture and gradually working inwards (sometimes pausing at certain parts to contemplate), the meditator becomes completely absorbed. By the time that the center is reached, all normal egoistic notions should have been dissolved and the profundities of the mind should have been opened.Other religions have various other ways : mass, chanting, sacrament, reciting holy scripture, contemplating. These too become their mandala -- their objects of worship.
But it is not enough to go to church or temple once a week, or to read a bit of a holy book every morning. Can Tao be confined to such simple rituals? No. We could fly to the very height of the cosmos, plunge to the greatest depth, swim the length and breadth of eternity, and still not come to the limits of Tao. Therefore, we should look for Tao in every day. We should ask ourselves each day how Tao manifested itself to us. Our daily activities are our mandala.
Tao reveals itself to us in our mundane doings.
Personal Interpretation
The mundane activities that comprise our everyday lives are our mandala, our object of contemplation, the things that ground us. Tao cannot be confined to ritual. It is in all that we are, know, do, encounter. It can be sensed but never understood completely. It is elusive and yet, it makes up all that is. When we think about the myriad ways in which Tao manifests itself in our lives, we will begin to see that our time on this planet is a wondrous thing indeed.
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