The Golden Arches
It’s December 21st and rain is pounding down from the heavens. It’s the winter solstice, the shortest and darkest day of the year. As raindrops pummel the roof of my house and my cat looks pleadingly at me as if I could stop the rain, I feel moody. I find myself going within, remembering an amusing article I read some years ago, written by a journalist for Reuter’s Daily News.
He reported that a few minutes before noon on December 14th, 1998, in Houston, Texas, a trio of Buddhist monks were spotted in the street, heading for the golden arches. Not the gates of heaven as one might assume. Rather, they were headed for a MacDonald’s fast food restaurant. Fully robed, they causally strode through the swinging glass doors and placed their orders, picked up their trays and sat in a booth, happily munching quarter pounders extra value meals with fries and cokes, giggling as they ate. No sacred chants or meditations of gratitude. Just eating and laughing. They were taking a lunch break from performing a ritual called “Tibetan Sand Painting,” an art form that began two and a half thousand years ago, a dramatic expression of impermanence.
Some time ago, I was fortunate to witness the week long process. On the first day, the monks don industrial-looking aprons as they use chalk, dust, string and pencils to create a foundation for an intricate design on a wooden platform that serves as an instructional chart of the spiritual aspect of the human experience. When they feel satisfied with what they have outlined, they remove the aprons, sit cross-legged, bend forward, put their shaved heads together and begin blowing millions of grains of colored sand through a funnel shaped instrument called a cornet to create the design. As they work, a magnificent demonstration of the Universe takes form with images of flaming swords, lotus blossoms, mythical creatures in chariots and images of the Buddha sitting in meditation, watching over the world.
At the end of the week, the results are breathtaking. They thank the local spirits and dedicate their hard work to the fulfillment of universal benefit. Then, amid chanting, music and prayer, the most senior monk places his index finger on one side of the precious work of art, presses down and sweeps it across the sand, destroying the masterpiece. The rest of the monks take pieces of cardboard, sweep up the remaining sand and place it in an urn that they will later deposit into a body of water.
I was upset when I watched them deconstruct their artwork until all that was left was the original wooden platform. They had worked so hard on it, it was so beautiful and now it was gone.
We in the West find this kind of deconstruction devastating. Starting from our childhoods, we are taught to keep impermanence at a distance, that maybe if we ignore it and keep on moving, we can bypass it altogether. But of course it’s a losing battle. I was five when my great aunt Ruth passed away from cancer. She had been living with us, she and I had been very close but I didn't know she was dying because no one told me. When I walked into her room one day and saw her empty bed, I asked my mother where she was. She told me my aunt was gone. I climbed into my mother’s lap, crying, She stroked my head for a few minutes and then she stood up abruptly, walked upstairs, went into her bedroom and shut the door. On the day of the funeral, I begged my parents to let me go with them. They refused. “It’s no place for little girls,” they said, and I watched them drive away.
I was in my thirties when I was in Bali and witnessed a funeral procession making its way through the center of town. Family members were wearing colorful clothing, singing to live music and the children, some of them younger than I was when Ruth died, giggled and chased each other back and forth around the body which lay open on a platform. I was envious that I didn't have the opportunity to celebrate my relationship with my aunt, a woman whom I often imagined was my real mother.
The older I get, the more I realize that we might as well give up resisting loss because impermanence is our true nature, whether we like it or not. The fundamental nature of a being human is embracing ambiguity and surrendering to the fact that we can't change it. We can rail against the way things are or buckle in and take the ride. When we stop expecting things to remain the same and start accepting that nothing ever stays the same, we can experience a lot less suffering. Life gives and it takes, so while what we love doesn't last forever, neither do the things we dislike, like deep sorrow. This wouldn't be possible without impermanence.
Someone told me a story about a monk sitting at the edge of a river, trying to meditate. He couldn’t concentrate because all he could hear was the water splashing against the rocks in a relentless rhythm. He stood up, stepped into the freezing water, grabbed the heavy stones, one by one, and placed them back in a different position. It was hard work, the water was cold but he persevered. When he was through, he sat back down, pleased with himself that he had solved his problem. But when he closed his eyes, the sound of the water hitting the rearranged rocks was louder, he was shivering from the icy cold river and his body ached from heaving the stones around. He longed for how it had been before, but there was no going back. Finally, he let it all go, relaxed into the rhythm of the flow of the water and recognized that everything was simply the way it was. He could go with it or not, but accepting things as they were was the more compassionate choice.
No matter what we did or didn't do, what we’re doing or not doing, what we will do or won't do, we deserve self- kindness in this challenging world of ours. We can regret the past, feel guilty about the present or dread the future. But like our monk and student of life, accepting things as they are is the compassionate choice.