The Sand Mandala (Tibetan: དཀྱིལ་འཁོར།; kilkhor) is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of mandalas made from colored sand. A sand mandala is ritualistically destroyed once it has been completed and its accompanying ceremonies and viewing are finished to symbolize the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life. (link)

Planning creation, planning destruction

You build a fire and then you light it…

Symbolism in each grain

Ceremonious cooperation

Beauty is fleeting, as are all things

Fine detail, fine labor, and karmic purification

Sweeping away the attachment…

A Mandala Destruction Ceremony

“A person who seeks knowledge knows more and more. A person who seeks enlightenment knows less and less until things are just what they are.”
– Lao Tzu

It’s all newness. It’s all new.
Every letter of this sentence.
Every breath inhaled – what of any of this has happened before?

And is this significant?
Yes. But only when lived as newness.

When newness itself is lived it all gains meaning;
it all has to be new, because nothing is allowed to be old.
And yet our all-too-powerful brains jump to nonexistent past and future times,
all unreal, jumping simply because they can.

Whatever you have to do, make it real,
cause there’s no time but this one – and it’s never happened before.
And as soon as it’s over,
it didn’t.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it:

Universe got you down?
First bring some grace to your mind.
With this, ironically, grace to others is simultaneous.

A nicely shaped concept, attainable but perhaps unsustainable.
So slow maintenance soothes.

Say to yourself: This is what I want — cosmic comfort.

Tao friends unite, eat grapes, and be merry.
Otherwise this wine will turn to vinegar.

The sky is flat and beautiful.
The mind weak and excitable.
Life is short and stressful,
but not necessarily so, you see…

Venus is watching, as is Mars
And while, in your mind, the Earth may be one pixel,
You are without a doubt only one pixel in Earth’s.
Always remember that.

You are but one processing unit.
And yet you have a place.
One pixel in the screen.
So don’t muck it up.
Don’t leave your block burnt up looking like another rock;
It’s not so aesthetically pleasing.

What is pleasing, however,
is the gradual recoloring of your transcendental neighborhood.
For this you will need some basic self-affirmations:

I am a human and I own my life.
I create reality but am linked to everything.
Just and peaceful turns of the mind do not only benefit me.

The usual suspects of confusion, anger, apathy, and grief,
These guys can be allies;
They have scoped out the terrain.
Listen and learn how to proceed from them.
Their language is one of ugly sounds with beautiful meanings.

Delay their negation.
Immeasurably it pays off.
Don’t escape so fast.
You have to know what you are running from.

When you next update your reality, please install these files.
The desktop will take on a whole new look.
Because perception is reality; i.e. WYSIWYG,
What you (choose to) see is what you get.

FROM XKCD:

JUST GHOSTS
To define Reality,
we must define Experience,
yet we must also define:
the Experiencer, Consciousness, Life, the Universe, etc.

WHAT IS REAL?
In one model of the Universe, 99.999% of all Matter is empty.
(Think hydrogen.)
A proton’s mass is mostly Energy.
(Look quantum.)
Normal Matter fills *only 5%* of the known space in the Universe.
Meaning we, the Experiencers,
can only directly grasp 5% of what exists materially.
And all of it is empty.
Because 9.999 = 10, just as 3.333 = 3.
(Think fractions, 1/3)

ABSURD LOGIC

Matter is both here and not here and we don’t know how or why.

WE ARE CHASING GHOSTS

Our Reality we generally define by what we sense:
Intuition, feelings, scent, touch, taste, sight, and sound.
A sense of Reality, Freedom, Truth, Justice,
Fashion, Compassion, Whatever.
All of these senses rely directly on the schema/ego of the Experiencer.
And we are able to process
only a small minority of what we are able to sense.
And some sense that they are free to believe anything,
because that is part of their schema.
A schema made up of everything processed during their life…

So, we come up with metaphors and diagrams and theories on
Life and Reality.
Taking, then, our constructs and descriptions and images
as reality.
We tell it to ourselves, and it becomes true.

ABSURD LOGIC

Once in a while, reality comes knocking on the door.
You say, [ Hold on a sec! I'll be right there.
Gotta finish your diagram! ]
Or maybe your diagram is true…
Maybe it was reality knocking on its own door.

THIS TOO IS A GHOST