Built not to last forever
I have two old wooden statues in my living room. They stand about three- and-a-half feet high, and are beautifully carved representations of young women - not voluptuous like some ancient goddesses' statues, just young women, slowly growing into their maturing bodies.
Gifted to us by a dear friend, for about 20 years we have had these beautiful women in our living room. They are not goddesses, as the symbols and signs they bear and other indications through our extensive iconographic research points out. They seem to be designed more like dwarapalas or paired doorkeepers at the entrance to a shrine or temple, but they do not show any indication of once having been attached to a door or to pillars, being carved fully in the round as they are. They look about sixteen years old and are full of promise of things to come - or perhaps this is what i like to read into them.
However, for a while we have noticed with dismay that the soft wood they have been made of has been slowly flaking away, even crumbling. They are old, not ancient, but the material is not teak or some other hard, long-lasting wood, but what is locally called jangli or common forest-tree wood that has not been weathered or aged. It is as if the carver lavished all this special attention on two very ordinary blocks of wood, to create these objects of true beauty.
We read many stories of artists taking a great amount of care in searching out and selecting the 'perfect' materials for their works of art - flawless marble, tough metal, or strong, aged wood.
And then there are those other artists, equally wise if not wiser, who think - "Ah well, if this is what's before me; this is what i must use. How can i work with it to make it truly beautiful?" A beautiful life lesson indeed!
Feeling miserable at first as i moved the statues to a new location in the room, it suddenly dawned on me that real beauty is often short-lived, even ephemeral. These will last as long as they will, and will slowly crumble back to the earth.
I am reminded once again of the ancient Vedic fire altars, carefully built for ritual worship according to strict guidelines, and then later completely dismantled when the ritual was 'done'. The large, intricate sand-painting mandalas of Tibetan Buddhists, created with deep meditative awareness, are swept away when they have served their need.
The Taoist ritual space, or altar, called daochang or daotan, reflects the structure of the cosmos, and is visualised as a sacred mountain connecting the human and divine realms. The altar is taken apart when the ritual is complete.
When my father lay dying in a hospital bed, and we, his family, watched in pain as his organs failed one by one and he grew into a shadow of the vibrant person he used to be, at a moment of precious insight i unexpectedly felt swept over by a strange sense of peace: we, like the ancient sacred altars and sanctified ritual implements, are not built to last forever.
Hopefully we serve our purpose, we delight others through the beauty of our being, we worship and honour our Creator through our everyday acts and interactions with others around us - then crumble back to the earth.
Follow the writer on our website, www.speakingtree.in
No comments:
Post a Comment