Random Thoughts
My writing has been sporadic lately because I still haven't figured out a sleep schedule. So I find myself trying to knock out something witty, insightful, or at least something that fills a few lines when I have a moment to spare. This is one of those times...and I'm feeling the pressure.
I do have some random pieces of clutter I might string together. For instance, if you're looking for a free email service to store every email on earth you can try mailnation.net which offers a free terabyte of space. My first computer hard drive was 4 megabytes I think.
I should also mention for anyone whose going to be in San Antonio in about two weeks that the Buddhist Monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India are visiting soon. They're the guys who make those painstakingly intricate designs out of individual grains of colored sand.
It's pretty amazing...I hope to take Ana to go see them.
I hope we don't sneeze...although, as I recall, they always blow their masterpieces away when they leave...demonstrating the fleeting nature of beauty or something insightful like that.
I'm out of time, so I suppose my attempt at wisdom should be considered fleeting too...that insight might apply more often than I'd like actually.
posted by Michael
©The Main Point by Michael Main
1 Comments
1 Comments:
I certainly hope you and Ana have the chance to see them at work -- it's really something.
Yes, they're Tibetan Buddhist monks and I had the chance to watch them a couple months after 9/11, when they created a sand painting at the National Museum of the American Indian in the old US Customs House in New York City, on Bowling Green down at the bottom tip of Manhattan Island. That particular sand painting, IIRC, was done with the intention to help restore harmony to NYC after the attack, and the museum was only a few blocks from 'Ground Zero' and the WTC site.
A friend and co-worker whose neighbors were longtime supporters of these monks took me to see the opening ceremony when the monks started the sand painting,with prayers and deep bass chanting and those amazing 10 foot long traditional ceremonial Tibetan Horns, and then to the closing Dissolution ceremony a week or so later, after it was finished.
When the monks completed the painting, they swept it up into a big pile of multi-colored sand grains, part of which they then distributed in teeny baggies with about half a teaspoon of the sand in each one to the assembled witnesses. Then they gathered up the rest of the sand and led us all in a big procession out of the building and through Battery Park, right outside, over to the side of a pier where they ceremoniously cast the sand into the waters of New York Harbor (I understand it's customary to cast the sand into moving water or something like that)
Many of us onlookers poured our little pinches of the sand from the baggies into the Harbor too, while others kept the sand as a memorial of the event -- I still have mine in a cubbyhole over my desk at work.
At that time and place, so close to the site of the WTC, it was an amazingly powerful experience to join my silent Christian prayers with those of many others of various faiths, all praying for peace and healing for our suffering world.
Harriet
Post a Comment
<< Home