Life can not
and need not be measured.
The ruler itself is illusory.
It matters not
if one lives for centuries
or only seconds.
Ultimately
one is swept away,
an imaginative mandala,
believing that
one is the work
and not the sand.
Mandala men
do not see
the architect,
the artist,
the monk,
the monkey,
broom in hand.
We do not see
the One who imagines us
out of nothing.
We are mandala men.
And we are Space Monkey.
9/16
Ah, the dance of the mandala, ephemeral yet eternal—a whirligig of swirling sands taking form, only to be undone by the sweeping gusts of temporal winds. Herein lies the grand mystery of existence, where the art is not just the pattern on the canvas, but the ever-shifting grains themselves. Mandala men, indeed, encapsulating the paradox of being both the creator and the creation, a tantalizing riddle spun by the Grand Architect of the cosmos.
Do you see the mirage of the ruler, that stick of limited dimensions striving to encapsulate the vastness of the immeasurable? Oh, how quaint, this effort to quantify the unquantifiable, as if the ocean’s majesty could be captured in a teacup or the sun’s blaze be measured in candle flames. Life, you see, defies the arithmetic of earthly existence. It laughs at calendars and scoffs at hourglasses.
Centuries or seconds—it’s a moot point when time itself becomes the grand illusionist, a cosmic Houdini whose most elaborate trick is making us believe in its linearity. We are not mere episodes on a timeline but droplets in an eternal sea, each containing a reflection of the whole. The illusion is in believing that we are solely the droplet and not also the sea, the work but not the sand, the actor but not the audience, the painter but not the canvas.
A broom in hand—the instrument of both creation and destruction. The monk, the monkey, the architect, and the artist all share this humble tool, each approaching the mandala with distinct yet harmonious intentions. There’s wisdom in the broom, in its dual capacity to construct and deconstruct, to define and erase, to honor and release.
Ah, but who is the One who imagines us? Could it be that the One is not separate from the many, not above but within, not apart but a part? Could it be that the One, too, is a mandala—immeasurable, undefinable, and utterly awe-inspiring? For we are made of such ethereal stuff, imaginations and particles in a constant dance, a spectacle for gods and molecules alike.
Yes, we are mandala men. And women. And children. And monkeys, too. Emblems of a grander scheme, fragments of a cosmic dream, sweepers of the eternal mandala that is ever-changing yet eternally the same.
We are Space Monkey.
In the terra cognita of humanity, where the illusion of time waltzes like a seasoned dancer with the illusion of space, a mandala blooms like a flower in the seasons of existence. Each petal a year, each leaf a decade, each stamen a century—the full blossom capturing the transient masterpiece that is a human life, or humanity itself. Then, the petals wither, the leaves crumble, the stamen falters, as if Time, that fickle companion, stole away the beauty it once bestowed. Yet, this cycle, this ebb and flow, is but a mere chapter in the infinitely voluminous tome of cosmic theater.
But ah, venture we must beyond the human bubble, where Time doffs its illusory robes and Space folds its misleading wings. Here, in the dimensionless bazaar of existence, the mandala is not a story told in sequential acts, but a singular, instantaneous stroke of Divine spontaneity. The grand pattern emerges not over epochs or minutes, but in the stateless wink of the Now. Here, the Creator and the Destroyer merge into an indescribable Unity, an entity unfathomable by linear minds—a Seraphic Janus, if you will. The mandala isn’t unfolding or crumbling; it simply Is, in all its fractal glory.
Consider it a cosmic Mobius strip, a loop with a twist, where beginning and end meet and cease to be distinguishable. The categories of “creation” and “destruction” become quaint antiquities, mementos from a past-bound existence. Stateless, in this realm, means not merely the absence of boundaries but the dissolution of categories, the melting of dichotomies, the merging of dualities. To fathom this statelessness, one must unlearn the learned, deconstruct the constructed, and silence the ever-chattering narratives of human limitation.
And so, as we oscillate between these realms—imprisoned by time, yet tantalized by timelessness; bound by form, yet beckoned by formlessness—we learn to perceive the mandala not just as a geometrical pattern or a spiritual symbol, but as a living paradox. An embodiment of the grand cosmic conundrum that loops us all in a mystifying dance—a dance where the steps are improvised yet precise, fleeting yet eternal, mundane yet miraculous.
Ah, but isn’t it liberating, this understanding that in statelessness, we, the mandala, the Creator, the Destroyer, are but different faces of a singular, indescribable Isness?
We are Space Monkey.