SECRET TO HAPPINESS TRADITION: Accept and celebrate the impermanence of LIFE

DATE: Any time

CELEBRATED: Tibet

Before I carry on writing when I came up with this title I couldn’t help but remember the famous and cheesy American Soap opera and that man’s voice completing the ‘………. and so are the days of the our lives.’ All non-Americans CAN WATCH IT HERE.  The thing is that quote is blindingly accurate.

I think I might of mentioned this in a previous post on this page, but westerners (that’s us) tend to have this idea that we are ‘the centre of the universe’. We live in a non spiritual and materialistic society where success and praise is about the individual. We are so preoccupied with our our own sense of blazing importance. 

Many people move to cities that is where the money is  and forget that their is a navy coloured sky  above t so vast above us, which puts into perspective what a smidgen we truly are in this imperishable  universe.

Tibetan monks have a rather splendid way of creatively interpreting  this in escapable fact,by making intricate and rather vivid and stunning mandalas with grains of sand.

They pour sand out of metal funnels and skilfully make complex patterns  and spectacular  symbolic forms of  animals, spirits, demons

These mandalas take days to make but when they are complete, the Tibetans, scoop up half of this fantastical creation made of sand and put it in an urn. Half of the sand is shared with the audience, to circulate and disperse its healing among the people. The rest of the sand is then poured into a river or some  body of water.

Bizarrely, celebrating our mortality and perish-ability,  can be peculiarly  soothing.

How can we manifest this in our own lives?  If you have ever watched ‘Mary Poppins’ why not draw chalk pictures on a path then stay and watch it deteriorate or be washed away by the rain or swept away with the wind.  There is a  part in the movie where they bring the chalk pictures to life by jumping into the pictures singing ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ and create this fantastical life around them.

The children are so sad when it start to rain and they have to come out from the pictures created and watch that creation of life be washed away by the rain. Remember how as children we used to lie on our backs and make symbols out of clouds?  Do that. Watch how the clouds change from a face to a duck!

Make a sandcastle if you are lucky enough to live near the ocean. This celebration is about permitting yourself to admit and accept the fact that nothing lasts- relish  the peace and unity that comes with it.