On Mandalas at work…
This is in response to questions I have had from people in the last few weeks over why I use nature mandalas in my work. It’s not meant to be an explanation as much as it’s a sharing of my relationship with beauty, and I hope it fuels yours too.
My fascination with mandalas began as a child growing up in a traditional south Indian household where one of the first things the woman of the house would do in the morning was to draw a ‘kolam’ — symmetrical patterns guided by a system of dots in space, created with coarse rice flour. Then as I grew up, I got exposed to intricate Tibetan mandalas and tantric sacred geometry, and realised, mandala in Sanskrit loosely translated to mean circle.
I love pottery, and while I prefer hand pottery to wheel, one of the most critical lessons the wheel has taught me, is that unless I am centered (physically, mentally, emotionally…), the clay will not centre on the wheel. This is a lesson I carry into my work with mandalas, and for that matter, into all my work in the world.
Anytime I work in nature, such as when Srilakshmi Divakar and I work on The Handmade Journey, I feel the need to centre myself more deeply than ever, for our relationship with planet has been rather skewed. We have largely sought to receive from the Earth and not tended to her enough. We have sought to ravage and sculpt her body based on our ideas of utility without looking at the impact on her, and therefore, on ourselves.
Yet, she, in her intelligent design, has balance embedded in her being. So when we work with her, she does not ask to be avenged. She only asks to find our own centre, our own balance. Starting a day with a nature mandala, for me, is an act of prayer, to find my own centre, as I seek to steward her. It is also an exercise in learning to see beauty outside of the patriarchal sense of it, that equates it with flawlessness. I am learning to see beauty in a withered flower. When I gather fallen leaves for a mandala and attempt to discard dry decaying ones, I make myself stop and sense the journey of the life form that a leaf is: surely, there must be beauty of a life well lived, so much so that it is willing to now decay so it may nourish the soil? When I am sometimes disappointed about not finding twigs the same size, I strive to find beauty in how something unequal can also create harmony together.
A mandala is an exercise in slowing down, in finding my centre, in building my capacity to experience beauty that exists all around. It builds a new relationship with the world, one of appreciation for life as it is, without needing any fixing or ‘development’.
What is your relationship with beauty?
#RukminiIyer #mandala #beauty #TheHandmadeJourney
