After realizing the illusion, we can either struggle to climb out and drown from exhaustion, or deny the truth and willfully forget, sinking back into the abyss. Or we can let go and simply accept that we are here, drifting on this endless sea with no shoreline and nothing to cling to. When at last we relax, we discover to our delight that we quite naturally rise and float peacefully upon the surface.

For thousands of years, the mandala has represented the great circle that is the entirety of existence. In religious art, the mandala has been depicted in many different ways. The celestial rose in Dante’s Paradise, the golden lotus of Mahavairocana, the great sun Buddha, and the giant rose windows in Europe’s great cathedrals.

Of course, all of these mandala symbols were created long before science recognized that our own galaxy is itself one vast mandala in a circular universe spinning with billions of galaxies.

We are living in a great, radiating circle, and this radiance is also in a cycle; this cycling is the dance that is in us, around us, and is us. We are the dance.

Agave Mandala ~ Art from Jeff’s Zen Garden

On the surface of a sphere any point may be regarded as the center. We exist in a curved universe, on one point of a spinning galaxy, all driven by one vast and incalculable energy. This one energy pulses in a perpetual vibration of on and off. As this energy vibrates it spins, much like we spin when we dance.

As an aperture through which this one energy manifests itself, all temporal organic life in the universe is likewise vibrating and spinning in a perpetual cycle of growth, creation and expansion; decay, destruction and contraction. As this process is simply an expression of a single energy, it cannot go toward or away from itself or move in opposition to anything else.

As an inextricable part of this organic process, we are subject to all aspects of this eternal dance of energy. From a limited point in time and space it may appear that the dance is moving toward some future, more advanced or degraded position. This appearance is merely an optical illusion of consciousness, a phantom by-product of memory and the ability to engage in abstract thought. Nothing more.

Zen presents a challenge to awaken from this illusion. Having awoken, all notions of past and future, success and failure, better or worse, self and other, naturally disappear, as a mirage simply fades away when the aperture through which it is viewed changes position.

Leaving nothing but the circle dance.

The Geometry of Nature ~ Art from Jeff’s Zen Garden