The Beauty of Impermanence
A few weeks ago, I attended performances at the Esplanade in Singapore at a weekend-long music festival called Tapestry of Sacred Music. It featured religious and sacred music from around the world including Sikh kirtans, sufi poems, Tuvan throat singing and various dance forms from exotic places like Tibet and Bali. Drawn to the melody of Sufi compositions, I registered for a Sunday evening sufi performance expecting whirling dervishes like the ones I had seen on a trip to Turkey. Instead, I got the opportunity to listen to a soulful quartet that showcased songs by Imams from famous mosques in Istanbul. The audience was respectful and engaged, despite most of us not understanding the meaning of the words of the songs.

“Everything in this universe is evanescent. Because it is evanescent, it is also precious. Spend this precious moment wisely and beautifully” ~ Haemin Sunim
Tapestry of Sacred Music
A few weeks ago, I attended performances at the Esplanade in Singapore at a weekend-long music festival called Tapestry of Sacred Music. It featured religious and sacred music from around the world including Sikh kirtans, sufi poems, Tuvan throat singing and various dance forms from exotic places like Tibet and Bali. Drawn to the melody of Sufi compositions, I registered for a Sunday evening sufi performance expecting whirling dervishes like the ones I had seen on a trip to Turkey. Instead, I got the opportunity to listen to a soulful quartet that showcased songs by Imams from famous mosques in Istanbul. The audience was respectful and engaged, despite most of us not understanding the meaning of the words of the songs.
A breathtaking Mandala
When we stepped out of the vast auditorium into the concourse area where smaller concerts are typically featured, we found ourselves in a small crowd clustered around what looked like a large, circular painting. It was a beautiful mandala – a breathtaking painting made with colored sand, similar to the colorful rangolis we see at Indian festivals. Created by Buddhist monks, the mandala was an exquisitely crafted, symmetrical and perfect picture with a small statue of the medicine Buddha at the center. Even as I admired the perfection of this exquisite art form, what happened next was even more amazing.
Dissolved!
At exactly 6 p.m, a group of monks of various ages, dressed in their yellow-orange robes, chanted prayers in unison. They slowly walked up the intricate mandala that they had painstakingly created and proceeded to methodically destroy it. Not in an angry, uncontrolled way but in a gentle reverential way. A dozen or so monks started from the outer edge at various locations and using a cloth, messed up their carefully created masterpiece by bringing all the sand to the center. It felt oddly peaceful to see them execute a lesson in detachment and humility.
Nothing is permanent
Nothing is permanent. Life and the moments of beauty embedded in it are all transient. It is only the wise who know it but still proceed to wholeheartedly live a life of purpose.
I stood transfixed as I saw the mandala dissolve into a mass of regular sand with colorful specks. The audience was allowed to take home a small part of this mixed sand, it is believed to be beneficial for relieving afflictions and bringing peace. I have my piece of the mandala by my bedside.
My mother’s rangoli
Each morning my mother would draw a rangoli outside our doorstep. They weren’t huge productions but simple clean lines drawn with geometrical precision and devotion. My mother’s rangoli was as reliable as the morning sunshine. It was a symbol that all was well at home. Even though it would invariably be smeared or defaced in a few hours, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that each day we had proof of her daily discipline and a small act of faith in a world that is always spinning, always changing.
Today my mother is no more. In my own life across countries, I have not developed either the skill or the discipline to make such a mark outside my doorstep with consistency. I do take the time to create a rangoli during Diwali. Even then it seems like a massive effort to add that to my to-do festive list. Perhaps my reluctance is reflective of our contemporary lives, much of which is lived in public view in a curated, controlled fashion. There is no value in displaying quick messy squiggles on social media. When every image is filtered and every caption parsed, the value of showing up everyday, no matter how imperfectly, is lost.
Mother’s Day
This year on Mother’s Day, I remembered the same day a year ago. I was in California, celebrating my daughter’s graduation. In what seems like a blink of an eye, another year had passed. But so had all the others before that. I had brought home a newborn infant in a California neighborhood many years ago. At that time, I had no idea what the future would hold for us as mother and child. We had shared many happy and fun and poignant and painful moments. We had moved and grown together. And now we were apart. My fully grown child was forging her own way ahead.
There was no one perfect moment that neatly summarized our messy life. No singular airbrushed picture could capture the ups and downs, the detours and disappointments of our life. Like the daily rangoli, we had erased and started over again and again. We had redrawn the contours of our life together and separately, more than once.
Impermanence is a permanent condition. Yet, our lives are precious not because they are perfect, but because they are transient.
There are cycles and seasons. Just as the trees sprout and shed, we keep breathing, creating, covering up and beginning again.
Regardless of the number of times we come across this lesson, it is hard to integrate it into our consciousness. Perhaps the only way to truly accept and embrace this axiom is to start a practice that reiterates the message repeatedly. Maybe it’s time for me to start a daily rangoli practice. Not just to create pretty drawings but to remind myself each day of the transience of things, of life itself. Practice, it is said, makes perfect.
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