The Giant wheel moves
with regulated speed
as its prime mover treads on
precariously.
with regulated speed
as its prime mover treads on
precariously.
In this fair of life,
we buy our tickets for the ride,
and wait our turn.
we buy our tickets for the ride,
and wait our turn.
Up and down we go,
with a prime force moving us,
we hang on precariously,
yet with the notion that we are
the movers and shakers.
with a prime force moving us,
we hang on precariously,
yet with the notion that we are
the movers and shakers.
Sometimes the prime mover
gets drunk, loses his footing,
sometimes the cogs get clogged
and as the wheel creaks,
we groan along.
gets drunk, loses his footing,
sometimes the cogs get clogged
and as the wheel creaks,
we groan along.
You have to get off the wheel
to see where you belong.
to see where you belong.
A mandala (Sanskrit for circle) is a spiritual and ritual symbol that represents the universe or the wheel of life. Ubiquitous in Indian religions, it was also adopted by the Swiss analytic psychologist Carl Jung, who noted its spontaneous occurrence in the art he created while he explored his unconscious. "I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing,... which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time.... Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is:... the Self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious." He theorized that the urge to make mandalas emerges during moments of intense personal growth, and their appearance indicates that a profound re-balancing process is underway in the psyche, leading to a more complex and better integrated personality. One of his chief disciples, Marie-Louise von Franz, claimed, "The mandala serves a conservative purpose -- namely, to restore a previously existing order. But it also serves the creative purpose of giving expression and form to something that does not yet exist, something new and unique…. The process is that of the ascending spiral, which grows upward while simultaneously returning again and again to the same point." In a Buddhist sense, in the words of Chögyam Trungpa, “The nature of the path is more like an exploration or an expedition than following a path that has already been built. When people hear that they should follow the path, they might think that a ready-make system exists, and that individual expressions are not required. They may think that one does not have to surrender or give or open. But when you actually begin to tread on the path, you realize that you have to clear out the jungle and all the trees, underbrush, and obstacles growing in front of you. You have to bypass tigers and elephants and poisonous snakes.” On the other hand, the notion of a “prime mover” was developed by Aristotélēs, who posited “that which moves without being moved") is the primary cause of all the motion in the universe; “there is neither place, nor void, nor time, outside the heaven. Hence whatever is there, is of such a nature as not to occupy any place, nor does time age it; nor is there any change in any of the things which lie beyond the outermost motion; they continue through their entire duration unalterable and unmodified, living the best and most self sufficient of lives… From [the fulfillment of the whole heaven] derive the being and life which other things, some more or less articulately but other feebly, enjoy."
ReplyDeleteGreat summation. Thank you so much
ReplyDelete