Sandbox

To my sandbox playmate, I miss you and I still love you. Russia had it all the last time, but then there’s still this funny feeling that this lifetime hasn’t been quite fulfilled yet.

As a child I loved the sandbox, it meant a certain comfort - a nation of my own, sovereign. It included enough dreams and enough space to create and recreate reality(ies). It had enough sand to make castles and enough space to be free. The sandbox had all the elements alchemists talked about: earth, fire, air, water, dreams, passion and love - where you say? Well it all begins in a little child play that forms the mind into a fortress of ideas, all encompassing. When one steps into the sandbox, everything around stops making sense, from a child to a buddha, a doubting thomas to a zealous paul - the sandbox (can’t help repeating this) just had it all. There is also a certain comfort in the sandbox’s limitation. How the litte, how reality seemed to only extend up till where the sandpile runs out. How this little boundary makes sense but does not bother is into a frenzy of limitations. A sandbox if you have never been in one, is your tiny little universes where you can be yourself, honest, bare and naked. What you did and what you brought was accepted, a bucket, a shovel and few action figures. A shovel, flip flops and flags. I cannot help but remember how you sat on steps thinking, when age took us away - we still had heaven in a glass, tiny umbrellas covering. Did you keep those tiny umbrellas by the way? You kept my soul.

By A. Pushkin

If I walk the noisy streets,
Or enter a many thronged church,
Or sit among the wild young generation,
I give way to my thoughts.

I say to myself: the years are fleeting,
And however many there seem to be,
We must all go under the eternal vault,
And someone’s hour is already at hand.

When I look at a solitary oak
I think: the patriarch of the woods.
It will outlive my forgotten age
As it outlived that of my grandfathers’.

If I caress a young child,
Immediately I think: farewell!
I will yield my place to you,
For I must fade while your flower blooms.

Each day, every hour
I habitually follow in my thoughts,
Trying to guess from their number
The year which brings my death.

And where will fate send death to me?
In battle, in my travels, or on the seas?
Or will the neighbouring valley
Receive my chilled ashes?

And although to the senseless body
It is indifferent wherever it rots,
Yet close to my beloved countryside
I still would prefer to rest.

And let it be, beside the grave’s vault
That young life forever will be playing,
And impartial, indifferent nature
Eternally be shining in beauty.

– Views of St. Petersburg in the 19th Century

No longer under cover of darkness, we stepped out of the sandbox, afraid and hoping we made responsible choices. Responsibility is a funny word, its etymology ultimately relates to Latin respondere (to reply). Funny in the sense that it also pantomimes in direct proportion: Free Will (see article on: Moral Responisbilty [link]) - hence ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing comes from nothing, a dogmatic conundrum especially when argued that creation was from a nothing, but then are we to argue this in a metaphysical context of syntax? Bordering on the sacred AUM sound and the sandbox rant may even lead to quantum physics, when all we wanted to tackle was the intentions of being in the moment, fully conscious and alive. And during the sandbox days as a child, I maintained in my journals a quote by Alan Watts:

“No work for love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”
And the entire statement may be taken as a good practice of Faith or what A. Watts called the Wisdom of Insecurity:

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

Since in this sense, a presupposition is somehow taken in as a form of Faith, of having come from something - and I don’t believe in conversion and arguments in the realm of the intangible. Hence let us just be comfortable in knowing:

“The self is a contrived collection of attachments, beliefs, and expectations. To exist, the self requires our full attention, like a movie requires the light inside the projector. When the light is turned off, the movie ceases. Stop the show and move into the moment.” “The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.”

July 15, 2004 - Watts

Like the Chants of Metta (Pali Buddhists Texts): May our decisions then in the now take us to places where are minds and hearts are truly alive and happy. Laughter, tears, smiles and whispers are all part of the moment fully expressed. May we never be questioned, never be thrown behind bars for expressing our passion. May our flights and dreams be one, in this way we may always be together. Blessed BE!

Om Mani Pädme Hum
*note: Gen Rinpoche, in his commentary on the Meaning of said: “The mantra Om Mani Pädme Hum is easy to say yet quite powerful, because it contains the essence of the entire teaching. When you say the first syllable Om it is blessed to help you achieve perfection in the practice of generosity, Ma helps perfect the practice of pure ethics, and Ni helps achieve perfection in the practice of tolerance and patience. Päd, the fourth syllable, helps to achieve perfection of perseverance, Me helps achieve perfection in the practice of concentration, and the final sixth syllable Hum helps achieve perfection in the practice of wisdom…”