Space, Time, Origin, Art, The Present, and Serenity: The Sacredness of Life
While slaving away at developing what modern society deems a person needs to be “successful”, we often lose ourselves in the depths of duty. Take a step back and ask yourself; what is the purpose of life? The successes of life will be washed away and forgotten with time, so what does that leave? The simple answer to this is personal satisfaction/happiness, and self-discovery. I only understood this recently. Visualize yourself at the end of life. You have achieved wealth and fame. However, to achieve these things, you sacrificed important experiences and the things that made you who you are. You spent little to no time with loved ones and dropped your most enjoyed hobbies. At the end of the road, what did the wealth and fame really mean? Now, come back to the present, still possessing the fruits of youth. What do you plan on doing differently now that you have seen your journey’s end? Let’s rediscover ourselves and see what it truly means to live and experience the sacred.
The Arts
Creator’s treasure
woven from the stuff of dreams
mind with God’s blessing
How do you practice art? Art can take any forms, the difference between the arts and everything else is that it will make you feel deeply in a certain way. The deepest emotions and thoughts often surfaces with the arts. The arts also take forms of beliefs and principles. The Mandala is a unique type of artistic creation often made by Buddhist monks. The purpose of a Mandala is not to create a drawing pleasing to the eye or precious to the artist, but instead the exact opposite. “Once the mandala is complete the monks ask for the deities’ healing blessings during a ceremony. As the monks chant, one monk begins the destruction of the mandala by scraping a knuckle through the sand, creating a cross of grey sand.”(54) After much time is invested into creating a Mandala, it is then destroyed immediately after. Why is it destroyed? The purpose of its destruction is to represent that nothing in life lasts forever, and to let go of preciousness and be free of clinginess to possessions.
The arts for me would be creating anything. I code as a profession and am a hobbyist visual artist and former pianist. More than mind and body, all of the end products I have with these activities become extensions of me. As for the process, it puts me in a meditative state or gives me a rush. Let me walk you through exactly what I mean. With creation, you have a doorway that transports you into another world. You are the god of that world. You can make things exist and cease to exist at the same time. You can create something, then destroy it when you are done, or don’t. Everything in this world is completely up to you. That’s the kind of free feeling I get. Nothing can bother me when creating, it’s just my mind and me. Free as a bird to express what I’m thinking, whether it be in an illustration or webpage I make.
Serenity and The Breath of Life
Beauty’s look, it seems
takes form of virtual worlds
stirring hearts abound
Where do you experience serenity or the breath of life? Most popular experiences are sunsets by the beach or the fireworks at a Japanese firework festival. However, I experience it a little differently. I experience the breath of life in the midst of windy yet calm nights. Even in the city, where the lights fog up the starry night, the illumination from glowing street lights give an eerie yet exciting feeling. That’s the primary reason for why I choose to run at night. The same experience can be had through digital means. Although digital scenery and sounds lack sensory essence compared to experiencing it in real life, the difference between reality and fantasy is that fantasy has the advantage of having the capability of surpassing the limits of reality. It can be anything it wants and anyone can have the creative freedom to alter it to their own desires. And who knows? Maybe in the near future, virtual reality can reach new heights and make it possible to experience these things like we can in the real world. Seriously. Many video games like Genshin Impact has some truly breathtaking views.
Space, Time, and The Present
Universe of mine
Delicate fabrics of space and time
all shall fade away
The present is the moment of excitement, passion, and truth. The present can both speed up and slow down, bring emotion, bring joy. It is also when everything in the universe, simultaneously, coexists and traverses throughout. It is the beginning of the future and the end of the past. The present is the only place the sacredness of time can exist. How do you spend the sacredness of time? What is your sacred time? Think about it, what gives you ecstatic butterflies when thinking of doing it? I spend my sacred time in many ways, but the time I consider most valuable is creating, more specifically, drawing and coding. Nothing is even close to being comparable to the feeling I get when getting into the zone of doing these activities. This is in the category of sacred time that is sped up. The sun rises and the night falls before I can even react.
How do you perceive the reality that is before your eyes? During my daily jog, I usually run during the sunset, and I have to say, looking up at the sky, I realize how insignificantly small I am. The world is both unfathomably small, yet enormous. Every object is both huge and tiny. The infinity in the void and numbers. The amount of numbers between just one and two is infinite. Infinity is limitless, yet there are bigger and smaller infinities. Infinities like time and space exists all around us. Our senses bring those infinities into a space that is comprehendible. When a question of the mystery of the universe is answered, more questions appear in its place. Let’s begin at step one, the thing we should know the most about: ourselves. Where does the soul reside? If in the brain, where exactly? Furthermore, what are “we”? Is it our body, no. The human body is merely a vessel for the soul. Our soul is the only thing we can’t lose without losing the entirety of ourselves, although it can lay dormant when the brain’s function ceases. Hence, we are it, the soul. What exactly is a soul? Is it actually a spirit, a separate entity? Or is it something actually physical in our brain. We know so little about “souls”, they are undoubtedly one of the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe.
Origin
What is your origin? How did you become who you are? Everyone is born more or less the same, it’s what follows day after day that makes the person. Remember every string of events that has happened, they all lead to this moment. Now, the sacred feeling of origin, where do you feel it most? I experience my origin in my hometown. My hometown is small enough to where I consider the entirety of it as my comfort place. Because my parents haven’t moved since my birth, my home is where I experience origin. The architecture and furniture are relatively the same for as long as I can remember. With nearly every item in the house, I can tell a story of the past. However, my true origin lies wherever my family is. The feeling of origin and belonging are where my family is.
These methods are how I maintain balance between my work and struggles in society and how I, as a human being, desire to live the fullest and essence-rich life. Take these principles, find value in humility and you will find yourself to be much happier than you are now.
