Inhabiting our Mandala 2024

Connecting with beauty, with Earth and Sky, we honour the land, our creative mind, and our devotional heart. With Sangharakshita' s text  "The Greater Mandala" as our guide, we explore how we might move towards the ideal of working and playing within a greater mandala of aesthetic appreciation. 

Supported by our creative practice both in the shrine room and on the land, we will inhabit our outer and inner landscapes more and more fully.  Immersing ourselves in the gardens and landscapes of Taraloka, and using materials/resources found on the land, we will explore movement, drawing, sculpture and poetry. Times of silence and of playfulness will help us increase our sensitivity and receptivity to our affinities with each other and the natural world around us. As we engage in a creative dialogue we start to reveal and uncover our own responses, authentic offerings and personal mandalas. Releasing a sense of joy and experimentation, the emphasis will be on process rather than product, on unearthing and revealing inner gestures and hidden values. In witnessing these together, and within the context of devotional ritual, we will create too our shared collective mandala. 

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris, it could be weeds

in a vacant lot, or

a few small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

to make them elaborate, this isn't 

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in 

which another voice may speak.

'Prayer' by Mary Oliver