Zen in a Box

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my pal Heather sent me a nifty "Meditating With Mandalas" kit for my special day. She suggested that perhaps the gift was a little juvenile, but a little juvenility once n' a while never hurt anyone.

The kit includes a 60-some page book. The first half explains mandalas, and the latter shows different meditation exercises for a variety of different images. It also includes five sticky sheets with some very basic designs to peel off and 5 tubes of coloured sand to paint the sticky sheets with.

I whipped through the book and was looking forward to designing my own mandala. I doodled a couple images in my sketch book, one of which I might paint later when I get a proper canvas for it. Then I decided I wanted to try these sticky sandy crafty things on for size.

I had been hoping the designs were more like the ones shown in the book. Instead, as I mentioned above, they were very basic. No intricate weavings or elaborate drawings. Then again, I'm sure to colour such images with grains of sand would be the sort of task for experienced monks - not your average chick with a do-it-yourself kit. Besides, how fancy can you get with only 5 colours?

I choose the design that most appealed to me. It was sort of a swirling vortex with a ring of circles - or what I like to think of as bubbles. Then I looked towards my selection of colours - purple, blue, green, gold and black.

That's it? I thought. No pink? No red? Not even white? Oh well... Not that I'm complaining... I just love lots of colour. I could've done without the dull ol' dark yellowish gold or greyish black.

The process started out easily enough. I peeled back a section of the swirling vortex and opened up the bottle of blue. I turned it upside down. Nothing. I unscrewed the cap. There was a little plastic stopper inside. Duh. Of course.

I removed it and turned the bottle upside down again. Still nothing. Too lazy to get up and grab some scissors, I tried biting the top, thinking I needed to make my own sand hole. But naturally, all my chompers gave me was a squished tip. I got off my duff and grabbed some scissors.

With a quick snip, I began pouring my blue sand onto the sticky sheet. I dusted the image off, carefully catching what spilled and funneling it back into the tube.

I looked at my lovely little bit of blue swirl, swelling with pride. Very nice! Oh boy, this is gonna look great!

Next, as I tried peeling what-would-become-purple bubbles from the blue swirls, I discovered how difficult the rest of this lil' zen project o' mine was about to become. My clumsy nails would scratch at the blue sand, leaving tiny chips of white.

I opened the purple sand tube and was about to clip off the top, when I noticed that it had a teeny-tiny hole there already. I guess I didn't stop to notice that with the blue. I soon realized that the proper technique was actually to gently puff the sand onto the image, and not spill it out in a steady stream, like I had been doing. So I puffed my purple, and things were looking not too bad.

Once I was purpled out, I knew I needed another colour, but green seemed too clashy. I decided to give black a go as a neutral shade, even though it wasn't really doin' it for me either. Outside of small details, black just doesn't feel uplifting enough to be in a mandala. Too much is too dark, too heavy... to me anyway.

This is where everything started getting messy. First of all, I should've finished with all the blue and purple sections first, because I still needed to alternate in a few places. Then as the swirls got smaller, so did the peely pieces. I found myself chanting a steady mantra to myself of 'shit, f*ck, shit' as I carefully attempted to pull the small pieces from the sticky sheet. Guaranteed, more than one piece would always peel off at once, and I'd have to try and replace it. Sand was chipping and slipping from the page, and different colours spilled into the wrong places. I tried scratching those places out and re-sanding, but it still didn't look so hot.

When I looked at the almost-finished product, it really wasn't what I had originally imagined. The colours were faded and chipped. The image had no great impact. I peeled the final bubble from the center and coloured it the unimpressive shade of gold.

What an ugly piece o' crap I've created. If this is a juvenile project, then someone send me back to pre-school.



And to think I was originally hoping to create something a little more elaborate. I think I have a lifetime to go before I have the patience, discipline and technique of a Buddhist monk.