“If you are a bodhisattva you enjoy the world much as you enjoy a work of art” — Sangharakshita
Like an apparition from another world, golden particles were dancing in the shafts of light that pierced through the gap between curtain and window frame. Tiny sparks, rising and falling weightlessly, floating round and round each other. I had just woken up from an afternoon nap—I may have been around five, when children still occasionally need some daytime sleep. Hovering in the air, glittering with magic, the light beams were spellbinding. Sounds from outside—birdsong, bursts of children’s laughter—didn’t dispel an aura of profound quiet. No sign of my mother, and I was perfectly happy to lie there on my own. The light was stable and ephemeral, powerfully present yet almost not there. A moment of perfection, nothing missing, and the most striking part of it was the intuitive knowing that this was happening in Awareness. As if the light was a portal into a different plane of consciousness—lucid, calm, expansive and blissful—and suffused by beauty. I was filled with awe and knew that something precious and significant had newly awakened in me, yet it also felt strangely familiar from long ago. I didn’t want to move, as if that might dispel the magic. “Always remember this”, an inner voice said and I let the message sink in, subtle as it was. I was aware of how young I was and how easy it would be to forget. I also knew how hard it would be to find words to tell anyone about it—even myself. And I didn’t, till much later.
Looking at how my life has unfolded, I can see the ways I have honored that pledge I made with my soul, while also recognizing the dimmer passages where that golden light was occluded. For many decades now, daily meditation practice has been the sine qua non for staying in touch with that depth dimension of consciousness. Similarly, it has been fed by the practice of the arts—first music and later expanding into visual art and writing. I was fortunate to come across Buddhism relatively young, in my early twenties in Germany, and it was a relief to experience how natural it was for the needle of my inner compass to stay attuned to my calling in that framework, compared to the Christianity I was born into.
Still, sometimes a host of inner and outer conditions conspire to make it seem that other concerns are more important: proving myself to be a competent, useful and blame-free citizen, teacher, friend, and family member; achieving and maintaining a degree of material security; simply getting things done and even a seemingly noble aim such as making spiritual progress. Not that there is anything wrong with such intentions and roles—but sooner or later, when I find myself earnestly embroiled in some task or other, that fine inner voice pipes up: “remember!” And something in me responds, shifts and re-centers, making room for lightness and playfulness, for a sense that there is more to life than achieving those worthy goals.
If you are reading this, chances are that you have had your own glimpses of the uncontrived nature of awareness, with its hallmarks of effortlessness, spontaneity, and ephemeralness—experiences that elude words. Maybe sometimes it would seem better not to even try—and yet we do; perhaps to honor them and give them weight against the pull of materialism in our secularized societies. A recurring question among practitioners is how to pursue something of that ungraspable nature without the very effort of it getting in the way? Among the teachings of Sangharakshita—the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order, of which I have been a part of since the early nineties—there is one teaching that has struck me as particularly useful in this enquiry: he talks about dwelling in the “greater mandala of uselessness” or in the “mandala of aesthetic appreciation.” People often chuckle when they hear these expressions for the first time, as it exposes the utilitarianism and drivenness at the core of modern life. How audacious, to put its very opposite, uselessness and beauty, at the center of a mandala—an ancient map of the totality of human consciousness—and even call it the “greater” mandala! Sangharakshita coined this expression during study seminars on the Ratnaguna-saṃcaya-gatha, one of the earliest and most foundational texts of the Mahayana Buddhist Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) tradition. He jokingly compared the text to an Agatha Christie thriller: without a murderer, without a victim, and where nothing is done. “Wisdom appears when we’re not there,” Vessantara, one of Sangharakshita’s senior students said on a retreat on the theme of “Living in the Greater Mandala” and the way to approach it is through “delight in open-hearted awareness.” (Personal notes from a talk on “The Greater Mandala Retreat” at Adhisthana, April 2025)
Faced with the many challenging emergencies of our age, the pursuit of delight and appreciation of beauty may seem denialist, frivolous, and irresponsible. But there is another way to see it. In the Mahayana tradition, the activity of a bodhisattva—a being devoted to the awakening of all—is described as lila, the Sanskrit word for play: action that flows freely from the realization of non-duality, without straining, without any anxiety to get somewhere. in this light, attending to beauty is not a retreat from the world’s troubles. It may be what enables us to stay rooted, responsive, and resourceful amid the suffering of beings in samsara. I find it an inspiring vision—and yet easy to lose touch with. What might enable us to stay connected with it, amid so much disturbance and noise, so many competing demands? Are words enough—or do we need to engage other faculties as well?
My morning meditations take place on a platform above my bed, built specifically for that purpose. Arranged on a low Japanese table, given to me by a dear friend, is a display of objects that hold symbolic meaning: a small bronze figure of Tara, in her lap a little scroll containing words from the Mahamudra tradition, framed prints of other buddhas and bodhisattvas, various bowls filled with natural objects and semi-precious stones, several red glass hearts, sheep wool, bird skulls, a string of fairy lights, candles, and incense. The wall I face is covered with cork and it is easy to pin up postcards, little drawings, photos and other light-weight objects. These are all memory aids—they carry the flavor of meaningful experiences and encounters throughout my life, moments in the slipstream of that childhood awakening. Before and after sitting meditation, I will just sit and stare at them, doing nothing, surrendering to their power to evoke a dimension beyond the rational mind, where boundaries between inner and outer, self and other dissolve.
I sit and do nothing, aided by visual prompts at other times too. On the sitting room window sill is a collection of equal size, dark grey, flat, round stones made of slate, found on Easdale Island in Scotland on a solitary retreat. They are arranged in a row, like offering bowls on an altar. Some of them support other round stones of similar or opposite colors, including one perfect, white granite sphere—they ask to be played with, to be rearranged into other pleasing configurations. Or just to be contemplated in their perfection, nothing needing to be done.
When I lead retreats, space permitting, I like us all to sit in a circle. In order to respect the non-Buddhists in the group, we go easy on explicitly Buddhist imagery, but something needs to be in the centre of the mandala, of this temporary, safe space enabling inner transformation. Usually there will be a bunch of wild flowers, picked around the retreat centre, and an assemblage of natural objects that people find on their silent walks. Recently I have used little colored discs made of the thinnest of tissue paper. People write words on them that express their intentions and heart wishes, such as simplicity, love, or letting go. One of my mindfulness students, a self-proclaimed rationalist and atheist, wary of anything ritualistic, lingered after the meditation. I was touched to watch him bend down to read the messages, gently lifting the discs his approach had scattered. Then he just knelt there, doing nothing.
None of this needs to be elaborate. A few objects that carry meaning, a pause before and after practice, a willingness to stop, simply look, appreciate beauty—these can be enough to shift us, however briefly, from the small circle of usefulness into the greater mandala. And it is often from there, rather than from striving, that our most wholehearted responses to the world arise.
Related features from BDG
Mandala of Socially Engaged Buddhism: A Tool for Sustainable Activism
The Meaning of Mandalas
The Mandala of the Five Dancing Wisdoms within Our Hearts
Bodhimandala
Stepping into the Mandala – A Journey to Ankor Wat
