Mandalas: The dynamics of vedic symbolism

A Deer Sermon Before the humming of human voices. Before human myths and hymns . . . The silence of the sky, the darkening purple of distant slopes, the vast, sustained quiet of the lakes’s lyric . . . All found themselves echoed in the lake's reflections. With the evening breeze, all the lake’s images trembling into dreams of themselves, until the air calms and all reflections recompose themselves once again reassuming their original forms, then faded away in the evaporating light. Darkness itself faded into night's slow river of constellations. In far hills and mountains, the great annals of the high forests and hills, birch, alder, pine, and oak contributed yet another ring to the silent saga of their still growth. Lakes and springs, waterfalls echoing in their grottos, glazing rocks, streamed down valleys feeding grass-filled, wildflower-strewn meadows. It is there we found pasture. And so it was, through forests our story followed the effortless calligraphy of descending waters our ancient paths cutting through meadows, disappearing among boulders, reappearing within pine groves. Arriving at the edge of a deep forest, we fattened on berries. A creek cut through the dunes and we gazed out across the wave-tossed edge of the great waters. The earth and our migrations inscribed each within each many white glaciers dissolving into black moraines, our wide swath of hoofprints peppering meadows of new-fallen snow. These, though more permanent than the writing of raindrops on leaves, were not the Great Story. Though we long remember the death of the great stag, shivering before his legs folded. One cat digging in from behind. Another pulling down from the nose. Soon afterward, heavy snow. With spring, an avalanche, and the record of this story lay buried,. Smaller stories — the calligraphy of our hooves in the snow, tree rings circumnavigating the sap images of pines and stars shimmering in lakes and lagoons — continued. After fires Grasses and meadows There we pastured following this same effortless paths of fire and descending waters. We four-legged creatures, following green waves of wind-blown grasses, of rainbows, of flower-strewn meadows, began to be followed by two-legged creatures. At times, sipping sweet waters, we would behold our images in lakes and pools rippling in stillness. These haunted us, but we thought not of images themselves until one evening, following a trail of mushrooms. . . while the moon stood erect a great, glowing pair of horns floating through night, we entered a cave for the first time, where on the rock walls . . . we beheld images of ourselves. Thus, we learned the two-legged creatures knew images also. The two-legged creatures, in caves and under boughs. Later, in dwellings fashioned from the skins of four-legged creatures. They made ropes they used skins to make sleds so that four-legged creatures could pull the loads of the two-leggeds. We whimpered under the weight. Yet, the lightning step of the fleeing deer could not evade the traps the two-leggeds had hidden in the forests . . . In the end, even long-remembered events — the stalking, the pounce from behind, the clawing, the crumpling legs, the ripping of hide, the tearing of flesh, the coming of the two-legged ones — were not really events. None were really actions. None were truly verbs. All were insignificant like waves rippling through grasslands all mere nouns, smaller even than acorns. For in all Earth and Heavens there is only one Verb. Fire Only the great fire in the heavens and his pale, round, changing sister can swallow up all nouns and then gradually re-illumine them into existence once again. These heavenly fires these soaring calligraphers cast their images in countless lakes, pools, lagoons, while forming broad paths of light meandering across the great waters. These inscriptions light inscribed within darkness-illumining night, a photo-graphy a writing a writhing with light effortless as flowing calligraphy of falling waters. Gradually a great darkness began covering much of the land, the loose-soiled clearings and golden meadows. For long and long, much of the land was covered with glacies . . .